Baker County Blog

So How's That "Citizens United" Thing Working Out For Ya?

2012-01-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

After the rabidly Zionist gambling Mogul and newspaper owner, Sheldon Adelson, and his wife revived Newt Gingrich's campaign with $10 million plus in contributions, even some in Congress were rattled. But, this was the predicted outcome of the "Citizens United" decision, so no one should be surprised. You might, however, want to support the groups that are trying to promote a needed constitutional amendment that would overturn the decision like Move to Amend. Interestingly, Mr.Adelson seems to prefer giving his money primarily to political ventures favoring Israel, where he maintains the most read newspaper, and along those lines, he is willing to provide whatever it takes to influence our Presidential election on Israel's behalf. Unprincipled politicians like Gingrich are all to eager to become Adelson's sock puppet for 10 million dollars, and Gingrich's hyperbolic, Likud-like statements about the Palestinians and Iran in recent weeks demonstrate that Adelson's purchase was a sound one.

Here are some articles about Sheldon and his good work:
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Adelson, Gingrich, and the Selling of America
Posted By Justin Raimondo On January 24, 2012

If you want to know what’s wrong with our campaign finance laws – and our political system in a more general sense – look at the way Sheldon Adelson is buying the Republican nomination for his sock puppet, Newt Gingrich.

Right now, the anonymous donors to a political action committee, or PAC, can buy ads on behalf of – or against – a candidate, and spend unlimited amounts as long as there is no official connection between the PAC and any candidate. This degree of separation, however, is pure fiction: in reality, “former” aides to the candidate can and do operate these “Super PACs,” which are funded by one Daddy Warbucks or another: no overt coordination is necessary. What’s important here is disclosure, or the lack of it: the PACs don’t have to say who is funding these ads, only that the “Committee for Good Government” or some such semi-fictional entity is paying for it. In this way, Adelson – a casino billionaire, one of the richest people in the country – can drop a cool $10 million into the race (with more in the pipeline) and in effect buy the election, without the average voter knowing who is paying the bills. In short, Adelson can operate in the dark, as far as Joe Voter is concerned – and darkness is what the Adelsonian agenda requires above all.

So what is Adelson’s agenda? . . . .

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Gingrich’s Extremist Anti-Palestinian Stance Follows Millions from Casino Magnate Sheldon Adelson
Democracy Now! 1/27/12

. . . . Gal, explain what it is, this Adelson-Gingrich relationship, why he supports him.

GAL BECKERMAN: Well, he supports—the relationship is really symbiotic, in a way. It developed, as you said, in the mid-'90s over issues of union busting. Adelson wanted some help; Gingrich was able to offer it. And it developed as time went on. It seems to have helped kind of in Gingrich's evolution in terms of his pro-Israel stance. Wayne Barrett recently reported in The Daily Beast that, you know, if you look at what Gingrich was saying about Palestinians and Israel in 2005, even, as recently as 2005, it was kind of a different line. He was talking about investing in their ancestral lands. He was really speaking a much different language. This is now changed. You won’t hear Gingrich saying anything like that anymore. And it’s not—you know, one can’t draw a direct causal link, you know, find the telephone call in which Adelson said, you know, "I want you to say this." But it’s not hard to imagine that if your political life depends on a man who has very extreme-right views when it comes to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, that you’re going to hear that same language come out of that candidate’s mouth. . . . .

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NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Urged to Resign After Police Conceal Role in Anti-Muslim Documentary
Democracy Now! 1/27/12

. . . .
LINDA SARSOUR: The film is absolutely outrageous. Any rational-minded person that watches it will say, "Wow! How did the New York Police Department, the largest police force in this country, supposedly the most credible, have access to this film?" And what’s most astonishing is that while the NYPD surveils our community and creates files on us and checks us and all this kind of intelligence, the fact that there was no due diligence on the part of the NYPD to check out who the Clarion Fund is and to look up—look at their history—you don’t even need to have intelligence; just go on Google and find out who these people are—and connecting the dots, and looking at, you know, someone like Sheldon Adelson, who like funded this film, is also funding Newt Gingrich. It’s all connected. And this Third Jihad is not a one-time, you know, just a film, and we’re all mad and offended. It’s not about being offended. It’s about the security of all New Yorkers. If one bad judgment like this is happening in the NYPD, only God knows what other films are being shown that we don’t have the names in order for us do a FOIA request on these films. It’s absolutely outrageous. . . . .

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Who is Newt Gingrich’s biggest donor and what does he want?

. . . . Sheldon Adelson is also, far and away, the biggest patron of Newt Gingrich’s now-surging Republican presidential bid. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, have pumped $10 million into a political action committee backing Gingrich that is run by the former House speaker’s onetime aides. Campaign finance experts say the two $5 million contributions are among the largest known political donations in U.S. history.

No other candidate in the race to challenge President Barack Obama in the November election appears to be relying so heavily on the fortune of a single donor. It’s been made possible by last year’s Supreme Court rulings — known as Citizens United — that recast the political landscape by stripping away restrictions on contributions and how outside groups can spend their money.

Sheldon Adelson is Citizens United come to life. . . . .

Some Views on Obama's State of the Union Address

2012-01-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

I want to be a believer. I want to believe that President Obama is a born again progressive populist, who after having tried compromise with the Republicans for three years, and finding out that they aren't interested, is now returning to some core set of principles related to the "hope and change," "yes we can" rhetoric of his first Presidential campaign. I want to believe that the Democratic leadership, both local and national, was, and is correct to support him, despite his record of severely diminishing our civil rights at home while engaging in, and still supporting, probable war crimes abroad, and despite his capitulation to Republicans on important social and economic issues in the name of compromise. I realize that the Republican leadership has cynically opposed most of his efforts to revive the economy in order to get "regime change" at home, and I realize that the Republican candidates represent destructive forces that are at best no better than Obama, and which at worst will likely hammer the hopes and dreams of the American poor and middle classes, while worsening the prospects for peace in the world. Once again, progressive independents and Democrats are left on the horns of a dilemma, as the corporations and power brokers have the radical Republicans as their first choice, and Obama as their slightly less desirable backup, with no reasonable, or at least visible, alternative yet in the "race." Those who feel that Obama sold them out will have to decide whether to sit the election out or to hold their nose and vote for him in the hopes of keeping a Radical Republican out of the executive office.

Will Obama return to his imagined progressive roots and turn things around? I don't know, except that it doesn't look good.

Here, below, are two reactions by progressives to his SOTU speech, and one good suggestion for how he should proceed if he is interested in salvaging a decent place in history for himself.
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"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address

. . . .
RALPH NADER: Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms, force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria, and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn’t talk about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries, unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they’ve come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy. So I think it was very, very poor taste to start and end with this kind of massive militarism and the Obama empire. . . . .

But then, when he said to the American people, "no more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop-outs" — but that’s what’s been going on. And it’s going on today and it went on last year under his administration. Washington is a bustling bazaar of accounts receivable. They’re bailing out and they’re handing out all kinds of subsidies to corporations—handouts, giveaways, transfer of technology, transfer of medical research to the drug companies without any reasonable price provisions on drugs, giveaway of natural resources on the federal lands. You name it, it’s still going on. And as far as a cop-out, how about his deferred prosecution gimmicks with these corporations under the Justice Department, where they never have to plead guilty, they never have to make themselves vulnerable to civil lawsuits so they pay back the American people what they’ve stolen from them?

So, obviously, State of the Union speeches are full of rhetoric, they’re full of promises, but it’s good to measure them against the past performance of the Obama administration and what his promises were in 2008. They don’t really stand up very well.
. . . .

For rest of article see: "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address
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Sen. Sanders Reacts to Pres. Obama's State of the Union Address

"The American people are beginning to catch on that there`s something fundamentally wrong in our society when so few have so much and so many have so little," Bernie said after President Obama made economic fairness a key theme in his State of the Union address. The senator also praised the president for stressing the need to create millions of good-paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels.

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Obama Can Win Big with FDR Formula
by Robert McElvaine

Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn’t always “Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
. . . .
FDR launched his 1936 reelection campaign by warning against a dictatorship by the over-privileged and declaring that private enterprise had become “too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.”

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,” he said, expressing sentiments that could resonate now. “What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

Running against economic royalists, Roosevelt won reelection in one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. The Democrats, moreover, won 77 percent of the House seats and increased their hold on the Senate to 79 percent.

As 2012 begins, such a resounding victory for Obama and the Democrats looks impossible. Whether it is depends on which past reelection campaign recipe Obama decides to follow. . . . .

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More Views on SOTU:

Money in Politics Groups Mixed on Obama’s Speech

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As the Republican Presidential candidates focus on each other's numerous faults, America focuses on tax injustice

2012-01-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

[Edited 1/25/12]
As most of the Republican candidates turn their inherently mean, greedy, and compassionless natures against each other during the debates, in what has become a free-for-all circus of incompetence, demonization of poor people, and back-biting, they have managed to bring the issue of tax fairness into America's living rooms. Mitt Romney has become the poster boy for how fabulously wealthy people can end up paying a lower tax rate than ordinary working people. Mitt Romney, who even though he tells us he does his own laundry, does have an estimated wealth of $190 to $250 million, and paid only about 13.9% in taxes, i.e. $3 million, on $21.7 million of unearned income in 2010. (Unearned--they got that adjective right, because the easier the work, the more you make) At least he pays more than nothing, as is the case with many corporations. His tax rate for the 2011 tax year is estimated to come in around 15.4%. The reason offered for why his rate is so low is due to the fact that most of his income is from investments (long-term capital gains), which are taxed at a 15% rate. The average person pays above 15%, some much more, when payroll taxes for medicare and Social Security are included. Newt Gingrich says he paid almost $1 million, or about 30%, on his 2010 income of roughly $3.1 million. Perhaps it is worth noting that in 1961, an individual making $200,000 or over, and a couple making $400,000 or over had a tax rate of 91%, which, even when adjusted for inflation ($200,000 in 1961=$1,504,608.70 in 2011), would still include both Romney and Gingrich.

The long-term capital gains tax rate is currently as low as it has been for at least the last 50 years. Until the George W. Bush administration, when it was lowered to 15%, it has ranged from a high around 40% to a low of 20%, and for most of the years before W, it was at, or most often above, 25%.

It is difficult however, for Newtie to criticize Romney or even to capitalize on what many people see as inherent unfairness in the tax code, because Gingrich has a 15% flat tax plan, which he now calls the Mitt Romney flat tax, and which would eliminate taxes on capital gains entirely, while cutting his own taxes in half. Then Newt will be able to keep $2.6million instead of a paltry $2.1 million on a $3.1 million income derived from influence peddling and speech making, and Mitt would pay almost nothing as a corporate raider/restructurer. Under Newtie's plan, the corporate rate would fall from its current 35% to only 12.5%, lower that the individual's flat 15%, and both corporations and the rich would reap large tax savings, while tax revenues tumble into the abyss. Fabulous ideas? Are we going to saddle the resurgence of the American Dream on the backs of the vast majority who are already seeing their share of the dream continuously shrink towards desperation? I read tonight that Obama said in his SOTU that he wants a tax plan where people making a $million or more pay at least a 30% rate, which is definitely a move in the right direction.

Romney responds to any criticism of capitalist inequality or thoughts of increasing the low tax load of the rich as "the politics of envy" and "class warfare," as if there couldn't possibly be an objective, fact based, critical analysis and thoughtful evaluation of tax fairness and our growing inequalities in wealth and opportunity between the rich, the middle class, and the poor. No, he and his class would have us believe that it's not the politics of fairness and justice, it's only "envy." He, and many Republican leaders, would have us believe that "class warfare" isn't by the rich on the poor, and isn't about the growing inequality and the increasing wealth and power of the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, but that somehow, in the face of the facts, the poor are waging war against the rich! If he thinks that listening to poor and middle class people criticizing and protesting against outrageous inequality, in a peaceful, democratic fashion is warfare, then what would he call a situation where the poor actually decided to stand up and fight?

Partly in the hope of avoiding that eventuality, some folks are turning their skills to documentary film making so as to clearly explain the situation to Americans, in the hope that once armed with the facts, they will be able to bring change through the ballot box, even in the face of the Citizen's United ruling which grants corporations and unions unlimited campaign spending.

Below are two video variations on the same theme: We're Not Broke (We're just not taxing the rich and corporations enough, like we used to when all Americans mattered!) These are followed up by an informative Democracy Now! article on the Sundance Film Festival documentary "We're Not Broke," and a blog article by Robert Reich on the effects of globalization and "a Government Overwhelmed by Corporate money."
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We're Not Broke (Documentary at Sundance Film Festival)

From Synopsis in Sundance Film Festival Film Guide:

"With the United States in the grip of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression and an unprecedented budget deficit, the conclusion that our country is broke seems unquestionable. At least that's what politicians and pundits want ordinary citizens to believe as they call for massive spending cuts.  Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce's searing exposé reveals that, strangely absent from this rhetoric, is the infuriating fact that multibillion-dollar corporations are based in the U.S., make money from American consumers, and often even receive lucrative contracts from the government, yet pay nothing in U.S. income taxes. By exploiting tax-law loopholes and spending millions on lobbyists to pressure politicians to protect their interests, corporations pocket billions while the less-connected middle class disappears, and the poor get poorer. . . . ."

Watch a short clip on Prescreen:
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Democracy Now!
As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got To Start Taxing Corporations

During the GOP primary, Mitt Romney has come under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. We speak with Tax Justice Network USA chair Jack Blum, a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Blum appears in "We’re Not Broke," a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the United States and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. "Has [Romney] cheated? No," Blum says. "What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill... We must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that is the only way to balance the budget."

[Link added] [Read rush transcript]
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We're Not Broke, Just Twisted: Extreme Wealth Inequality in America

Go To inequality.org
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The State of Our Disunion: A Globalizing Private Sector, A Government Overwhelmed by Corporate Money

Robert Reich
 MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2012

. . . .
An Apple executive says “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” He might have added “and showing a big enough profits to continually increase our share price.”
. . . .
What they want in America is lower corporate taxes, less regulation, and fewer unionized workers. But none of these will bring good jobs to America. These steps may lower the costs of production here, but global companies can always find even lower costs abroad.
. . . .
Put simply, American workers are hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuitions, decaying infrastructure, and declining basic R&D. All of this is putting us on a glide path toward even lousier jobs and lower wages.

Get it? The strategic responsibility for making Americans more globally competitive can’t be centered in the private sector because the private sector is rapidly going global, and it’s designed to make profits rather than good jobs. The core responsibility has to be in government because government is supposed to be looking out for the public, and investing in public schools, colleges, infrastructure, and basic R&D.

But here’s the political problem. American firms have huge clout in Washington. They maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns. After the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, there’s no limit.

Who represents the American workforce? Organized labor represents fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers and has all it can do to protect a dwindling number of unionized jobs.

Republicans like it this way, and for three decades have been trying to convince average working Americans government is their enemy. Yet corporate America isn’t their friend. Without bold government action on behalf of our workforce, good American jobs will continue to disappear.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause's board chairman.

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See also:

Income inequality: Theme of 2012
By Marshall McComb
LTE, Baker City Herald
Baker City, Oregon

. . . .
But the inequality issue is not going away. Despite Republicans’ avoidance of this issue or their decrying it as “class warfare,” most of us realize that we have become a society more unequal than at any time since the 1920s. Automation, globalization, union-busting, and legalized financial abuse have drained middle-class purchasing power and stymied upward mobility. Health care and public education are in critical decline. Most of us have been left behind, while Romney and his cohorts pursue a never-ending quest for more money ... and the political power to cut their taxes even further. . . . .

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Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free

Two Minute History of Western Civilization: Population Growth, Resource Depletion, and War

2012-01-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

The Age of Stupid: Resource wars

Internet Censorship Bills In Congress: SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

In December, 2010, I received the following message from Google about "offending content" on my blog (see below). The email did not in fact tell me what the offending passage was. At the time, I checked with the "Chilling Effects" website to see what the problem was. I could not find anything due to their overload. Google took the blog post down without telling me what the "offending content" was. Their action has not been challenged or reposted as I do not yet know how to challenge or correct an error I am not privy to. This action was due to alleged violation of Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The new SOPA/PIPA bills would enshrine in American law even more dubious censorship. Now, under the proposed law, it seems they could just takedown an entire blog without much recourse.

We have received a DMCA complaint for your blog, Baker County Blog. An e-mail with the details of the complaint was sent to you on Dec 14, 2010 , and we reset the post status to "Draft"; you can edit it here. You may republish the post with the offending content and/or link(s) removed. If you believe you have the rights to post this content, you can file a counter-claim with us. For more on our DMCA policy, please click here. Thank you for your prompt attention.

Update, 1/21/11, [Edited 1/22/12]
I checked the Chilling Effects website yesterday to see if they had posted my offense. They did finally put up an undated post of the original dated complaint from Salon Media Group, Inc. concerning copyright infringement for an article of Glenn Greenwald's that I had posted back in December of 2010. I actually got the article in it's entirety from another website, but posted it with the link to the original Salon website. I edited the post yesterday and hopefully it will comply with their demands. The point is, aside from me not having used a proper disclaimer for a non-profit site or cutting Greenwald's article down to a paragraph, is that Google has the right under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down a post upon a complaint without the kind of protections we have been accustomed to, and without even informing the alleged offender of the specific violation. Go figure! Guilty until proven innocent?

The Megaupload takedown two days ago, and the arrests of its founder and other employees, would seem to contradict the arguments put forward by proponents of SOPA and PIPA, i.e., that the bills were needed to take down and prosecute allegedly criminal, overseas-based file hosting sites. Given that the government just did, without the benefit of SOPA and PIPA, what the heavy-handed legal tools in the now sidelined bills were designed to allow it to do, one wonders why the bills were proposed in the first place. The unbridled power, control, and convenience of corporations and their government?
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The End of the Blog?

By James Kwak

As you may have noticed by now, Wikipedia’s English-language site is (mostly) down for the day to protest SOPA and PIPA, two draconian anti-copyright infringement laws moving through Congress. . . .

See The End of the Blog? for article.
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SOPA Will Take Us Back to the Dark Ages

By Lance Ulanoff

January 18, 2012 "Mashable" -- I had an epiphany today. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, was not written by people who fundamentally misunderstand how the web works. They understand all too well, and want to change it forever.

Behind the almost unreadable (yet truly scary) text of SOPA (and its Senate doppelganger, PIPA, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a desire, likely fueled by powerful media conglomerate backers, to take us all back to the thin-pipe, content-distribution days of 1994 — right before the World Wide Web launched. From the moment the Internet and websites arrived, a veritable Pandora’s box of opportunities have opened to every average Joe and Josephine in the world. Everyone became a content creator. Everyone had an audience. . . . .

See link above for entire article.
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Wikipedia on SOPA and PIPA - Learn more
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Sen. Wyden's Statement on the Letter to Senator Reid Calling for More Time to Consider PIPA and Dropping of DNS Provision in SOPA

Senator Wyden's Letter to Harry Reid
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Sen. Jeff Merkley Tweets he's Opposing SOPA/PIPA
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OpenCongress Opposes SOPA/PIPA

Here is a recent OpenCongress Blog on the subject:

Open Congress : Congress Gossip Blog

PIPA first on Senate agenda on Jan. 24th, 2012
Posted: 03 Jan 2012 10:26 AM PST

Happy 20-12 all, looking ahead to the second session of the 112th U.S. Congress. The House is officially back in session on Jan. 17th, and the Senate convenes on Monday Jan. 23rd. Until then it’s all about district visits & fundraisers, generally speaking.

The most important blog post of the new year – so far – is by our ally Ernesto Falcon of Public Knowledge, giving an overview of the legislative process surrounding the net censorship bill PIPA when the Senate returns under Sen. Reid’s prioritization. I hope Ernesto won’t mind if I excerpt at length, with a second vociferous recommendation to read it all and share it with your online communities ::
. . . .
Why, again, is it so urgent to oppose these terrible legal frameworks for an internet blacklist? Answers via our deeply-researched partners EFF, FightForTheFuture, and of course our own OC Blog. . . . .

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See Also:

Democracy Now! Wednesday, January 17, 2012
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Please sign the petition:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

If you have tried to Google anything today, you know why it is very important and "on topic".
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"The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty." -- Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Source: Lovell v. City of Griffin

Celebrating Our Glorious Wars, Plus Are Corporate Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths?

2012-01-03T19:12:00.000-08:00

In This Edition:

- Celebrating Our Glorious Wars
----Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget. (William Blum)
----Debacle! (Tom Englehardt)
- Our Innocents Abroad? (Pat Buchanan)
- Are Some Corporate & Government Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths? (A Nation on Meds. YouTube)
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(First three articles via Tom Feeley at Information Clearinghouse)

Celebrating Our Glorious Wars

Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget. (William Blum)

"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

"It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.

See Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget. (William Blum) for rest of article.
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Debacle!
How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower

By Tom Engelhardt

. . . . In a final flag-lowering ceremony in Baghdad, clearly meant for U.S. domestic consumption and well attended by the American press corps but not by Iraqi officials or the local media, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke glowingly of having achieved “ultimate success.” He assured the departing troops that they had been a “driving force for remarkable progress” and that they could proudly leave the country “secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people begin a new chapter in history, free from tyranny and full of hope for prosperity and peace.” Later on his trip to the Middle East, speaking of the human cost of the war, he added, “I think the price has been worth it.”

And then the last of those troops really did “come home” -- if you define “home” broadly enough to include not just bases in the U.S. but also garrisons in Kuwait, elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, and sooner or later in Afghanistan.

On December 14th at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the president and his wife gave returning war veterans from the 82nd Airborne Division and other units a rousing welcome. With some in picturesque maroon berets, they picturesquely hooahed the man who had once called their war "dumb." Undoubtedly looking toward his 2012 campaign, President Obama, too, now spoke stirringly of “success” in Iraq, of “gains,” of his pride in the troops, of the country’s “gratitude” to them, of the spectacular accomplishments achieved as well as the hard times endured by “the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” and of the sacrifices made by our “wounded warriors” and “fallen heroes.”

He praised “an extraordinary achievement nine years in the making,” framing their departure this way: “Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq -- all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering -- all of it has led to this moment of success... [W]e’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

And these themes -- including the “gains” and the “successes,” as well as the pride and gratitude, which Americans were assumed to feel for the troops -- were picked up by the media and various pundits. At the same time, other news reports were highlighting the possibility that Iraq was descending into a new sectarian hell, fueled by an American-built but largely Shiite military, in a land in which oil revenues barely exceeded the levels of the Saddam Hussein era, in a capital city which still had only a few hours of electricity a day, and that was promptly hit by a string of bombings and suicide attacks from an al-Qaeda affiliated group (nonexistent before the invasion of 2003), even as the influence of Iran grew and Washington quietly fretted. . . .

For rest of article see Tomgram: Engelhardt, Lessons from Lost Wars in 2012
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Our Innocents Abroad? (Pat Buchanan)

As Leon Trotsky believed in advancing world communist revolution, neocons and democratists believe we have some inherent right to intervene in nations that fail to share our views and values.

But where did we acquire this right?

And if we are intervening in Egypt to bring about the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, and the Islamists win as they are winning today, what do we expect the blowback to be? Would we want foreigners funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into our election of 2012?

How would Andrew Jackson have reacted if he caught British agents doing here what we do all over the world?

See Our Innocents Abroad? (Pat Buchanan) for rest of article.
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Are Some Corporate & Government Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths? (A Nation on Meds--Snakes In Suits)
"I Am Fishead" Are Corporate Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths ?‬ (Long)

The Complex, Yet Simple Truths, of Chris Hedges

2012-01-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

Chris Hedges "Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!"

How the Rest of the World Sees Us: the "Glass House of Hypocrisy"

2011-12-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

[Edited 12/14/11]
Listening to the American media, like NPR and Fox News, or to Presidential candidates, and the like, who constantly berate the rest of the world, like Russia, or any country that defends their sovereignty from the parasitic demands of western capitalists, or who seriously defend the rights of Palestinians against the illegal murderous acts of the Zionist Israeli state, as Iran, Syria, Libya or pre-war Iraq have done, for example, you get the idea that we, the US, are the "Pillar of International Law" and "Democratic Freedoms" -- the ultimate arbiters of "moral authority."

We are God. We decide for the world what is moral or immoral, right or wrong. We don't subscribe to the International Court--we just tell them who to try for war crimes before or after we and NATO bomb target countries and their civilians into submission. You can hear our righteous role promoted in the media, some churches, and from Congress every day--we make the rules by virtue of our power and not to be questioned so-called moral authority--governed of course by who has the most money to influence elections and our most moral Congressional legislation. The fact that our government now consistently violates and trashes our Constitution, civil liberties, and traditional American democratic values is not worthy of notice, and in fact, many Americans realize that they dare not speak of it for fear of retribution.

We get government by the well off, imperial empire, drone killing of citizens without trial, indefinite detention, war without end, extreme inequality, increasing poverty, medical care we can't afford, foreclosures and homelessness, crumbling schools and infrastructure, and tear gas when we protest, but despite the reality of our lives, our government and media lecture us and the rest of the world on the virtues of American democracy.

Well, much of the world disagrees with the hypocrisy represented by the policies, wars and other actions of the US government, but you won't hear that from most of the American media or Congress.

Here are two infinitesimally small, but recent, examples of what much of the world really thinks:
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Heavy-Handed Police Weigh In To Tackle Thousands "Occupying" US

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December 05, 2011
Thousands March at U.N. Climate Summit in Durban to Demand Climate Justice

NNIMMO BASSEY: The U.S. delegation should understand that the citizens of the United States are not living on a separate planet. We have only one planet. And it’s important that the delegation from the U.S. should stop stopping global action against global warming. They have done this from 1997. They can’t keep on bullying the world. If they don’t want to act, they should get out of the convention. Simple message: we can’t allow this any further.

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Which nations are really responsible for climate change - interactive map
The Guardian, UK

There are many ways to view the world's carbon emissions: by national totals or emissions per person; by current carbon output or historical emissions; by production of greenhouse gases or consumption of goods and services; by absolute emissions or economic carbon intensity.  Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.

Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.

See link above for interactive map.
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There are no magic answers

"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future." -- Noam Chomsky

Taibbi on Indefinite Detention of American Citizens: Several Days Late & Many Dollars Short?

2011-12-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

Matt Taibbi penned an excellent article about the indefinite detention of American citizens in "Rolling Stone" on December 9th, but given the quickness with which the legislation was produced and passed by our corrupt Congress in the midst of the Christmas season (isn't that what all the government scoundrels do?), it is doubtful that many have had the time to understand it and react to it, if in fact there are even any Americans who pay attention and respond anymore. While this blog has posted other articles about the issue in the last week or so, I didn't even know of his article until tonight, so this is a bit late, but please give it a read anyway, if for no other reason than to understand how bad things have gotten, and to contact your representatives and others if you are so inclined. (Info below attempts to clarify Obama's position on indefinite detention of American citizens.)

Indefinite Detention of American Citizens: Coming Soon to Battlefield U.S.A.
(Original post here)

By Matt Taibbi

December 12, 2011 "Rolling Stone" -- There’s some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of "terrorist" suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military.

The fact that there’s been only some muted public uproar about this provision (which, disturbingly enough, is the creature of Wall Street anti-corruption good guy Carl Levin, along with John McCain) is mildly surprising, given what’s been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial.

The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably-unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law "basically says … for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and that people can be jailed without trial, be they "American citizen or not." New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that "America is part of the battlefield."
. . . .
As soon as December 13, the President will sign NDAA Section 1031 into law, permitting citizen imprisonment without evidence or trial. The bill that passed Congress absolutely DOES NOT exempt citizens. The text of Section 1031 reads, "A covered person under this section" includes "any person who has committed a belligerent act". We only have to be ACCUSED, because we don't get a trial.

- Confusingly, Obama threatened a veto for 1032, but NOT 1031. 1032 is UNRELATED to imprisoning citizens without a trial. He has never suggested using a veto to stop Section 1031 citizen imprisonment -- in fact, it was requested by the Obama administration. Watch the video for proof.

- The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) is dangerously misleading. Don't be fooled: In the text of 1031(e), "Nothing in this section shall be construed...", the only word that matters is "construed" because the Supreme Court are the only ones with the power to construe the law. The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) permits citizens to be imprisoned without evidence or a trial forever, if the Supreme Court does not EXPLICITLY repeal 1031.

- Any time you hear the words, "requirement for military custody" this refers to 1032 NOT 1031. We MUST not confuse these two sections. In its statements, the Obama administration has actually contributed to the confusion about 1032's "requirement for military custody", which is COMPLETEY UNRELATED to Section 1031 citizen imprisonment without trial. These tricky, misleading words appear even in major news stories. Don't fall for it!

If we act urgently to tell our friends, family, and colleagues, we may still be able to prevent this. Here is what we can do:
See article for links

Associated Video:

Starship Troopers Scene Citizens vs Civilians

OK, Here's what you can do:
1) Americans must know about this to stop it. Urgently pass this petiton as widely as possible: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-ndaa-section-1031-citizen-imprisonment-law-before-dec-13

2) To spread this C-SPAN video evidence, Thumbs Up and comment on this video. People deserve to watch this before he signs it.
Proof Obama will sign NDAA 1031 Citizen Imprisonment Law in a few days

3) Congress can still block the law before December 13. Write and call your Representative and Senator telling them to stop NDAA Section 1031 and the dangerously misleading Feinstein Amendment 1031(e).
Contact your Representative: http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/
Contact your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

4) Write and call the White House to tell the President you won't sit by and watch NDAA Section 1031 and the dangerously misleading Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) become law: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

American Civil Liberties Under Attack: National Defense Authorization Act bill Update; Hernandez: Bloggers Not Media

2011-12-08T15:19:00.000-08:00

Two Quick Items in This Edition:

- National Defense Authorization Act Bill Update

- Hernandez: Bloggers Aren't Media?
[Edited 12/9/11]
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National Defense Authorization Act Bill Update

Jon Stewart Pokes Congress and the National Defense Authorization Act on the Daily Show
December 07, 2011

The Senate passes a bill that jeopardizes Americans' civil rights, the CIA loses a stealth drone in Iran, and Ralph Fiennes enjoys Shakespeare.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/wed-december-7-2011-ralph-fiennes
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MONDAY, DEC 5, 2011 6:27 AM PST
PolitiFact and the scam of neutral expertise
BY GLENN GREENWALD

PolitiFact rated as “mostly false” Paul’s argument that the new explicit standards in Levin/McCain defining the scope of the War on Terror are so vague and broad that they allow virtually anyone to be targeted by the President with force or detention; to support his claim, Paul cited the fact that, under this new language, the President is explicitly authorized to use force not only against members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (as the original 2001 AUMF provided), but also against anyone who “substantially supports” those groups or “associated forces.” As Paul put it in his supposedly false statement: “It’s (now) anybody associated with (those) organizations, which means almost anybody can be loosely associated — so that makes all Americans vulnerable.”

Paul is far from the only person making this argument. The ACLU . . . . (see link for rest)

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Who needs a trial?

Written by Baker City Herald Editorial Board December 09, 2011 09:21 am

Imagine that a U.S. citizen is arrested as a suspected terrorist, on U.S. soil, and then placed in military custody for as long as officials deem necessary.

Oh, and this citizen doesn’t get a trial, so the mere suspicion of complicity in promoting terrorism is sufficient grounds for an open-ended detention.

. . . .

When it comes to our constitutional rights and the government’s protection of them, we consider the word “optional” inappropriate.

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Hernandez: Bloggers Aren't Media?

Dec 7, 8:39 PM EST

Federal judge: Montana blogger is not journalist
By JEFF BARNARD  Associated Press

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets. . . . .

"My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information."

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The Real Danger in That Bloggers-Aren't-Journalists Ruling
Dan KennedyAssistant Professor, School of Journalism at Northeastern University
HuffPosted: 12/ 8/11

You may have heard that a Montana blogger must pay a $2.5 million libel judgment because a federal judge ruled she was not a journalist, and was thus not entitled to protect her anonymous sources.

In fact, that's not quite what happened. The case actually had little to do with whether bloggers have the same right to protect their sources as traditional journalists. But U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez's opinion nevertheless threatens to weaken long-standing protections against libel suits, and to widen the already-gaping divide between the media and the rest of society. . . . .

But if Judge Hernandez's ruling on the shield law is nothing to be all that alarmed about, the same cannot be said for what he wrote elsewhere in his opinion. In a passage that I find astonishing, Hernandez found that Cox could not be considered a "media defendant," and that therefore Obsidian and Padrick would not have to prove she acted negligently. . . . .(See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kennedy/the-real-danger-in-that-b_b_1136844.html)

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The Meteoric Rise of Marco Hernandez
Nine years from law degree to judge: Affirmative action and the diversity decades had absolutely nothing to do with it!

Marco A. Hernandez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marco Antonio Hernandez (born 1957) is an American attorney and judge in the state of Oregon. A native of Arizona, he served as a Circuit Court judge in Washington County from 1995 until 2011, including as presiding judge for three years. . . . .

Hernandez then moved on to a four-year school and received a B.A. degree from Western Oregon State College (now known as Western Oregon University) in 1983.[5][4] He then attended the University of Washington School of Law and earned his J.D. in 1986.[5] . . . .

After law school he returned to Oregon where he spent three years working for Legal Aid Services of Oregon where he often represented farm workers.[2][6] Hernandez himself had picked crops in the field in his youth.[2] Following his time with legal aid, Hernandez the[n] joined the Washington County District Attorney's office as a deputy prosecutor in 1989.[7]

Shortly before leaving office in January 1995, Governor Barbara Roberts appointed Hernandez to be a Circuit Court judge in Washington County, Oregon.

In January 2008, Hernandez was one of three candidates recommended by a six-member judicial selection committee to replace Garr King on the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.[11] President George W. Bush selected Hernandez to fill the vacancy on the District Court of Oregon and submitted his nomination on July 23, 2008.[2] Senators Gordon H. Smith and Ron Wyden supported the nomination, but it was made with less than six months remaining in the Bush Presidency.[2][12] The nomination was not acted upon by the 110th Congress and was thus returned.[13]

Republican Gordon Smith was defeated for re-election in 2008, and newly-elected President Barack Obama restarted the judicial selection process for the District of Oregon.[3] Democrat Ron Wyden recommended Hernandez in addition to five other candidates selected by a thirteen-member judicial selection committee.[12] On July 14, 2010, Obama renominated Hernandez to replace Garr King.[14] He is one of few people to be nominated to the federal bench by presidents from two different political parties.[7] The Senate failed to act on Obama's nomination, and President Obama nominated Hernandez again in January 2011.[4] On February 7, 2011, the Senate unanimously confirmed Hernandez as the newest judge for the District of Oregon,[4] and he received his commission on February 9.[10]

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See Judge says blogger can be sued for defamation for photo.
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OBSIDIAN FINANCE GROUP, LLC, and KEVIN D. PADRICK,
VS
CRYSTAL COX
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74870113/Crystal-Cox-Opinion
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Obsidian V. Cox - I was Denied the Right To Show Jury my Source Documents that I Provided Judge Marco Hernandez.

Judge Marco Hernandez Says that Oregon Retraction Statutes Do Not Apply To Blogs

Disagree With Our Government's Wars? Could You Be Subject to Arrest & Indefinite Detention?

2011-11-28T18:36:00.000-08:00

[Edited 11/29/11- links changed & added; text added; update on Senate Vote added 11/30/11]

A friend brought this latest assault on American liberty, and what used to be our taken for granted constitutional protections, to my attention this morning (Monday, 11/28/11). We've been treated recently to the killing of American citizens in Yemen, without constitutionally guaranteed due process of charge and trial, by the Obama administration --a real shock for sure to those who thought that the violation of the rule of law would not come home to Americans in a major way. But like Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens said:

"But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket."

Glenn Greenwald mentioned today on Democracy Now! that:

If you look back at what the Congress did in the wake of 9/11 when it enacted the authorization to use military force, if you look at that authorization, it’s incredibly narrow, as it turns out. If you go and actually read it, it says the President is authorized to use military force against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attack and those countries who harbored those individuals. That’s it, that’s the only authorized use of military force. Well, here we are more than a decade later, and there was an article in The Washington Post from a week ago where U.S. officials anonymously are saying that, in essence, Al Qaeda, the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attack according to the government, is now dead. There’s only two leaders left they say in that entire region. It [is] already rendered "effectively inoperable". There is no more Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan or Pakistan according to the U.S. government. The group that perpetrated 9/11, according to it is no longer even existing. And yet, here we are engaged in extraordinarily broad military efforts, constantly escalating in numerous parts of the world. There’s six different countries in which the U.S. is actively using drones; in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Yemen, against groups that didn’t even exist at the time that 9/11 was perpetrated. And constantly, what you find is we are killing all sorts of civilians.

Now we have S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill. Pertinent section HERE.

Congress, with its all-time low approval ratings, is arguably the most despised political institution America, and now the Senate is considering a bill that allows the military to arrest you and send you "to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime." See link to read the ACLU's objections and to lodge your protest to Senators. Senators John Mc Cain and Carl Levin are said to have produced this proposed legislation in secret. The House apparently passed similar legislation back in May.

UPDATE:
The Senate voted 61-to-37 on Tuesday, 11/29, to defeat Sen. Mark Udall's amendment to delete the indefinite detention provisions.

Here is the primary objectionable section (1031):

Section 1031
(b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

Here is my synopsis of the interview of the ACLUs Christopher Anders by Scott Horton on AntiWar Radio:

The current version of the legislation would allow the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. "It doesn't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It doesn't require any trial."

The 5th Amendment provides protection against the deprivation of life or liberty without due process of law. However, the detainee could begin to rot in jail while the courts decide that issue.

According to Anders, Habeas Corpus (Article 1, section 9) at a minimum provides a right to have a court decide whether the detention of an American citizen is lawful or not. Habeas Corpus does not provide a right to not be detained except as decided by the court--so you have a right to have a court decide whether your detainment is lawful as you sit in jail for perhaps years (as was the case with Jose Padilla).

The old 1878 Posse Comitatus act says basically that the military can't be used to enforce laws in the United States, but because it is a statute and not a Constitutional amendment, it can be changed by Congress, as by the bill before the Senate.

As in the Patriot Act, powers can lead to over reach or mistakes. After 9/11 there were some 1200 people who were held and never charged with a terrorism offense. Under the current pending legislation a citizen could be detained "for the rest of their lives without ever seeing a court room." The definition in Section 1031 "is so broad that it includes support for people involved in terrorism. So it doesn't mean that you've ever picked up a gun, it doesn't mean that you're fighting anybody anywhere, it can mean writing a check to someone who you think is a charity. . . ."

With this bill you can be detained on suspicion alone.

Listen as "Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, discusses his article [linked also above]: Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a ‘Battlefield’ They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window" on AntiWar Radio.

President Obama, who has no problem with killing American citizens abroad, including children, without due process, is reported to have "threatened" to veto it, but then he promises a lot of things.

Another article states:

If passed in its present form, the bill would give the President the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.“ [Hey, aren't they already doing that in other lands?] The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” Anders warned. Anders also noted that presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) voiced his concerns about the detention provisions in the legislation in a Republican candidates' debate. Ironically, President Obama, who has frequently been criticized by libertarians of both the left and right for exceeding his powers as Commander-in-Chief, is opposed to the legislation and has threatened to veto it if it passes both houses of Congress. Both the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General of the United States have called the indefinite detention provisions of the bill harmful and counterproductive. But Senator Lindsey Graham has praised those same provisions for saying “for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and that people can be arrested without charge or trial, “American citizen or not.” Freshman Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, declared that the provisions are necessary because “America is part of the battlefield.”

Congressman Ron Paul:

“I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights,” responded Rep. Paul. “You can prevent crimes by becoming a police state . . . So if you advocate the police state, yes, you can have safety and security and you might prevent a crime, but the crime then will be against the American people and against our freedoms.”
Congressman Ron Paul

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) has offered an amendment to delete the indefinite detention provisions and “[set] up an orderly review of detention power,” Anders said. “It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.” The provisions raise a great many political, sociological, and constitutional questions, including whether all of the “homeland,” formerly known as “the land of the free,” should be designated a battlefield and whether people arrested anywhere in the world, including here in the United States, should be considered “enemy combatants” even if they were captured nowhere near a scene of actual battle."

See also:

Battlefield America: U.S. Citizens Face Indefinite Military Detention in Defense Bill Before Senate

Senate wants to turn USA into battlefield, internment for Americans

S. Floyd Mori: Internment specter raises ugly head in forgetful U.S. Senate

Senators Demand Military Lock Up Americans in “Battlefield” Defined as Outside Your Window

Thought Crime in Washington

Assassinating the Rule of Law
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UC Davis PepperSpray Update

Police Pepper Spraying UC Davis (YouTube capture)

Profile of Pepper-Spraying Officer Pike: Ex-Marine
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Stephen Stills, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, Richie Furay & Neil Young (Young Neil in buckskin & long brown-back sideburns)
Buffalo Springfield - For What Its Worth (1967)

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Is It For Freedom?

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Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free

Old Paradigm--New Paradigm: Occupy Wall Street or Occupy the Land?

2011-11-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

After a holiday of satiation, frenzied shoppers, and hopefully thanks, readers might be interested in the following article I ran across this morning while pursuing a link on the "America 2 Point 0" mailing list at Yahoo. For myself at least, it has always been too tempting and too easy to slip back under the spell of the cornucopian eternal consumption and growth delusions created and marketed by the dominant global business class. This despite having realized for at least two or three decades that a growing population size of a country or world coupled with consumer growth culture, is on an unsustainable resource ravaging road that leads to social and ecological collapse. When looking at social phenomena, like Occupy Wall Street, I've tended to pop right back into the old endless growth paradigm instead of viewing them through the lens of sustainability. This article by Jan Lundberg of Culture Change helps to bring the Occupy movement into proper perspective and focus when viewed through a sustainability lens.
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How The Occupy Movement May Be Off-Base, and How It Can Evolve ("Occupy the Land")

. . . .
What folks in "poor" countries have always understood is that their power and survival lie in possessing their own land. Land reform in many parts of our increasingly crowded world is a burning issue. Many people live and die for the struggle for their right to live on their ancestral lands. A movement in the U.S. for the masses to take back the land from the few is inevitable.

Better late than never; many decades have passed during which the importance for consumers of being close to the land was greatly diminished. Real wealth, the land, was given up for wages and cheap petroleum's technology explosion. Population growth has happened so fast that a new generation didn't know it was inheriting a world less and less free and no longer abundant in life-giving resources ("ecological services").

But as the sun sets on the system of vast, false monetary wealth and on the oppression it has wielded, nature may first wake us up rudely, before people in the U.S. can go about land reform. If so, after societal and possibly ecological collapse, there may be quite a bit of land available and to share after the population has diminished sufficiently in size. This was the case in Europe after the 14th century plagues took their toll. However, in no way should such drastic "solutions" be pursued.

"Occupying" the heart of cities today does mean something in today's world of artificial environments, material culture, and middle class values. But instead of occupying the cities, the movement should be about running away from cities. Instead of occupying Wall Street, run away from it: abandon it, abandon the system, abandon consuming, and embrace simple living on the land. This ought to be the prime goal, rather than a stampede today or tomorrow. . . . .

Read entire article HERE.

See also Update from DC: Occupy, pepperspray, peak oil, sail power, Congress, and Culture Change for more articles.

Occupy: State Powers Crush the Flowers

2011-11-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

In This Edition:
- Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Lessons Not Learned
- Glenn Greenwald on the Pacifying Effects of Militarized Police Power (must read)
- A Compendium of Police Violence Against Occupy Protestors
- "You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring"
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Back on October 26, 2011, in a short lead-in to news about the police riot in Oakland, I mentioned the militarization of American police forces over the last 20, more realistically, 30, years. This month I've seen a few articles that address the issue much more effectively than I can, so I'm posting them here tonight.

Police Pepper Spraying UC Davis (YouTube capture)

The first one is by former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, who was in charge during the WTO protests, aka, the Battle in Seattle almost 10 years ago this month.

Writes Stamper:

More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland—where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine [protester] remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Link:
Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
Norm Stamper | November 9, 2011
_

A second article, by Glenn Greenwald, is a most thoughtful summary of the meaning and dangers of police force and state violence in America, as seen today and in the past. It is simply the best piece I remember reading on the subject over the years. (But then. . . there is the problem of my memory! ;-)) If you don't read anything else on this blog, please read the excerpts below.:

Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
As Chief Stamper would now say--"Why?"

The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying
BY GLENN GREENWALD

. . . .
Despite all the rights of free speech and assembly flamboyantly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the reality is that punishing the exercise of those rights with police force and state violence has been the reflexive response in America for quite some time. . . . .

The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.

The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. . . . .

Although excessive police force has long been a reflexive response to American political protests, two developments in the post-9/11 world have exacerbated this. The first is that the U.S. Government — in the name of Terrorism — has aggressively para-militarized the nation’s domestic police forces by lavishing them with countless military-style weapons and other war-like technologies, training them in war-zone military tactics, and generally imposing a war mentality on them. Arming domestic police forces with para-military weaponry will ensure their systematic use even in the absence of a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil; they will simply find other, increasingly permissive uses for those weapons. Responding to peaceful protests and other expressions of growing citizenry unrest with brute force is a direct by-product of what we’ve allowed to be done to America’s domestic police forces in the name of the War on Terror (and, before that, in the name of the War on Drugs).

The second exacerbating development is more subtle but more important: the authoritarian mentality that has been nourished in the name of Terrorism. It’s a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one’s fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters. It’s an even smaller step to go from supporting the power of the President to imprison or kill anyone he wants (including one’s fellow citizens and even their teenaged children) with no transparency, checks or due process to supporting the power of the police and the authorities who command them to punish with force anyone who commits the “crime” of non-compliance. At the root of all of those views is the classic authoritarian mindset: reflexive support for authority, contempt for those who challenge them, and a blind faith in their unilateral, unchecked decisions regarding who is Bad and deserves state-issued punishment. . . . .

Link to entire article on Salon
-

The third article is a collection of visuals, primarily YouTube videos, highlighting some of the more offensive actions towards Occupy protesters by various police departments across this country over the last month.

Too Much Violence and Pepper Spray at the OWS Protests: The Videos and Pictures
The Atlantic
By GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA, NOV 19 2011, 6:58 PM ET

UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed

_

The fourth article is an essay in defense of Occupy Wall Street from Tom Dispatch, with the following prologue to Rebecca Solnit's article just below it:

. . . .
The police, up-armored in full riot gear, with the sort of surveillance paraphernalia, helicopters, and high-tech cameras that were a far more minimal aspect of domestic policing before 9/11, were clearly thinking counter-terrorism.

They were the representatives not just of New York’s billionaire mayor and the bankers and brokers who had previously made the area their own, but of the ever more militarized national security state that had blossomed like some errant set of weeds in the ruins of the World Trade Center towers. They were domestic grunts for a new order in Washington as well as New York that has, by now, lost the ability to imagine solving problems in a civil and civilian fashion.

They represent those who have ruled this country since 9/11 in the name of our safety and security, while they made themselves, and no one else, safe and secure. It is an order that has based itself on kidnapping, torture, secret prisons, illegal surveillance, assassination, permanent war, militarized solutions to every problem under the sun, its own set of failed occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the closest of relations with a series of crony capitalist corporations intent on making money off anyone’s suffering as long as the going is good.

Behind the police, directly or indirectly, stands that bureaucratic monster of post-9/11 domestic "safety," the Department of Homeland Security. And behind both of them, without a doubt, that giant tangle of agencies -- 17 in all -- with an $80 billion-plus budget that go under the rubric of “intelligence” and dwarf the intelligence bureaucracy of the Cold War era, when the U.S. actually had an enemy worth speaking of. . . . .

'You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring'
Dream big. Occupy your hopes. Talk to strangers. Live in public. Don’t stop now.
by Rebecca Solnit

. . . .
Alexander Dubcek, the government official turned hero of the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, once said, “You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.” . . . .

It’s as if the best of the spirit of the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 was back -- without the foolish belief that one man could do it all for civil society. In other words, this is a revolt, among other things, against the confinement of decision-making to a thoroughly corrupted and corporate-money-laced electoral sphere and against the pitfalls of leaders. And it represents the return in a new form of the best of the post-9/11 moment.

As for the worst after 9/11 -- you already know the worst. You’ve lived it. The worst was two treasury-draining wars that helped cave in the American dream, a loss of civil liberties, privacy, and governmental accountability. The worst was the rise of a national security state to almost unimaginable proportions, a rogue state that is our own government, and that doesn’t hesitate to violate with impunity the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights, and anything else it cares to trash in the name of American "safety" and "security." The worst was blind fealty to an administration that finished off making this into a country that serves the 1% at the expense, or even the survival, of significant parts of the 99%. More recently, it has returned as another kind of worst: police brutality (speaking of blind fealty to the 1%). . . . .

In the meantime, a domestic-violence-prone government is squandering a fortune on a little-mentioned extravagance in financially strapped American cities: police brutality, wrongful arrest, and lawsuits over civil-rights violations. New York City -- recall those pepper-sprayed captive young women, that legal observer with a police scooter parked on top of him, and all the rest -- you’re going to have a giant bill due in court, just as you did after the 2004 Republican convention fiasco: New York has spent almost a billion dollars paying for the collateral damage already done by its police force over the past dozen years.
The desperately impoverished city of Oakland paid out more than $2 million in recompense for the behavior of the Oakland Police at a nonviolent blockade at the Oakland Docks after the invasion of Iraq broke out in 2003, but seems to have learned nothing from it. Surely payouts in similar or larger quantities are due to be handed out again, money that could have gone to schools, community clinics, parks, libraries, to civilization instead of brutalization. . . . .

Read the entire thing here.
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Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free

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Woodie Guthrie's "The Unwelcome Guest" - by Billy Bragg and Wilco

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Accountability for Baker City's Cryptosporidium Fiasco--is the elephant still in the room?

2011-11-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

In This Edition:
- Review and Summary of Events
- Council responses to my question , i.e.: When were you first informed that Crypto was in the water?
- Crypto Time line, from Council reports and etc.
_____

[Note, 11/17/11. Either yesterday or today, the Baker City administrators switched their website over to a new look. In the process, the archive they had available on past meetings is currently down the memory hole and all my blog links to Baker City documents that have been linked to http://www.bakercity.com will no longer work. I am in the process of uploading some Baker City documentsI had linked or intended to link in these two most recent blogs on the Cryptosporidium problem to Scribd.com. - Chris]

Review and Summary of Events with regard to Cryptosporidium and required water treatment

For a few years now, the people of Baker City, as well as our many visitors and tourists, have been led to believe that we have safe, clean, nearly pristine drinking water. The city uses the idea of clean mountain water to market our fair city to tourists, other visitors, and potential employers. The City Manager's welcoming comments on the city web site currently state:

. . . . From our snowcapped mountains and fresh water lakes and streams, to hiking and biking trails and wide variety of shopping, museums, lodging and restaurants; you will immediately understand why we are now a hot commodity.

We pride ourselves in keeping with the tradition of extraordinary livability by equally providing outstanding public services. Our water, for example, comes from a mountain watershed and is of quality and quantity incomparable to any other city in the Western United States. . . . .

Water quality, public services, and a smoothly functioning, competent city government, are attributes that are of interest to potential visitors and investors, and that affect our economic development--development that has been a primary focus of both city and county government for decades. You'd think the city would take testing for Cryptosporidium, as well as compliance with secondary treatment requirements, very seriously, so as to avoid a potential public relations disaster and to live up to the city sales pitch.

These are just some of the reasons why people were puzzled that during Council comments at last week's (Nov. 8, 2011) Council meeting, only Councilor Calder spoke about "the elephant in the room," i.e., ". . . How is it we received reports [telling the city that we had Crypto in the water] that we didn't read?"

(Some of the background on Crypto, and City Manager Kee's bombshell from the special November 1st meeting that the city should have known that Crypto has been in our water since April or May of 2010, can be found in the last blog and also here:
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011
Baker "Bugs:" Cryptosporidium and Elm Leaf Beetle"

View the exchange between Councilor Calder and City Manager Kee on YouTube:
City Manager Kee interrupts Councilor Calder, evades question, and minimizes importance of staff failure to read and report.
Here are a few comments:

Calder asked a question: How is it we received reports [telling the city that we had Crypto in the water] that we didn't read?"

Mike Kee doesn't really answer the question fully. He says:

"Well we began testing in April of 2010. Our water specialist, for lack of a better word, would take the samples above where it was treated, and send those samples in. Uh, at some point, he would receive results back from those tests, Here at city hall, we would receive a bill, we would write a purchase order for the bill, and we would send it away."

He doesn't answer the question, so I sent him a follow-up the next day:

"Will you please tell me whether the "water specialist" Jake Jones read the lab results that were sent to him from the laboratory?

Also, you said you received a bill for the test at City Hall. Did you ever receive test results forwarded from Jake Jones to you, Michelle, or another responsible party?

Did you folks ever receive verbal communication from Jake about the lab results?

Thanks for helping me understand this situation."

Perhaps another question should have been "Didn't public works staff call Jake Jones at least monthly to inquire about the results?"

Mike replied:

"As I said last night if you need to hold someone accountable for the delayed notification hold me accountable. Internally we have taken steps to make sure this does not happen again and those that should be in the loop are in the loop. We will continue moving forward with a treatment facility that will make Baker City drinking water safer."

To which I responded:

"The problem is that holding you accountable doesn't explain how and why it happened, and the public has a right to know that. They deserve an actual explanation. You have not answered a single one of my questions. Will you please do that and explain how and why it happened?"

Mike continued to cover for staff and again put the responsibility on himself:

"I appreciate your inquiry, but as I said I had not asked for the individual test results as they were completed. Had I done that I would have reported the results in the last water quality report."

Later, I asked the City Manager:

"Are you planning any type of disciplinary action for city staff and/or other employees due to their failure to comply with the state and federal drinking water rules as they relate to crypto?

"
Mike's reply:

"Yes, Chris as I said that issue has been addressed with staff."

I can only conclude from those responses that Mike Kee, at least at the time, didn't think the citizens of Baker City have a right to know how it came to be that the people with whom they've entrusted the safety of their water supply, have failed them. Why, after such a travesty of competence, isn't the City Manager providing the transparency required for citizens to understand the situation. Where's the real accountability to the people of Baker City? Aren't public officials and their staff accountable to the public they serve?

You can be ticketed for parking your car past the time limit, or having your grass longer than ten inches, but there seems to be no penalty for gross city staff incompetence and negligence that denies people timely notice about the potentially deadly pathogens in their water. You don't even get to know how it happened or who is actually responsible. What would a food production facility or similar business where public health risks were involved do if their employees were not reading or not reporting the lab reports for serious pathogens in the food or other products they sold?

It should also be noted that while Mike Kee has assumed responsibility, he was not City Manager when the first failure in reporting occurred. Steve Bogart was the interim City Manager during the initial months of testing up until September 23, 2010, and the first failures were the lack of notification by staff to Council and the state after Crypto was first detected in April of 2010, and the lack of notification to the people in the water Consumer Confidence Report of July 2010.

Hopefully, the Council will request the state or an independent body to investigate to determine how and why it happened, and to ensure that something similar can not happen again.
_

Also during the "exchange" (monologue almost) between Councilor Calder and City Manager Kee, Kee said:

"And, you know, had we all known in April of 2010, it wouldn't have made any difference. The, there is nothing different that we would have done. We still would've, uh, you know, we still would've been moving toward building the UV treatment center and, er, facility, and we wouldn't have been able to do it until 2015. . . ."

"Nothing different that we would have done?" I seriously doubt that. Council has for sometime been urging a "go slow" approach to compliance due to their being told that there was no Crypto in the water and due to their hope that the city might be able to get a variance (waiver or exemption) from having to install secondary treatment such as filtration or UV. A good example of the misinformation and the effects of staff's alleged failure to read or report lab results concerning the presence of Crypto in the drinking water can be seen in the events of the May 25th, 2010 Council Meeting, but other examples can be found in the timeline below up through October 25, 2011.

Despite the fact that Crypto had been found, which already disqualified us from a variance, waiver or exemption from the LT2 rule, the minutes from 5/25/10 state that "Ms. Owen explained [to the Council & public] that the City can hope for a waiver. However, if any cryptosporidium is discovered, then the City will have to comply." [For more on the requirements or a variance, see May 25, 2010 in the timeline below.]

At that meeting, "Council discussed a request to approve the second task order for the LT2 Treatment Project. Ms. Owen stated that the City is now ready to enter the phase of selecting the type of UV equipment." Some on the Council were still hoping for a waiver and none of them, so far as we know, knew that Crypto had already been detected. "With Mr. Bass and Mr. Pope in favor, and Mayor Dorrah, Ms. Bonebrake, Ms. Calder and Mr. Button opposed, the motion [to approve the task order to move forward with UV water treatment] FAILED." (See 5/25/10 meeting packet & minutes)" I seriously doubt that the Council would have voted against moving forward with UV treatment had the April lab report showing Crypto was present in the water been known to them. There are more examples in the timeline and video's linked below which lend credence to the idea that the Council's ignorance about the Crypto in the water supply led them to continue to resist secondary treatment and to hope for the impossible--a variance.

For another example, see theAugust 24, 2010 meeting in the timeline below. Councilor Calder (and others) obviously did not know Crypto had been detected and still thought we had an opportunity for a variance. Councilor Beverly Calder ask questions regarding the "moving target" and general problems faced by small towns. She asks--"Is it here?" "Is there a problem with us waiting to see what happens with Portland?" Burnett responded to one question in this regard with something like " …my view is that I think these alternative disinfection methods . . . .whether it is ozone or UV rather than filtration will be OK unless something happens and you do find crypto in your watershed. . . . "

As late as October 25th of this year, CouncilorRoger Coles was asking about a variance, Mayor Dorrah was taliking about a wait and see approach, and Councilor Calder was saying""we do provide safe drinking water."

In responding to Councilor Coles, Ms. Owen does not answer the question as to where Baker City stands with respect to a variance or exemption. She has known at least since early September of 2011, and should have known since May of 2010, that we have Crypto in the water, and that the current EPA LT2 rules do not allow us to be granted an exemption due to the concentration of Crypto found in our water.

Over a long period of time, the failure of Council to get accurate information about Crypto in our water from staff, distorted and diverted the discussion from actions that should have been taken to expedite secondary treatment in order to protect people who drink Baker City water.

During the "elephant in the room" discussion at the Nov. 8 meeting, Mr. Kee also said:

We have no reason not to tell the paper that there's Cryptosporidium in the water. Uh, we just were delayed in finding out. We did find out, we delayed it even further, because I believe that we have a responsibility to find out what this means, so we can get good answers to the people, uh, you know, uh, spread the word to our citizens instead of just coming out the day we find out there's, that there's been a positive test and saying we've got Cryptosporidium and we don't know what that means, but we've got cryptosporidium. [garbled due to high volume] . . . we've got no idea. Well, during that delay, I learned more about Cryptosporidium in that month than I ever wanted to know.

Well, better late than never, I guess. Nice to know the city is finally trying to understand why they have been testing for Cryptosporidium so that they can explain the dangers and the options to Baker City citizens. Might want to speak with the experts at the Oregon Health Authority and County Health department more often and a lot sooner. Frankly though, it sounds like a pretty lame excuse for not telling the people they had Crypto for almost two months.
______

11/4/11 Council responses to my question , i.e.:
"When were you first informed by Public Works that they had received positive Cryptosporidium analysis results on Baker City water samples?"

Beverly Calder:

I was informed a week ago Thursday [October 27th it seems-Chris] by CM Kee that the report had been received and staff had called for more information.
I agreed that we needed a work session ASAP to openly discuss the results and CM Kee said he would ask the involved engineers to be available for the discussion. There is no greater urgency (as there is no immediate health danger) than the schedule we are currently on however, now that we have done our year of testing we have concrete results that will guide the continuing steps in the treatment development process.

Aletha Bonebrake:

I never heard from Public Works until last Tuesday night [Nov. 1, Special Meeting]. Mike called me either Friday or Monday and said they had found some and that we needed to let the public know right away. . . . .

Clair Button

I was informed at the end of the County Commission-Council meeting [October 18, 2011--Chris]. Mike was already planning a public session to give full information to the public.

Roger Coles

Would have written last night but had a Bronc & Bull riding meeting, having said that, I did not know there were three positive Crypto reports until the November 1st meeting.

No other Councilor bothered to respond, so I don't know when they were told. However, their lack of a response may leave some questioning whether they knew about the positive reports of Crypto in the water supply prior to the October 25th meeting.

At the October 25th meeting, neither Kee nor Owen said anything to the Council or the public that Crypto had been found, even though they had known about the results since early September or before. No Councilor told the public that Crypto was in the water either.
______

Crypto Time line, from Council reports and etc.

2000

Requirement for addressing Cryptosporidium identified in Water Facility Plan and then more recently with the updated EPA Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2ESWTR) in 2006.

Spring of 2009

"The City contracted with HDR Engineering, Inc. to clarify our compliance requirements, determine available options and recommend the best alternative."

12/8/09, Tim Collins is City Manager

"Bryan Black, P.E. of HDR, Inc. attended the December 8, 2009 Council meeting to discuss the options in further detail and staff requested and received approval for the recommended alternative of Ultra Violet light treatment." (Staff Report for 5/25/10 meeting.)

12/8/09 Packet:

"After group discussion and teleconferencing with Mr. Black the Committee recommended that the Council proceed with Ultraviolet (UV) light treatment to comply with the LT2 requirements."

Minutes:

"The Public Works Advisory Committee met to discuss the alternative treatment options in detail on Monday, December 1, 2009. The draft minutes of that meeting are attached to this report .
. . . .
The City of Baker City has one of only four unfiltered surface water systems in the State of Oregon. Portland with the Bull Run Watershed is also one of the four systems. Portland Water Bureau officials have filed a request for waiver with the EPA in an effort to avoid the costly expense of the system upgrades. The argument is that the water is of high quality and the likelihood of testing positive for Crypto is slim and therefore disinfecting water that doesn’t contain “the bug” is unnecessary. Baker City staff has conferred with the Portland Water Bureau staff and supports the request for consideration of a waiver. The possibility of a waiver being granted for Portland or Baker City is not likely; however, all efforts will be made to follow through with this option.

The Public Works Advisory Committee considered the fourth option of filtration in their discussions. However, after evaluating the high initial construction costs as well as the substantial increase in operations and maintenance costs, the Committee concurred that UV treatment was a better alternative. The concern over unpredictable, changing regulations as well as the possibility of new treatment technology also factored into the Committee’s recommendation for UV light treatment.
. . . .
After a brief discussion, Ms. Bonebrake made a MOTION to approve UV radiation as the method to comply with the LT2 treatment rule, authorize staff to enter into negotiations with HDR Engineering Firm for a task order to amend the existing contract, and delay execution of that task order until the Council gives further approval. The motion was seconded by Ms. Calder and with all in favor the motion was APPROVED."

April 6, 2010, Testing of Baker City water begins.

April 20, 2010, Sample taken that revealed 1 Crypto oocyst found in the 10 liter water sample, which was analyzed by Lab/Cor on April 27, 2010. Positive finding should have been reported to the state health authorities by June 10, 2010 but was not received by the state until September 2, 2011. Lab/Cor states that they sent the results to the city public works Water Plant Specialist Jake Jones within two weeks of the actual test.
Given 4 days for mail to arrive, the city should have received the results by about May 16th, 2010. Did anyone open the envelope or read the results?

May 25, 2010 Council Meeting

Portland has been seeking a variance, also known as a waiver or exemption, from the LT2 water treatment rule so that they do not have to have expensive additional treatment for their unfiltered water from the Bull Run watershed. We, like Portland, have an unfiltered water system. Some Councilors have hoped that our water is clean enough for us to get a variance or waiver too.

The rule states that:
"If an unfiltered PWS [Public Water System] could show a raw water Cryptosporidium level 3-Log lower than the Bin 1 cutoff for filtered PWSs (Ie., below 0.075 oocysts/1,OOO L), this could demonstrate that no treatment for Cryptosporidium is necessary." (LT2ESWTR, Variances and Exemptions, page 728)

This means that to get a variance on treatment, we would have to have results which conclude that the concentration of Crypto is below 0.075 oocysts/1,OOO Liters of water. So if we had only recovered 1 Crypto oocyst in all 24 monitoring events over two years (April 2010 to March, 2011), we would not be granted a variance. (1 oocyst / 240 L = 0.00417 oocyst / Liter, times 1000 = 4.17 oocysts / 1000L, = 55 times the amount of Crypto allowed for a variance.)

Despite the fact that Crypto had been found, which already disqualified us from a variance, waiver or exemption from the LT2 rule, the minutes from 5/25/10 state that "Ms. Owen explained [to the Council & public] that the City can hope for a waiver."

"Council discussed a request to approve the second task order for the LT2 Treatment Project. Ms. Owen stated that the City is now ready to enter the phase of selecting the type of UV equipment."

"The ultra violet treatment facility (UVTF) will include several steps to move towards completion and operation by October of 2013. The first part of the project involves selecting the equipment that will be used. This is part of the Task Order #2 before the Council for consideration. This current task order will be completed for a fee of $38,700 which is included in the budget.

"Ms. Owen explained that the City can hope for a waiver. However, if any cryptosporidium is discovered, then the City will have to comply.

With Mr. Bass and Mr. Pope in favor, and Mayor Dorrah, Ms. Bonebrake, Ms. Calder and Mr. Button opposed, the motion [to approve the task order to move forward with UV water treatment] FAILED."

(See 5/25/10 packet & minutes)

July 2010 No mention in the yearly Consumer Confidence Report of Crypto being found, as is required by the rules.

8/24/10 Council OKs Mike Kee who replaces City Manager Bogart after 9/23/10.

Bill Goss & Gary Burnett, State Department of Human Services, Public Health Division, Discussion Regarding Water Treatment

Minutes:

Ms. Owen introduced Bill Goss and Gary Burnett of Department of Human Services, Drinking Water Program.

See the following YouTube Videos from this meeting:

1) Baker City Crypto-OR Health Authority-Bill Goss1 Baker City Council 082410.mp4

Bill Goss, from the Oregon Health Authority Drinking Water Program, discusses EPA and Oregon drinking water rules with regard to Cryptosporidium. Among other things, Mr. Goss explains that should a variance for surface water treatment be involved, the city would have to continue testing, and if Cryptosporidium is found, additional treatment would have to be instituted. Even though the city had been sent lab results indicating Cryptosporidium had been found in April of the same year, they apparently had not read the lab results at the time of this meeting, 4 months later.

2) Baker City Crypto-OR Health Authority-Bill Goss2 Baker City Council 082410.mp4

Bill Goss, from the Oregon Health Authority Drinking Water Program, discusses drinking EPA and Oregon drinking water rules with regard to Cryptosporidium. Mr. Goss discusses issues associated with Baker City avoiding filtration of their surface water source.

Filtration could still be required if:

-- There is a waterborne disease outbreak due to lack of filtration,

-- If the quality of the source water declines for various reasons, such as a major fire in the watershed,

-- If coliform bacteria [from the feces of humans or cattle, for example] were found in the water system,

In any case, the goal is to provide safe drinking water.

3) Baker City Crypto-OR Health Authority-Gary Burnett1 Baker City Council 082410

Gary Burnett, from the Oregon Health Authority Drinking Water Program, discusses EPA and Oregon drinking water rules with regard to Cryptosporidium and some history with regard to the Safe Drinking Water Act and Baker City water management, including increasing requirements and uncertainty in choosing treatment options.

4) Q&A1 Baker City Crypto-Gail Duman1 Q&A Baker City Council 082410

Councilor Gail Duman ask questions regarding effectiveness and cost tradeoffs between UV vs Filtration.

5) Info Q&A Baker City Crypto-Councilor Sam Bass-What do we tell the people for safety-Baker City Council 082410

Councilor Bass asks how much Cryptosporidium do we have all over the United States and if we get a positive sample, what do we need to tell the people to make it safe for them?

6) Q&A Baker City Crypto-Councilor Aletha Bonebrake-What are different options for filtration-082410

Councilor Bonebrake asks about effectiveness options for different methods of filtration and how they would deal with viruses, like Hanta virus.

7) Q&A Baker City Crypto-Councilor Button- number of oocysts found versus compliance

Councilor Button asks about details in the chart provided Council concerning concentrations of cryptosporidium oocysts with reference to raw or treated water. Goss explains that Portland (or other systems) will have to meet stringent standards. "So if they find 1 cryptosporidium in that 10,000 liters of (Portland) water it's not going to meet that standard (for an exemption). He also explains that Crypto oocysts reproduce in vivo, i.e., in the body of mammals like humans or cows, and not in the water that carries them.

8) Q&A Baker City Crypto-Bev Calder Q&A Baker City Council 082410
Councilor Calder asks--"Is it here?". . . . "Is there a problem with us waiting to see what happens with Portland?"

Councilor Beverly Calder ask questions regarding the "moving target" and general problems faced by small towns. She asks--"Is it here?" "Is there a problem with us waiting to see what happens with Portland?" Burnett responded to one question in this regard with something like " …my view is that I think these alternative disinfection methods . . . .whether it is ozone or UV rather than filtration will be OK unless something happens and you do find crypto in your watershed. . . . "

At the time, even though the city had been sent lab results indicating Cryptosporidium had been found in April of the same year in Baker City water, the city staff apparently had not read the lab results, or at least not reported them to the state or Council, at the time of this meeting, 4 months later, so the state and Council did not know that, "yes, it is here." (It was not acknowledged until September of 2011, and not reported to the public until November 1, 2011.) That fact distorted and diverted the discussion from actions that should have been taken to protect people who drink Baker City water.

9) Baker City Crypto-Owen on 2yr Extension Process-Baker City Council 082410

Public Works Director Michelle Owen spoke about talks with the state concerning a 2 year extension on installing UV treatment.

October 5, 2010 (Mike Kee is new City Manager), Sample taken that revealed 1 oocyst found in the 10 liter water sample, which was analyzed by Lab/Cor on 10/12/2010. Positive finding should have been reported to the state health authorities by December 10, 2010 but was not received by the state until September 2, 2011.

January 18, 2011 Sample taken that revealed 2 oocysts were found in the 10 liter water sample, which was analyzed by BioVir lab on 1/24/2011. Positive finding should have been reported to the state health authorities by March 10, 2010 but was not received by the state until September 2, 2011.

July 2011 No mention of Crypto being found in the yearly Consumer Confidence Report, as is required by the rules.

September 2, 2011 State gets Crypto lab reports from someone working for the city, likely either Jake Jones or Michelle Owen.

October 25, 2011 Agenda--UV Filtration Task Order

10/25/11 Roger Coles asks whether the city has explored an exemption for secondary treatment like Portland?

Councilor Roger Coles asks "So, has the city explored--it's my understanding that there's an exemption going on in Bull Run in Portland, and they are trying to get an exemption for secondary treatment--has the city explored any of that?"

Owen: "Certainly we've been following the variance request for Portland's UV request, um, a, over the last couple of years, as it looks right now, the focus that New York and Portland have had, . . . has to do with the uncovered reservoirs--that isn't pertinent to Baker City--our reservoirs . . . are covered. . . . Portland is pursuing the variance on the UV treatment as well, they submitted a request to the state in June--they are to have an answer back by December, and at this point we don't have an answer-we don't know where the state is leaning as to whether or not they will grant that, . . . ."

[Basically, Ms. Owen does not answer the question as to where Baker City stands with respect to a variance or exemption. She has known at least since early September of 2011, and should have known since May of 2010, that we have Crypto in the water, and that the current EPA LT2 rules do not allow us to be granted an exemption due to the concentration of Crypto found in our water.]

10/25/11 Dorrah & Calder Still Seem to Think Drinking Water Safe.MP4

Cryptosporidium had been detected in the water three times since April of 2010. Mike Kee, Michelle Own, and at least one Councilor were aware that it was in the water and because the water is unsafe, it would require 3log UV treatment with 99.9% effectiveness (the best UV treatment available). Seemingly unaware of the crypto in the water, Mayor Dorrah considers waiting and Councilor Calder says "we do provide safe drinking water and that we're not doing anything to compromise that by going slowly."

October 25, 2011 Minutes

While reading the minutes below, please note that at least some councilors, including Councilors Coles, Bonebrake, and Calder, were apparently still unaware that Crypto had been found in the water supply.

"Ms. Owen reviewed the staff report, explaining that this was the third task order of this project. She reminded the group that the Council had selected UV treatment as the required second form of disinfection. Ms. Owen further noted that this task order would go one step further: to select the type of equipment to be used. . . . .

Mr. Coles commented that he had heard about requests for exemption in some areas and asked if the City had explored that option. Ms. Owen responded, stating that the City had been closely following the variance request in Portland for a couple years. She commented that Portland has had to do quite a bit of testing which has cost them around $3 million just to get to the point where they could request the variance. Ms. Owen noted that no decision had been made at this point.

Mr. Coles commented that he thought, with the deadline being stretched to 2016 and a new administration coming forth, perhaps requirements and technology would change by then. He noted that for that reason he felt he could not vote for it.

Ms. Owen explained that, at the Council's request, she submitted a request for an extension to move forward slowly. She added that ordering the equipment was not part of the third task order, only the selection of the equipment was included.

Ms. Bonebrake asked if the $109,745 was part of the original budget bid document. Ms. Owen responded that there was an estimated amount in the budget, but this was actually lower than the estimate for this task number. She noted that this number was the maximum that task order three would cost. In response to another question from Ms. Bonebrake, Ms. Owen indicated that there was money left from what was budgeted for the previous task orders.

Ms. Calder asked if there was an idea of what the City inner costs would be for this project. Ms. Owen estimated that number to be approximately $2,000.

Ms. Calder asked what the timeline was for the next task order. Ms. Owen indicated that the City was not moving fast on this project and it would probably take place in the spring when the budget would be discussed.

Mayor Dorrah commented that many communities across he country would be doing this, probably by 2014. He suggested waiting to see how those other areas were handling the situation.

Mr. Kee reminded the group that the City wanted to do everything possible to provide safe water.

Ms. Bonebrake made a MOTION to approve task order number three. The motion was seconded by Mr. Bass. Ms. Calder commented that the City should do what they can to keep a good working relationship with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), but noted that the City did provide safe water.

In a vote of the motion to approve task order number 3, with all in favor except Mayor Dorrah and Mr. Coles, who were opposed. the motion was APPROVED."

November 1, 2011 Special Council Meeting on Cryptosporidium

See Baker County Blog

CM Kee Reveals Crypto Had Been Found-B C Council Special Sess-110111.mp4

City Manager Mike Kee reveals that Cryptosporidium had been found in the Baker City water supply in April of 2010, October of 2010, and January of 2011. The Council and the public had previously been repeatedly assured that Crypto had not been found in our water supply.

Mike Kee introduces Susan Bland, Director of Baker County Health Department, Bill Goss, Regional Engineer of the Oregon Health Authority, and Dave Kyle, and engineer with HDR, the company helping Baker City with a design for a water treatment plant. Michelle Owen, Baker City Public Works Director is sitting between Mr. Kyle on the left, and Mr. Goss, on the right.

Mike Kee CryptoSummary-B C

". . . . We may've always had Cryptosporidium, the difference is now we know we did. Uh, and we don't know of anyone who has ever been ill in Baker City as a result of Cryptosporidium, and that hasn't changed. And so, the message we want to give to the public is if . . . [you are] at risk uh, talk to your health care provider and take appropriate risk [sic], but for the rest of us there is no real . . . worry of, of ill effects . . . to our health as a result of this Cryptosporidium. Uh, we'll continue to move forward. . . ."

Nov 7, 2011 Michelle Owen to me

I was out of the office on Friday and just now getting through emails…
I first had confirmation of the crypto hits in September-not sure of the exact day, but around the 10th or so. I then told my boss. I do not know the exact dates-sorry.

It will be reported to all local water consumers in the annual water quality, consumer confidence report next spring as required.
Michelle

11/8/11 Council Meeting

YouTube video posted above near top.

Council/Staff Comments

Calder

"I'm sorry, I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room. Michelle, I guess I'd like you to make a statement about the Cryptosporidium. As one of the members of Council who is damn mad that the federal government was going to force us to spend millions of dollars for something we didn't have to deal with, I for one, as well as many people who have contacted me, really kind of assumed that you were going to look at everything that came your way, because those tests . . . . [Calder was interrupted by City Manager Mike Kee very loudly at this point.]

Kee-

"Councilor Calder, I, go ahead and address me and I'll help you out with this."

Calder

"OK--How is it we received reports that we didn't read?"

Kee

Well we began testing in April of 2010. Our water specialist, for lack of a better word, would take the samples above where it was treated, and send those samples in. Uh, at some point, he would receive results back from those tests, Here at city hall, we would receive a bill, we would write a purchase order for the bill, and we would send it away.

Now, if we had this all to do over again would we have changed the way we did it, absolutely. We would, we would, I would do a much better job. Uh, but you know, we missed it, I missed it, and in the long run it doesn't make any difference. We, we, there's still bugs in the water and there would have been whether we knew it or not. We are going to treat the water, and we are going to try to keep people as safe as we can. And that's what I'm here for, and I think that if there is an elephant in the room, uh, what we're trying to do is, or the bottom line is, to keep people safe. And, you know, had we all known in April of 2010, it wouldn't have made any difference. The, there is nothing different that we would have done. We still would've, uh, you know, we still would've been moving toward building the UV treatment center and, er, we wouldn't have been able to do it until 2015, and as we sit here today, we know that there are days that there is Cryptosporidium in the water and there's not a lot we can do about it."

Calder

"I, I realize that--it's, it's just the transparency and the timeliness, and keeping Council informed on something that was as sensitive an issue as this. [interrupted by Kee saying "I agree, I agree", so Calder's words unintelligible.] . . . was our failing, it's not that we can hurry up the process, we're the middle of the process."

Kee

"And I just want to assure the Council, and I don't think I need to because, uh, you know, we, we've had discussions with the Council, there's nothing sinister about this--we have no reason not to tell people in Baker City that there's Cryptosporidium in the water--absolutely no reason at all. We have no reason not to tell the paper that there's Cryptosporidium in the water. Uh, we just were delayed in finding out. We did find out, we delayed it even further, because I believe that we have a responsibility to find out what this means, so we can get good answers to the people, uh, you know, uh, spread the word to our citizens instead of just coming out the day we find out there's, that there's been a positive test and saying we've got Cryptosporidium and we don't know what that means, but we've got cryptosporidium. [garbled due to high volume] . . . we've got no idea. Well, during that delay, I learned more about Cryptosporidium in that month than I ever wanted to know. And I have a pretty good idea of it that will make people sick here in Baker City, I have a really good idea of how to treat that, and, I have, you know, I am fairly positive that it's been there when I was growing up here in the 1970's. So I do understand, and I acknowledge, that uh, you know, that I should have done a better job keeping an eye on uh, you know, the testing and what was going on with that. I didn't, I apologize about that, but the fact is we've gotta move on and take care of this, and keep people as safe as we can."

Calder

"Thank you for taking responsibility."

Kee

"Sure."

October 25, 2011 Agenda--UV Filtration Task Order
October 25, 2011 Minutes

Ms. Owen reviewed the staff report, explaining that this was
the third task order of this project. She reminded the group that
the Council had selected UV treatment as the required second
form of disinfection. Ms. Owen further noted that this task order
would go one step further: to select the type of equipment to be
used.

Mr. Coles asked what exactly would the City get for
$100,000 that this task order would cost. Ms Owen explained that
it would pay for the assistance in determining the criteria
developed to select the equipment. She continued, stating that it
would help coordinate with the various state agencies to make
sure it would meet the required standards. Ms. Owen clarified that
this was a common process with wastewater, but relatively new to
water systems. She added that part of what was covered is
assistance with the bidding process as well as the financial part
such as looking at how the rates are utilized.
. . . .

Mr. Coles commented that he had heard about requests for
exemption in some areas and asked if the City had explored that
option. Ms. Owen responded, stating that the City had been
closely following the variance request in Portland for a couple
years. She commented that Portland has had to do quite a bit of
testing which has cost them around $3 million just to get to the point where they could request the variance. Ms. Owen noted that
no decision had been made at this point.

Mr. Coles commented that he thought, with the deadline
being stretched to 2016 and a new administration coming forth,
perhaps requirements and technology would change by then. He
noted that for that reason he felt he could not vote for it.

Ms. Owen explained that, at the Council's request, she
submitted a request for an extension to move forward slowly. She
added that ordering the equipment was not part of the third task
order, only the selection of the equipment was included.

Ms. Bonebrake asked if the $109,745 was part of the
original budget bid document. Ms. Owen responded that there
was an estimated amount in the budget, but this was actually lower
than the estimate for this task number. She noted that this number
was the maximum that task order three would cost.
In response to another question from Ms. Bonebrake, Ms.
Owen indicated that there was money left from what was budgeted
for the previous task orders.
Ms. Calder asked if there was an idea of what the City inner
costs would be for this project. Ms. Owen estimated that number
to be approximately $2,000.
Ms. Calder asked what the timeline was for the next task
order. Ms. Owen indicated that the City was not moving fast on
this project and it would probably take place in the spring when the
budget would be discussed.
Mayor Dorrah commented that many communities across
the country would be doing this, probably by 2014. He suggested
waiting to see how those other areas were handling the situation.
Mr. Kee reminded the group that the City wanted to do
everything possible to provide safe water.
Ms. Bonebrake made a MOTION to approve task order
number three. The motion was seconded by Mr. Bass.
Ms. Calder commented that the City should do what they
can to keep a good working relationship with the Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ), but noted that the City did provide
safe water.

In a vote of the motion to approve task order number 3, with
all in favor except Mayor Dorrah and Mr. Coles, who were
opposed. the motion was APPROVED.

11/01/11 Special Council Meeting on Cryptosporidium

CM Kee Reveals Crypto Had Been Found-B C Council Special Sess-110111.mp4

City Manager Mike Kee reveals that Cryptosporidium had been found in the Baker City water supply in April of 2010, October of 2010, and January of 2011. The Council and the public had previously been repeatedly assured that Crypto had not been found in our water supply.
Mike Kee introduces Susan Bland, Director of Baker County Health Department, Bill Goss, Regional Engineer of the Oregon Health Authority, and Dave Kyle, and engineer with HDR, the company helping Baker City with a design for a water treatment plant. Michelle Owen, Baker City Public Works Director is sitting between Mr. Kyle on the left, and Mr. Goss, on the right.

Council responses

Beverly Calder:
I was informed a week ago Thursday [October 27th it seems] by CM Kee that the report had been received and staff had called for more information.
I agreed that we needed a work session ASAP to openly discuss the results and CM Kee said he would ask the involved
engineers to be available for the discussion.
There is no greater urgency (as there is no immediate health danger) than the schedule we are currently on however, now
that we have done our year of testing we have concrete results that will guide the continuing steps in the treatment
development process.

ALETHA BONEBRAKE alethaboneb@msn.com to me
show details Nov 5 (4 days ago)

Hi Chris,

I never heard from Public Works until last Tuesday night [Nov. 1, Special Meeting]. Mike called me either Friday or Monday and said they had found some and that we needed to let the public know right away. He seemed astonished and concerned and I truly don't know whether he had just read the reports or Michelle told him. I thought the Tuesday special meeting was the appropriate response. . . . .

Clair Button cfbutton@gmail.com to me
show details Nov 4 (4 days ago)
I was informed at the end of the County Commission-Council meeting [October 18, 2011]. Mike was already planning a public session to give full information to the public.

Clair

Clair said nothing at the October25th meeting. Neither did Kee orOwen.

No other Councilor bothered to respond, so I don't know when they were told.

---11/8/11 Council Meeting

Council/Staff Comments

Calder

"I'm sorry, I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room. Michelle, I guess I'd like you to make a statement about the Cryptosporidium. As one of the members of Council who is damn mad that the federal government was going to force us to spend millions of dollars for something we didn't have to deal with, I for one, as well as many people who have contacted me, really kind of assumed that you were going to look at everything that came your way, because those tests . . . . [Calder was interrupted by City Manager Mike Kee very loudly at this point.]

Kee-

"Councilor Calder, I, go ahead and address me and I'll help you out with this."

Calder

"OK--How is it we received reports that we didn't read?"

Kee

Well we began testing in April of 2010. Our water specialist, for lack of a better word, would take the samples above where it was treated, and send those samples in. Uh, at some point, he would receive results back from those tests, Here at city hall, we would receive a bill, we would write a purchase order for the bill, and we would send it away.

Now, if we had this all to do over again would we have changed the way we did it, absolutely. We would, we would, I would do a much better job. Uh, but you know, we missed it, I missed it, and in the long run it doesn't make any difference. We, we, there's still bugs in the water and there would have been whether we knew it or not. We are going to treat the water, and we are going to try to keep people as safe as we can. And that's what I'm here for, and I think that if there is an elephant in the room, uh, what we're trying to do is, or the bottom line is, to keep people safe. And, you know, had we all known in April of 2010, it wouldn't have made any difference. The, there is nothing different that we would have done. We still would've, uh, you know, we still would've been moving toward building the UV treatment center and, er, we wouldn't have been able to do it until 2015, and as we sit here today, we know that there are days that there is Cryptosporidium in the water and there's not a lot we can do about it."

Calder

"I, I realize that--it's, it's just the transparency and the timeliness, and keeping Council informed on something that was as sensitive an issue as this. [interrupted by Kee saying "I agree, I agree", so Calder's words unintelligible.] . . . was our failing, it's not that we can hurry up the process, we're the middle of the process."

Kee

"And I just want to assure the Council, and I don't think I need to because, uh, you know, we, we've had discussions with the Council, there's nothing sinister about this--we have no reason not to tell people in Baker City that there's Cryptosporidium in the water--absolutely no reason at all. We have no reason not to tell the paper that there's Cryptosporidium in the water. Uh, we just were delayed in finding out. We did find out, we delayed it even further, because I believe that we have a responsibility to find out what this means, so we can get good answers to the people, uh, you know, uh, spread the word to our citizens instead of just coming out the day we find out there's, that there's been a positive test and saying we've got Cryptosporidium and we don't know what that means, but we've got cryptosporidium. [garbled due to high volume] . . . we've got no idea. Well, during that delay, I learned more about Cryptosporidium in that month than I ever wanted to know. And I have a pretty good idea of it that will make people sick here in Baker City, I have a really good idea of how to treat that, and, I have, you know, I am fairly positive that it's been there when I was growing up here in the 1970's. So I do understand, and I acknowledge, that uh, you know, that I should have done a better job keeping an eye on uh, you know, the testing and what was going on with that. I didn't, I apologize about that, but the fact is we've gotta move on and take care of this, and keep people as safe as we can."

Calder

"Thank you for taking responsibility."

Kee

"Sure."

Baker "Bugs:" Cryptosporidium and Elm Leaf Beetle

2011-11-04T21:17:00.001-07:00

In this Edition:

- Bad Information on Crypto?--Don't Blame the Herald--Look to the Source

- Cyclical Outbreak of Elm Leaf Beetle in Baker City
[Edited 11/6/11]
[11/17/11--See also the next blog:
Accountability for Baker City's Cryptosporidium Fiasco--is the elephant still in the room?]
_____

Bad Information on Crypto?--Don't Blame the Herald--Look to the Source

When I first heard that testing results had been provided to the city revealing that Cryptosporidium (Crypto) had been identified in the city water supply as early as April of 2010, I was as shocked as anyone, given the repeated denials by the city staff of its existence. I was puzzled as to why all 24 lab reports, a years worth, were all date stamped September 2, 2011 by the state, some 17 months after testing had begun and over 5 months after it had ended. At Tuesday's Council Meeting, all the City Manager had to say about the discovery was: "In September the staff of Baker City became aware that as a result of the tests that we had been conducting for Cryptosporidium we had had some positive test results." No discussion of why it had not been reported to Council or the public prior to late October and early November, even though the first of three positive detections came in about 18 months earlier. Now we are informed by the Herald that public works director Michelle Owen said "she looked at some, but not all, of the lab reports." Ho Hum--after all--it is just a potentially deadly pathogen in the water supply of a city of roughly 10,000 people. Good to know we've got public works looking out for us. Yikes!

Having been reluctantly convinced by the Herald's recent editorial, "Baker City's dilemma" (Oct. 27, 2011) that treatment was the best way to proceed, so as to avoid costly legal battles, fines, and etc., even though we all thought Crypto hadn't been yet detected, one of my responses to the disclosure was that it might make some question the Herald's credibility. Such accusations, if offered, would be misdirected though, because the Herald was depending upon the city to provide accurate information, which the Herald dutifully reported. One would hope that we can trust at least our local government to be doing the job they are well paid to do, and if you can't trust them to give you accurate information, who can you trust?

Perhaps that view is a little naive, but one can hardly blame the Herald for reporting in good faith the information that was given to them by the city, and there was no indication from any other governmental source that things might be amiss. (There are systemic reasons for that which I hope to address in a later post on this subject.) The Herald and the Council, like anyone else, will be more skeptical once burnt, but on issues of trust related to the very basic and important issue of public health, as opposed to street maintenance and contract issues, I am unaware of any reason why they wouldn't take the Public Works Department seriously. Who could imagine the Public Works Department not taking care to read all the lab results and to immediately report matters of such import to the Council and the public?

That's why I was surprised by yesterday's politic and gracious editorial, "The story behind the crypto mistake," wherein the Herald Editorial Board says "We messed up. . . . . We were wrong."

On many occasions, as a blogger, I have to rely on information from government sources, when I can pry it out of them. The information is often not easily questioned due to technical issues, time, legal hassles, and budgetary constraints, among other reasons. That's why the public and media in general look for both trust and competency in their public officials, while retaining a healthy skepticism. But Crypto in the water supply? What responsible and competent public official wouldn't be on top of that?

Upon watching the special Council work session called for last Tuesday, and looking at the test results provided (at last) in the Council Packet, many questions arose within the public and myself as to the process used for reporting important data on our water quality. While I did initially spend some time researching the subject, the prediction of the winter storm now upon us compelled me to tend to important fall chores, such as putting the garden to bed and keeping the property maintenance police off my back, so it was not until yesterday I was able to speak with the regional state drinking water department and testing labs, etc. To make a very long and complicated story much shorter, and using today's Herald editorial as a base for correcting misunderstandings (without adding too many of my own I hope) here is a summary of what I was able to find out.

The Herald editorial stated that "

. . . cryptosporidium, [is] a parasite that can cause diarrhea and vomiting."

While they had previously reported that 50 people died in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin outbreak of the 1990's, they might have more accurately stated that cryptosporidium is a parasite that can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and death. According to Wikipedia, "At least 104[2] deaths have been attributed to this outbreak, mostly among the elderly and immunocompromised people, such as AIDS patients."

Another report, from the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, states that:

The organism is highly infectious.
The median infective dose (from human trials!) is only 132 oocysts, and 20% of human subjects could be infected with as few as 30 oocysts!

While it is true that people exposed to Cryptosporidium when healthy may often form a degree of immunity to it, it still poses the risks mentioned above to many other folks, especially the previously unexposed, sick, elderly, or immunocompromised. There is also the possibility that locally, there are sometimes more than 0 to 2 oocysts in every ten liters of water. One lab professional I spoke with yesterday said that given the very small 10 liter sample size, compared to the much, much larger volume of water passing through the system, combined with other variables such as seasonal stream conditions, proficiency and technique of the sampler, etc, one could expect high variability in the actual numbers at any given time and that the standard deviation of results "could be all over the place." I take that to mean that it could be expected that sometimes there are far more oocysts in a given volume of our drinking water than is indicated by the lab results which reflect only 24 samples over a one year period.

The Herald also states that "Nor does the presence of crypto affect the city’s ongoing planning for installing an ultraviolet light system, at an estimated cost of $2.5 million, that inactivates the parasite."

Our surface water source is an unfiltered source of water. According to information provided by the state and EPA (Treatment Rule: A Quick Reference Guide For Schedule 4 Systems), there is a difference in in the UV system needed depending upon whether Crypto has been detected or not. If no Crypto had been detected, we would still need a 2-log (99% crypto inactivation) system, which is less expensive (marginally perhaps) than a 3-log system (99.9% inactivation) which is required when Crypto has been detected. A minor detail.

Perhaps the most important (and most politic) clue to the Crypto mystery is this part of the editorial:

She [Michelle Owen] told us that there was no sign of crypto.

Then we learned this week about the three positive tests.

The explanation for the discrepancy, Owen told us on Thursday, is that while the tests were being done, she looked at some, but not all, of the lab reports.

. . . .
Owen said she believed, when she told us that none of the city’s water samples tested positive for crypto, that she was speaking truthfully.

She said she learned that wasn’t the case late this summer, when the city compiled the 24 lab reports to send to the Oregon Health Division’s Drinking Water Program.

Owen said she realized then that three reports — ones she hadn’t read before — indicated small amounts of crypto were present.

Hmmmmm.... Like I said, the Herald is very gracious. . . .

Michelle Owen, Public Works Director

Before I had a chance to see the Herald yesterday, I spoke with the Oregon Health Authority's drinking water program and both laboratories involved in the Crypto analyses.

BioVir laboratory (2011 results) said they were sub-contracted by the original Lab/Cor, Inc. laboratory contractor (2010 results), and sent the results to them fairly quickly. Lab/Cor said they sent the results to the city public works Water Plant Specialist Jake Jones within two weeks of the actual test.

So we are expected to believe that no one at public works took the time to read every one of these important reports about the presence or absence of a potential deadly pathogen in our water supply? Again, it's good to know we've got public works looking out for us!

Bill Goss, from the Oregon Health Authority regional office in Pendleton, said that while in some cases the results are sent to the state office in Portland, the lab results for Baker City are sent directly to the public works department. Apparently the regional representative was not previously completely aware of the Federal requirement for city water systems (city public works) to "report [to the state] results from the source water monitoring no later than 10 days after the end of the first month following the month when the sample is collected," but he claims to be out of the loop anyway because the results were supposed to have been sent by public works to the Portland office, not Pendleton, within the specified time frame.

A state representative said the reports, which were supposed to be sent regularly to the state office in Portland, were often not tracked or scrutinized there until the end of the yearly reporting period, at which time they were reviewed to determine the appropriate level of water treatment needed. Given that the state office did not report regularly to the regional representative, the regional representative would not know of the positive findings for Crypto, had they actually been sent to Portland. Additionally, the regional representative stated he was informed verbally by Michelle Owen at the late 2010 Council meeting (8/24/10) that Crypto had not been detected in our water.

Here's the rule:
333-061-0040 Reporting and Record Keeping
(1) Reporting requirements:
(m) Reporting source water monitoring results for Cryptosporidium and E. coli collected in accordance with OAR 333-061-0036(5)(e). Water systems must report results from the source water monitoring no later than 10 days after the end of the first month following the month when the sample is collected as prescribed by this subsection.

Well, the reports, dating back to April, 2010, were not received by the state until September 2, 2011 (you count the months). Several violations here.

And then there is the question of this year's required Consumer Confidence Report, provided by the city for the public, which did not report the presence of Crypto to the Baker City public, even though it had been reported to the city as being present in April and October of 2010, as well as in January or this year. Another clear violation. Consumer Confidence?

Here's the rule:
333-061-0043 Consumer Confidence Reports
(3) Detected Contaminants:
(m) Information on Cryptosporidium, radon, and other contaminants:
(A) If the system has performed any monitoring for Cryptosporidium,
which indicates that Cryptosporidium may be present in the source water or the finished water, the report must include:
(i) A summary of the results of the monitoring, and
(ii) An explanation of the significance of the results.

The Herald editorial stated that:

Nor is the city required to report the presence of crypto — unlike with other contaminants, such as E. Coli, the state doesn’t have a protocol for when cities must notify either the state or the public about possible crypto contamination, Goss said.

Given the information provided above from multiple sources, that statement is not entirely accurate

Both the state representative and the EPA have clarified that the city [public works department] was required to report a finding of Crypto in the water supply in their annual Consumer Confidence Report that must be sent out by July first of every year.

While there appears to be enough blame to go around in this case, from the information available, one should look to government, not the local paper, for the real culprits. If anything, the Herald set a good example by accepting some responsibility, however slight it may be in reality, for passing on bad information. It is truly a shame that the public works department didn't do the same, along with issuing an apology to the people and the Council, as soon as they realized their careless handling of the lab reports.
__

Centers For Disease Control--Cryptosporidium Life Cycle

For more information on Cryptosporidium, see also:

Selected Zoonotic Agents of Gastroenteritis

Cattle:
The domestic animal of most importance as a reservoir of Cryptosporidium parvum is clearly cattle.

-

Epidemiologic Aspects of Human Cryptosporidiosis and the Role of Waterborne Transmission
(Use search facility to get to page where you can download article.)
_____

Cyclical Outbreak of Elm Leaf Beetle in Baker City

This past summer, I was a bit chagrinned to see numerous little tan-brown beetles with dark racing stripes milling about the house, both inside and out, and hiding towards fall under the bark of some of my firewood. My first thought was that they might be some sort of wood boring beetle whose larval stage had been eating away at my house. They had been around in previous years, but never in the numbers seen this summer.

I was relieved to find out upon investigation, that, rather than attacking my house, these beetles were chewing up the leaves on my old elms (I believe mine are American Elms), planted by previous owners of the property, and that I was experiencing an outbreak of the Elm Leaf Beetle (Xanthogaleruca luteola).
Elm Leaf Beetle clinging to screen door.

The adults seen under the bark of my firewood had gone there seeking a shelter for winter hibernation, although that ultimately could prove to have been a "bad choice." They also seek winter quarters in houses. Those that remain in the spring will fly or crawl up into the elms again to lay eggs on the lower surface of leaves, and when the larvae hatch in about a week, they will begin feeding on this lower leaf surface. The effects can be seen in the next photo.
Effects of Elm Leaf Beetle larvae feeding on the underside of elm leaves.

After feeding, the larvae then migrate down to the larger crack and crevices in the bark of the tree where they develop into the adult beetles which emerge in summer. Adult beetles feed on the leaves as well, leaving spots or holes seen on the upper surfaces.
Effects of Elm Leaf Beetle adults feeding on the upper surface of elm leaves.

Having grown up in an area with few of the large elms found in Baker City, I had not experienced these little delinquents until moving here. The literature assures me that while they weaken the tree, they do not normally kill it. Treatment is problematic, but Wikipedia suggests the following:

In North America, there are few natural enemies, but in Europe, the ova of the beetle are often heavily predated by the chalcidoid wasp Oomyzus gallerucae [2]. Insecticide sprays are of little use since by the time the infestation is apparent, the application will be too late to be effective. However, tree trunks banded with insecticides can limit repetition the following year by killing the larvae as they descend before hibernation.

My view? Don't bother.

Other Links:

U of M Extension Elm Leaf Beetle

LEAST TOXIC AND ORGANIC PESTICIDES FOR GARDENERS

Biological Insecticides
Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis)
Source: naturally occurring bacterium produced en masse in the lab Mode of action: bacterial stomach poison that must be ingested by insect to be toxic, initial poisoning causes cessation of eating, insect dies in a few days Uses: Bt kurstaki used against plant-eating caterpillars, Bt israelensis used against mosquitoes and fungus gnats, Bt san diego used against elm leaf beetle and Colorado potato beetle Toxicity: mammalian toxicity varies from low to very low toxicity depending on product Products: Caterpillar Killer, Dipel, Gnatrol, Bactimos, Potato Shield
Miscellaneous Garlic
Notes: biodegrades quickly in sunlight, spray late in day or on a cloudy day, need full plant coverage, Bt kurstaki works best when caterpillars are still small

Occupy, Oregon Wolves, Perry's Tax Plan, Deficit Super-committee

2011-11-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I'm just passing on some information that folks have sent to me, and some info I've come across--all well worth watching or reading. Thanks to those who forwarded the information.
[Edited 11/2-3/11]

In This Edition:

- Occupy Wall Street Videos and reminders of why Occupy is important

- Oregon Wolf News--“OR-7” Makes it into the Cascades!

- Rick Perry's Tax Plan

- What's With the Deficit SuperCommittee?
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Occupy Wall Street Videos and reminders of why Occupy is important
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Occupy Wall Street Videos

DC Douglas' "Why #OccupyWallStreet? 4 Reasons."

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Michael Moore: "There’s No Turning Back!"
Monday 31 October 2011
by: Felipe Messina, Media Roots | Video with Transcript

This is a 36-minute video of Michael Moore speaking at Occupy Oakland last Friday, with transcript, from Truthout.
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Back in March, I published info about the documentary, "Inside Job," narrated by Matt Damon.

If you have a memory like mine, this longer video will re-focus the mind on the reasons for Occupy Wall Street. I just watched it again recently, and was amazed (and outraged again) at the events I had forgotten. Now, for those with DSL broadband, you can watch it for free at "Inside Job. The documentary. Online. For free."

The DVD is also available (may have to sign-up for it) at the Baker County Public Library, and I think it also available from NetFlix and the sources mentioned on the previous blog, or for purchase at Amazon and probably from Betty's Books.

Please take the time to watch it!
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Oregon Wolf News--“OR-7” Makes it into the Cascades!

97 lb. male wolf collared 2/12/10 (ODFW Photo)

From Wally, at Northeast Ecosystems:

Conservationists Celebrate First Wolf in Western Oregon
After 500 mile journey, a young male known as OR7 returns to historic habitat in the Southern Cascades

Nov 01, 2011

Oregon conservationists and wildlife-lovers are celebrating the news today that the radio collar of “OR-7”, a two year old male wolf originally from Northeast Oregon, has been located in the Cascade Mountains east of Roseburg. This is the latest stop in a spectacular, 500 mile journey that has taken the young wolf across some of Oregon’s most rugged and remote mountains, deserts, and forests.

OR7’s odyssey has taken him across at least 9 Oregon Counties. Prior to the discovery of his tracking collar signal in the upper Umpqua River watershed this week, his most recent known location was in Lake County, over 100 miles away. Whether he will winter in the South Cascades, or continue his journey elsewhere, is unknown.

OR7’s arrival in the upper Umpqua is another major milestone in one of Oregon’s, and America’s, greatest wildlife conservation success stories. Gray wolves were hunted to extinction in Oregon under a misguided policy of extermination that was driven by irrational fear and misinformation. The last bounty paid for the killing of a wild wolf in Oregon was in 1947, for a wolf shot and killed in the Rogue-Umpqua Divide. Ironically, OR7’s latest known location is very near the Divide. . . . .

Please read the rest: Conservationists Celebrate First Wolf in Western Oregon
After 500 mile journey, a young male known as OR7 returns to historic habitat in the Southern Cascades
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DIspersal Route of Wolf "OR-7" as of 10/28/11. He has since travelled west and crossed over the Cascades to the Umpqua watershed. (ODFW Image)

More from Northeast Ecosystems:

Migrating wolf enters southwest Oregon
Medford Mail Tribune
11/1
A young wolf migrating out of a northeast Oregon pack this fall has reached northeastern Douglas County, becoming the first confirmed wolf in Western Oregon in 65 years.
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New wolf pack identified in northeastern Oregon along Snake River
Oregonian
10/29

With the shrinkage of the state's oldest and biggest pack of gray wolves to four -- and a potential kill order looming over two of the pack's remaining wolves for preying on livestock -- Oregon's fledgling wolf population looked like it was in trouble...the Department of Justice is adopting a paradoxical stand that to save wolves, they must be killed.
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AP: Oregon has new wolf pack in Snake River country
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ODFW Press Release: New wolf pack in Snake River Unit; Walla Walla wolf collared
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Ecotrope (OPB): Wallowa County B&B pledges not to draw wolves
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The Wildlife News: NE Oregon . . . get friendly with wolf watchers and lose your property rights
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State argues wolf kills will help pack
Blue Mountain Eagle
10/27

The state argues that killing two wolves "will not cause irreparable harm to the gray wolf population in Oregon, and, in fact, will aid in the recovery of the species...,"... Noah Greenwald: "There's really no evidence that killing wolves increases tolerance. In fact, there are studies that show it doesn't increase tolerance, he said "The wolf population is too small to take these kinds of killings." . . . .

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What Hunters And Others May Not Know About Wolves

. . . . "FWP wolf biologists routinely come upon pup rearing areas or other loafing areas where a pack is spread out and bedded down," he said. "Anyone out enjoying the outdoors could similarly surprise multiple wolves by coming upon them at rest."

"If you surprise resting wolves at close range they might quickly rise to their feet around you," McDonald said. "It can be unnerving, it might heighten your heart rate."

Hunters are most likely to have this experience as they advance stealthily during a hunt.

Some of the wolves scattered across the landscape may see the intruder, while others will not. A few might lope off quietly, others may bark at the intruder, howl to locate the other wolves, or cautiously approach to get a better look at the intruder.
McDonald said once wolves have identified what the disturbance is, they generally leave the area. Or, the vocalizing and movements could go on for awhile as wolves regroup out of sight and pull back from the situation.

"It is easy to read aggression into this, but that is rarely the case," McDonald said. "The few unfortunate incidents between wolves and humans have occurred where wolves were habituated to humans, were fed human foods, provoked or otherwise engaged in ways that caused them to lose their fear of humans. . . . .

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Defenders: Wolf Weekly Wrap-Up

The amazing disappearing, reappearing wolves of Oregon

Newly released map of wolf groups in Oregon

Wolf numbers in Oregon have fluctuated quite a bit this year, but according to a new map, state wildlife managers now believe at least five distinct groups of wolves comprising four different packs exist today. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) announced this week that a new pack has been identified along the border with Idaho in the northeast corner of the state. That brings the total number of known wolves in Oregon to at least 23: four in the Imnaha pack, six in the Walla Walla pack, five in the Snake River pack, four in the Wenaha pack, two wolves in northern Umatilla county, and two have dispersed from the Imnaha pack to central Oregon.

The official count, however, won’t be determined until the end of the year when ODFW does their survey for the 2011 Northern Rockies annual report. Only packs with at least two adults (one male, one female) and two or more pups are considered “breeding pairs.” The state’s initial goal as outlined in the Oregon wolf management plan is to have four breeding pairs on either side of the Cascade Mountains. If Oregon’s wolves continue to move about the way they have this year, the state may reach their goal sooner rather than later. . . . .

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Rick Perry's Tax Plan

Huge tax break for millionaires under Perry's plan, study shows
By Stephanie Condon

Individuals making more than $1 million a year could see an average tax cut of more than $500,000 under Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's complicated tax proposal, while some taxpayers at the other end of the income spectrum would see a tax hike compared to the current tax rates, according to an analysis released Monday.

Perry's plan would also reduce federal tax revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars, forcing the government to make dramatic spending cuts -- long a goal of many conservatives pushing for a smaller federal footprint. . . . .

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Governor Rick Perry’s Tax Reform Plan
Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center October 31, 2011

Governor Rick Perry's Tax Reform Plan
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What's With the Deficit SuperCommittee?

Supercommittee of the One Percent Won't Even Think of Taxing Wall Street

. . . . While the supercommittee has plenty of time to think of ways to make life more miserable for seniors, it won't even countenance the idea of taxing Wall Street speculation. In spite of the repeated pledges that everything is on the table, taxing Wall Street speculation is absolutely off the table.

In order for a tax bill to be considered by Congress, it must be scored by the Joint Tax Committee (JTC). While many members, including some very senior members from both houses, have requested a score from the JTC of a bill taxing financial speculation, the supercommittee has the JTC completely tied up meeting its requests. By refusing to include a financial speculation tax (FST) in its scoring request, the supercommittee is preventing this idea from even being included in the discussion.

Given the role of Wall Street in both creating the conditions for the crash and prospering at the expense of the other 99 percent, it might seem reasonable to include a tax on speculation in the mix of items to consider. This is not a radical proposal. The European Commission is currently on the edge of approving a FST. Its leading proponents are the conservative leaders of Germany and France. . . . .

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OpenCongress Blog

Talking Supercommittee Transparency

Every activist knows that to influence legislation you have to get involved at the earliest stage in the legislative process you possibly can.

Congress knows this too, and itʼs why the created the supercommittee — to prevent the public from having influence in discussions on long-term budget, spending and tax issues. The supercommittee process shuts the public out until the very last step by concentrating power in just 12 lawmakers and establishing special fast-track rules that make any engagement beyond “yes” or “no” impossible. But itʼs not shutting out the corporations and special interests that have been able to engage with the committee through expensive access lobbyists. Transparency wouldnʼt fix all the problems with the supercommittee — its structure is anti-democratic and its mission is flawed — but it would at least level the playing field a bit.

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[Added 11/3/11]
The President Surrenders
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 31, 2011
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8/16/2011
Who's Buttering Up Deficit Super Committee Members With Donations
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[Added 11/3/11]
Super committee: Who are these guys?
By Charles Riley @CNNMoney August 11, 2011:

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7 BILLION AND COUNTING

2011-10-31T20:05:00.000-07:00

In This Edition:

- 7 BILLION AND COUNTING (Center for Biological Diversity & World Watch Institute)
- Some Consequences of Teen Pregnancies in Western Industrialized Countries
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: 7 BILLION AND COUNTING
Center for Biological Diversity

How many people are there on the planet, and how has the population grown?

The United Nations predicts the world population will reach 7 billion on October 31, 2011, and continue exploding till its hits 10 billion by century’s end. Global population doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion between 1800 and 1930, then exploded over the past five decades — doubling from 3.5 billion in 1968 to nearly 7 billion now.

How many people will there be at the end of the century?

According to a May 2011 U.N. report, the global human population will likely exceed 10 billion by 2100. This projection is higher than previous estimates, which predicted the population would peak at slightly more than 9 billion in 2050 and then begin to decline.

How does this affect plants and animals?

Population growth has an enormous impact on biodiversity, the suite of plant and animal species that make up our physical world. As the world’s human population grows unsustainably, so do its unyielding demands for water, land, trees and fossil fuels — all of which come at a steep price for other life forms already being forced into remote corners, deprived of food sources or outcompeted by introduced species. Most directly, population growth has led to massive habitat loss, overhunting and interruption of migration.

Is it affecting the rate of species extinction?

Most biologists agree we’re in the midst of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. Some have even begun to use the term “Anthropocene” to describe a new period of time on Earth. Species are disappearing up to 1,000 times faster than is typical of the planet’s history. This time, though, it isn’t because of geologic or cosmic forces but unsustainable human population growth.

What are some of the North American species that have already gone extinct because of overpopulation?

They include the woodland bison of West Virginia, Arizona’s Merriam’s elk, the Rocky Mountain grasshopper and Puerto Rico’s Culebra parrot. Each year researchers report discovering more than 15,000 new species around the world; at the same time, more than 90 species are going extinct every day.

How can we stop this?

One person at a time. One of the most important actions we can take is to speak out and speak up. For too long, overpopulation has been ignored by environmental groups and others, largely for political reasons. But at this point the facts can’t be ignored, and there are practical, real-world ways to begin addressing the crisis.

Forty percent of pregnancies are unplanned, and the majority of women in the world do not have access to birth control. These realities are often a result of women not being in decision-making positions.

We can reduce our own population to a sustainable level in a number of ways, including the empowerment of women, education of all people, universal access to birth control and a societal commitment to ensuring that all species are given a chance to live and thrive. These steps will decrease human poverty and overcrowding, raise our standard of living and help sustain the lives of plants and animals everywhere — and with them the natural systems on which our own lives and wellbeing depend.

Isn’t this just a problem for the rest of the world?

No. The United States has the world’s third largest population after China and India. At 2.1 children per woman, the U.S. fertility rate remains the highest among developed nations, which average around 1.6. The current U.S. population exceeds 300 million and is projected to grow 50 percent by 2050. By any ecological measure, we have exceeded our carrying capacity.

Isn’t the problem more about overconsumption?

It’s inextricably connected. Dramatic overconsumption has coincided with the population explosion. Consumption of resources — from land and water to oil, gas and minerals — has played a significant role in the loss of biodiversity around the globe. Reducing consumption is vital to curbing the extinction crisis, and so is stemming unsustainable population growth.

What are Endangered Species Condoms?

In 2010, through a network of more than 5,000 volunteers, the Center for Biological Diversity distributed 350,000 free condoms, packaged in boxes with images of endangered species. Distributed in all 50 states — as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico — they highlighted how runaway human population growth is driving species extinct at a cataclysmic rate. The Center is giving away 100,000 of these popular condoms in 2011 as part of its 7 Billion and Counting campaign.

You can find out more at our website.

What can I do to help with the population crisis?

Talk. The overpopulation crisis has been exacerbated by social reluctance to discuss problems involving reproduction and differing perceptions of the morality of reproduction. No doubt about it: This is a delicate subject. But it’s also essential that people begin to have the conversation.

Host or attend an event about the 7 billion milestone, endangered species and how to stem overpopulation.
Become one of our volunteer condom distributors.

Write a letter to the editorof your local newspaper and talk with, or write to, your elected representatives. Check out ideas to get you started with our Take-action Toolbox.

Become a member of the Center for Biological Diversity, Join our e-network, sign up for Pop X, our monthly e-newsletter about human population and species extinction, join us on Facebook and learn more on our resources page.

Donate to the Center’s overpopulation campaign so we can continue to expand our innovative overpopulation campaign.
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As Global Population Surpasses 7 Billion, Two Clear Strategies for a Sustainable Future
Greater reproductive choice and measures to reduce resource consumption and waste are critical to reducing humanity's environmental impact

WASHINGTON - October 31 - As the global population surpasses 7 billion people sometime around the end of October, addressing the challenges associated with a still-growing world population will require a two-pronged response, according to experts with the Worldwatch Institute. The combined measures of empowering women to make their own decisions about childbearing and significantly reducing global consumption of energy and natural resources would move humanity toward rather than further away from environmentally sustainable societies that meet human needs.

. . . .
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Teenage Childbearing and Long-Term Socioeconomic Consequences: A Case Study in Sweden

. . . .

Results: Compared with Swedish women who first gave birth at ages 20-24, those who were teenage mothers had significantly increased odds of each unfavorable socioeconomic outcome in later life, even after the data were adjusted for family socioeconomic situation and maternal birth cohort. For example, teenage motherhood was positively associated with low educational attainment (odds ratios of 1.7-1.9, depending on the specific age during adolescence when the woman gave birth), with single living arrangements (odds ratios, 1.5-2.3), with high parity (odds ratios, 2.6-6.0), with collecting a disability pension (odds ratios, 1.6-1.9) and with welfare dependency (odds ratios, 1.9-2.6). These trends were usually linear, with the highest odds ratios corresponding to women who had had their first child at the youngest age.
Conclusions: A longitudinal analysis of record-linkage data from Sweden supports the view that childbearing during adolescence poses a risk for socioeconomic disadvantage in later life—even for adolescents from relatively comfortable backgrounds and for those who studied beyond elementary school.
Family Planning Perspectives, 2001, 33(2):70-74
. . . .
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The Children of Teen Parents

Poverty, inadequate social support, mothers’ lack of education, mothers’ cognitive immaturity, and greater maternal stress have all been suggested as possible factors contributing to poor social and educational outcomes for the children of teen mothers.
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Social Barriers Faced by Adolescent Parents and Their Children

Howard Spivak, MD; Michael Weitzman, MD

From the Department of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine (Drs Spivak and Weitzman), and the Division of Health Services, Boston University School of Public Health (Dr Weitzman).
ABSTRACT

Pregnancy and childbearing are well recognized as having significant, long-term consequences for teenagers. Recent literature documents an array of negative outcomes for children born to adolescents, with a range of factors identified as contributing to the problems observed in these children. These include (1) the characteristics of those teenagers most likely to become parents, (2) the social and economic consequences of early childbearing, (3) the increased biologic vulnerability of children born to teenagers, and (4) the nature of parenting by teenagers. It has been acknowledged that adolescent parents tend to come from high-risk families, have poor academic achievement, and live in our most disadvantaged communities and therefore, biologic, economic, and behavioral factors contribute to the increased likelihood of teenagers having children who are vulnerable to physical and developmental problems. Teenaged parents face many obstacles to economic and social success, and these further influence the environment in which their children grow up. Adolescents also experience many difficulties in adjusting to parenthood and display a range of suboptimal parenting practices. Whereas some of these factors appear highly resistant to change, others have clear clinical, programmatic, and policy implications.

(JAMA 1987;258:1500-1504)

[I have the article in PDF upon request.]
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Bits & Pieces on domestic American politics from the Alternative Press

2011-10-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

Just a "few" bits and pieces on domestic American politics tonight.

In This Edition:
[Edited 10/29/11]

- Dennis Kucinich on Occupy Wall Street & National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act
- Recent Occupy Wall Street Polls (oldest first)
- Study Confirms Wealth Distribution in United States is Most Unequal Among Industrialized Nations
- CBO Study Shows Growing Inequality
- Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston--Three Part Video
- Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (Bad) News
- Article on Rick Perry "Flat Tax"
- Bob Dylan--High Water [For Charley Patton]
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Dennis Kucinich on Occupy Wall Street:

Occupy
Friday, 28 October 2011

Dear Friends,   An Iraq War veteran who survived two tours of duty gets his skull fractured in ... Oakland!  53 activists arrested in Atlanta. SWAT teams deployed to boot out peaceful protesters.   Recent actions against Occupy protesters are irresponsible and tragic. They're an assault on our democracy. These protesters are bravely exercising their right to freedom of expression, to bring attention to a political and economic system that's rigged against most Americans. I stand with them; and, all Americans -- left and right -- should join me in protecting their freedom to non-violently create change.   

This isn't a Democratic or Republican movement. It's not about one party or one policy. It's about standing up to a financial system that's completely backwards. Wall Street banks get billions in bailouts and emerge with massive profits. Most Americans see a program of austerity in a painful economic climate -- benefit cuts, high unemployment, declining wages, and crumbling infrastructure. Congress moved swiftly to "save" banks (something I strongly opposed), and now Congress is paralyzed, unable to create jobs and to save our middle class.

  It's no surprise Americans are standing up. Our country's economic policies have consolidated and accelerated wealth to the top. One percent of Americans now control 42% of our wealth. It's not radical to think this is out of balance or to demand a government that is of the people and for the people. I've been to these protests, and I can tell you they're filled with honest, hard working Americans who are concerned with the direction of our country and our economic future.

  I am deeply concerned. I'm concerned about an economic system which tethers job creation to China and big banks. We shouldn't have to borrow money from China -- or Japan or South Korea -- to get out of this ditch. We should stop the Fed from giving billions to the big banks. We have to take back the power to manage our own economy, to regain control over our monetary system, consistent with the U.S. Constitution. That's why, one month ago, I introduced the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act. The legislation would put the Federal Reserve under the Department of the Treasury, and it would help us recapture control of our financial system. As part of the NEED Act, Congress would use its constitutional power to invest in America, creating millions of jobs by putting billions of dollars directly into circulation. And since this money is adding real, tangible value to our national wealth, it will not generate inflation.   

We need a financial system that is of the people and for the people. We need to take it back from the big banks. We need economic and social justice. I will continue to support the Occupy movement. I will continue to fight for legislation, including the NEED Act, that sets America on a path of jobs for all, health care for all, education for all, retirement security for all, and peace.

  Let's keep this movement alive. Let's keep fighting for economic and social justice. Keep occupying Wall Street. And, with your help, I'll keep occupying Congress.   With respect,     Dennis Kucinich   P.S. Please forward this email to your friends and family, and share it on Facebook and Twitter. Let's spread this movement, and continue to support the Occupy protests.
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Recent Occupy Wall Street Polls

4 Polls That Show Occupy Wall Street is Just Getting Started
By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet
Posted on October 24, 2011, Printed on October 28, 2011

After over a month of demonstrations, numerous dismissals, and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum. Over the last two weeks, polls have poured in revealing that Americans familiar with the protests largely support them. And since that familiarity will continue to increase, we can only conclude that the country's support for the movement will keep on growing. When you've got NYT pundit Charles Blow unfurling his hipster flag comparing OWS to legendary 90s band Nirvana, you know a tipping point has been reached!

Recent polls prove that when Americans hear this band, they dig it. Here’s a round-up:

Oct. 9-10 Time Magazine/Abt SRBI: This poll showed a 54 percent favorable rating of OWS, compared to a mere 27 percent thumbs up for the Tea Party.
. . . .

Oct. 13-16 United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll: Here, a majority of those polled – fully 59 percent – said that they backed the goals of the protests from what they "know about the demonstrations." And 68 percent supported the Democratic surtax on millionaires to pay for the cost of their jobs plan, a policy cited by OWS protesters in a recent Millionaire's March in New York City.

Oct. 17 Quinnipiac poll: This survey of New York City voters revealed that the Big Apple is on board with OWS. 67 percent agreed with the views of the Wall Street protesters and a whopping 87 percent believed it's okay that they are protesting.
. . . .

Bottom line: If this thing continues to grow – and there is every indication that it will – the Occupy Wall Street could become the definitive movement for an entire generation. On Sunday, Noam Chomsky addressed Occupy Boston and called the movement "unprecedented." "There's never been anything like it," said Chomsky. "If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead – because victories don’t come quickly – it could turn out to be a real historic, a very significant moment in American history."
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October 25, 2011 6:30 PM
Poll: 43 percent agree with views of "Occupy Wall Street"
By Brian Montopoli Topics Polling

Forty-three percent of Americans agree with the views of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll that found a widespread belief that money and wealth should be distributed more evenly in America.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans said they disagree with the movement, which began more than a month ago in lower Manhattan and has since spread across the country and around the world. Thirty percent said they were unsure. . . . .
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Study Confirms Wealth Distribution in United States is Most Unequal Among Industrialized Nations

A new study released Thursday has found the distribution of wealth in the United States is among the most unequal among industrialized nations. The United States ranked in the bottom five on a combination of issues including poverty prevention, health and access to education—ahead of only Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey. The study was done by the German-based Bertelsmann Foundation. Meanwhile, a new study here in the United States has found New York State has the highest income inequality of all 50 states and that the New York City metropolitan region has the highest income inequality of any large metro area.
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CBO Study Shows Growing Inequality
The Report:
Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007
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Article:
CBO Cites Income Inequality
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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston--Three Part Video

Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston: Video 1 of 3

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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston: Video 2 of 3

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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston: Video 3 of 3

See also: http://www.occupyboston.org/
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Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction News

Democrats Offer Significant Concessions
Plan Is to the Right of Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six

PDF of this statement (4pp.)

By Robert Greenstein, Richard Kogan and Paul N. Van de Water
Revised October 28, 2011

The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the "supercommittee") marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate's "Gang of Six," and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.

Although the new plan thus moves considerably closer to Republican positions than any of the bipartisan plans, Republicans have been quick to reject it. . . . .

See rest here: Democrats Offer Significant Concessions
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Article on Rich Perry "Flat Tax"

TPMDC
Rick Perry’s Flat Tax Plan: Not A Flat Tax

BRIAN BEUTLER OCTOBER 26, 2011, 6:00 AM 8647 64

The flat tax is such a popular idea in conservative circles that Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to revive his presidential primary campaign by proposing one.

Except for the flat tax part.

It turns out Perry’s plan isn’t flat, doesn’t eliminate the current tax code, as many conservative elites claim to want, and would likely blow a huge hole in the federal budget.

Perry’s plan doesn’t scrap existing tax law altogether, but rather creates a new, parallel tax code that taxes individual and corporate income at 20 percent. Investment income would go untaxed. Every tax payer would have a choice between staying in the current system, or transferring over to the new one. But as Michael Linden, a tax expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, points out, the new, simpler, alternative code would constitute a tax increase for most Americans and a huge tax cut for wealthy Americans, creating incentives for a small well-to-do sliver of the country to make the switch, and for everyone else to stay put.

. . . .

“For most people who don’t have big capital gains and dividend income, they’re going to stay in the current system,” Linden explained. “It’s not a flat tax.”

. . . .

“For very wealthy people who do have big capital gains and dividends — they’ll take the new one, but even that’s not really a flat tax. It’s 20 percent on ordinary income and zero percent on investment income.”

. . . .

“The wealthy will end up benefitting from a very simple tax code, and they’re going to end up paying really low rates,” Linden said. “Of the richest 400 taxpayers, fully 66 percent of their total adjusted gross income came from capital gains and another seven percent came from dividends. So basically for the very wealthy you’re going to save nearly 75 percent of income from taxation. It’s just a massive tax cut for very wealthy.” . . . .
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Bob Dylan--High Water [For Charley Patton]

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11/29/211
They took away the previous, excellent, original version of "High Water" posted on October 28, so we are stuck with this:

For what its worth, a more recent, shall we say different, version of High Water. Lacks the power of the original because the words are secondary to the godawful gaudy, noise-filled performance. He's lost himself it seems to become a clownish performer, just an old shadow of who he was.

Police Riot at Oakland Occupy Wall Street Protest, + Glenn Greenwald Interview on Democracy Now!

2011-10-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

[Edited 10/27/11]

In This Edition:

- Police Riot in Oakland: Iraq War Vet Hospitalized with Fractured Skull After Being Shot by Police
- The Times They Are A Changin'
- Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street and More
- Dean Baker--Doesn't NPR Know That the Wage Matters for Workers?
- Robert Reich on Flat Tax plus great interview on Letters & Politics
- Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free
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Since at least the Clinton administration, the police in America have been in training to act as an arm of the military, with many of the weapons that militarization implies, to control any outbreaks of discontent on the streets of our cities and hometowns. You can see it in the SWAT teams that converge on suspected crime scenes, but now it is being used to squelch first amendment rights to protest and free speech. More video footage is now available on YouTube from last night's (10/25/11) police riot in Oakland, California, exposing the violent, over the top, militaristic response by the elite to the threat of common people standing up for their free speech and other rights. Please also listen to the analysis of constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald on Democracy Now! Much More-- (below).
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WEDNESDAY OCT 26, 2011 8:01 AM
Police Turn Oakland Into War Zone
BY ALLISON KILKENNY
(Updated 4:24 p.m. ET)

"As always, it's important to remember that regardless of police accusations, the charges against protesters listed above (sanitation issues, graffiti, etc.) are relatively minor offenses given the nature of this police retaliation in which OPD turned downtown Oakland into a war zone."

Incredible footage emerged from downtown Oakland last night - not of basic law enforcement efforts to maintain public "health and safety" as the police have been claiming - but of a war zone in which police shot tear gas, bean bags, wooden dowels, flash grenades, and rubber bullets at protesters.

Occupy Oakland video: Riot police fire tear gas, flashbang grenades

Tear gas! Thrown at Occupy Oakland!

[See article link for all videos and many photos]

Rather than using the weaponry once in a final effort to subdue the crowd, officers reportedly used them over and over again in what @OccupyOakland describes as a "relentless" assault on the thousands of activists gathered near City Hall.
. . . .
The police claim they were ever-so-distressed that they couldn't get medical responders through to attend to the wounded protesters, and they ultimately expressed this concern by shooting the remaining activists with tear gas and rubber bullets. Reportedly, activists retaliated by "throwing paint" on police officers.

Oakland Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan said that a total of 102 arrests have been made so far, but as of last night that number was still increasing. Eighty-five of those arrests were made early Tuesday when officers raided the Occupy Oakland encampment at Oscar Grant plaza along with an annex in Snow Park near Lake Merritt.

During the assault, police dressed in full riot gear as if preparing to battle a zombie horde or terrorist cell (photo by @garonsen). . . . .

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Added 10/27/11:

Oakland Policeman Throws Flash Grenade Into Crowd Trying To Help Injured Protester

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Iraq War Vet Hospitalized with Fractured Skull After Being Shot by Police at Occupy Oakland Protest
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Showing a good example, Police reacted differently in Albany, NY.
New York cops defy order to arrest hundreds of ‘Occupy Albany’ protesters

By Andrew Jones
Monday, October 24, 2011
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Occupy-Wall-Street-Revolution (Bob Dylan -The-Times-They-Are-A-Changin)‬

There was a time in recent years when I thought that the times were a changing in a totally different direction from what those of us who were young in the sixties actually thought, but as Dylan said, "don't speak too soon, For the wheel's still in spin," so perhaps after 40 or 50 years, the times might actually be changing. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hopeful.
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October 26, 2011

Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street, Banks Too Big to Jail and the Attack on WikiLeaks

The prominent political and legal blogger Glenn Greenwald comments on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. "What this movement is about is more important than specific legislative demands. It…is expressing dissent to the system itself," says Greenwald. "It is not a Democratic Party organ. It is not about demanding that President Obama’s single [jobs] bill pass or anything along those lines. It is saying that we believe the system itself is radically corrupted, and we no longer are willing to tolerate it. And that’s infinitely more important than specific legislative or political demands." Greenwald also discusses the possible shutdown of the online whistleblower website WikiLeaks due to a "financial blockade" led by MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. "The reason why all these companies cut off funds is because the government pressured and demanded that they do so," Greenwald says. "So, no due process, no accusation of criminal activity. You could never charge WikiLeaks with a crime. They’re engaged in First Amendment activity. And the government has destroyed them through their pressure and influence over the private sector... WikiLeaks has shed more light on the world’s most powerful factions than all media outlets combined, easily, over the last year, and that’s the reason why they’re so hated."

Guest:

Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com. His new book is called With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. [See also: Democracy for the Few by Michael Parenti Must be totally out of print, glad I saved a copy or two]

Read Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Glenn Greenwald. With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful is his book. Glenn, your book is divided into interesting chapters. One is "Too Big to Jail." Talk about that.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think most Americans realize—and I think you see this driving the Occupy protest movement that you covered at the beginning of the show and that everyone is aware of now—that there wasn’t just economic—poor decisions that precipitated the financial crisis, but massive, system- and industry-wide fraud on the part of Wall Street and the banking industry. And yet, there has been virtually no criminal investigations of any kind, let alone prosecutions or accountability.

At the same time, the United States is the largest prison state in the world. We imprison more of our citizens than any country on earth, including China and India and other countries with many more times the people that we have, for even trivial infractions, things that no other country in the Western world imprisons people for. And this chasm between how we treat ordinary Americans in the justice system, imprisoning them for petty and trivial offenses, versus how we treat the world’s most powerful and wealthiest individuals, who can commit the kind of fraud on the massive scale that we saw in 2008 with no accountability, pure impunity, is really what drove me to write the book and I think is what is driving so much citizen anger.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: How do you explain, actually, the convergence of the two? The legal immunity for the elite classes, and at the same time—because the period coincides exactly, four decades. From 1972 to 2007, imprisonment rates in the U.S. increased fivefold, from 93 per 100,000 to 491 per 100,000.

GLENN GREENWALD: Right, well, one of the illustrative ironies is that Richard Nixon, of course, is—what I argue in the book, the pardon of Richard Nixon was the template that created how elite immunity is now justified and how it seeped into the private sector. And of course, Richard Nixon’s career, throughout the 1960s and then into the early 1970s, was made as a law-and-order Republican, demanding no leniency for criminals, harsher and harsher sentences for people who commit crimes. And this is the divergence between how the elite class treats itself when it commits crimes and how they treat ordinary Americans, what Occupy Wall Street calls the 99 percent, that has really destroyed the rule of law, because the rule of law ultimately was intended to be the sole anchor guaranteeing equal opportunity and equal treatment that would then legitimize outcome inequality, and we no longer have that.

. . . .

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn now to one of the—to Occupy Wall Street, because a lot of the things that the protesters say, you bring up in your book. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been critical of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. He recently said the protests were unproductive, since the biggest tax base for New York City was in fact Wall Street.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: The protests, that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in the city, aren’t productive. And some of the labor unions, the municipal unions that are participating, their salaries come from the taxes paid by the people that they are trying to vilify.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Your comments, Glenn?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, this is the propagandistic template that has been used to try and persuade Americans that it’s not only something they should accept, but cheer for, when the wealthiest in our society are permitted to prosper without constraints. It was the Ronald Reagan cliché of "a rising tide lifts all boats," meaning the richer the rich get, the better off you are. And, of course, it’s in Michael Bloomberg’s interest to propagate this mentality, as well. And I think, for a while, Americans believed that. And yet, what they’re seeing now is that that’s actually completely untrue, that the richer the rich get, nothing trickles down. Inequality starts to explode, and their opportunities start to become destroyed, because the richest are able to use the power that accompanies that wealth, the political power, to ensure that the system doesn’t work [to] create equal opportunity, but works only to entrench and shield their own ill-gotten gains. So this kind of—these platitudes that Michael Bloomberg is spewing are no longer working, because people compare their own experience to what they’re teaching and see that it’s false.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. You talk about the press secretary for Ford quitting, saying here we’re—you’re protecting the elite, and you have all these conscientious objectors that are going to jail. In a sense, would you describe this whole Occupy Wall Street movement around the country as a kind of conscientious objection to the system? These are conscientious objectors, too. You have more than 2,500 of them who have been arrested around the country. Compare that to the number of executives in the last two years, since the economy has just completely tanked, then the number of crimes that have gone unprosecuted.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, it’s interesting. You watch the images, which are police state images, that you showed in Oakland, and we’ve seen this elsewhere, with pepper spray abuses and other kinds of police abuses. What this really is, is using the law to protect criminals, which are the people hiding in Wall Street buildings, from people who are really committing no crimes, who are exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly. It’s exactly how the law has been perverted.

But this is, I think, a really important point that you just asked about. In the beginning, people were criticizing Occupy Wall Street, including people who might otherwise be sympathetic, on the grounds that they didn’t have any policy platforms, they didn’t have PowerPoint presentations of the legislation they wanted. And I wrote very early on in defense of them repeatedly, because I think that what this movement is about is more important than specific legislative demands. It is exactly what you just said, which is expressing dissent to the system itself. It is not a Democratic Party organ. It is not about demanding that President Obama’s single bill pass or anything along those lines. It is saying that we believe the system itself is radically corrupted, and we no longer are willing to tolerate it. And that’s infinitely more important than specific legislative or political demands.

AMY GOODMAN: And what it would mean for Wall Street executives to be held accountable, and watching President Obama go around the country—last Sunday, he dedicates the Martin Luther King Monument. Not miles away is Cornel West and others being arrested in front of the Supreme Court, Cornel West saying, "If Martin Luther King is being honored today, someone’s got to be arrested."

GLENN GREENWALD: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And having President Obama referencing Occupy Wall Street, saying he understands, but traveling the country raising millions of dollars for the Democratic Party, saying, well, the Democratic Party plans to raise, what, a billion dollars for President Obama’s 2012 run.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, there’s clearly an effort on the part of the Democratic Party to co-opt the energy that is behind the Occupy movement and to reinject the Obama campaign with the enthusiasm that it had in 2008, and which it now lacks obviously. And the reason why that’s so destined to fail is because, although President Obama was funded overwhelmingly by Wall Street in 2008, that fact was not very extensively reported or appreciated. And yet, now people have seen him in office shielding Wall Street from investigations.
. . . .

Please read the rest of this important interview at Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street, Banks Too Big to Jail and the Attack on WikiLeaks. Greenwald comments on the "end" of the war in Iraq, government and corporate cooperation to destroy WikiLeaks and your privacy [Fascism], and more.
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You probably know that Dean Baker (Center for Economic And Policy Research), a constant and valiant critic of mainstream media's inaccuracies in economic reporting, isn't exactly Atilla the Hun, but he is willing to take the politically dangerous position of saying there is something missing from NPR's reporting on immigration policy. NPR, in their frequent orgies of self adulation during fund raising drives, tells their listeners, oft repeated by the latter as they open their wallets, that they are God's gift to accurate and unbiased reporting. There are many examples testifying to the contrary (actually, they are just another agenda ridden media outlet), but here is a report by Baker that goes to the heart of their reporting on immigration:

Doesn't NPR Know That the Wage Matters for Workers?

Dean Baker, Center for Economic And Policy Research
Monday, 24 October 2011 05:23

Workers work for pay. Most of the country understands this fact, but apparently the reporters and editors at National Public Radio do not. A Morning Edition segment [sorry, no link yet] on the impact that Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigrants is having on the ability of farms in the state to get workers never once mentioned the wages being offered for this work.

The piece repeated complaints by farmers that they could not get citizens or green card holders to work in their fields because the work is too hard. The inability to get workers presumably reflects the pay being offered. For example, if the farmers were offering $40 an hour plus health care benefits, then they would likely be able to find people willing to work in their fields.

Of course offering higher wages would make most of these farms unprofitable, but it is not true that people in the United States are literally unwilling to do farm work. The question is the wage at which they would be willing to work.

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The Flat-Tax Fraud, and the Necessity of a Truly Progressive Tax

Robert Reich, 10/21/11

Herman Cain’s bizarre 9-9-9 plan would replace much of the current tax code with a 9 percent individual income tax and a 9 percent sales tax. He calls it a “flat tax.”

Next week Rick Perry is set to announce his own version of a flat tax. Former House majority leader Dick Armey – now chairman of Freedom Works, a major backer of the Tea Party funded by the Koch Brothers and other portly felines (I didn’t say “fat cats”) — predicts this will give Perry “a big boost.” Steve Forbes, one of America’s richest billionaires, who’s on the board of the Freedom Works foundation, is delighted. He’s been pushing the flat tax for years.

The flat tax is a fraud. It raises taxes on the poor and lowers them on the rich.. . . .
Rather than merely oppose the flat tax, sensible people should push for a truly progressive tax – starting with a top rate of 70 percent on that portion of anyone’s income exceeding $5 million, from whatever source.

See link above for entire post by Robert Reich.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause's board chairman.

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Robert Reich on Letters & Politics

Must listen audio for those seeking understanding of the progressive (as opposed to regressive) perspective from a person who has devoted his life to socio-economic theory/history, public service, and teaching.

Letters and Politics - October 24, 2011 at 10:00am

Click to listen (or download)

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Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free

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The Unwelcome Guest - Billy Bragg and Wilco

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What NATO & Obama Have Wrought

2011-10-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

[Edited 10/26/11]
Listening to the glee of our masters, both political and in media, at the death of Gaddafi, I was left feeling a bit more hopeless, a bit more angry, and perhaps, a bit more wise about the brutal facts of power left to the hands of the ruthless. When one faces ruthless people, as long as one faces that fact directly, one has to refine the response to their threat. Occupy Wall Street is a courageous beginning, but if they continue to be displaced from their occupations by the state power of militarized police [Apparently the local media doesn't think the protesters are members of the public], other tactics will have to be considered. The main point is that state power, whether international coalitions, national, or local, can be both overwhelming, and ruthless. Given the timid behavior of most people, one assumes they already get that.

But I digress.

The Western powers of the undemocratic UN Security Council, and the "defense" grouping called the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization," NATO, declared war on Muammar Gaddafi, for reasons, despite their claims, unrelated to humanitarian issues. Not unexpectedly, the west won their war over a small relatively defenseless nation. This is the well worn pattern. The problem they face now, not unlike the problems they faced in their illegal war against Iraq, is how to form a civil government that promotes more freedom and less suffering than that experienced under the government they deposed. Given that a civil, democratic government takes a back seat to Western access to Libya'a resources, that problem will likely go unnoticed, as will the war crimes committed by the "revolutionary" forces supported by the west. War crimes of the west, and their friends, are after all, not war crimes, but simply 'humanitarian" necessities, as in the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden during the end of World War II, the napalming of villages during the Vietnam war, and the destruction of civilians and their infrastructure during the NATO war on Serbia/Yugoslavia. The fact that NATO and their proxy Libyan quislings destroyed Sirte and other Libyan cities, many civilians included, in order to save civilians from the imagined potential crimes of Gadadfi matters little. Once you get through the nonsensical hypocrisy of the given motives for the brutal and merciless use of force, one is only left with the stark motive of controlling resources.

So now, after the brutal NATO onslaught, and the illegal, perverted, and unbelievably cruel killing of Gaddafi, we are left, not with governance that provided for the people, but with the weasel-eyed Mustafa Abdel Jalil, and the nice folks you can watch in the following videos. Fine, uplifting, humanitarian work, as usual.
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[See following link for all videos]
Gaddafi Sodomized By NATO Supported Rebels
Video shows abuse frame by frame (GRAPHIC)
An analysis appears to confirm that a rebel fighter sodomized Gaddafi with a knife.

By Tracey Shelton

October 25, 2011 "Global Post" -- SIRTE, Libya — An analysis of video obtained by GlobalPost from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Muammar Gaddafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover.

A frame by frame analysis of this exclusive GlobalPost video clearly shows the rebel trying to insert some kind of stick or knife into Gaddafi's rear end.

WARNING

Pictures and Videos should only be viewed by a mature audience

'Video shows Muammar Gaddafi being sodomized'

I personally would call that something more than being "sodomized." It is actually a most vicious torture.
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Gaddafi's Murder and International Law

By Craig Whitlock

Firoze Manji: Nothing in international law allows regime change and assassination of a leader.

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Used and Abused
The Murder of Gaddafi, and the War Crimes of Western Powers

By Peter Baofu, Ph.D.

October 25, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- - -

The jubilant reaction of Western powers and the foes of Muammar Gaddafi to his barbaric murder on October 20, 2011 raises some serious questions about war crimes committed by the Western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters and NATO forces.

There are two serious violations of international law here, namely, (1) in relation to the Third Geneva Convention in 1929 and (2) in relation to the UN Security Council Resolution #1973 in 2011. Let me explain first (1) the Geneva Convention and then (2) the UN Resolution hereafter.

(1) The first violation of international law concerns the Third Geneva Convention in 1929, which offers rights to prisoners of war (POWs), such that POWs have certain rights to be protected. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rightly said on October 21, 2011 that, "in compliance with international law, the moment that a party to an armed conflict is captured, special procedures should be applied to him or her, including assistance, as well as a ban on killing such a person."

But this right was violated, when Gaddafi was captured alive (as POW) and was then repetitively verbally and physically abused before being shot dead shortly after. As "testified by the grainy mobile phone footage seen by the world of the former leader, bloodied and dazed, being dragged along by NTC fighters" in a gruesome way, "Gaddafi can be heard in one video saying 'God forbids this' several times, as slaps from the crowd [of NTC fighters] rain down on his head," as reported by Rania El Gamal for Reuters on October 23.

Then, he was executed by a young NTC fighter named Sanad al-Sadek al-Ureibi, who claimed that he shot Gaddafi after capture, because he did not want him alive; and other fighters celebrated with him after the summary execution. Worse, his dead body was then publicly displayed in a commercial freezer at a shopping center for more celebration.

This act of Western-backed NTC fighters is not only criminal but also barbaric. The foes of Gaddafi may argue that he deserves this fate, but two wrongs do not make a right (which is a well-known logical fallacy), and the answer to criminality is not more criminality. This blatant violation of the Geneva Convention then led Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, to charge on October 21 that "the manner of the deposed Libyan leader's killing could be a war crime," in a report by RT on October 22.

This criminal act by Western-supported NTC fighters is not just restricted to the case of Gaddafi's death but also be extended to the murder of his son (and others in the group). For instance, Gaddafi's son, Mutassim Gaddafi, was captured alive, together with his father, and, in a video released by NTC fighters, he was shown to be "alive in custody, and even casually smoking a cigarette" in a room (surrounded by armed NTC fighters), but in a few moments later, "other images show him dead with gunshot wounds to his neck and abdomen" in the same room, in a report by RT on October 21.

A technical question here is who should be responsible for this criminal act. There are at least five legal possibilities, namely, (a) the individuals who physically abused him and/or pulled the trigger, like Sanad al-Sadek al-Ureibi and others to be identified, (b) the specific unit of NTC fighters which participated in the capture of Gaddafi and his group, (c) the NTC leadership, (d) NATO forces because of their participation (or complicity) in the attack which led to the capture (and the subsequent murder), and (e) certain leaders of Western powers who have given wholehearted support to NTC from the start to encourage the violence against the regime.

It is not surprising that, at the beginning, the NTC tried to cover up the criminal killing by making up fictional stories and blaming others instead. For instance, NTC leader Mahmoud Jibril, first tried to defend NTC by making a dubious public statement to the press that Gaddafi was killed in a crossfire and was shot by one of his own loyalists. But this cover-up was questioned later, even by a senior member of NTC, Waheed Burshan, who said on October 22: "We found that he was alive and then he was dead. And as far as we can tell, there was no fight" (crossfire).

Even "British MP Jeremy Corbyn said that, as Gaddafi was captured alive, he should have been treated as prisoner of war, interrogated and put on trial," but "it looks that there was an element of mob rule in this, and he was indeed killed in the back of the truck," as reported by RT on October 20.

So now, both "the UN Human Rights Office and Amnesty International are calling for an investigation into Gaddafi's death as it raises concerns over what may be the unlawful killing of a prisoner," as reported by RT on October 22. U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville even said on October 20 that he found it very disturbing when "you see someone who has been captured alive and then you see the same person dead....Summary executions are strictly illegal under any circumstances. It's different if someone is killed in combat....But if something else has happened, if someone is captured and then deliberately killed, then that is a very serious matter," as reported by Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters on October 21.

Unfortunately, because of the Western dominance in international legal bodies, any prosecution of war crimes committed by Western forces and their allies is very unlikely, as "Benjamin Barber, an analyst at a US think tank, does not expect anyone will be held accountable for the colonel's death," as reported by RT on October 22.

Now that Gaddafi was dead, the most tragic thing is that this gruesome murder "will cast doubt on the promises by Libya's new rulers to respect human rights and prevent reprisals. It would also embarrass Western governments which gave their wholehearted backing to the NTC," as reported by Rania El Gamal for Reuters on October 23.

Even British MP Jeremy Corbyn soberly warned that "this really does raise some question marks about the command and discipline of the NTC forces and what Libya is going to be like, not just tomorrow, but next month, next year and the next ten years."

Furthermore, according to Shirin Sagedhi, "the gruesome and public killing of Gaddafi was insulting to the people of Libya and the people of the region, as well as the 'idea that democratic forces would brutally kill someone like that,'" in a report by RT on October 22.

(2) And the second violation of international law concerns the UN Security Council Resolution #1973 in 2011, which set up a "no-fly zone" above Libya but did not authorize NATO forces to carry out an attack on any group who were not harming anyone but were fleeing from being attacked instead. Indeed, it was a French jet which "fired on Gaddafi convoy" when it was trying to flee from the ferocious attack by NTC fighers, as confirmed by French defense chief and reported by RT on October 20.

In this specific case, Gaddafi and his few bodyguards were under attack by NTC fighters when they were fleeing Sirte in a convoy, but NATO helped the NTC fighters and carried out an aerial attack (by a French jet) on Gaddafi's convoy (which led to Gaddafi's capture).

But this violates international law, in regard to the UN Security Council Resolution #1973, since, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday rightly pointed out, "the attack on Gaddafi's convoy was directly at odds with the agreed task of guaranteeing a no-fly zone," because "in this specific case one cannot speak of protecting the lives of civilians, either because the convoy did not attack anyone" and was trying instead to escape from the ferocious attack by NTC fighters, or because there was no civilian around to protect (as an excuse) in the first place.

Russia's NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, therefore accused NATO of being "directly involved in the operation to kill the former Libyan leader," since "apparently there were orders that oriented the military servicemen who are in Libya and that directed them to ensure the physical elimination of Gaddafi," as reported by RT on October 21.

Instead of showing respect towards international law, Western powers reacted joyfully to the killing, as shown by the elation of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, when "learned about the death of Muammar Gaddafi via an SMS message" in an interview "filmed by CBS NEWS," exclaimed "Wow!" and thus joyfully said, "We came, we saw, he died!," as reported by Pravda on October 21. And her boss, President Obama, triumphantly announced that, "without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives" of getting rid of Gaddafi and setting up a new regime.

In reaction to this Western joy over the killing, Rogozin thus observed that "the Western elation over the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could have sadistic grounds," as he thus added: "The faces of the leaders of 'world democracies' are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods," as reported by RT on October 21.

In this way, Western mainstream media did not waste time to engage in spinning the whole murder into one of bashing Gaddafi and his historical legacy, without telling the rest of the world about the Western complicity in supporting Gaddafi in all these years of dictatorial rule.

For instance, only some years ago, "former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had no qualms doing business with Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got cozy with him at a United Nations Summit in Rome," as reported by RT on October 21.

In the case of the U.S., the thoughtful comment by Matthew Rothschild on October 21 is worth mentioning: "The hypocrisy of the U.S. position could hardly be greater. In 2003, the Bush Administration rehabilitated Qaddafi, who became an ally of the United States in the 'war on terror.' In fact, the CIA used Qaddafi's intelligence service to torture detainees that the U.S. sent over to Libya. The CIA 'rendered' eight or nine detainees to Qaddafi's intelligence service, and sent questions along with for the torturers to ask, according to Human Rights Watch, in an interview with Democracy Now. The CIA may even have had agents present during some of the questioning. In 2008, Condoleezza Rice visited Qaddafi in Libya. The next year, Obama shook his hand, and John McCain offered him arms. When it was convenient for Washington to support Qaddafi, it did so. When it was convenient to attack him, it did so. But the Obama administration didn't attack Bahrain when it cracked down on people fighting for democracy against that kingdom. No, Washington even let Saudi Arabia, another kingdom, invade Bahrain to help put down the nonviolent uprising."

Many who do not know the history of modern Libya are not aware of the historical contributions of Muammar Gaddafi to his people and the region, even when he has his own failures. Consider, for instance, the following five important contributions by Gaddafi to his country and the region:

(a) He envisioned "the United States of Africa" and thus contributed to the formation of the African Union. In fact, "the African Union is basically the creation of Muammar Gaddafi, who saw it as a vessel for a stronger Africa," as reported by RT on October 20

(b) He succeeded in holding Libya together, which, according to Shirin Sagedhi, was previously fragmented by different "tribes and ethnicities."

(c) He transformed Libya to have "one of the highest GDPs per capita in Africa and...to provide an extensive level of social security, particularly in the fields of housing and education," in a way that many sub-Saharan countries in Africa could only dream of, in the article on Libya by Wikipedia.

(d) He managed to avoid being dominated by the Soviet Union or the U.S. during the Cold War by masterfully playing the Soviet Union against the U.S. without being a puppet of the former. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, he continued to fight against Western domination in the region and thus developed bad blood with Western powers.

(e) He overthrew the Kingdom of Libya in a bloodless military coup against King Idris in 1969 and thus brought Libya into the modern era (from monarchic feudalism).

All these achievements are no small feats for a ruler of a small country with only a few million people and thus have allowed Gaddafi to rule for 42 years.

This does not mean that Gaddafi has no failures. Surely, there are good examples to consider, like his personal vanity, his abuse of power, his ruthlessness, and the like. But who has no failures, for a man with his historical status in the modern era?

But all these achievements are now forgotten, as the West had finished using him, and Western mainstream media is now spinning his historical legacy, in accordance to the dominant rhetoric of Western powers in world media.

Yet, history has its final say: Muammar Gaddafi, in the end, is a historical figure in the modern history of Africa and for that matter, the Middle East, in spite of all his personal faults. And the war crimes by Western powers and their allies help perpetuating the vicious cycle of violence and of suffering in the world.

This article was first published by Pravda

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Libya: Apparent Execution of 53 Gaddafi Supporters

Bodies Found at Sirte Hotel Used by Anti-Gaddafi Fighters

OCTOBER 24, 2011

The entrance to the Mahari Hotel in Sirte, where at least 53 persons were apparently executed. At the time of their killing the hotel was apparently controlled by anti-Gaddafi fighters from Misrata. The red graffiti on the right states "Tiger Brigade," the name of a prominent Misrata fighting group.

Bodies of persons lie in the garden of the Mahari Hotel in Sirte, immediately after they were put into body bags by local residents. At the time of their killing the hotel was apparently controlled by anti-Gaddafi fighters from Misrata. 53 persons were apparently executed at the site. . . . .

© 2011 Peter Bouckaert/Human Rights Watch
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
Libya Before and After Image Shows What a NATO/UN Humanitarian Mission Looks Like
Activist Post

All hail humanitarian war. Regime change can be a bitch. Start with sanctions because of 'humanitarian' reasons. If they don't work, arm ragtag mercenaries and implement a 'no-fly zone' through an international body. If the rebels can't hunt down the defunct leader, then just bomb the hell out the country until a bloody carcass vaguely resembling the leader turns up. Then claim that the humanitarian intervention was a wild success. PS: Make sure you destroy enough of the infrastructure to secure a huge IMF bondage loan for reconstruction.

The before and after picture of Libya below shows what the U.S./NATO means by a humanitarian war:

[See link for photos, or just Google "Sirte Libya Destruction photos"]

Swimming Against the Rural Western Mainstream in a World of Misconceptions

2011-10-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

[Edited 10/21/11]
In This Edition:

- Lengthy Comments on Herald Op-Ed: "Sharing the protesters' anger, but worrying about my 401(k)"

- Additional Links on #Occupy Wall Street

- Iris Dement--Wasteland Of The Free
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Comments on Herald Op-Ed: "Sharing the protesters' anger, but worrying about my 401(k)"

When, as an adult, I was able to explore the rural west, I was struck by its conservatism, as represented by the large majorities of registered Republicans and voting patterns in western rural counties. Millard County, Utah, where I once owned property and spent several months of each year, was a real shock, given that votes for Republican Presidential candidates hovered around 90%. When I moved to Grant, and then Baker County here in Oregon, similar feelings of minority political status surfaced, even though the political distribution was less lopsided and extreme than was the case in rural Utah. Only in these rural western counties had I experienced small town businesses putting pressure on local papers to tow a particular political line, and, at least in one case where the local businesses publicly spoke about removing their advertising, and thus the life-supporting revenue needed by the paper, if editorials or op-ed appeared with which they disagreed.

In the case of the small town commercial media, dependent on subscribers, and most importantly, on advertising revenue, one may reasonably suspect that when the opinions rendered by the local paper most often reflect the political makeup of the community, that it is the the local politics, especially those of the business interests that provide advertising revenue, that drives the opinions and articles rendered. On the other hand, one might also reasonably assume that people who pass the hiring filter at the local paper may reflect the political opinions of the publisher or owners who reflect the major political forces in the community. (After all, it is unlikely that a news outlet in business to make money is going to hire a howling progressive to run a paper in a conservative community.) Either way, it works out well for the commercial interest of the media outlet, with the only problem being that media likes to present themselves as the great objective voice that readers and viewers can trust, fair and balanced, as they say.

If anyone is aware of the local political demography here in Baker County, besides the County Clerk and political party heads, it is Jason Jacoby, editor of the Baker City Herald. He wrote a delightfully detailed article a while back (The urban-rural divide in Baker County; and eating crow on Dudley) that carefully described those demographics. His investigation revealed that:

- 46 percent of of all Baker County voters are registered Republicans.
- 28 percent of all Baker County voters are registered Democrats
- the rest, about 26 percent, are not affiliated with either party
- Within Baker City, "41.9 percent are registered Republicans, and 30.5 percent Democrats."

More telling perhaps, is, as Jayson says:

"Voter registration isn’t a foolproof way to gauge the political preferences of a populace, of course.

In the 2008 presidential election, for instance, Baker County voters went for Republican John McCain in a relatively big way — 64 percent."

So it is a bit complicated, but none-the-less, quite "conservative." Nothing, however, like rural Utah.

My take on all of this is that there isn't much difference between Republicans and Democrats in Baker County. Both parties here are really rather conservative, as they are nationwide. That's why some call them the two wings of the business party (or is that the war party?)

(I must admit, that I am particularly alone as a member of the Progressive Party aligned with the likes of Ralph Nader--do they still exist? Haven't heard much from them lately.)

Trust of media, of course, as opposed to trust of partisan bloggers like myself, depends on objective journalists, who try to stick to the facts, and check on whether those "facts" are actually facts. Otherwise, we would be left with demagogues, who report any notion, or recent email, as fact, and twist their falsehoods as they want, in order to please themselves and the political persuasion of their audience. Worse than self-admitted partisan bloggers perhaps.

Recall that Dan Rather, long-time anchor of CBS News was fired for reporting "facts" that may have actually been true:

"The documents [presented by 60 minutes in early 2009] suggested that Mr. Bush disobeyed an order to appear for a physical exam, and that friends of the Bush family tried to "sugar coat" his Guard service.

After a stubborn 12-day defense of the story, CBS News conceded that it could not confirm the authenticity of the documents and asked former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press President Louis Boccardi to conduct an independent investigation into the matter.

Their findings were contained in a 224-page report made public on Monday. While the panel said it was not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery, it raised serious questions about their authenticity and the way CBS News handled them."

Was Dan Rather fired for reporting the "facts" or for reporting questionable facts? Apparently there is at least a selective standard applied to the "facts" that commercial media journalists report, as opposed to those reported by "crazy" bloggers ("crazy blogger"--Dave Miller-"Think Out Loud"/OPB/NPR).

All of which brings me to a recent Jason Jacoby Op-Ed in the "Baker City Herald", which mocks the Occupy Wall Street movement "Sharing the protesters' anger, but worrying about my 401(k)."

In a county as conservative and ours, I have no doubt that it was well received by most.

About the Occupy Wall Street protests, Jayson, in his admirably sarcastic and flowery prose, says:

"Well, I kind of understand.
The economy stinks.

And Wall Street is the symbolic, and malodorous, heart of the putrefying American financial system."

and that:

"(. . . the presence of sign-waving hordes is as predictable as autumn rain puddles.)

What’s not clear to me, though, is which actions we’re supposed to take against the omnipotent cabal that controls America — the so-called 1-percenters — that will confer any tangible benefit on everyone else.

And by “we” I mean the voters.

Forgive my childlike innocence, but I still believe the best way to fix any mess in the halls of power is with the ballot, generally speaking a more potent slip of paper than the most cleverly phrased protest sign."

"Childlike innocence" indeed, and from such a bright guy! This full half page (The Herald will give you 350 word to express your opinion.) of mocking misrepresentations, with its barely veiled contempt for Americans practicing their rights to protest policies that have left them in dire straits, was printed on the Friday (10/14/11) before last weekend's unprecedented worldwide protests against the prevailing global financial system involving "1,500 cities, including 100 cities in the United States—all in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement that launched one month ago in New York City." See Democracy Now!

I understand why, after the outrageous Obama fraud, and many fruitless protests over the years, one might question whether these protests will go anywhere, but given their depth and breadth across this nation and the world, I wouldn't characterize them to be exactly "as predictable as autumn rain puddles."

What actions are we, Jayson says, "supposed to take?"

Hint--Something more than badgering cynicism and demagoguery.

Something more than inferring that the most important social movement in recent American history is insignificant.

Something more than saying that one is worried about their 401(k), which Wall Street no doubt trashed a few years ago anyway, along with the 401(k) s of millions of other Americans.

(See: Retirement Dreams Disappear With 401(k)s March 23, 2010

"(CBS) The effects of the current economic crisis have touched everyone. Even if you still have a good job and a paid up mortgage, chances are your monthly 401(k) statement will remind you that you've lost a good chunk of your savings.

Trillions of dollars have evaporated from those accounts that have become the prime source of retirement funds for a majority of American workers, affecting their psyche and their future. If you are still young enough, there's time to rebuild and recover, but if you are in your 50s, 60s or beyond the consequences can be dire, and its drawing attention to the shortcomings of a retirement system that has jeopardized the financial security of tens of millions of people."

Something more than the cynical or naive true believer notion that "'we' ,,, "the voters" can fix the problem with a vote" in a system controlled by big money and the political elite.

Something more than blind faith in a system that in recent decades has failed the majority of Americans time and time again--from the union busting, consequent wage depression, and deregulation of the Reagan administration, to the long-term flooding of the labor market via mass immigration policies, to the savings and loan fiasco, to the high-tech bubble, and on to the really monstrous and predictable collapse of the housing bubble. Boom and bust, over and over. It is a system that burns up decent hard-working Americans in one crisis and phony war after another, and then largely ignores them. Looks like the people are getting a little tired of it and are willing to start doing something about it, which of course scares the bejesus out of the comfortable, who came through these upheavals unscathed for the most part.

As Richard Wolff (Professor of Economics Emeritus, U. of Mass., Amherst) said recently ("Letters and Politics,"):

"If you lived with a [loved one] who was as unstable as Capitalism, you would long ago have moved out, or demanded that [the] other person get some professional help! But you live in an economic system that is unspeakably unstable, and you accept it."

The Herald Op-Ed speaks about the 1 percent, but doesn't tell us much about them. The one percent are but a symbol, used by #Occupy Wall Street, to represent the social and economic inequality in this country. The inequality in wealth and opportunity between the top one percent and those in the middle and below is so enormous that, once understood, crystallizes in general discontent, now represented by a movement that is about much more than the one percent.

According to Henry Giroux, (Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street Now!):

"The richest 1 percent in the 1970s only took in about "8-9 percent of American total annual income," whereas today they take in 23.5 percent.(9) Furthermore, as University of California-Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez states in his study of inequality, 10 percent of Americans as of 2007 have taken in 49.7 percent of all wages, "higher than any other year since 1917."(10)"

No big deal to the presently comfortable I guess.

The Herald piece goes on to say that:

"Even if we seize a significant portion of the 1 percent’s allegedly ill-gotten gains, I don’t see how, if we spread this considerable sum among the 99 percent in anything resembling an equal formula, that anybody’s going to end up with much more than a couple payments on the mortgage."

Perhaps, but the claim is really just a straw man distraction from the real motivations and intent of the #Occupy Wall Street movement, which is not simply about taking the money of the 1 percent and sending checks to the 99%.

Right now I don't have those figures, and the article doesn't provide a citation for them either, just some speculation. What is missing from the Op-Ed's analysis, is any understanding that Occupy Wall Street's 1% is simply symbolic of our country's gross inequality in income distribution, and all that it entails. Inferring that Occupy Wall Street is busy devising a scheme to seize and divvy up the 1 percent’s booty so as to send out checks to the 99% is a gross mischaracterization and distraction from what they are really about, which in part is to create a more participatory and meaningful democracy where greed, fraud, and inequality are minimized, starting with Wall Street.

For the sake of argument though, here is a figure from Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research, concerning the effects on the typical family of the upward income distribution to the top 5%:

If Our Children Don't Do Better Than Us, It Will Be Because the Top 1 Percent Took It All

Monday, 17 October 2011 05:46

Robert Samuelson warns that our children may not do better than us. His warning is based on rising health care costs, aging of the population and the resulting rise in Social Security and Medicare expenses, and the risk of an end to productivity growth. Remarkably the upward redistribution of income doesn't feature in his story.

This is striking since upward redistribution is such a huge part of the picture. His example of workers not gaining is taken from a Health Affairs article that reported that 95 percent of compensation growth from 1999 to 2009 for a median four person family was eaten up by inflation and health care costs. However, if there had not been an upward redistribution of income over this period, compensation for a typical family would be about 10 percent higher (@$10,000 in today's dollars).

What about $10,000 per family, or at least a 10% increase in family income that was instead accrued by the top 5%? Is that enough money to pay the mortgage on foreclosed property owners for enough months to please the nervously comfortable?

And then there is this analysis, Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, by Joseph Stiglitz:

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.

One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top.

In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today.

The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible.

Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.

None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes. . . . .

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

See the rest of this important article, written over four months prior to the world-wide Occupy Wall Street protest.

Jayson: [I] "understand--kind of"?

Next comes the suggestion that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we redistributed wealth:

"Besides which, if we take all that money then who’s going to pay the taxes that keep Medicare and Medicaid and all those social programs afloat?"

This question implies that the rich are paying so much money in taxes that we are fortunate that things are arranged the way they are.

Thing is, as Warren Buffet recently explained (see "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich", the very rich folks like himself are paying a much smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do the middle class workers he employs. Buffett explains:

"If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage [in taxes] may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher [Higher still, like around 90% for top brackets, if you go back to the 1940's--Chris], and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
. . . .
I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Here is another enlightening article:

How I Paid Only 1% of My Income in Federal Income Tax

"In a recent newspaper interview, I mentioned my absurdly low tax rate to illustrate the extent to which the tax system is biased in favor of the wealthy (my income varies widely from year to year, but is typically north of half a million dollars). My point was that with our country facing frightening budget deficits amid an ever-widening income gap between the rich and everybody else, I consider it both unwise and unfair that a former investment banker like myself pays less in taxes than working Americans with far lower incomes.

Among the dozens of emails I received in response were many from people who assumed that rich people avoid taxes through complicated strategies devised by an army of expensive advisors (many correspondents asked for the name of my accountant). But under our current tax system, the rich don't need high-priced lawyers who exploit obscure loopholes; I wasn't even trying to minimize my taxes (and, in fact, could have paid zero tax if I was). Warren Buffett has observed that if there's class warfare in this country, the rich are winning. I offer my 2009 tax return, then, as a flare to illuminate the battlefield.

Americans are understandably angry over the government's multi-billion-dollar bailouts of reckless bankers. But low tax rates on investment income have put far more money into Wall Street's pockets than the TARP bill did. Even President Obama's proposal to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the richest Americans would leave a top marginal rate on capital gains and qualified dividends of just 20% -- half the proposed rate on labor income.

This difference creates a loophole you can drive a Rolls Royce through. . . . ."

My take is that if the wealth were redistributed downward, more revenue would be raised, because the lower brackets seem to always pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. If, in addition, tax rates on the very rich were raised back towards what they used to be, assuming reasonable fiscal responsibility in Congress, our budget problems would be over.

But who cares about concentration of wealth in America, because, after all, Jayson says:

". . . such abominations [should not be used] as a pretext for, in essence, busting up an entire economic system. For all its faults, that system has contributed to a society in which even those in the lower tier of the 99 percent, were they to consider the matter soberly and honestly, must admit they’ve made out pretty well over the decades.

(Sure there are exceptions. But how many bloated-belly toddlers have you seen recently? And Africa doesn’t count.)
[Apparently, belly size is supposed to be the new standard for health and a satisfying and productive life. -Chris]

Yet dismantling the Wall Street oligarchy seems to be a theme among this budding protest movement.

This might sound satisfying when you’re striding down the street, aglow with populist solidarity, your critical thinking skills subsumed by the crude power of the crowd."

Whoa--wait a minute--"busting up an entire economic system?" "dismantling the Wall Street oligarchy?"

My take is that people participating in the protests want to see Wall Street and the financial system regulated in an effective manner (yes, they used to be) which prevents the sort of greed, fraud, bubble creation, and Too-Big-to-Fail behavior that has brought financial disaster, home foreclosures, and personal insecurity to many millions of Americans.

And given the thought and facts that went into the Op-Ed, don't get me started on "critical thinking skills."

Jayson Jacoby, the editor of the Herald then states:

"I haven’t filched any of my meager dollars from some oppressed minority of laborers, either. I just show up for work when I’m supposed to.

There are tens of millions of Americans who do the same (although not as many as a few years ago). We’re all part of that mistreated middle class the protesters purport to represent, and as I said, many of us are equally disgusted by the more egregious abuses of crony capitalism."

Great Jayson, so glad you have a job you can show up to, with the family and all, but many millions of Americans who want one, with families and all, don't have one. But then maybe they can't produce mindless Op-Eds that cater to the well off and conservative patrons.

"Equally disgusted?" I'm thinking maybe they are not equally disgusted, but in fact much more disgusted, given that they don't have a paycheck and the security you now have. They might be disgusted because the homes they live in, or used used to live in, and had invested in, are now underwater or foreclosed upon. Maybe many of them, our younger generation, are wondering how they are ever going to pay off their gargantuan student loans in a system that has provided no jobs for them. They might even be wondering why their government doesn't provide free or subsidized higher education, as some other successful countries do. Maybe they don't have the national heath insurance for all that other western industrial nations provide. Perhaps an unforeseen health issue has caused them to go bankrupt. Perhaps it was not because they didn't want to "show up for work," but because the system controlled by the greed and criminal behavior of Wall street speculators, bought off politicians, and corporations, not to mention simple discrimination, caused the current economic disruption they are victims of.

The Op-Ed goes on to toss out yet another straw man:

"But I’d also wager that most of us would appreciate it if the marchers avoid trampling our 401(k)s while they’re clambering up to the penthouse to get their hands on those conniving 1-percenters."

Interesting imagery considering that the protests have thus far been pretty peaceful, aside from some bad behavior by the gendarmes.

Interesting too, because there is no mention of the harm done by the Wall Street bubble collapse to the 401(k)s of Americans lucky enough to have them. (See link above (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4951968.shtml))

And then we are told:

"But speaking as a member of the people, I don’t want to spend my golden years eating ramen three times a day (or scraps of poster board) because one of the consequences of my power grab is that the market gobbled my retirement and excreted a few pellets of Social Security.

(And I probably won’t get those anyway.)"

I hate to be the one to inform the Herald that "the market" and the corporations have been gobbling up retirements for decades now. (Most recently, see again (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4951968.shtml).

See also, for example:
Court approves termination of United Airlines pension plans

One suspects that some true believers still don't understand the game.

While I understand people's nervousness, given the mainstream media's constant propaganda about the coming end of Social Security, the reference to the collapse of Social Security is not supported by the facts and only serves as a self fulfilling prophesy. As more people, young people in particular, are led to believe that Social Security won't be there for them, these claims provide political support for it's dismantling. Then all people will have is their winnings or losses gambled on 401(k)s, if they are wealthy enough to have one.

According to Dean Baker, in the post mentioned above (If Our Children Don't Do Better Than Us, It Will Be Because the Top 1 Percent Took It All)
Monday, 17 October 2011 05:46

"it would take just 5 percent of the projected wage growth over the next 30 years to make the Social Security trust fund fully solvent for the rest of the century."

So there are some problems with the Op-Ed from my perspective. But then we get to the part that I found even more troublesome--the most flimsy "straw man" allegation of them all perhaps:

"But after perusing some of the material allegedly associated with their campaign, including a 13-point manifesto, I see little reason to trust my financial future to their judgment."

And

"I hate to be cynical but it may well be that the protesters aren’t motivated mainly, or even largely, by a beneficent concern for the well-being of ordinary, politically obtuse Americans like me.

Consider, for instance, demand number three on that manifesto I mentioned: 'A guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.'

I have no idea if most, or even many, of the people participating in the various protests consider this a reasonable demand.
But I hope not."

These concerns are apparently in reference to a bogus manifesto that was circulating on the internet as early as October 9, 2011. But it was false.

The disclaimer is prominent at the top of the list:

Admin note: This is not an official list of demands. This is a forum post submitted by a single user and hyped by irresponsible news/commentary agencies like Fox News and Mises.org. This content was not published by the OccupyWallSt.org collective, nor was it ever proposed or agreed to on a consensus basis with the NYC General Assembly. There is NO official list of demands.

In the first edition of “The Occupied Wall Street Journal,” published a week or so earlier, they wrote:

"We are daring to imagine a new socio-political and economic alternative that offers greater possibility of equality. We are consolidating the other proposed principles of solidarity, after which demands will follow."

"No list of demands" We are speaking to each other, and listening. This occupation is first about participation." [The No list of demands statement was repeated in issue #2. ]

and that:

"Through a direct democratic process, we have come together as individuals and crafted these principles of solidarity, which are points of unity that include, but are not limited to: 
- Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy; 
- Exercising personal and collective responsibility; 
- Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions; 
- Empowering one another against all forms of oppression; 
- Redefining how labor is valued; 
- The sanctity of individual privacy; 
- The belief that education is human right; and 
- Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source."

They also said:

"Even now, three weeks later, the elites and their mouthpieces in the press continue to puzzle over what we want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate what they need?

The goal to us is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word — REBELLION. We have not come to work within the system. We are not pleading with the Congress for electoral reform. We know electoral politics is a farce. We have found another way to be heard and exercise power. We have no faith in the political system or the two major political parties. And we know the corporate press will not amplify our voices which is why we have a press of our own. We know the economy serves the oligarchs. We know that to survive this protest we will have to build non-hierarchical communal systems that care for everyone.

These are goals the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites, stops. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into massive debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured.

And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in serious trouble. . . . ."

A difficult task, for sure.

What troubles me, more than Jayson printing things he admits may not be true, even as he attacks them (straw men), is that somehow the Occupy Wall Street protestors "aren’t motivated mainly, or even largely, by a beneficent concern for the well-being of ordinary, politically obtuse Americans like me." Why would someone admit they lack political intelligence and sensitivity, and then suspect that the protesters might not be concerned about them? Could it be that protesters may not be concerned and beneficent towards people that are clearly hostile to them? Beats me. I do hope the statement is not yet another version of the "I'm doing OK, so what's wrong with you?--get a job!" mantra that seems so prevalent in conservative circles these days. Seems to me that the Occupy Wall Street folks are trying to create a more fair and democratic system (spare me the rhetoric about a "republic" unless you also want to talk about the "general welfare" mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution!) that benefits everyone, even newspaper editors that disparage them.

That's what it is about folks, from their own journal. It is not about the Straw Men erected by the media so as to discredit and trivialize a promising movement that the media and the comfortable see as threatening. It is in fact a serious movement with the best of intentions and values, backed by action and sacrifice, about real hope and social change--one that could bring something valuable to the whole of society, as well as to the oligarchs and their apologists.
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Links

Got Class Warfare?
Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street Now!
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Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud
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Dylan Ratigan Show--Occupy Wall Street--Not Left-Right, Republican Democrat--William Black, David Degraw

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Chris Hedges: "This one could take them all down." Hedges on OWS w/ OccupyTVNY -- 10/15/11

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Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges Part 1

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Public and 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement Agree on Key Issues
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SEC Cases Bypass Top Execs to Target Employees for Negligence

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Iris Dement--Wasteland Of The Free

Living in the wasteland of the free...

We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
but they don't look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running 'round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on MTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
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Iris DeMent & Emmy Lou Harris - Our Town

Occupy Wall Street, Herman Cain, Iran "Terror Plot" & Media Complicity in Libya

2011-10-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Just a few articles to consider:

- Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where it Hurts--Taibbi

- Herman Cain Hoping for Big Financial Campaign Stimulus from the Rich

- More on Iran "Terror Plot"

- Media Bias in Libya Reporting: "media’s complicity in the human rights violations"

- Extras
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Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where it Hurts--Taibbi

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters:  Hit Bankers Where it Hurts 

By Matt Taibbi   
October 13, 2011

"Rolling Stone" - - I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.

No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant.

© 2011 Rolling Stone
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Herman Cain Hoping for Big Financial Campaign Stimulus from the Rich

[Cain recently blamed the jobless and the poor for their problems]

Why Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Is a Disaster for the Middle Class

RS Politics Daily
by: Tim Dickinson

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain wants to increase your taxes so that the very rich pay less.

If you were trying to formulate a tax proposal to enrage and energize the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would be hard to improve on Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

The Republican frontrunner is proposing a 9 percent tax on wages, a 9 percent tax on business income and a new 9 percent federal sales tax. This cleverly marketed flat-tax plan would "drastically increase taxes on the working poor and middle class, and reduce taxes going forward on the rich, " Edward Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at USC, writes for Tax Notes.

Kleinbard estimates that 90 percent of tax payers would end up with a "vastly increased tax bill," under the 9-9-9 plan. That's because the "business flat tax" is effectively structured as a payroll tax, so with each 9 in Cain's plan, workers take the hit. "The combination of the three actually operates as the economic equivalent of a 27 percent uncapped payroll tax," writes Kleinbard. A middle class family of four with an income of $50,000, he tells Rolling Stone, would see its tax burden soar by nearly $5,000 a year to $13,500. "Its staggering!" For a family just to break even under Cain's scheme, it would need to take home in excess of $120,000 a year.

If Cain were being honest, he would sell his tax scheme as the 9-0-9-0-9 plan. That's because two taxes vital to the fairness of the current tax code simply disappear: Taxes on capital gains and inheritance. That is to say, taxes on the rich.

Who earns capital gains? The top 0.3 percent of tax payers take home more than 60 percent of America's investment income. Perversely, the Cain plan would liberate more than 23,000 millionaires from federal income taxes altogether. Those who make money soley from investing wouldn't pay nine percent – they'd pay a zero percent. That's an average annual tax cut of nearly half a million dollars for some of the fattest cats in the land.

Repealing the estate tax, currently up to 35 percent for estates in excess of $5 million, would create another trillion-dollar windfall for the richest of the rich. The two tax breaks dovetail nicely. Under Cain's plan, a billionaire hedge fund manager could pay nothing in income tax and then pass that wealth on to his heirs completely tax free.

The net effect of the Cain plan, says Kleinbard, would be to shift the tax burden from capital to labor, and — within labor income — to shift the burden of taxes down the ladder from the CEO class to workers struggling to make ends meet.
Worse, Cain's plan would not raise any more revenue than the current system. Cain would destroy the fairness of the tax code and still leave America's fiscal house, Kleinbard says, "in exactly the same mess we're in now."

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More on Iran "Terror Plot"
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FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (IPS) - While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.
. . . .

[More]
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Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot

Ray McGovern
October 13, 2011

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in his accustomed role as unofficial surrogate CIA spokesman, has thrown light on how the CIA under its new director, David Petraeus, helped craft the screenplay for this week’s White House spy feature: the Iranian-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

In Thursday’s column, Ignatius notes that, initially, White House and Justice Department officials found the story "implausible." It was. But the Petraeus team soon leapt to the rescue, reflecting the four-star-general-turned-intelligence-chief’s deep-seated animus toward Iran.

Before Ignatius’s article, I had seen no one allude to the fact that much about this crime-stopper tale had come from the CIA. In public, the FBI had taken the lead role, presumably because the key informant inside a Mexican drug cartel worked for U.S. law enforcement via the Drug Enforcement Administration.

However, according to Ignatius, "One big reason [top U.S. officials became convinced the plot was real] is that CIA and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informant’s juicy allegations and showing that the plot had support from the top leadership of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the covert action arm of the Iranian government."

Ignatius adds that, "It was this intelligence collected in Iran" that swung the balance, but he offers no example of what that intelligence was. He only mentions a recorded telephone call on Oct. 4 between Iranian-American cars salesman Mansour Arbabsiar and his supposed contact in Iran, Gholam Shakuri, allegedly an official in Iran’s Quds spy agency.

The call is recounted in the FBI affidavit submitted in support of the criminal charges against Arbabsiar, who is now in U.S. custody, and Shakuri, who is not. But the snippets of that conversation are unclear, discussing what on the surface appears to be a "Chevrolet" car purchase, but which the FBI asserts is code for killing the Saudi ambassador.

Without explaining what other evidence the CIA might have, Ignatius tries to further strengthen the case by knocking down some of the obvious problems with the allegations, such as "why the Iranians would undertake such a risky operation, and with such embarrassingly poor tradecraft."

"But why the use of Mexican drug cartels?" asks Ignatius rhetorically, before adding dutifully: "U.S. officials say that isn’t as implausible as it sounds."

But it IS as implausible as it sounds, says every professional intelligence officer I have talked with since the "plot" was somberly announced on Tuesday.

The Old CIA Pros . . . .

[More]
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Media Bias in Libya Reporting: "media’s complicity in the human rights violations"

Mainstream Media’s Coverage of Libya Disturbing

INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES
Published 14 Oct 2011

The mainstream media’s conspicuous silence about the racially motivated human rights abuses perpetrated against black Libyans and immigrants, by the NATO-backed Transitional National Council (TNC) forces in Libya, is disturbing. Similarly, the high civilian casualties of the current intense fighting in the city of Sirte seems, to a large extent, to be underplayed. Yet organisations such as Human Rights Watch have acknowledged that civilian abuses have continued and called on forces on both sides that are fighting in Sirte to minimize harm to civilians and treat all prisoners humanely.

This biased media coverage raises questions about the credibility of media organisations and their agenda. Is it because the presence of widespread evidence of racially motivated human rights abuses committed by the TNC forces raises moral and ethical questions that challenge the validity of the notion of a “humanitarian war”? The responsibility assumed by NATO and the TNC forces to protect civilian lives from abuse by Gaddafi forces is also questionable, as it appears this mandate does not seem to extend to the protection of black Libyans and African immigrants.
. . . .
It in interesting to note that despite widespread evidence of such racial abuses perpetrated by the TNC forces, it appears mainstream media organisations have not been willing to represent a narrative that does not conform to its set ideological position and agenda. What has become evident where the reports of racial abuses have reached mainstream media is the framing of a narrative that portrays the victims as “African mercenaries,” despite the availability of adequate evidence to prove that many of the victims were not mercenaries. Amnesty International reports that, “the allegations about the use of mercenaries proved to be largely unfounded” but this has remained an unknown fact to the public. This revelation demonstrates the media’s complicity in the human rights violations. Therefore, mainstream media organisations have concealed gross abuses that could have been exposed and stopped by not representing and speaking against such human rights violations.

The lack of adequate exposure and coverage of the rebels’ racial violations by mainstream media corroborate the assertion that the media is not serving the public but it is serving power and in the process it has abandoned professional media ethics and standards.

ISS Pretoria Office

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Extra-

Patty Griffin-Cold As It Gets

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Jim Rogers- Let the Banks Fail!!- CNBC

It Must Be Presidential Campaign Season: Obama Produces "Terror" Plot By Iran

2011-10-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Taking a page from the G.W. Bush playbook, Obama has put "Terror" front and center in the minds of Americans, a little over a year before the next Presidential election.

A month or so ago, he ordered the killling of bin Laden, when he could have been captured and brought to a trial. Then he tosses his body into the sea before anyone else could identify him. A week or so ago he had two American citizens in Yemen, supposed terrorists, killed without trial.

This week, the Obama administration, through Attorney General Eric Holder (under scrutiny for lying to Congress about "Fast and Furious," which sold guns to very unsavory characters in Mexico) and FBI Director Robert Mueller (Appointed by G.W. Bush a few days prior to the 9/11 attacks), unveiled an allegedly planned, but foiled, "terrorist attack" on the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Mainstream media outlets, from NPR to the Washington Post, repeated the story while presumably trying to keep a straight face.

Is an election year attack on Iran in the making? Thinking it might be a bit too obvious a ploy at this late date, but who knows? A few years back I predicted either Obama or Israel would do so before Obama leaves office. Maybe Obama is just trying to distract folks from their dire economic straits and a floundering empire. (But on the other hand, he did deliver 55 bunker buster bombs to Israel in 2009.)

Here are a few articles from the alternative press that raise the obvious and not so obvious questions about the "plot." [See the links provided for each article to access important links included within it.]
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FAKE TERROR - FBI Entrapment Plot Involving Iran Assassinating Saudi Ambassador Act Of War?

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The Fast and Furious Plot to Occupy Iran

Tehran would have to be terminally foolish to try to snuff out an ambassador on US soil, author says.

By Pepe Escobar

October 13, 2011 "Al-Jazeera" - - No one ever lost money betting on the dull predictability of the US government. Just as Occupy Wall Street is firing imaginations all across the spectrum - piercing the noxious revolving door between government and casino capitalism - Washington brought us all down to earth, sensationally advertising an Iranian cum Mexican cartel terror plot straight out of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise. The potential victim: Adel al-Jubeir, the ambassador in the US of that lovely counter-revolutionary Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted the Iran-masterminded terror plot "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script". It does. And quite a sloppy script at that. Fast and Furious duo Paul Walker/Vin Diesel wouldn't be caught dead near it.

The good guys in this Washington production are the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). In the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, they uncovered "a deadly plot directed by factions of the Iranian government to assassinate a foreign Ambassador on US soil with explosives".

Holder added that the bombing of the Saudi embassy in Washington was also part of the plan. Subsequent spinning amplified that to planned bombings of the Israeli embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires.

The Justice Department has peddled quite a murky story - Operation Red Coalition (no, you can’t make that stuff up) - centred on one Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old holding both Iranian and US passports and an Iran-based co-conspirator, Gholam Shakuri, an alleged member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's (IRGC) Quds Force.

Arbabsiar allegedly had a series of encounters in Mexico with a DEA mole posing as a Mexican drug cartel heavy weight. The Iranian-American seems to have been convinced that the mole was a member of the hardcore Zetas Mexican cartel, and reportedly bragged he was being "directed by high-ranking members of the Iranian government", including a cousin who was "a member of the Iranian army but did not wear a uniform".

On top of it, he told the DEA mole that his Iranian government buddies could come up with "tons of opium" for the Mexican cartel (an Afghan connection, perhaps). Then they discussed a "number of violent missions" complete with Arbabsiar bragging about bombing a packed Washington restaurant used by the Saudi ambassador.

Holder characterised the whole thing as a $1.5m "murder-for-hire" plan. Arbabsiar was arrested only a few days ago, on September 29, at JFK airport in New York. He allegedly confessed, according to the Justice Department. Shakuri for his part is still at large.

Holder was adamant: "The United States is committed to hold Iran accountable for its actions." Yet he stopped short of stating the plot was approved by the highest levels of the Iranian government. So what next? War? Hold your horses; Washington should first think about asking the Chinese if they’re willing to foot the bill (the answer will be no).

Predictably, the proverbial torrent of US "officials" came out with guns blazing, spinning everything in sight. An alarmed Pentagon will be increasing surveillance over the Quds Force and "Iran’s actions" in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. Former US ambassadors stated that, "it's an attack on the United States to attack this ambassador". Washington is about to impose even more sanctions against Iran; and Washington is urgently taking the matter to the UN Security Council.

What next? An R2P ("responsibility to protect") resolution ordering NATO to protect every House of Saud minion across the world by bombing Iran into regime change?

Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a spokesman for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at least introduced a little bit of common sense. "I think the US government is busy fabricating a new scenario and history has shown both the US government and the CIA have a lot of experience in fabricating these scenarios ... I think their goal is to reach the American public. They want to take the public's mind off the serious domestic problems they're facing these days and scare them with fabricated problems outside the country." Iran has not even established yet that these two characters are actually Iranian citizens.

The Iranian government - which prides itself on a logical approach to diplomacy - would have to have been inoculated with a terminal Stuxnet-style foolishness virus to behave in such a counterproductive manner, by targeting a high-profile foreign policy adviser to King Abdullah on American soil. The official Iranian news agency IRNA described the plot as "America's new propaganda scenario" against Iran.

As for the Washington mantra that "Iran has been insinuating itself into many of the struggles in the Middle East", that's undiluted Saudi propaganda. In fact it's the House of Saud who's been conducting the fierce counter-revolution that has smashed any possibility of an Arab Spring in the Persian Gulf - from the invasion and repression of Bahrain to the rash pre-emption of protests inside Saudi Arabia's Shia-dominated eastern provinces.

The whole thing smells like a flimsy pretext for a casus belli. The timing of the announcement couldn't be more suspicious. White House national security advisor Thomas E. Donilon briefed King Abdullah of the plot no less than two weeks ago, in a three-hour meeting in Riyadh. Meanwhile the US government has been carrying not plots, but targeted assassinations of US citizens, as in the Anwar al-Awlaki case.

So why now? Holder is caught in yet another scandal - on whether he told lies regarding Operation Fast and Furious (no, you can't make this stuff up), a federal gun sting through which scores of US weapons ended up in the hands of - here they come again - Mexican drug cartels.

So how to bury Fast and Furious, the economic abyss, the 10 years of war in Afghanistan, the increasing allure of Occupy Wall Street - not to mention the Saudi role in smashing the spirit of the Arab Spring? By uncovering a good ol' al-Qaeda style plot on US soil, on top of it conducted by "evil" Iran. Al-Qaeda and Tehran sharing top billing; not even Cheney and Rumsfeld in their heyday could come up with something like this. Long live GWOT (the global war on terror). And long live the neo-con spirit; remember, real men go to Tehran - and the road starts now.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

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From Phillip Giraldi: One Step Closer to War
October 12th, 2011

. . . .
And if the Persian/Arab Gulf problems erupting aren’t enough to worry about, the Israelis had previously developed plans for an attack on Iran. However, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta carried a U.S. message to Tel Aviv last week that President Barack Obama would not support a military strike. Israeli plans for an attack had alarmed the National Security Council and the Senate foreign affairs committee when briefed on Tel Aviv’s proposal. However, the Iranian terrorist operation just revealed could lend support to long-time American hard liners as well as Israel’s supporters for bombing Iran. The Israeli position will be strengthened by the Saudis telling President Barack Obama that they will strongly support a military option directed against Iran. The Saudis are believed to be in direct contact with the Israelis, telling them that King Abd’allah is in favor of a strike on Iran, and proposing that the two countries coordinate their activities to get Washington fully on board.

[Emphasis Added]
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'No way Iran devised assassination plot'

Iran could not have been behind the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in any imaginable way, a former CIA officer tells Press TV.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer from Washington, said in an interview with Press TV that all the details that have surfaced about the attempt are “ridiculous.”

The following is a transcript of the interview:

Press TV: Let us assume that Iranians were really plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador on the American soil. Would they contract it out to the Mexican mafia, send traceable money, wires from Iran to the US and not care if they killed 100 Americans in the process of achieving this goal? Please give us your impression as a former CIA officer about the circumstances that have arisen.

Giraldi: Iran had absolutely no motive for carrying this out. Then I would add as a former professional intelligence officer that all the details that have surfaced about this operation are ridiculous. No professional intelligence service, whether from Iran or anywhere else, would ever have run anything like this, which is not to say that there is not a kernel of truth in this story that maybe somebody was plotting to do something and was doing it in a very stupid way and came to the attention of the Drug Enforcement Agency and eventually to the FBI.

We have a missing chapter here, which is the past nine months, during which period the DEA informant was in contact with one of these gentlemen and we do not know to what extent the situation was manipulated by him to turn what may have started out as nothing and turn it into a case that could be exported by the government to make its case that is being tough on terrorism.

There are a lot of little stories here, a lot of things we do not know yet, but I would absolutely agree that I cannot imagine there is any way that the Iranian government could have been behind this.

Press TV: After the news of the alleged assassination plot broke out, the Pentagon said this needs a diplomatic and not a military response and on the other hand, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran needs to be more isolated. In particular, what do you think of chances of US attacking Iran?

Giraldi: I think they are very low if the United States is the one making the decision, but if Israel orders to stage an attack, I think it is inevitable the United States would get drawn in.

But I think there is something everybody is missing here. Leon Panetta was in Israel last week and I think it is generally accepted that Panetta warned the Israelis that the Obama administration does not want Israel to unilaterally attack Iran. Every time the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense goes to Israel and gives them a warning about something, you usually see within a few days something happening to basically tell the Israelis, “But we are still on your side.”

I would rather suspect the timing of this whole thing is going back to the Israelis to make a case to put more pressure on Iran. I think that is the quid pro quo that we are seeing here, “Do not attack Iran, but we are going to put more pressure on them and we have this story in the pipeline that will enable us to do that.”

I am just speculating on that. I have no specific information but I think it is something worth thinking about, because you see this pattern repeated over and over again. Certainly the Israelis, of all the players in this thing that we are talking about, are the only ones that really have a strong desire to go to war with Iran. I do not think anyone else, even the United States, has any serious desire in that direction. So I think this is something we should be thinking about.

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Scott Horton Interviews Philip Giraldi

Scott Horton, October 13, 2011

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the inside information on the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US; indications that the plot was legitimate but an amateurish rogue operation – not the work of Iran’s government; escalating talk of “all options on the table” for military retaliation against Iran; and why it’s never a good sign when Saudi Arabia and Israel agree on a common regional enemy.

MP3 here. (18:30)

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.
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The “Very Scary” Iranian Terror Plot

By Glenn Greenwald

October 13, 2011

"Salon" -- The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.

To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot” hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,” explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.’”

But no matter. The U.S. Government and its mindless followers in the pundit and think-tank “expert” class have seized on this ludicrous plot with astonishing speed to all but turn it into a hysterical declaration of war against Evil, Hitlerian Iran. “The US attorney-general Eric Holder said Iran would be ‘held to account’ over what he described as a flagrant abuse of international law,” and “the US says military action remains on the table,” though “it is at present seeking instead to work through diplomatic and financial means to further isolate Iran.” Hillary Clinton thundered that this “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.”
Hillary Clinton [added by Chris]

The CIA’s spokesman at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, quoted an anonymous White House official as saying the plot “appeared to have been authorized by senior levels of the Quds Force.” Meanwhile, the State Department has issued a Travel Alert which warns American citizens that this plot “may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian Government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain countries, to include possible attacks in the United States.”

In case that’s not enough to frighten you — and, really, how could it not be? — some Very Serious Experts are very, very afraid and want you to know how Serious this all is. Within moments of Holder’s news conference, National Security Expert Robert Chesney – without a molecule of critical thought in his brain — announced that this “remarkable development” was “very scary.” Very, very scary. Chesney then printed large blocks of the DOJ’s Press Release to prove it. Self-proclaimed “counter-terrorism expert” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross tapped into his vast expertise to explain: ”Holder weighing in on the plot’s connection to Iran means the administration is deadly serious about it.” Progressive think-tank expert and Atlantic writer Steve Clemons decreed that if the DOJ’s accusations are true, then ”the US has reached a point where it must take action” and “this is time for a significant strategic response to the Iran challenge in the Middle East and globally,” which “could involve military.”

The ironies here are so self-evident it’s hard to work up the energy to point them out. Outside of Pentagon reporters, Washington Post Editorial Page Editors, and Brookings “scholars,” is there a person on the planet anywhere who can listen with a straight face as drone-addicted U.S. Government officials righteously condemn the evil, illegal act of entering another country to commit an assassination? Does anyone, for instance, have any interest in finding out who is responsible for the spate of serial murders aimed at Iran’s nuclear scientists? Wouldn’t people professing to be so outraged by the idea of entering another country to engage in assassination be eager to get to the bottom of that?

. . . .

The United States does not have solid information about “exactly how high it goes,” one official said. . . .The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates.

I wouldn’t exactly call that — what was the phrase Biden used? — “compelling evidence for the assertions being made.” In fact, it reminds me of the language anonymous government officials began using to describe their “knowledge” of Anwar Awlaki’s alleged operational role in plots against the U.S. once they killed him: “patchy”; “partial”; “suspicion.” But what we learned with Awlaki is likely what we’ll see here: many people reflexively believe government accusations even when unaccompanied by evidence, and that belief is not diluted even when government officials began acknowledging (albeit anonymously) that they do not possess and never did possess any conclusive evidence to support their accusations.

[Entire article]

Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: @ggreenwald.More Glenn Greenwald

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Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake
Not even good propaganda

by Justin Raimondo, October 12, 2011

Fake, fake, fake – I’m talking about the latest anti-Iranian propaganda coming out of Washington, which claims the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved in a “plot” to take out the Saudi ambassador to the US and blow up both the Saudi and Israeli embassies. The narrative reads like a formulaic melodrama: two Iranians, one a naturalized US citizen, purportedly approached someone they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel – according to the indictment [.pdf], it was a “sophisticated” drug cartel, not the plebeian sort – and proposed paying him $1.5 million to murder Adel al Jubeir, the Kingdom’s ambassador in Washington – oh, and by the way, the Iranians supposedly said, “Are you guys any good with explosives?”

The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us:

“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’”

Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end.

This is another one of US law enforcement’s manufactured “anti-terrorist” triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a “crime” out of thin air, and then proceed to “solve” a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our “anti-terrorist” operations in the US since the beginning – because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right.

The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!”

The credibility rating of this story, taken on its face, is close to zero. . . . .

[More]
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The ‘Terrorist’ Who Couldn’t Think Straight
Iranian 'terrorist' plot unravels

by Justin Raimondo, October 14, 2011

Would Iran recruit a used car salesman with a memory problem to conduct assassinations in the US?

This is a question you have to ask yourself when evaluating the alleged Iranian "terrorist" plot supposedly uncovered by Attorney General Eric Holder the other day. The arrest of Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old Iranian immigrant who came to this country as a college student, was the occasion for a trumpet blast of anti-Iranian propaganda and belligerent declarations by US officials, who vowed to "hold Iran accountable" for purportedly mounting a plot [.pdf] to kill the Saudi ambassador, bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, and strike at the Jewish community in Argentina.

The alleged plot was supposed to have been carried out by a member of the Zetas drug cartel, who was to be paid up to $1.5 million to implement the plan. US officials, even while acknowledging the "B-movie" aspect of the story, reportedly "fanned out" to convince our allies the plot was real and – with Congress already demanding new sanctions on Iran – that the economic vise be tightened. Not only are the more hysterical neocons calling for military action against Iran – no surprise there — but the headlines had the normally staid and relatively reserved Steve Clemons, a prominent Obama shill, babbling that "this is a serious situation" and "the U.S. has reached a point where it must take action," and Sen. Carl Levin calling the plot "an act of war."
Less than 24 hours after Holder’s press conference, the whole fantasy began to unravel under closer scrutiny. Gary Sick, of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, averred that the alleged plot "departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures," and went on to write:

"It is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and U.S. intelligence agents.

"Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g. discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the U.S. Yet that is what happened here."
. . . .

[More]
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No Direct Evidence of Iranian Government Complicity in Plot
Posted By John Glaser On October 12, 2011 @ 6:13 pm
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Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake  (But Who Faked It?)
By Maidhc Ó Cathail

October 12, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- In his latest Antiwar.com piece, Justin Raimondo asks some of the questions that mainstream reporters never seem to think of asking (or if they do, these doubts don’t ever make it past their more credulous editors):

The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!”

But Raimondo then gets a bit distracted in looking for the source of plot:

This story is very scary – not because it’s credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it’s the most frightening story I’ve heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran – all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies – and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being “soft” on Iran.

In passing, however, he does locate the more obvious source of any anti-Iranian propaganda:

The making of American foreign policy is all about domestic politics. By preparing the country for war with Iran, Obama will not only defang the GOP, but also appease the all-important Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years.

In contrast, Raimondo’s readers have a more clear-eyed view of the affair. One comments:

I don’t believe a word of it. The Zionists who control the State, Justice and Homeland Security Departments have fabricated this event to egg the USA on to invade Iran for the sake of Israel security. And the typical Zionist media, CNN, Fox and others, will play it for all its worth. Unfortunately most Americans just don’t understand how manipulated this “greatest government on the earth” is and will likely believe it at face value. Schumer and Kantor will step right up to the plate. In 30 years, when our ties to Israel have bankrupted the nation (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, who knows where), we will look back and see just how we have been used by our best friends in the Middle East. With friends like that, who needs enemies.

Another is even more perceptive:

The script for this “plot” was probably hand-delivered direct from AIPAC to Holder. As soon as I heard that, btw, the Israeli embassy was targeted for bombing also, I knew the whole thing was bogus – not that the other inconsistencies and absurdities weren’t enough but this was the giveaway line. Israel must be getting really desperate to think that something as badly concocted as this was going to pass the smell test.

As FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III so aptly put it, the whole thing “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.”

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com/

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Robert Reich - 7 Lies About the Economy and Taxes

2011-10-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Each day, I read many, many articles that are important enough to post. Others are similarly flooded with information. Things are falling apart in so many places, so rapidly, that it becomes difficult to choose which ones to share from all those important articles. Today, I have decided to post just one, in the hope that it might be watched and read.
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The Seven Biggest Economic Lies
  By Robert Reich 
 October 12, 2011
 
Robert Reich - 7 Lies

THE SEVEN BIGGEST ECONOMIC LIES

The President’s Jobs Bill doesn’t have a chance in Congress — and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society – unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.

Here’s a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards. The major points:

1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans’ wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and have dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

2. Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False. From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they’ve been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. (Don’t believe small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax; fewer than 2 percent of small business owners are in the highest tax bracket.)

3. Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again. It means fewer government workers – everyone from teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and social workers at the state and local levels to safety inspectors and military personnel at the federal. And fewer government contractors, who would employ fewer private-sector workers. According to Moody’s economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.

4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They’ll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. The first priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy. Only then, when jobs and growth are returning vigorously, should we turn to cutting the deficit.

5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that’s because the nation’s health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system. And since Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Don’t believe it. Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.

7. It’s unfair that lower-income Americans don’t pay income tax. Wrong. There’s nothing unfair about it. Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.

Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed — unless they’re rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong. Make sure you know the truth – and spread it on.

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Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause's board chairman.
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For more Videos from Robert Reich, see Robert Reich's archive.

Imnaha Wolves Get at Least a Temporary Pardon

2011-10-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

[Edited 10/7/11--added links and information about program costs and insignificant # of cattle deaths due to wolves.]
Targeted Alpha Male after ODFW collaring, and etc. (Adorable ear-tags, pretty "wild," eh?)

Back on September 30, 2011, The Baker City Herald printed a well received editorial on ODFWs order to kill the alpha male and a youngster in the Imnaha wolf pack--Oregon's first pack since the wolf's extermination by government agents and ranchers in the first half of the last century. As these are two of apparently four remaining members of a pack that once numbered 16, State Wolf Coordinator Russ Morgan admitted that it could mean the end of a viable pack. Oregon Wild's Conservation Director, Steve Pedery, was quoted by AP as putting it more bluntly:

"This is really a kill order on the pack. It is very unlikely the mother and her pup will survive the winter . . . . They really have little hope of bringing down a deer or elk by themselves."

For the second time in 6 months, in unusual acts of compassion and good sense for a north east Oregon paper in wolf country, the Herald actually suggested not killing wolves that had killed livestock, recommending a temporary "pardon" instead. Yesterday afternoon, an Oregon appeals court, at the request of Cascadia Wildlands, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Oregon Wild, granted that temporary pardon.

In a nutshell, the petitioner's motion seeks a review of whether the interpretation of the State's Wolf Plan, as codified in Oregon Administration Rule OAR 635-110-0010(6)-(8), that was used to justify the recent kill order, violates the state's own Endangered Species Act. An explanation of the reasons for the filing of the motion to stay the execution, can be found here. For more information on the motion, and the granting of the stay, see the press release here.

Cascadia Wildlands has also, in an informative alert sent out today, stated that:

Yesterday's court order prevents the state from killing the two wolves until the court can fully consider our case challenging the legality of the agency's wolf killing program. You can read more about this news in the Oregonian and Blue Mountain Eagle, as well as in our press release. In addition to making an emergency donation to our wolf campaign and lawsuit, please take a moment to take action by sending Governor Kitzhaber a personalized auto letter demanding protection for Oregon's wolves.

Targeted Imnaha Pack; Alpha female left, targeted juvenile 2nd from left, targeted Collared Male, 2nd from right, remaining puppy on right--ODFW Photo

A common theme, complaint if you will, that runs through the criticism surrounding the kill order, and past killings of the Imnaha wolves, expressed by both wolf advocates and objective observers, is that wolf recovery has always depended upon, if not good will, then at least an honest attempt by ranchers to employ non-lethal measures to protect their livestock. While some ranchers have begun to institute these measures, others seem to be begging the wolves to kill their unattended livestock, so that they can gain sympathy and use the ensuing political pressure to make the State eliminate the pack. If the kill order is reinstated by the appeals court, then they will have essentially succeeded.

One expression of this recurring theme is found in today's press release from the wolf advocate plaintiffs:

Plaintiffs in the case include groups that formerly supported the wolf plan but now believe the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is abusing its authority to kill wolves while downplaying portions of the plan that focus on conservation, education, and requiring livestock operations to adopt nonlethal alternatives to shooting wildlife.

Another articulate, more to the point voice, can be found in Baker City resident Suzanne Fouty's letter [third letter] in last night's Herald (A new approach with wolves):

However, despite these efforts [to educate ranchers and Mr. Nash in proper husbandry and non-lethal measures], Mr. Nash, the ranching community, and land management agencies have done little to prevent conflicts. Given their refusal to be proactive, ODFW’s decision to kill these wolves, at the same time expecting the public to “compensate” Mr. Nash for his loss, is absurd. He should not be compensated and the wolves should not be held accountable for poor animal husbandry.

The AP article mentioned earlier states that

He [Nash] was not using nonlethal controls such as flagging and electric fencing but did have a range rider checking the cattle.

Nash was visiting a new grandchild in California when he got the call . . . .

So who's watching the cows? My understanding is the wife has a day job and that the "rider" is hopelessly trying to cover hundreds of thousands of rugged acres that make up several grazing allotments with some 7000 head of cattle. Sources and press reports reveal that ODFW sends the location data on the collared wolves to the rider and ranchers at least twice daily, and yet the allegedly killed calf was largely consumed when found, and the collared wolf had returned to the scene over a period of time. Where were the Nash's? Where was the rider?

I suspect that the reality is that some, if not most, ranchers, like many of us, resist change. They like the ways they slouched into after helping to exterminate the wolf, i.e., put the cows out in the Spring and hope they drift back in the Fall. They, like many business enterprises, prefer to externalize their costs to the larger society. That way their cows get to mow down life giving riparian areas, leave their cow pies in our waterways, have the Feds, States and Counties pay for predator control and management with tax payer dollars, and to insist that we have little right to see wolves and their beneficial functions in our ecosystems. You also get to learn how to get through or over a barbed wire fence on public land without tearing up your pants or favorite shirt or blouse.

Along these same lines, wolf advocates point to the many examples of successful coexistence between livestock operators and wolves. Wally Sykes of Northeast Oregon Ecosystems, compiler of voluminous amounts of information on wolves, ranchers, and their conflicts, and who also helped support and contribute to rancher compensation plans, not to mention his efforts to save the Imnaha pack, sent in this example:

Whitney Angell Leonard’s Blog

Hey Wildlife Services, killing predators isn't the only option

Wally also presented a list of good reasons why ODFW should not kill the Imnaha pack and their Alpha male:

- This wolf has been implicated in only one confirmed and one probable depredation.
- The OWP does not require lethal removal of a depredating wolf, it allows it.
- Without the subadult, the Alpha male may not be able to successfully attack livestock.
- Removing the Alpha male destroys Oregon's first wolf pack and its only known breeding pair (the Wenaha pack is not known to have bred this year). [Since Wally wrote this ODFW says that the Walla Walla pack had at least two pups this year.]
- Without the Alpha male, the remaining pup. . . . may not survive.
- Without the Imnaha pack, efforts to develop an economic benefit from wolf presence in Wallowa County will be damaged.
- Non-lethal measures taken by the rancher involved may not be adequate to meet the recommendations of the OWP.
- This loss will be compensated by either Defenders of Wildlife or under the Oregon Compensation plan. If this proves impossible, Northeast Oregon Ecosystems will provide compensation for this loss under the same conditions as the Defenders program.
- The OWP does not envision a wolf population that does not have conflicts with livestock. The Plan realistically tries to minimize rather than eliminate such conflicts. That's why Oregon has a compensation plan.

Oregon has chosen to encourage a wolf population and the majority of its citizens support this decision. . . . .eliminating Oregon's first and most well-known pack is not the way to do it.

Concerning his statement that

The OWP does not require lethal removal of a depredating wolf, it allows it.

The following seems to confirm it:

2010 Wolf Plan; P. 51,

Table III-1. Matrix of Wolf Conflict Management Options.
31 While a species is state-listed, harassment or take is allowed only upon a finding that such harassment or take is consistent with conserving the species in Oregon.

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Other Bits & Pieces of the Puzzle

ODFW, despite the fact that the calf carcass they used to justify the recent kill order had been largely consumed over a period of two or more feedings, found that the 550 pound calf had been killed by wolves rather than simply scavenged by opportunistic wolves of the Imnaha pack. Nobody witnessed the alleged killing. This is why wolf advocates refer to an alleged killing by wolves.

ODFW does not provide, in my experience, the actual reports documenting their assessments of alleged killings. When I asked for the actual reports of the reported wolf kills on the Jacobs Ranch in Baker County in 2009, they only sent a sketchy summary of the wolve's activities. Given the majority support for wolf recovery in Oregon, the least they should do is post the reports on the ODFW website.
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Ranchers are often portrayed as noble, poor cowboys struggling to protect their small, traditional, family-owned ranches from the ravages of both wolves and environmentalists out to get them. That is sometimes at least partially the case, and there are many hard working people who actually own their ranches, even though hardly poor in the economic sense. The Marr Flat Cattle Co. L.L.C., managed in part by the Nash family in Wallowa County has been presented by the press in that light.

According to the Oregon Secretary of State's Business Registry, the Marr Flat Ranch has a number of principals, and Todd Nash is listed as one of two managers.

Angela Nash, who apparently is Todd's wife, has stated on Ecotrope that "

We have lost at least 36 calves to wolves. [(ODFW/USFWS say 14 [is] the number of livestock animals confirmed to be killed by the Imnaha pack in the past year and a half.)] We run on 100,000 acres. When wolves kill there is nothing left except maybe a leg or head or ribcage." "We run close to 600 head of cattle. About 400 are in wolf country. . . ."
This is 100,000 acres, 10,000 private which is where much of the killing takes place."

The other 90,000 acres are primarily YOUR public lands, wherein the state and the federal agencies grant them permits to disrupt the ecosystem for a pittance. (A flat out subsidy that degrades your public land and externalizes the costs of their use, such as destruction of wolves, to you.)

Some people are wondering what all the hullaballoo is concerning cattle predation by wolves. On a Friends of Animals web site, "Nabeki" writes:

Ok, 51,200 cows died in Oregon in 2010 from non-predation causes. (NASS 2010) This should be front page news, right? When wolves are involved in miniscule livestock losses they make the front pages of local media. So what about those 51,200 cows that weren’t killed by wolves?

ODFW is planning on killing the alpha male (pictured left) and another wolf from the Imnaha Pack, for tiny livestock losses. Yet huge numbers of cows drop dead in Oregon every year and all we hear is “crickets”.

See: 51,200 Dead Oregon Cows Not Killed By Wolves! Where’s The Media? September 28, 2011

The figures Nabeki cites come from a USDA report titled Cattle Death Loss, Released May 12, 2011, by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). If you dig around in the report, you find, using the ODFW figure of 7 livestock (assume they were all cattle) killed in 2010, that cattle deaths due to wolf predation in Oregon amounts to an insignificant 0.0127% of cattle deaths from all causes. See also: Wolf Predation and Livestock Losses

Reading Angela's words, you might assume that Marr Flat is a ranch that the Nash family owns, but the business registry states that there are four principals:
Chris Buhler (absentee from California),
Allison Reed, absentee from Lake Oswego, Oregon,
Leslie Miller absentee from Los Angeles, CA
Todd Nash of 64541 Alder Slope Road in Enterprise, OR

The last two are listed as managers. with Todd Nash listed as registered agent. My understanding is that Chris Buhler is the majority interest and that he resides in California, although getting to the bottom of ownerships in many cases is problematic, at best.

When I asked Angela if "the Buhler family actually own most or all of the outfit with Todd hired as one of the managers?" she did not answer, preferring to respond with an ad hominem attack to that and my other relevant questions.

Another interesting bit of information I have received is that the Nash family "don't own any of their cows nor do they own a ranch. Todd is a hired manger for the Marr Flat cattle co., owned by the Beuhler [Buhler] family. He works on salary base plus a percentage."

So some ranchers are as most of us, subject to the whims of the economy and employment opportunities--just workers like the rest of us. Fact is, ranching is big business, often corporate, and they might be expected to get the treatment that the rest of us get, not special interest protections from the government.
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Another interesting relationship:

The only rider for the huge area in question is Dan Warnock, said to be a friend of the Nash family. "Warnock has ridden the rugged country south and east of Joseph where thousands of cows graze on both private and public land."

One might expect that a rider, who is supposed to be interested in saving livestock from attack, should be a disinterested party, with no conflict of interest concerning the establishment of wolves in Oregon. I am told that the rider is also a friend of Todd Nash, manager of Marr Flat Cattle Co. L.L.C.. Interestingly, the principals of the THE MARR FLAT CATTLE ASSOCIATION are Joe and Charles Warnock.
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Other Comments by Angela Nash on Ecotrope:

I asked Angela Nash many questions, the most important of which she didn't answer.

Angela: "We live with the land everyday"

I'm told Angela has a full time day job at a "mental health" clinic, god forbid.

Angela: "We haven't received a dime from you or anyone else. OR has spent 4.5 million on these wolves already which has nothing to do with us or our cattle." And: "Oregonians have spent 4.5 million dollars on the Imnaha pack alone which had nothing to do with our cattle."

When I asked ODFW what they had spent, I was told that "ODFW’s wolf budget for this year is: $378K. I’ll have to get back to you on the cost since the Imnaha pack was first detected. B-300, the alpha female of the pack, was first confirmed in Oregon in January 2008."

They have yet to get back to me after a week. This Just in. 10/9/11--In response to yesterdays reminder, ODFW just sent an email with the 2009 & 2010 figures for the State wolf budget. This is for all wolf activities which I suppose was primarily the Imnaha pack for the first one and one half year, and now on all three packs plus dispersers.

2011 $378K
2010 $350K
2009 $143K
Total spent on all packs: $871K

Oregonians do contribute through taxes to other agencies spending dollars on wolves, such as USFWS and "Wildlife Services," but those costs are spread out among tens of millions of taxpayers in other states. So, it is incredibly unlikely that "Oregonians have spent 4.5 million dollars on the Imnaha pack alone."

Another poster wrote her that: "According to the Farm Subsidy Database, your company - Marr Flat Cattle has received $231,775 in the last decade."

As for whether they "haven't received a dime from you or anyone else," with regard to the Oregon wolf program, Angela, upon further questioning, wrote:

In response to this from Ecotrope--"I'd also be interested to know whether you will be reimbursed for the $40,000 you lost to wolf predation."

Angela responded with: "No we will not be reimbursed."

When pressed Angela wrote: "We have been paid for 1 confirmed kill in 09 when in 09 we lost 20." [19 unconfirmed, I might add.]

Angela never answered many more questions, including:

whether "the other ranchers in the Imnaha pack territory [are] losing a lot of these large summer range calves" to wolves?

"Do you get just one text a day from ODFW each day about the location of the alpha, or are there more?"

"how close together you keep them?" "Were the cows on the private 10,00 acres or so grouped "close together" so you could monitor them, or were they spread out over the property?"

With reference to the non-lethal methods allowed in the Oregon Wolf Plan: Did you or your husband go out on "your" private land to use these methods when you knew that the Alpha was in the neighborhood, or were you too tired after coming home from your day job?

How can one range rider hired to take care of some 7,000 head of cattle spread out over many thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of acres, including yours and other allotments around the Salt Creek Divide, possibly be able to cover the territory? Aren't many more needed? Where was Todd? What's he doing?

Are the cows yours, or are they owned by the Marr Flat Cattle Co. L.L.C.? Principals include Chris Buhler (absentee from California?), Allison Reed, Lake Oswego, Oregon, with both Leslie Miller of Los Angeles, CA and Todd Nash of 64541 Alder Slope Road in Enterprise, OR listed as managers. Does the Buhler family actually own most or all of the outfit with Todd hired as one of the managers?

You stated that "These wolves have no real fear of people as they simply come to town and kill also." I can find no documentation of that, and I have heard from Joseph, OR that the statement is simply not true. Will you please document your statement with some verifiable source?

Angela Nash didn't answer these questions. Her cute response was:

"Your fiddle is really out of tune...Playing dumb is also very unattractive."

Oh yeah, my fiddle is out of tune, but of course I don't play the fiddle, even though I'd like to.

My response:

What is truly unattractive Angela are your ad hominem attacks, your lack of candor, and your conflicting statements concerning your claims about wolves, compensation, land and cattle ownership, and efforts at non lethal control. People drew their own conclusions as to why you refuse to answer relevant questions concerning your statements. If all ranchers, as well as hired hands like Todd, had made an honest effort to use effective non lethal control, your servants at ODFW and "Wildlife Services" would not have issued the recent kill order for the two wolves. [Actually, ODFW ordered the kill, "Wildlife Services" just aids in the effort to carry it out.- Chris] Hopefully the state [appeals court] ordered stay of execution in response to the recent request by wolf advocates for judicial review will become permanent.