Obama Slides Further Down Bush’s Hill on Indefinite Detention
by Matthew Rothschild
The Obama Administration is looking more and more like the Bush Administration every day when it comes to the policy of holding prisoners indefinitely, without trial, or even after a trial and an acquittal.
Obama himself is already on record favoring indefinite detention of some prisoners.
“We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country,” Obama said in May. He alluded to the problem of trying prisoners who were coerced into testifying against themselves. “Even when this process is complete,” he said, “there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.”
Now the chief lawyer at the Pentagon has expanded the prospects of indefinite detention to include those who actually have already been prosecuted and have even been found not guilty.
Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told the Senate on Tuesday that this was a “policy decision officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.” Johnson said that the legality of this position “was never tested.”
Well, not exactly. The Supreme Court ruled in the Boumediene case last June that the judiciary has the authority to order the release of an “individual unlawfully detained.”
And holding a prisoner after he’s been found not guilty is the very definition of “unlawfully detained.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy was the author of the court’s 5-4 decision, and he minced no words. Our security depends not only on the skill of our intelligence agencies and the might of our Armed Forces, he wrote. It also depends on “fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers.” He added: “Few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person.”
The general counsel of the Pentagon ought to bone up on the Supreme Court’s decision. As should Obama.
Johnson did acknowledge that his view happened to be the same as the Bush Administration’s.
And that’s a huge problem.
Copyright 2009, The Progressive Magazine
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.
Energy Industry Sways Congress With Misleading Data
by Abrahm Lustgarten
![[See where states stand on regulating gas.]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/state_regs_chart.jpg "state_regs_chart.jpg")
See where states stand on regulating gas.Another report concluded that state regulations for drilling, including fracturing, “are adequately designed to directly protect water.” But the report reveals that only four states require regulatory approval before hydraulic fracturing begins. It also outlines how requirements for encasing wells in cement — a practice the author has said is critical to containing hydraulic fracturing fluids and protecting water — varies from state to state.
One recommendation in that report flies in face of industry’s assertion that its processes are safe: hydraulic fracturing needs more study and should be banned in certain cases near sensitive water supplies.
Hydraulic fracturing — where water and sand laced with chemicals is injected underground to break up rock — is considered essential to harvesting deeply buried gas reserves that some predict could meet U.S. demand for 116 years.
In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, based on assurances that the process was safe. But a series of ProPublica reports has identified a number of cases in which water has been contaminated in drilling areas across the country, and EPA scientists say they can’t fully investigate them because of the exemption.
Now, Congress is considering legislation to restore the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of the process. And industry — leveraging its money and political connections — is using the recent reports to fight back.
Since January at least five studies have been published making the case that state laws are adequate and that new regulations could hamper exploration, raise fuel prices and eliminate jobs. Three of the studies were paid for by the Department of Energy and produced by consulting firms that also work with the industry. One of the DOE reports was written by the same person who authored a study for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
The industry argues that federal oversight would amount to a redundant layer of bureaucracy that is not needed because states already require the same environmental safeguards that might be required by the EPA, and that those safeguards are effective.
“We don’t think the system is broke, so we question the value of trying to fix it with a federal solution,” Richard Ranger, a senior policy analyst at the American Petroleum Institute [12], told ProPublica in May. “So proceed with caution if you are going to proceed with regulating this business because it could make a very significant difference in delivering a fuel that is fundamental to economic health.”
Industry reports say that if federal regulations are applied to hydraulic fracturing, more than a third of onshore gas wells would be closed and oil and gas companies would spend $10 billion complying with the law in its first year. The federal government would lose some $1.2 billion in revenue.
But advocates for the federal legislation say the industry is misleading the public into a false choice between the economy and the environment.
“We are all for using science-based information,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But the underlying information doesn’t really tell the story they claim it does.”
Nonetheless, the arguments have gained traction in Congress and have eroded support for new regulation.
Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., told his fellow members in a recent hearing that “these folks are laying people off — people are hurting in my district.” Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., who sponsored legislation to regulate fracturing in 2008, but declined to add his name to this year’s bill, told ProPublica that “developers may have legitimate concerns about the impact that removing the exemption may have on their ability to find and extract oil and gas.”
To keep the legislation alive, Diana DeGette, D-Colo., its main sponsor, has shifted gears to seek environmental studies and hearings rather than a quick passage into law.
“The opposition has been throwing out scare tactics and mischaracterizations of what she is trying to do,” said DeGette’s spokesman, Kristofer Eisenla. “Unfortunately the oil and gas guys came out of the barn storming.”
Fuzzy Numbers
The study that has received the most publicity is also among the most misleading.
The report, which evaluates the costs of regulations for the oil and gas industry, was written for the Department of Energy by a consulting company also used by the energy industry, Advanced Resources International, or ARI. It contains a table listing seven specific processes it says would be mandated under the proposed federal regulations, and what those processes would cost — a total of $100,505 per well. Among the listed items is “state of the art” fracture imaging, at a per-well average cost of $37,500, and three-dimensional fracture simulation, at a cost of $7,500.
But a footnote reveals that these figures are based on memo sent to a DOE official by another consulting firm in 1999. The report’s author said they haven’t been updated to reflect technological advances or substantial shifts in the drilling business over the last decade.
Furthermore, none of the tests listed in the table are mentioned in the text of Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that would apply to hydraulic fracturing, according to an EPA spokesperson in Washington. And they aren’t mentioned in the bill being floated in Congress either.
“It’s a sense of magnitude of the impacts, not a sense of absolute accuracy,” said Michael Godec, Vice President of ARI and author of the report. The regulatory requirements were interpolated on a “bad-case” scenario, he explained, because the federal laws are not specific. “We took some liberties. You have to make some assumptions about what might be required.”
Godec believes that many of the processes listed in the report are already being practiced to a greater degree than they were in 1999, meaning that even if they were required they may not be additional burdens at all. But he said that anecdotal conversations with drilling companies confirm that the report’s conclusions are still “about right.”
Godec said he did not obtain recent cost figures from drilling companies, which are closely guarded. Halliburton — one of the largest hydraulic fracturing service providers — did not return calls from ProPublica for comment about the expense of the procedures listed.
Asked whether the age of the data was a concern, Godec said it had been discussed with Nancy Johnson, the DOE official who commissioned the report. He said he was instructed that the report was needed quickly, that the budget was limited and that he should move forward because “this is a hot topic and people are testifying.”
Nancy Johnson did not return calls for comment and the Department of Energy’s office of fossil energy did not make its officials available for an interview after repeated requests. It said, through a spokesperson, that the Department did not author the report.
Godec also produced a similar report on costs and state gas regulations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America that was published in late April. Titled “Bringing Real Information on Energy Forward,” that report also makes the case that state regulations of drilling practices are effective. Godec says his company’s work is impartial and his conclusions would have been the same whether he was contracted by the oil and gas industry, or the federal government.
Even if the costs Godec laid out in the DOE report were up-to-date and accurate, it’s doubtful they would have the devastating financial impact the industry claims.
The estimated expense of regulating hydraulic fracturing amounts to between one and three percent of the total cost of drilling a new well when factored into operating costs estimated by financial analysts at Deutsche Bank. If all the testing that Godec includes is factored out, the regulations would cost the industry just $4,500 per well, according to his report, or just six hundredths of a percent of the cost of establishing a typical new well.
“I think at the end of the day it’s unlikely to have a real huge impact,” says John Freeman, a senior vice president for energy equity research at the investment bank Raymond James. “It’s a lot of fuzzy stuff that I can’t get my hands around. This just seems to be more of a soft number that I frankly have more of a hard time connecting the dots on.”
State Regulations Leave Gaps
In May the Ground Water Protection Council, a group made up mostly of industry representatives and state oil and gas regulators, released the first comprehensive review of oil and gas regulations across 27 of 31 drilling states it surveyed. The report, paid for by the DOE, concluded that most states have requirements to encase wells in cement and protect groundwater, and that a majority also require they be notified after hydraulic fracturing takes place.
“The study confirms what the industry has been saying: that regulation of oil and gas field activities, including hydraulic fracturing, is best accomplished at the state level,” the American Petroleum Institute said a press release about the study.
But the GWPC report — which focuses on what regulations are in place, rather than what may be missing — raises important points that are downplayed in its summary. It reveals that regulatory oversight is inconsistent from state to state and has substantial gaps. It also says hydraulic fracturing requires “comprehensive” further study “to determine the relative risk” and to determine best practices.
In fact, the report calls for some of same measures found in the congressional bill the industry is so hotly contesting.
Regarding fracturing in areas close to the surface or near shallow aquifers, the report reads: “States should consider requiring companies to submit a list of additives used in formation fracturing and their concentration.” It also says that shallow fracturing very close to certain drinking water aquifers “should either be stopped, or restricted to the use of materials that do not pose a risk of endangering ground water and do not have the potential to cause human health effects.”
A close examination of the appendices attached to the research also showed that 21 of the 31 states listed do not have any specific regulation addressing hydraulic fracturing; 17 states do not require companies to list the chemicals they put in the ground; and no state requires companies to track how much drilling fluid they pump into or remove from the earth — crucial data for determining what portion of chemicals has been discarded underground.
“The tone is that in general states do an adequate job of protecting water,” said Michael Nickolaus, the report’s author, special projects director for the GWPC and former director of Indiana’s state Oil and Gas Division. “There are certain gaps in certain states … it’s not a hundred percent world.”
The GWPC report does not name the states that lack more stringent regulations, a detail that is important because one or two states can account for a large proportion of the drilling in the United States. To extract that information from the report would require analyzing all the state regulations included in the appendices and repeating much of the GWPC’s original research. Nickolaus also declined to name the states in an interview with ProPublica, saying that the GWPC was obliged to protect its members.
Nickolaus says well construction — especially the cementing process that keeps drilling fluids and gas from seeping into groundwater — is more important than the fracturing issue. But according to the report, state regulations about cementing are sometimes vague and often don’t specify standards that makes the protection fool-proof.
While most states have regulations that protect drinking water near the surface, a third don’t require that the cement casing extends far enough to completely isolate wells from geologic layers and the deepest aquifers, according to the report. Twenty-two percent don’t require the cement to harden before the well is used for fracturing, and don’t test cement quality and consistency — one of the surest ways to protect against contamination.
© Copyright 2009 Pro Publica Inc.
I found this on a forum I post at.
Wow, another person who holds political office in America lies. They all lie. It doesn’t matter if they are Republican or Democrat every word out of their mouths is a LIE.
People wonder why Americans have such mistrust toward their own government. I wonder if governments in other nations lie to their own people like American Government LIES to their fellow Americans?
| The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up 07 Jul 2009 01:54 pm Some readers have asked me to put all the various odd lies of Sarah Palin that the Dish has compiled in one helpful place. So that’s what we’ve done. A couple of months ago, I asked an intern to re-fact-check all of them to make sure new details hadn’t emerged that might debunk some. And I also asked to get any subsequent statements by Palin that acknowledged that she had erred in any of these statements that are easily rebuttable by facts in the public record and apologized and corrected. She has not. Since this was a vast project over the last ten months, it’s possible there are some nuances or errors that need fixing. Please tell us if you find one and we’ll acknowledge and fix. But it has been put through the ringer a few times. After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn’t Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to? Palin lied when she said the dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire state trooper Mike Wooten; in fact, the Branchflower Report concluded that she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men. Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor. Palin lied when she denied that Wasilla’s police chief and librarian had been fired; in fact, both were given letters of termination the previous day. Palin lied when she wrote in the NYT that a comprehensive review by Alaska wildlife officials showed that polar bears were not endangered; in fact, email correspondence between those scientists showed the opposite. Palin lied when she claimed in her convention speech that an oil gas pipeline “began” under her guidance; in fact, the pipeline was years from breaking ground, if at all. Palin lied when she told Charlie Gibson that she does not pass judgment on gay people; in fact, she opposes all rights between gay spouses and belongs to a church that promotes conversion therapy. Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame. Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country’s domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower. Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script. Palin lied when she recalled asking her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the VP offer; in fact, her story contradicts details given by her husband, the McCain campaign, and even Palin herself. (She later added another version.) Palin lied when she claimed to have taken a voluntary pay cut as mayor; in fact, as councilmember she had voted against a raise for the mayor, but subsequent raises had taken effect by the time she was mayor. Palin lied when she insisted that Wooten’s divorce proceedings had caused his confidential records to become public; in fact, court officials confirmed they released no such records. Palin lied when she suggested to Katie Couric that she was involved in trade missions with Russia; in fact, she has never even met with Russian officials. Palin lied when she told Shimon Peres that the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag; in fact, she has several flags. Palin lied when she claimed to have tried to divest government funds from Sudan; in fact, her administration openly opposed a bill that would have done just that. Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed that troop levels in Iraq were back to pre-surge levels; in fact, even she acknowledged her “misstatements,” though she refused to retract or apologize. Palin lied when she insisted that the Branchflower Report “showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part”; in fact, that report prominently stated, “Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.” Palin lied when she claimed to have voiced concerns over Wooten fearing he would harm her family; in fact, she actually decreased her security detail during that period. Palin lied when asked about the $150,000 worth of clothes provided by the RNC; in fact, solid reporting contradicted several parts of her statement. Palin lied when she suggested that she had offered the media proof of her pregnancy with Trig to “correct the record”; in fact, no reports of her medical records were ever published; and the letter from her doctor testifying to her good health only emerged hours before polling ended on election day, even though there was nothing in it that couldn’t have been released two months earlier. Palin lied when she said that “reported” allegations of her banning Harry Potter as mayor was easily refutable because it had not even been written yet; in fact, the first book in that series was published in 1998 – two years into her first term – and such rumors were never reported by the media, only circulated as emails. Palin lied when she denied having participated in a clothes audit with campaign laywers; in fact, the Washington Times later confirmed those details. Palin lied when asked about Couric’s question regarding her reading habits; in fact, Couric’s words were not, “What do you read up there in Alaska?” or anything close to condescension. Palin lied when she mischaracterized the “$1200 check” given to Alaskans as the permanent fund dividend check; in fact, that fund had yielded $2,069 per person, and she claimed otherwise to obscure the fact that Alaskans also received a $1200 rebate check from a windfall profits tax on oil companies – a tax widely criticized by Republicans. Palin lied when she claimed to be unaware of a turkey being slaughtered behind her during a filmed interview; in fact, the cameraman said she had picked the spot herself, while the slaughter was underway. Palin lied when she denied having rejected federal stimulus money; in fact, she continued to accept and reject the funds several times. Palin lied when she claimed that legislative leaders had canceled a meeting with her to hold their own press conference; in fact, they only canceled it after being told she would not participate, and the purpose of the press conference was very different from the meeting’s. Palin lied when she announced on the news that she never holds closed-door meetings; in fact, she had just attended a closed-door meeting with the legislature earlier that day. Palin lied when she said that former aide John Bitney’s “amicable” departure was for “personal” reasons; in fact, Bitney said he was fired because of his relationship with the wife of Palin’s friend, plus a Palin spokesperson later claimed “poor job performance” for his firing – without elaborating. Palin lied when she said she kept her running injury a secret on the campaign trail; in fact, her bandaged hand was clearly visible in photographs and the story was widely talked about. Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent “millions of dollars” on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry. Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party’s very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years. |
Waxman-Markey Will Not Do: A ‘Fell-Swoop’ Moment Missed
by Karyn Strickler
“We have been too kind to those people who are destroying the planet ~ inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind.”
– Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame
As the bell rang in the U.S. House of Representatives, announcing the 219-212 vote for passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, also known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the skies over Washington, DC ripped loose with a mighty storm.
Visibility was cut to a couple of feet as a torrential down pour was accompanied by hail that raised a ruckus so loud inside the car that conversation was impossible. Tourists with inadequate umbrellas were left with skin stinging from the pelting. There were small waves cresting on the Potomac River and flash flooding. Local areas got several inches of rain in less than an hour. Large trees bowed, split and littered the streets.
At least 2 people in the Washington, DC region died from the storm. Forty-year-old, supermom Kelly Murray of Chevy Chase, Maryland and her 7-year-old daughter Sloane, died when a fallen tree branch crushed them in their mini-van on Connecticut Avenue. Murray leaves a husband and 4 daughters: Maeve, Jillian, Quinn and Meghan.
With the evidence of catastrophic climate change coming more clearly into daily focus, President Obama dared to say, “We’re not going to get there in one fell swoop.” Mother Nature seemed to declare, “I beg to differ, Waxman-Markey, simply will not do.”
“Vital authority for the EPA is stripped, but 2 billion additional tons of pollution are authorized every year, forever. Residential consumer protection incredibly is entrusted to the mercy of utility companies. Exempting a hundred new coal plants and paying billions to Old King Coal leaves him, indeed, a very merry old soul. This bill is 85% different from what President Obama proposed months ago,” said Brent Blackwelter, President of Friends of the Earth, one of the groups opposed to the House version of the bill.
Even The Washington Post, which has grown increasingly conservative, said in an editorial, “Congress should deliver a bill to Mr. Obama this year. But given that congressional action could set a template for years or decades, we think it’s too soon to settle for something that falls so far short of ideal,” as the House version of the bill does.
Environmental and energy advocate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was in the minority voting against the bill. He said, “It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.
It certainly seems as if the lights may be on, powered by dirty coal, but there is nobody home in the U.S. House of Representatives. Did they miss the report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990 when they said we must cut greenhouse gas emissions 60-80% immediately? Were they unconscious when in 2001, the IPCC said that the problem was 50% worse than originally predicted?
Has Congress missed the rapidly receding Arctic ice? Did it not register with them when Katie Walters reported in Science Magazine that methane, the greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, was bubbling out of the arctic, taking humanity into the dreaded phase, where climate change may be beyond human control?
Were U.S. House members on recess when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently said, “The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that.”
By the time that we should have atmospheric greenhouse gases under control, The Breakthrough Initiative said of the ACES bill: “If fully utilized, the emissions ‘offset’ provisions in the [bill] would allow continued business as usual, growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions until 2030, leading one to wonder: where’s the cap in the ‘cap’ and trade?”
Let’s take a lesson from the failed experiment with cap and trade in Europe. They started with a commendable goal: to cut greenhouse gases by making companies pay for each ton of CO2 they emitted. But that plan, let loose lobbying pandemonium that led politicians to give favors to industries, blunting the environmental mission, just as Waxman-Markey will do, in its current form.
Four years later, the European system has so far produced no benefit to the climate – but has generated a multibillion-dollar bonanza for some of Europe’s biggest polluters. The New York Times reports that a German power company received $6.4 billion in the first 3 years of the system and that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by plants and factories, has not fallen in Europe – instead it has risen an average of about half a percent in 2006 and ‘07.
Hope is fleeting that the U.S. Senate will bring better sense to bear on climate legislation than the U.S. House, but if they do not, humanity may be screwed. With a filibuster-proof, Democratic majority including the recently affirmed, Al Franken (D-MN), fixing Waxman-Markey ultimately rests with one person — Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) of Connecticut – who was the lead sponsor of an even weaker bill in 2003.
At a time when serious leadership is needed to cut greenhouse gases 80% below 1990 levels by 2025, the inadequate greenhouse gas cap in Waxman-Markey cuts greenhouse gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.
A plan for achieving meaningful cuts in greenhouse gases is easily stated: Get off the fossil fuel economy and transition to a 100% clean, renewable, non-nuclear energy economy within 10 years. Stop all logging, mining, grazing and drilling.
America, this is your climate bill.
Karyn Strickler is a political scientist, grassroots organizer and writer. She is a senior fellow with the Center for New Politics and Policy. Karyn is the producer and host of Climate Challenge on MMCTV. You can contact her at climatechallengetv@gmail.com .
I was doing my morning trolling on Stormfront and I came upon a very interesting post. I think I am going write about this on my blog because the comment on Stormfront is from a Democrat who has left the Democratic party because he doesn’t think the party cares about White people. My first thought after reading his comment was I am sure the Democratic party is not unhappy with loosing you as you are now joining a White Nationalist site and allowing yourself to be brainwashed to believe what White Nationalists believe and will join them in the fight to gain control of this country. My second thought was another Liberal lost because they are so frustrated by what they see going on within the two political parties, our government, and feeling that your average American is not being heard, and that makes me want to weep in sorrow.
This is a part of this guy’s comment: “First, at what point do whites as a whole leave the Democratic party? So many of us really can’t be so stupid as to continue to support a platform that actively discriminates against us to get votes from hoards of degenerate blacks and hispanics? I just can’t see whites continuing to support Dems a whole lot longer. With a sneaky racist in the WH and his nomination of an overt, anti-white bigot to the SCOTUS, I’ve hit my breaking point. And I imagine a many other whites have also. I’m absolutely done with anyone or anything remotely left-of-center for the rest of my life.
I guess I see two things happening – a watered down democratic party that will lose it’s ability to discriminate against whites for fear of becoming irrelevant, or a democratic party that will be made up of mostly blacks/hispanics, and a few self-loathing whites, that will look like a combination of Detroit’s city council and Mexican slums.” (EMR 76, Stormfront, White exodus from the Democratic party?, today(7/6/2009))
Then the other Liberals who have become White Nationalists welcome him, and offer their hands of friendship and encouragement. I see this time and time again. When I see another Liberal become so disillusioned with our political system that they feel like the only place for them is to get involved with White Nationalists, I worry that White Nationalists could actually win. They are growing in numbers while many Liberals don’t want to face the truth, that we have got to take this country back from the powerful and elite who control and have corrupted our government of the people for the people; if we are going to have any chance of defeating the White Nationalist message that is growing like a cancer and is destroying this nation.
We have working White people who are loosing everything. Their jobs, their houses, their medical insurance. They are angry and frustrated. They can’t seem to remember that we have working Americans of all races who are suffering. It isn’t a racial problem, but an economic problem. Hitler was able to rise to power because of the terrible economic problem Germany was facing. At this point I don’t see any real solutions from those in government. People are loosing faith, they feel like every word out of President Obama and the other Politicians is a lie. Somehow our government is going to have to restore the trust in the American people who are tired of being lied to, seeing the rich and powerful getting their bail outs and the working man and woman still hurting and getting the short end of the stick, no health care, no decent job to support themselves and their families, and not being able to get a decent education.
I don’t know what the answer is, but if we can’t find someway to fix the broken system, than White Nationalism will continue to grow and gain power.
I am sorry to vent, but I just feel angry that another Liberal Democrat has come to the point in his life that he is so discouraged with everything that he is even willing to consider that White Nationalism is the answer to fix our nation’s problems.
EMR76 is a white man in his 30’s who much like my nephew wasn’t raised to hate anyone. I would guess from his post that like my nephew he received a good education and was a Progressive in his thinking. He was one of us. Why would someone who knows the truth and lives by good moral values one day decides to join a White Nationalist forum and begins the program to become a White Nationalist who now will parrot the words of hate toward others who are different than him?
I left the Democratic party last Fall. I didn’t leave for the same reasons that this young man left. I left to join the Green party. I felt the Green party best reflected my views as a Liberal Progressive because of their views on the environment and social justice. The Democratic party in my view is corrupted by the large amount of money given by large corporations. The two parties of Democrat and Republican are two faces of the same corporate party.
I believe our best hope is to get off the two party merry go around and start a real Progressive party who will be a real voice for the people. No more lesser of two evils, but standing up and saying we are going to make our government give an accounting for their actions and words, and make them pay the price for their crimes, lies, and subversion of justice and truth.
I also know what it is like to be so frustrated and angry that you think that White Nationalism appears to be the truth when we are surrounded with lies and corruption. White Nationalism is a cult. Like Jim Jones and Jonestown was a cult that sucked people in. They reached out to the lonely, hurting, lost, and angry in the world. They offered them a home, friendship, and answers. In the beginning they were happy and they thought they had found what they had been search for, but after awhile the truth came out and they realized that they were on the path to Hell.
I am just one woman and I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that the American people are frustrated, angry, and have lost respect and trust in our government because of all the lies, corruption, and the subversion of our system of government for the corporate elite.
I know we need real election reform to give all political parties a level playing field, being allowed into debate, and to have real town halls meetings (not the fake ones like they have today) and all media having to give free air time to all candidates (even third parties) to get their message out. No longer can we have money play the role of subverting our government.
We need to start making those in government who lie, steal, cheat, and break any Laws pay the price as if they were your average Joe/Jane citizen. No more one system for the rich and powerful and another for the average Joe/Jane.
I hope and pray that it is not to late to save this nation.
Chirstine Cosser
Britain’s National Health Service: Simple, Sensible and Civilized
A former NHS patient has some advice for Americans skeptical of single-payer, government-run healthcare: You’ll get over it.
by Clancy Sigal
For the first couple of years I lived in Britain, I was an illegal immigrant from the United States, visaless with an expired passport and looking over my shoulder all the time. Even so, from the very first day I arrived at Victoria Station in London, suffering from bronchitis, I was accepted in the NHS — the national health scheme, we called it — no questions asked and no ID required.
After I’d become a legal resident, I asked my doctor why he had taken me, almost literally off the boat, with so little fuss. Weren’t foreigners a drain on his time and the National Health Service? He shrugged. “If you come here with a contagious disease, we don’t want you infecting the rest of us. So of course we give you medical care. Purely selfish on our part.”
For three decades I used and, being of a hypochondriacal nature, exploited the British medical system without paying a farthing except for the taxes taken out of my wages as a working journalist. And that single-payer, socialistic, government-run, bureaucratized, heavily used, nationalized health system served me — and 50 million others — very well. In need, I saw many doctors, with no money ever changing hands. There was nothing to sign, hardly any papers to shuffle. My primary-care physician ran his “surgery,” his office, with the help of only one receptionist whose job it was to arrange appointments.
My doctor’s waiting room in his storefront office was by American standards shockingly casual, even a trifle seedy. In what was then a rigid class society, the waiting room was also a lesson in democracy where duchesses and dustmen, old and young, rich and poor, waited their turn. It wasn’t perfect. There was the occasional misdiagnosis, crowded hospital ward, sleepy student nurse. But it worked.
It was all free, including specialists, and I came to believe that healthcare is a right, not an entitlement I had paid for. This “free” part sometimes puzzled my visiting American friends. When they got ill in London, I’d send them to my doctor, who would smile bemusedly when offered money. Did they appreciate this? Hardly. “Your doctors,” they’d say, “can’t be much good, can they?”
Is this too rosy a picture of single-payer, government-run healthcare? Maybe. Over the years, an underfunded, over-bureaucratized, increasingly privatized NHS has in some areas turned into a shadow of its former vibrant self.
Perhaps I was lucky to arrive so soon after World War II, when a traumatized, bomb-weary public was in no mood to revisit a prewar history of medical deprivation and the humiliation of means testing. Slowly, over time, by argument and debate, a consensus had been achieved, by Conservatives and Labor alike, that, in the words of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales when he first saw the grinding poverty of the unemployed, “something must be done.”
Recently, the American Medical Assn. responded with skepticism to President Obama’s plea for healthcare reform. In Britain, too, the massed ranks of the medical profession at first fought bitterly against a “socialized” service covering all from cradle to the grave. But Labor’s health minister, a firebrand from the mining valleys, Aneurin Bevan, brought them into line with a mixture of enticements and threats.
The NHS was, and is, a classically English compromise, in which individual doctors are independent contractors paid by the government according to the number of their patients. Doctors are free to remove patients from their list, and patients are free to go elsewhere. Once ideology was laid aside and the system got working, it was actually quite simple.
Once launched, in an astonishingly short time, a matter of a year or so, the NHS was accepted by even its worst enemies — the doctors and the Conservative Party — as indispensable and a civilized way of dealing with life, illness and death.
Does that sound so awful?
© 2009 Los Angeles Times
Declare a Democratic Worldview
by John Hank Edson
This Fourth of July, let’s give America the birthday present she cannot do without. Let’s give the people back their Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence sets forth a worldview that, back in the 18th century, served as the foundation of our new nation. This foundation was composed of the principle of human equality and the rights of self-determination implied by the famous phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Back then, this foundation was sufficient to support the society we hoped to build, one free of the economic monopolies, religious authoritarianism and military brutality embodied, respectively, in the English nobility, the Church of England and England’s Redcoat soldiers. As large as these forces loomed over the colonists in the New World, these were forces still dwarfed by the Atlantic Ocean, the American wilderness and the sheer number of people they aimed to dominate.
In a day of bayonets, wooden hulls and musket balls, mere consciousness of the principle of human equality was enough to give the people confidence in their ability to rewrite the social contract, even if it had to be written in their own blood. “Give me liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry cried. In his day, he could calculate the odds of success as reasonable against an enemy that was still on a human scale. He could look his enemy in the eye and say to King George with confidence, our equality is self-evident.
When we won our independence, we dismantled all the power platforms setting some human beings above others. Against the concentration of wealth and power of the classist aristocracy, we built the one-person, one-vote principle. Against the psychological oppression of religious authoritarianism, we constructed the doctrine of separation of church and state. And against the physical domination of mercenary armies, we instituted civilian control of the military.
But then we lost our way.
After the Civil War, corporations stole the principle of equality and put it in the service of nonhuman monetary engines antagonistic to our democratic political process. During World War II, the military-industrial complex grew into a powerful privatized industry no longer answerable to the people. After the civil rights movement, the corporations and the military-industrial complex offered the authoritarian religious right political legitimacy in exchange for their votes. It took us far too long to recognize the Republican Party as embodying the same feudal alliance of authoritarian platforms we once revolted against.
Simply put, for more than two centuries, we did nothing to defend ourselves against the anti-democratic forces in society that were themselves constantly seeking ever-increasing sophistication and power. Thus, while economic monopolists, religious authoritarians and military industrialists developed subtle strategies for placing the people under their control, the people remained content with a merely “self-evident” equality. As a result, today we harbor serious doubts about our equality, our ability to rewrite the social contract, and the future of our democracy.
Fortunately, our understanding of the principle of human equality, the rights of self-determination that flow from it, and the people’s power to rewrite their social contract need not remain in its 18th century “self-evident” condition. A logical explication of these truths exists. We can give America the birthday gift she so desperately needs if only we will make thinking seriously about the democratic worldview our responsibility. Our original articulation of the democratic worldview changed the course of history in 1776. In 2009, it is high time we upgrade that worldview to meet the sophistication of our 21st century society. In so doing, we will once again expose the ideologies of authoritarian supremacy advanced by economic monopolists, religious authoritarians and mercenary militarists as directly in conflict with the people’s rights and humanity’s well-being. Equipped with this new understanding, we will find the true direction of change that America is wishing for as her birthday candles all blow out.
John Hank Edson is an attorney and the author of “The Declaration of the Democratic Worldview” (Democracy Press, 2008).
© 2009 San Francisco Chronicle
Filed under: enviromental issues, political issues | Tags: Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
Mountaintop Removal: Fourth of July Festival Organizers Fear Violence
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Larry Gibson, the well-known, 72-year-old activist against mountaintop-removal mining, will host his annual July 4 music festival at his Kayford Mountain home above Cabin Creek Saturday and Sunday.
“I’ve been having this event, which is open to the public, for 23 years. Everyone is welcome,” Gibson said.
Maria Gunnoe, a Boone County native, who won this year’s international Goldman Environmental Prize in April for her anti-mountaintop-removal activism, is among the many planning to attend.
“A lot of elders and a lot of children, show up,” Gunnoe said. “Normally, it is very peaceful.
“People get together, socialize and listen to very diverse music,” she said. “Some is traditional Appalachian music. Some is music for younger teenagers, including rock music. It is a good time with your family and friends.”
But both Gibson and Gunnoe worry this year’s festival could spark hostility and possibly violence, especially after last week’s arrest of demonstrators protesting Massey Energy’s mountaintop removal operations in Boone County.
Gibson, in particular, said he has received threats since the arrests.
No one could be reached at Massey Energy’s offices in Boone County on Friday.
A spokesman for the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department said he had heard nothing about any rumors of violence at Gibson’s planned July 4 celebration.
On June 23, 31 picketers were arrested, including: actress Daryl Hannah, National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist James Hansen and former Democratic Congressman and West Virginia Secretary of State Ken Hechler.
Protesting near Sundial, the picketers were charged with obstructing police officers and impeding traffic after sitting in the middle of W.Va. 3 near a controversial Massey coal preparation plant next to Marsh Fork Elementary School.
A nearby Massey dam impounds about 3 billion gallons of coal sludge from company mining operations.
Gibson’s festival started out as a family reunion, but quickly grew into an annual community event.
Last week, Gunnoe distanced herself from “out-of-state environmentalists,” explaining, “We are connected to the environment around our home lands. We care about our culture. But that does not make us tree huggers.”
Gibson hopes today’s event is well attended.
“Everyone is welcome. Bring a covered dish. But this is not a place for any kind of violence. But bring a conversation to the table. I would be glad to talk to anyone,” Gibson said.
Gibson, whose family has lived on or near Kayford Mountain since the late 1700s, travels around the country speaking about mountaintop removal at colleges, churches, public seminars and community groups
“The stand I am taking here is not so much for myself,” Gibson said, “but for all of the people living in this part of the country.”
Gunnoe said, “Some people have had windows broken out of their vehicles because they had ‘We Love Mountains’ stickers on their bumpers.
“For years, mountaintop removal blasting has covered our homes up with dust and polluted our water,” she said. “People fight mountaintop removal because they have lost their water, their land and their quality of life.”
Headzup: Sarah Palin Resigns As Alaska Governor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEsmcOmqpqw&feature=player_embedded
Filed under: Media, enviromental issues | Tags: Mike Papantonio, Pap Attack, Progressive Media
Chevron’s Slick Business Practices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkvxAg5G6U&feature=player_embedded
