Top Texas Government Officials Covered Up Unsafe Radiation Levels In Texas Drinking Water

Massive Texas Drinking Water Radiation Cover-Up Exposed: Top Gov Officials Knew All Along And Kept SilentThe Intel Hub
By Alexander Higgins – Contributing Writer
May 20th, 2011

An investigative report by a local Houston Texas news stations reveals numerous top-level Texas Government officials participated in a massive cover up of dangerous levels of radiation in Texas drinking water.

The report from KHOU 11 in Houston shed light on what government watchdogs are calling “a conspiracy of the highest order”  in the aftermath of the release of several email communications between top Texas officials in the Governors office, the state legislation, and the state agency in charge of protecting the environment in Texas.

The emails that were ordered to be released by the state attorney general reveal radiation tests of public drinking water were falsified to prevent Federal violations that would have required the local water systems to be cleaned up.

Instead the Texas bureaucrats went along with the ploy to cover up the levels of radiation in water to protect their fascist corporate puppet masters and poisoned the public over the last 20 years causing an untold number of cancers and other illnesses.

Perhaps more shocking is the fact that they knew Texas wasn’t complying with Federal regulations and even gave them a stern warning in 2004 that basically stated:

“If you don’t comply, we probably aren’t going to step in and take you over because we only take over state radiation monitoring in very severe cases”.

Texas was then allowed to continue to falsify their radiation reports for another 4 years while the EPA turned a blind eye to the cover-up until a random audit caught them red-handed manipulating the drinking water radiation results in 2008.

Even after that, top Government officials played a game of finger-pointing and denial of capability, that was until the Texas attorney general ordered the email communications between the officials and the state agency be released.

The original KHOU article is very long. Here are some of the highlights.

Texas politicians knew agency hid the amount of radiation in drinking waterby Mark Greenblatt / KHOU 11 News, khou.com

HOUSTON— Newly-released e-mails from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show the agency’s top commissioners directed staff to continue lowering radiation test results, in defiance of federal EPA rules.

Related:

• Texas drinking water makes pipes and plumbing radioactive
• Read Internal TCEQ Emails
• TWAC 2004 annual report to Texas leadership
• June 2004 TWAC meeting summary
• TCEQ testimony to TWAC June 2004
• I-Team investigates radiation in our water supply

HOUSTON— Newly-released e-mails from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show the agency’s top commissioners directed staff to continue lowering radiation test results, in defiance of federal EPA rules.

The e-mails and documents, released under order from the Texas Attorney General to KHOU-TV, also show the agency was attempting to help water systems get out of formally violating federal limits for radiation in drinking water. Without a formal violation, the water systems did not have to inform their residents of the increased health risk.

“It’s a conspiracy at the TCEQ of the highest order,” said Tom Smith, of the government watchdog group Public Citizen.  “The documents have indicted the management of this commission in a massive cover-up to convince people that our water is safe to drink when it’s not.”

Read Entire Article

The article continues on by detailing how all of the top Texas officials implicated in the cover up either are refusing to answer questions about the scandal or are just trying to play stupid.

In each case of an official playing stupid and making claims they weren’t aware or were not involved,  KHOU lays out a mountain of evidence proving the official is lying and was complacent, partaking in an active and participatory role in the cover up.

Now here it gets even better. The Feds knew that the Texas officials and the environmental agency was covering up the radiation levels in the drinking water.

Rather then take the appropriate steps to halt the cover up, they choose to instead allow the public to continue to be poisoned and plagued with cancer.

The EPA essentially told Texas officials that they weren’t going to step in to take over the state agency because this didn’t qualify as a “severe situation”

But despite the EPA’s warning in June of 2004 of potential loss of primacy, by December, the Texas Water Advisory Council issued its annual report to the then-speaker of the House, the lieutenant governor, and Gov. Rick Perry, saying:  “However, this result (the loss of primacy) is unlikely. Of the 49 states with primary enforcement responsibility to administer their drinking water programs (Wyoming is not a primacy state), EPA has never withdrawn primacy status from any of them because the federal agency views both withdrawing primacy and withdrawing funding as options of last resort.”

Under federal law Texas and other states are only allowed to enforce EPA rules, according to the Safe Drinking Water Act, if the EPA determines the state has adopted drinking water standards that are “no less stringent” than the federal rules.
After the annual report of the TWAC was delivered to the Speaker,  Lieutenant Governor, and the Governor, the TCEQ continued their policy of subtracting the margin of error from the result of each water-radiation test, until an EPA audit caught them doing so in 2008.   The state has since complied with the EPA regulation.
[...]

Then Chair of the TCEQ Commission Kathleen Hartnett White, [...], says the decision to continue the subtraction was a good one.
“As memory serves me, that made incredibly good sense,” she told KHOU.

That last statement just really gets to me. Is it really the concern that it would cost small communities too much money to comply?

Since when does the government care about spending the taxpayers money? Seriously, by small communities she must mean the small communities of lobbyists and crooked corporations that were paying her and all of her crony political buddies to cover up the radiation in the drinking water.

The pathetic excuses continue. People like you and me sickened with cancer and murdered and this is how she rationalizes and justifies her actions.

“We did not believe the science of health effects justified EPA setting the standard where they did,” said White. She added, “I have far more trust in the vigor of the science that TCEQ assess, than I do EPA.”

In response to questions about why the TCEQ did not simply file a lawsuit against the EPA and challenge the federal rules openly in court, White said that in federal court, “Legal challenges, because of law and not because of science, are almost impossible to win.”

MORE like the EPA wasn’t challenged because that would have meant letting the cat out of the bag that there was dangerous levels of radiation in the drinking water and the veil of the 20 year cover up would have been lifted for the people of Texas and the entire nation to see.

The EPA was contacted for comment and at press time has yet to provide any response.

Of course the EPA wasn’t available for comment.

They need to get together with the think tanks and the spin doctors and come up with an excuse for why this cover up was allowed to go on for 20 years while people were poisoned with cancer and murdered by lying crooked politicians and government bureaucrats.

The vulture funds of death

 Source: SCMP - May 21, 2011  

Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase, which bundled and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans, now want to help investors bet on people's deaths.

Pension funds sitting on more than $23 trillion of assets are buying insurance against the risk their members live longer than expected.

Investment banks see this as an opportunity to package that risk into bonds and other securities and create a new market for those willing to bet on life-expectancy rates. If pensioners die sooner than expected, investors profit. If they live longer, investors must compensate the pension fund for the additional costs it faces.

The hard part: finding buyers willing to take on the bets that may take 20 years or more to play out.

"Banks are increasingly looking to offer derivative solutions," said Nardeep Sangha, 43, chief executive officer of Abbey Life Assurance, a London-based Deutsche Bank unit that helps pension funds manage the risk of retirees living longer than expected. "Making the long maturity of the risks palatable for investors, including sovereign wealth funds, private-equity firms and specialist funds, is the challenge."

As insurers reach the limit of how much pension-fund liability they are willing to shoulder, companies such as JPMorgan and Prudential last year set up a group aimed at establishing and standardising a secondary market for so-called longevity risks.

They are also developing indexes that measure mortality rates and securities to let pension funds pay fixed premiums to investors in return for coverage against major deviations from projections.

Swiss Re, the world's second-biggest reinsurer, sold the world's first longevity bond in December in what it called a "test case" to sell risk to the capital markets.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have set up insurance companies that promise to pay pensions if retirees live beyond a certain age. They typically receive a portion of the pension plan's assets in return. The banks, along with Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and UBS, are looking for ways to offer this risk to investors.

"Ultimately, reinsurance capacity for longevity risks will run dry, and that's why it's imperative that as the market grows and develops it is able to bring in new types of risk-takers," Sangha said.
"The obvious channel is the capital markets."

Medical advances and healthier lifestyles have made predicting life spans more difficult for pension funds. Life expectancy in the United Kingdom is increasing by one to three months every year, according to Dutch insurer Aegon. Every year of additional life expectancy typically adds as much as 4 per cent to future pension requirements, Aegon said in a report in March.
Pension funds can hedge against life-expectancy risk by transferring assets to an insurer or other counterparty that promises to pay some or all of the future liabilities.

Last year, GlaxoSmithKline, the UK's biggest drug maker, became the 10th FTSE 100 firm to buy insurance on about £900 million (HK$11.3 billion), or 15 per cent, of its UK pension obligations. That means Prudential, the UK's largest insurer, rather than the pension fund, will pay some GlaxoSmithKline pensioners should they live longer than expected.

"We're seeing more and more sophisticated mechanisms being offered," said Bill Galvin, CEO of the UK's Pensions Regulator. "From a regulatory perspective, we are concerned to ensure that trustees understand the extent to which longevity risk has been passed from their scheme, and the precise shape of any residual risk."

The UK is the world's biggest market for insuring pension liabilities after a change in accounting rules in 2004 forced companies to include pension plans on their balance sheets, increasing the volatility of earnings.

Since then, £30 billion of liabilities have been insured, about 3 per cent of the total outstanding, according to estimates by Hymans Robertson, a London-based pension consultant.

Banks and insurers completed a record £8.2 billion in longevity-risk transfers last year.

Goldman Sachs-owned Rothesay Life sold the most pension-plan insurance in 2010, while Deutsche Bank's Abbey Life completed the biggest swaps deal.

Investors may be attracted to betting on life-expectancy rates because longevity trends are not linked to movements in equities, bonds or commodity markets, said David Blake, director of the pensions institute at Cass Business School in London, who has worked with JPMorgan on the derivatives.

The complexity and risk involved in longevity assets with timelines of more than 20 years means banks are looking to create bonds that offer 5 per cent to 9 per cent in annual returns, according to Guy Coughlan, former head of longevity structuring at JPMorgan. Returns as high as the "mid-teens" are possible, he said.

But not knowing whether a bet on a group of pensioners' life spans is correct for decades prevents some hedge funds, such as London-based Leadenhall Capital Partners, from entering the marketplace. Luca Albertini, CEO of Leadenhall, said the longevity market simply was not liquid enough.

Subprime mortgages sold in the past decade were the genesis of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. Investment banks passed the risk of borrowers defaulting to the capital markets by packaging, or securitising, the loans into bonds and selling them to investors and one another.

Collateralized debt obligations were sold in such volume that when mortgage holders defaulted, governments in the US and Europe had to bail out the financial system. In much the same way, banks are now looking to securitise the risk of pensioners living longer than expected.

Securities based on life expectancy do not hold the same risks as those linked to subprime mortgages because they are "fully collateralised", minimising the risk from a counterparty failing to meet its obligations, Coughlan said.

However, David McCourt, senior policy adviser at the UK's National Association of Pension Funds, said: "There's a massive counterparty risk. People say insurance companies don't go bust, but they do. We've seen AIG and investment banks going under like Lehman.

"There's a lot of pressure on the trustees to make sure they're comfortable the deal is right because there's no going back."

Rothesay Life, the biggest pension liability insurer in the UK last year, has not joined JPMorgan and Prudential in the new London-based Life & Longevity Markets Association.  Managing Director Tom Pearce said it preferred to develop the market alone and did not expect it to be easy.

"Clearly, if there was a capital market solution that would be helpful for the market generally, but there are some challenges," he said. "The biggest is selling these very long-term risks to shorter-dated investors."

White House on War Powers Deadline: 'Limited' US Role in Libya Means No Need to Get Congressional Authorization

(From the George W. Bush book, I Don't Need No Congreshunal Approval to Blow Shit Up to which Obama also subcribes and utilizes at his convenience.--jef)

Jake Tapper - ABC News - May 20, 2011

In an effort to satisfy those arguing he needs to seek congressional authorization to continue US military activity in accordance with the War Powers Resolution, President Obama wrote a letter to congressional leaders this afternoon suggesting that the role is now so “limited” he does not need to seek congressional approval.

“Since April 4,” the president wrote, “U.S. participation has consisted of:

(1) non-kinetic support to the NATO-led operation, including intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance;
(2) aircraft that have assisted in the suppression and destruction of air defenses in support of the no-fly zone; and
(3) since April 23, precision strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles against a limited set of clearly defined targets in support of the NATO-led coalition's efforts.”

A senior administration official told ABC News that the letter is intended to describe “a narrow US effort that is intermittent and principally an effort to support to support the ongoing NATO-led and UN-authorized civilian support mission and no fly zone.”

“The US role is one of support,” the official said, “and the kinetic pieces of that are intermittent.”

From the beginning of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, the Obama administration has cited the 1973 War Powers Act as the legal basis of its ability to conduct military activities for 60 days without first seeking a declaration of war from Congress. The military intervention started on March 19; Congress was notified on March 21. Those 60 days expire today.

The president thanked the congressional leaders – House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky --- for the support that they have “demonstrated for this mission and for our brave service members, as well as your strong condemnation of the Qaddafi regime.”

The president voiced support for a bipartisan resolution drafted by Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., John McCain, R-Ariz., Carl Levin, D-Mich., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., stating that Congress “supports the U.S. mission in Libya and that both branches are united in their commitment to supporting the aspirations of the Libyan people for political reform and self-government…Congressional action in support of the mission would underline the U.S. commitment to this remarkable international effort.”

Earlier this month, Kerry – who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – described his resolution as “in limbo.”

‘Historic’ budget cuts bill actually increased 2011 spending by $3 billion

(Remember, it is quite common for your govt to say that something does the exact opposite of what it really does: a budget  cuts bill that increases spending, tax cuts for the rich that increase the debt burden on the poor, wars for peace, etc. --jef)

+++++++

By Sahil Kapur - May 20th, 2011 - RAW Story

WASHINGTON – The fiscal 2011 funding bill roundly hailed for its "historic" spending cuts actually raised government spending by more than $3 billion, according to a new report.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday evening, "Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates—an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending."

In other words, the bill's increase in defense spending this year outweighed the cuts to discretionary programs -- something the CBO warned may potentially be the case. Now it's the official projection.

The finding is particularly embarrassing because President Barack Obama and leaders of both parties portrayed the measure as a monumental accomplishment in the realm of spending cuts, which they all agreed were vital to America's future.

"We have agreed to an historic amount of cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) five weeks ago, promising that the measure would cut $39 billion from 2011 spending.

There was some good news in the CBO report for champions of spending cuts: the legislation is projected to lower the deficit by $122 billion between 2012 and 2021, with a reduction of $183 billion in spending authority during that period.

"[O]ne thing is clear: congressional Republicans were able to save American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the long term," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner.

Icelandic Volcano erupts, spawns 50 small earthquakes

By David Ferguson - Saturday, May 21st, 2011- RAW Story

Iceland's most active volcano erupted Saturday, sending a plume of steam and ash 18,000 feet into the air and spawning 50 small earthquakes, the largest of which measured 3.7 on the Richter Scale, says MSNBC.com.

The volcano, called Grimsvotn, is located in southeastern Iceland, under the Vatnajokull glacier and erupted most recently in 2004. Saturday's eruption is not expected to disrupt air traffic in the way that the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokul volcano did in 2010.

Iceland is one of the world's most volcanically active countries, with eruptions sometimes causing local flooding and other problems, but fatalities are rare. Grimsvotn gave indications in November of 2010 of possibly being on the verge of eruption. Scientists have been closely monitoring the volcano since then.

The Great Switch by the Super Rich

How Wealthy Americans Started Paying So Little in Taxes

Over the last four decades, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted while loopholes have gotten bigger. 

By Robert Reich, RobertReich.org
Posted on May 20, 2011

Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money. While foreigners own most of our national debt, over 40 percent is owned by Americans – mostly the very wealthy. 

This great switch by the super rich – from paying the government taxes to lending the government money – has gone almost unnoticed. But it’s critical for understanding the budget predicament we’re now in. And for getting out of it.  

Over that four decades, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted. Between the end of World War II and 1980, the top tax bracket remained over 70 percent — and even after deductions and credits was well over 50 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the capital gains rate was 35 percent. Now it’s 15 percent. 

Not only are rates lower now, but loopholes are bigger. 18,000 households earning more than a half-million dollars last year paid no income taxes at all. In recent years, according to the IRS, the richest 400 Americans have paid only 18 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes. Billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers are allowed to treat much of their incomes as capital gains (again, at 15 percent).

Meanwhile, more and more of the nation’s income and wealth have gone to the top. In the late 1970s, the top 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. Now the top 1 percent’s take is more than 20 percent. Over the same period, the top one-tenth of one percent has tripled its share. 

Wealth is even more concentrated at the top — more concentrated than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 19^th century. 

So what are America’s super rich doing with all this money? They’re investing it all over the world, wherever they can get the best return for any given level of risk. Treasury bills – essentially loans to the U.S. government — have proven good and safe investments, particularly during these last few tumultuous years. 

You hear a lot of worries about foreigners dumping Treasuries if they lose confidence in the dollar because of our future budget deficits. What you hear less about are these super-rich Americans, who are just as likely to abandon Treasuries if spooked by future budget deficits. 

The great irony is if America’s super rich financed the U.S. government the way they used to – by paying taxes rather than lending the government money – that long-term budget deficit would be far lower.

This is why a tax increase on the super rich must be part of any budget agreement. Otherwise the great switch by the super rich will make the income and wealth gap far wider.

Worse yet, average working Americans who can least afford it will either lose the services they depend on, or end up with a tax burden they cannot bear.

 

Defeat the Corptocracy

The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that. 

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on May 20, 2011

Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.

The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?

1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.

Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.

2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:

• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system

As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."

3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy. Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media, religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right: "Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved."

4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating the status quo. William James (1842–1910), the psychologist, philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking," but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini, came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers, including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of difficult challenges.

5. Restore Courage in Young People
The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically, young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority. Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young people who are resisting illegitimate authority.

6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US electoral process. By focusing exclusively on electoral politics at the expense of everything else, we:

(1) give away power when we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them;

(2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections;

(3) lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all aspects of our lives; and

(4) forget that if we have no power in our workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will never be democracy worthy of the name.

Thus, we should focus our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."

7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate ourselves and others, we must:

• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity, humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars  we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in  concentration camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either  immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The energy  we have is better spent on healing and then working to change the abusive system;  this provides more energy, and when we use this energy to provide respect and  confidence for others, everybody gets energized.

8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals," "conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and corporatists versus anticorporatists. Both left anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout, the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies. There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues. One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce people.

9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or social supports in their lives. Many of these comfortable anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional state. The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements, including the Great Populist Revolt.

10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians
Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change and hold out for total transformation. We can better unite by asking these questions: Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater democracy? 

Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us? Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater solidarity and better decisions.

To summarize, democracy will not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting, consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help counter a dehumanizing world. However, revolutions that truly transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and solidarity.

Not Broke, Just Twisted

by Abby Zimet

So much talk about debt and austerity; so little focus on gross inequality. A video from the Institute For Policy Studies offers stunning income, profit and tax figures on an America "awash in wealth" held by a fortunate, twisted few.

47.4: Percent of profits corporations paid in taxes in 1961.
11.1: Percent of profits corporations paid in taxes in 2011.

Best Way to Save Medicare, Offer it to Everyone

Friday, May 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by John Conyers

 

Medicare is arguably one of the nation’s most successful and cherished public insurance programs. The program covers approximately 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, and helps pay for hospital, physician visits, and prescription drugs. It is truly hard to argue with success.

The traditional Medicare program, coupled with a supplemental private insurance policy, covers most of our seniors’ medical bills, with far less co-pays and out-of- pocket costs than private insurance.

Therefore, proposals to privatize Medicare — like Rep. Paul Ryan’s — have been met with such fierce opposition, because it was revealed in the national media that privatization meant much higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors. National polls have shown strong general support for maintaining Medicare or even increasing funding for it.

However, Medicare costs are projected to increase from $519 billion per year in 2010 to $929 billion in 2020.
The simplistic argument we often hear from conservatives is that Medicare is a costly federal government program because all federal government programs are inefficient and therefore costly. According to their line of reasoning, privatization is the only way to save money.

The truth is that there are several other ways to strengthen Medicare, but there has been a false debate in the nation regarding the rising costs of Medicare.

This may be partly due to not understanding a fundamentally key concept regarding current healthcare policy — there are no effective cost-containment mechanisms in place to control the private market costs of prescription drug costs, corporate hospitals and medical technology which are the main drivers of Medicare costs.

Research by respected nationally renowned economist Dean Baker shows that the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries would save $600 billion dollars between 2006 and 2013 if Medicare were allowed to directly negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
One study by Families USA found that the Veterans Administration was able to negotiate substantially lower prices for the top 20 drugs used by seniors, compared to private Medicare part D plans.

It would only make sense for there to be bipartisan support for Medicare to be able to use the full faith and credit of the federal government and be able to negotiate down the rising costs of prescription drugs.

According to Forbes magazine, hospital charges represent about one third of total healthcare spending — $718 billion altogether. Twenty four hospitals in this country with over 200 beds make an operating margin of 25 percent or more — a profit margin that compares favorably to drug giants like Pfizer, and easily beats the operating profit margin that General Electric reported in 2009.

We can no longer continue to have America’s hospitals make these kinds of large profit margins, when the health of our senior citizens and the fiscal health of our nation are at stake. It will take much needed political courage to address the root causes of rising Medicare costs — a Wall Street-dominated healthcare system.

America must transition to a non-profit improved Medicare-For-All program, if we are to have any chance of realistically containing over-all healthcare costs. That’ s why I have reintroduced H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act, that would provide for a single-payer healthcare system, providing all Americans with healthcare coverage.

Countries in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan have been able to effectively contain their healthcare costs for decades through their very successful universal healthcare systems — without waiting lines, rationed care, and out of control taxes.

America can learn invaluable lessons from other nations on how to control healthcare costs, and the time has come to be open minded about their success and honest about our need to change course from our corporate-dominated and inefficient healthcare system.

Larger Profits + Safety Shortcuts = Death

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by David Macaray

 

It was a year and six weeks ago (April 5, 2010) that 29 coal miners died in a massive explosion in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, making it the worst U.S. mining disaster since 1970.

On May 19, 2011, an independent investigation commissioned by the state’s former governor reported conclusively what everybody involved already knew….that the accident was the result of safety violations by Massey management. In truth, the Upper Big Branch mine was more or less a death trap.

In the investigators’ own words, “The disaster at Upper Big Branch was man-made and could have been prevented had Massey Energy followed basic, well-tested and historically proven safety procedures." The message couldn’t be any plainer: Had Massey paid as much attention to mine safety as it did to company profits, those 29 miners would still be alive.

And it wasn’t as if safety violations were alien to the company. Indeed, Massey Energy Co. was viewed by many as a major accident waiting to happen. In the previous five years leading up to the 2010 disaster, Massey had been cited for more than 1,300 safety violations by the MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration), including poor ventilation—believed to be the cause of the explosion. In 2009 alone, Massey was cited 64 times for ventilation violations.

As Gary Hardesty, an AWPPW (Assoc. of Western Pulp & Paper Workers) safety consultant, once put it, “Because maintaining a safe facility costs money, many companies see safety only as another form of overhead.” Obviously, while Massey management bears the brunt of the blame for regarding worker safety as “overhead”—money they would just as soon not have to spend—the MSHA deserves much of the blame as well.

Blithely issuing one safety citation after another to a renegade company with a proven record of ignoring them (or getting them reduced in the appeal process) is not what a government watchdog agency is charged to do. Mechanically going through the motions of slapping a company on the wrist, and desultorily filing the necessary paperwork, is not the same as hands-on regulation an industry’s safety practices. The MSHA failed in its duty.

And, of course, there’s another component to this tragedy, one reflecting organized labor’s unfortunate loss of influence, not only in the industry but in the country at large. As anyone who’s been paying attention to the mining industry since the 1970s knows, as the percentage of union-affiliated mines continues to decline, mining accidents continue to increase. Statistics show that 92-percent of all mine accidents occur in non-union facilities.

In an interview I conducted a couple of years ago with Phil Smith, Communications Director of the United Mine Workers (UMW) International, he made it clear that U.S. mine owners are in collusion to keep miners from seeking union representation. And even though collusion is a violation of federal labor law, one that the NLRB hasn’t seriously addressed, the companies continue to do it. They do it through intimidation and old-fashioned black-balling.

Because coal mining is a close-knit community, once your name gets put on a company shit-list as a “union activist” or “union sympathizer,” it’s going to stay on that list, and you’re going to find it difficult to get hired anywhere. Coal miners might be a remarkably tough but courageous breed of worker, but, tough or not, they have to work to eat, and there are only so many mining jobs to go around. Few are willing to rock the boat.

According to Phil Smith, even on those occasions when a mine does go union, companies have been known to shut down the operation, change names by selling it off to a “phantom subsidiary,” and re-open the mine as a non-union facility. And if anyone squawks too loudly about the illegality of this arrangement, they find themselves out of a job.

So while it’s gratifying to see Massey Energy found guilty of egregious safety violations, it didn’t exactly come as a revelation. Massey management knew it all along, the miners knew it, the MSHA knew it, and the UMW knew it. Alas, the families of those 29 men learned it a year too late.

The Always-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State

Friday, May 20, 2011 by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

 

When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin: 

"We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."  

There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .

From its inception, the law's increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.

Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden's demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes.  And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings:  to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture:  that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of "National Security Letters" -- the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval -- so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. . .
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." . . .

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.

Most critically, the government's increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied -- as always -- by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions.  Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government's Internet snooping powers, we have this:

The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.

The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy's reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department's refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.

The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration -- in particular the Office of Legal Counsel -- has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation's request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.

What's extraordinary about the Obama DOJ's refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities.  The Bush DOJ's refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen's scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: "reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens.  The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them).  Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions  -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.

This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren't difficult to understand.  Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches.  When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent:  J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King's alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York's new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities.  It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens -- as we have been inexorably doing -- is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.

Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the "State Secrets privilege") even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability.  That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power.  And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system -- with fully bipartisan support --- is expanding more rapidly than ever.

(And throw in the Kentucky vs King SCOTUS decision in which the Police don't have to have a warrant to enter your home now if they "suspect" something. By extension, that means neither do the FBI, NSA, etc. Both parties want to control us not protect our rights. Anybody pissed off yet?--jef)

Germany Takes Most of Its Nuclear Plants Offline

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by the Associated Press

by Juergen Baetz 

 

BERLIN  — More than three-quarters of Germany's nuclear power plants were offline Saturday due to maintenance work or shutdowns ordered by the government after Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, utility companies said.

Only four of the country's 17 nuclear power plants were online after the energy utility RWE AG took its Emsland plant off the grid Saturday.


Environmentalists accused the utilities of staging simultaneous maintenance shutdowns while threatening blackouts to put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, which appears determined in the wake of the Fukushima Dai-ichi catastrophe to phase out nuclear power within a good decade.

"We are afraid that the utilities could intentionally stage a blackout to influence people in the debate on phasing out nuclear power," said Jochen Stay of anti-nuclear group Ausgestrahlt.

A spokesman for RWE rejected the allegation, however, telling German news agency DAPD the maintenance at Emsland had been scheduled even before the disaster in Japan.

Experts said the situation was potentially worrisome, since a significantly lower electricity input could change the grid's overall voltage and in the worst case lead to blackouts.

"The situation will probably be manageable," the head of Germany's DENA electricity grid agency, Matthias Kurth, was quoted as saying in Saturday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "The situation would be worse if we didn't have that much sun at the moment" — a reference to the growing amount of electricity generated by solar panels across the country.

To compensate, Germany is likely to import more electricity from its neighbors, chiefly from France and the Czech Republic, which both rely heavily on nuclear power.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy, stands alone among the world's leading industrialized nations in its determination to ditch nuclear power and replace it with renewable energies.
While the government is expected to officially decide how quickly it wants to abolish the technology in June, Merkel's conservative allies from Bavaria state went ahead late Friday and voted in favor of a ban on nuclear power from 2022 onward.

Merkel on Saturday embraced their decision, saying the 2022 target is "very ambitious" but is in the right timeframe, DAPD news agency reported.

Nuclear power usually generates about 23 percent of Germany's electricity — about the same level as in the U.S. — but with the shutdowns it is now contributing less power than renewable energies, which normally provide 17 percent of Germany's power.

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima plant, Merkel's government decided to shut down seven reactors built before 1980 pending thorough safety checks. Other plants have been taken off the grid in past weeks for scheduled maintenance.
Two reactors are scheduled to go back online by the end of next week, which should ease the tight domestic electricity supply.

Nuclear power has been very unpopular in Germany ever since radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster drifted across the country.

This Is What A Police State Looks Like

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Rania Khalek

 

The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.

When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.

In this case, the police followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex and after losing track of him, smelled marijuana coming from one of the apartments. After banging on the door and announcing themselves, the police heard noises that they interpreted as the destruction of evidence. Rather than first obtaining a warrant, they kicked down the door and arrested the man inside, who was caught flushing marijuana down the toilet.

The Kentucky Supreme Court had overturned the man’s conviction and ruled that exigent circumstances did not apply because the behavior of the police is what prompted the destruction of evidence. Tragically, an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that citizens are not required to grant police officers permission to enter their homes after hearing a knock, but if there is no response and the officers hear noise that suggests evidence is being destroyed, they are justified in breaking in.

In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”

Not only did the police instigate the destruction of evidence by banging at the door and shouting “Police, police,” but they could have easily obtained a warrant since they likely had probable cause. There is no reason to believe that delaying the search to obtain a warrant, as legally required, would have led to the destruction of evidence. This was pure laziness and contempt for the constitution on part of the officers.

An argument could be made that entering without a warrant saves money, time, and resources, especially if it’s obvious that a crime is being committed. However, the protection of our rights is worth the money, time, and resources. Living in a free society requires that we make these sacrifices, even at the peril of our safety if need be. In fact, I would argue that the wasting of money, time, and resources is the fault of a deeply flawed drug policy, not the protection of those pesky civil liberties always getting in the way of law enforcement.

As for the implications of such a ruling, arming the police with more power will have serious consequences for an already institutionally biased criminal justice system in regards to the “war on drugs.” Jordan C. Budd notes the existence of a “poverty exception” to the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment, a bias that renders much of the Constitution irrelevant at best, and hostile at worst, to the American poor. While attacks on the Fourth Amendment negatively affect all members of society, minorities and the poor, generally the targets of the drug war, are more vulnerable to the abuse of power that follows.

Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit recently decried this “unselfconscious cultural elitism” in a case upholding the ability of police to clandestinely attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of a car parked in the driveway of a modest home:

Poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can’t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. . . .We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.

The same holds true in the context of warrantless door-busting. In the Kentucky case the police smelled marijuana in the hall of the apartment complex that the initial suspect they were tracking had taken refuge in. An apartment hall is a common space shared by many people, who could be emitting various odors from inside their homes, such as cooked onions or fresh paint. Had this been a single-family home in the suburbs, there is no way the smell of pot would have been detected from the doorway of the house across the street.

Scott Lemieux made this point well when he wrote:

As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact in terms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who have to worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doors broken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persisted because wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.

The failure of society at large to secure the rights of all segments of the population, has resulted in what can only be described as a nail in the coffin of our right to privacy, at least for those who can afford it.

In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.

For example, about a week prior to the Kentucky ruling, police authorities in Pima County, Arizona, fired 71 shots in seven seconds at 26 year old Jose Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq. Guerena was murdered in the middle of the night while his terrified wife and 4-year old son hid in the closet. The SWAT team that killed him was there to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. As Guerena lay dying with his wife pleading for help, the SWAT team barred paramedics from entering the home.

Guerena’s wife asserts that her husband grabbed his gun because he thought his family was the victim of a home invasion, not a police raid. This is understandable given the family’s location in Arizona, a state where anti-immigrant militants are notorious for the cold-blooded murder of hispanic families. Deputies initially justified their actions by claiming that Guerena fired at officers but later said he kept the gun safety on and never pulled the trigger.

As it turns out, Guerena’s murder is just the most recent in a long line of botched paramilitary operations. According to an investigation carried out by the CATO Institute, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 25 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?

After sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad to terrorize people in their homes around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that our government would eventually employ the same actions against its own citizens. Just as Chalmers Johnson predicted, our imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.

Apocalypse Not Now: The Rapture Fails to Materialize

 (False prophet, anyone? Weren't christians warned about people like Camping in the very book he says he used to calculate the end of the world. What about the tribulations? What about the doctrine of eminence? Learn your book, folks. That way you can keep things like this from happening.--jef)

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by the Guardian/UK
"I guess on Sunday when the #Rapture people feel really upset, we can't console them by saying 'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world.'"
by David Batty

Christian doomsday prophet Harold Camping looks likely to be less than rapturous after his prediction that the world would end on Saturday failed to materialize.

The 89-year-old Californian preacher had prophesied that the Rapture would begin at 6pm in each of the world's time zones, with those "saved" by Jesus ascending to heaven and the non-believers being wiped out by an earthquake rolling from city to city across the planet.

But as the deadline for the Apocalypse passed in the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia, it became apparent that Camping's prediction of the end of the world was to end not with a bang but with a whimper.

Only on Twitter did the supposed Armageddon sweep the world, with users expressing their mock disappointment at the lack of dead people rising from their graves.

New Zealander Daniel Boerman tweeted: "I'm from New Zealand, it is 6:06PM, the world has NOT ended. No earthquakes here, all waiting for the rapture can relax for now. #Rapture"

In Australia, Jon Gall of Melbourne was unimpressed by the lack of fire and brimstone. He tweeted: "#Rapture time here in Melbourne. A rather quiet sort of rapture if you ask me.

"Well we have had the #Rapture going for 50 minutes now. So far it hasn't interrupted my fish & chips and glass of stout."

In Brisbane, KillaJeules, was similarly disappointed by the lack of a Hollywood blockbuster ending: "So it's 6:37pm here in Brisbane, Australia. No earthquakes. No beaming up of Christians. No zombie apocalypse. No surprises haha."

Camping, a retired civil engineer, has built a multimillion-dollar, non-profit ministry based on his apocalyptic predictions. He previously predicted that the world would end in 1994. (0-2--jef) It is difficult to know how many of his followers took his latest prophecy seriously, though his Family Radio Worldwide reaches millions of listeners in the US and around the world.

Some have reportedly sold all their possessions and taken to the streets to warn people to prepare for the second coming of Jesus. In recent weeks, callers to Christian radio stations in the US have debated what to do about non-believing friends and neighbors who will be left behind to endure the wrath of God. (oh, well, obviously we'd have been fine--jef)

But it looks like it will be atheists and other skeptics celebrating this weekend, with tongue-in-cheek doomsday parties planned across the US.

TV scientist Professor Brian Cox summed up the mood of the non-believers. He tweeted: "I think we should all pretend the #rapture is happening so that when Harold Camping gets left behind later today he'll be livid."

But Kieran Healy had a slightly more comforting message for those disappointed at not joining Jesus: "I guess on Sunday when the #Rapture people feel really upset, we can't console them by saying 'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world.'"

Spain: Massive Crowds Defy Ban on Protests

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by the Associated Press
by Harold Heckle

Tens of thousands of people are defying a pre-election ban on demonstrations and protesting unemployment in squares around Spain in defiance of an order to quit at midnight.

The government avoided saying if it would order police to break up the crowds on Saturday, but at the stroke of midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of the demonstrations.

Demonstrators kept quiet as city clocks chimed the beginning of a new day, many with sticky tape over their mouths in a gesture organizers said suggested they have things to say but were being gagged by the ban.

People are angry over Spain's high unemployment rate and what they see as the national political parties' ineptitude in dealing with a deep economic crisis. (sound familiar?--jef) Protesters built a camp in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square Sunday, a week ahead of nationwide elections. Since then good-natured, peaceful and colorful gatherings have sprung up and grown around the country under the banner of "Real Democracy Now."

Many protesters have said they were influenced by recent pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and one popular chant is "Join us."

Friday was the last day for candidates to campaign for the election for municipal and regional government positions in much of the country. Citing the mandatory end of campaigning, the national election commission banned protests Saturday and on Sunday, voting day.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero did not say whether he would order police to break up demonstrations.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba was also cagey about how the government would deal with the protesters, although he said the police would not act to make things worse.

Initially he said the government will "enforce the law," but he then toned down this stance, saying "The police are not going to resolve one problem by creating another."

The ruling Socialist party is widely expected to suffer big losses at the polls, perhaps even in traditional strongholds, having been forced by the crisis to introduce austerity measures.

"They want to leave us without public health and public education. Half of our youth is unemployed and they have raised the age of retirement," said protester Natividad Garcia, who declined to give her age and profession.

The government is presiding over an economy struggling to overcome recession and create jobs to chip away at a 21.3 percent jobless rate, the highest in the eurozone.

In Spain, rallies called to urge people to vote one way or another are typically banned the day before an election, called "days of reflection."

The election commission was deeply divided this time, and upheld the ban by just a one-vote margin. The panel was convened to give a blanket ruling for all of Spain because provincial election bodies had issued contradictory rulings, with some allowing protests this week and some banning them, as was the case in Madrid.

Organizers of the protests say that they have no party affiliation, are not trying to affect the election outcome in any way, and are not even urging people to abstain from voting.

"Campaign posters are still going to be up, so why ban people from freely mingling to exchange ideas," said graphic designer Antonio Quiroga, 27.

Netanyahu Lectures Obama in Oval Office

(And if this isn't reason enough to distance from Israel, then a reason doesn't exist. Plus, they spy on us, steal top secret data from us, and merely being associated with them makes us a target to much of the Arab world. Israel is like the idiot friend you keep having to bail out of trouble. At some point, you have to cut them off.--jef)

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Saturday, May 21, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON -- Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Barack Obama against chasing what he called a Middle East peace "based on illusions" as he lectured the US president amid a widening rift in US-Israeli ties.

In a dramatic Oval Office appearance, after 90 minutes of talks Friday, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically vowed Israel would never return to its 1967 borders and laid down a set of non-negotiable conditions for peace talks.

The exchange, which left hopes for Obama's peace drive more remote than ever, came a day after the US president called on Israel to accept a return to territorial lines in place before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, with mutual land swaps with Palestinians to frame a secure peace.
But Netanyahu seized on the notion that he was being asked to return solely to Israel's 1967 footprint, which he said was nine miles wide in places and half the size of the "Beltway" highway surrounding Washington.

"While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines -- because these lines are indefensible," Netanyahu said, looking Obama squarely in the eye.

Israelis argue that returning to the former border configuration would leave Israeli population centers vulnerable and mean uprooting hundreds of thousands of settlers from homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu did not however mention the second part of Obama's stipulation -- namely that land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians, would change those 1967 lines to ensure two secure, contiguous states.

The White House insisted that it had never said that Israel should return to a narrow definition of its 1967 territorial lines.

Asked whether Netanyahu was willfully misinterpreting Obama's remarks, White House spokesman Jay Carney said such an observation was "interesting."

Privately, White House officials appeared infuriated by Netanyahu's combative approach, which even included a lecture for Obama on the historic struggles of the Jewish people.

In his first reaction to Obama's comments on the border issue, in a major speech on the Middle East on Thursday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said that Obama should press Netanyahu to accept his position.

"Netanyahu's position is an official rejection of Mr Obama's initiative, of international legitimacy and of international law."

Obama admitted that he had Netanyahu had "differences" on language and formulations over the best approach to reviving peace talks stalled since last year, but saw a moment of opportunity amid the "Arab spring."

"I think that it is possible for us to shape a deal that allows Israel to secure itself, not to be vulnerable, but also allows it to resolve what has obviously been a wrenching issue for both peoples for decades now."

Obama also noted that he shared Israel's concerns over Syria and Iran and backed the Israeli position on the tie up between the Palestinian Fatah movement and the Islamist group Hamas.
Netanyahu said Abbas had to pick between Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction and peace, or making peace with Israel.

The Israeli leader then launched into a history lesson of the struggles of the Jewish people, which Obama watched from a nearby chair, his hand over his mouth.

"A peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality," Netanyahu said.

"We don't have a lot of margin for error... because, Mr President, history will not give the Jewish people another chance."

After the talks, a senior Israeli official accused Obama of raising "unreasonable expectations" that could set the peace process back "dozens of years" by seeking a Middle East deal based on the 1967 borders.
 
"We had to put our foot down," he added.

Analysts said Obama became the first president to specifically state that the 1967 borders should be the basis for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, shut down over a settlements row last year.

But they also warned the statement could cost him support during next year'e elections among Jewish and pro-Israel voters.

"A lot of Democrats are not going to agree with this, and a lot of Democrats are not going to be Democratic in the voting booth," said New York political strategist Hank Sheinkopf.

On Sunday, Obama will address the powerful Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) before heading off on a week-long trip to Europe.

Netanyahu will also speak to AIPAC and will make a joint address to Congress next week, encouraged by Republican leaders who support his position.