For those of you who like me, just can’t cough up $3.98 for Caribou Barbie’s mutilation of a tree (I have a weak stomach), “Going Rogue” there is hope. Mudflats is “tiptoeing through the Muck of Alaskan Politics”, one a page at a time. Here is a sample of their offerings.
Page 116- This piece of brilliance came from the Alaska Dispatch. And thank you Andrew Halcro for correcting what was an obvious unintentional blunder from Palin who said “Democrat governor” instead of “Democratic governor.” I’m glad you said it correctly, despite you being all effete and everything.
Page 117-118
Halcro, “the Wasilla town crier” (Kilkenny) and “the falafel lady” Andree McLeod were considered credible sources by the national press. Imagine that! I wonder if they engaged in juvenile, petty bitter name-calling? That would be really lame, and people would find it hard to take them seriously. You know, like if they called you “the crazy lady” or “the Wasilla town whack job” or something.
There was a debate at a chamber of commerce luncheon. She chose to send Sean Parnell (the Lt. Governor nominee) to attend in her stead, and she went instead to visit with the troops who were about to be deployed because that was more important than a silly Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Irony Alert! The very same Sean Parnell (who became governor when she quit) decided it was more important to attend an Association of General Contractors luncheon than to meet the President who was stopping off 2 miles down the road to honor the troops last week. I just had to throw that out there.
Todd has an interesting Grandmother who is an Alaska Native.
Funny stuff especially after two or three bottles of wine - hiccup
Earlier this year, during an audit of the nation’s largest Level-4 BioSafety Lab (BSL-4) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, 9,220 vials of ebola, anthrax, botulinum, equine encephalitis virus, and other deadly germs were discovered in the proverbial dusty old storage area. No one even knew the vials existed and thus no one knows for sure whether any are missing.
But not to worry, according to officials. The vials were old and lost long before new documentation procedures were put in place. Besides, the lab is being expanded and updated with the latest security devices. Such reassuring mantras resound after every oil and chemical spill, radioactive discharge from nuclear power plant (more frequent than generally realized), black-market uranium sale, and mishandled nuclear bomb: “It may seem dangerous, but trust us – there wasn’t enough poison to hurt a fly and besides, we’re sure we recovered everything.”
Very likely – hopefully – at Fort Detrick they did. But the most important question remains unanswered: can any BSL-4, the labs with the deadliest, often highly contagious, bacteria and viruses, ever be truly fail-safe? After all, at some point that old storeroom in Fort Detrick was state-of-the-art. Human error applies not only to daily procedures, but to equipment that always seems so pristine when new. Proponents of BSL-4s argue that without these research labs we stand defenseless against a natural outbreak of disease or bio-terrorist attack. And, they say, the labs are so safe that the chances of a disease-spreading breach approach zero.
The problem is, neither of these assertions is strictly true. Vaccines against Level-4 Ebola and Marburg viruses have been developed in Level-2 labs by inserting their DNA into non-pathogenic viruses that can trigger immune responses just as definitively as the deadly pathogen. Scientists can therefore develop vaccines against deadly bacteria and viruses without actually handling the germs themselves. And the Level-4 labs may very well make our world more dangerous rather than safer and more secure. However modern and up-to-date a laboratory, it is still subject to human error, violence, neglect, and systemic breakdown. The Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in Great Britain in 2007 was due, according to the British government’s inquiry, to “poor training and incompetence” and a “creeping degradation of standards”, while the 2001 outbreak was attributed by the government to an employee who smuggled out a vial of FMD from his lab.
Image: Plum Island's Lab 257
“Creeping degradation” is probably responsible for most industrial and infrastructural accidents. The case of Plum Island off the northeast coast of Long Island, New York, home to a now-closed Level-4 lab, illustrates the problem. Many believe Plum Island responsible for Lyme Disease, borne by deer swimming five miles from the island to the Connecticut coast near Lyme where the first outbreaks occurred. Lab 257 by Michael Carroll details how protocols and procedures at Plum Island eventually unraveled. Countless small oversights and flaws in equipment, procedures, and human judgment tend to build up over time to generate distinct vulnerabilities until an otherwise controllable opportunistic event spins out of control.
It is often claimed that BSL-4s have a flawless safety record, although the 9,220 recovered vials seem to undermine that claim. More importantly, only two Level-4 labs have operated in the United States until recently and their documentation has been in disarray, as Fort Detrick’s spokesperson admitted to explain how the vials went missing.
There is, in fact, no real documentation that BSL-4 labs have been operating safely. As with the oft-ignored low-level radioactive releases from nuclear power plants, small accidents can be ignored or covered up; it takes a major disaster to enter public consciousness. Recently, the city of Boston had to admit that the news of the infection of three BSL-2 lab workers in a lab had been suppressed by the lab and city officials. Mayor Menino assured us that if the public had been in danger, they would have told us sooner. Granted, Level-2 labs are not built to be foolproof and the diseases harbored there are far milder than in BSL-4s, but when infection at a BSL-2 is kept under wraps, would a more serious threat have been publicized, especially with no real emergency response mechanism in place in most communities?
According to the Sunshine Project, “Three Texas A&M University biodefense researchers were infected with the biological weapons agent Q Fever in 2006. The infections were confirmed in April of that year, but Texas A&M officials did not report them to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as required by law. Instead, Texas A&M officials covered the infections up until now, illegally failing to disclose them despite freedom of information requests dating back to October 2006.” This was in addition to a brucella infection at the lab, news of which was also withheld from the public. In response to these events, the Center for Disease Control ordered the lab to shut down its bioweapons research, citing – in a detailed report issued August 31, 2007 – a host of violations of basic safety protocols at the lab. Other accidents at BSL-3s have recently occurred at the University of New Mexico (anthrax, 2003 and unidentified pathogen in 2004); Medical University of Ohio (2004, Level-3 Valley Fever); University of Chicago (2005, Level 3, possibly anthrax or plague); and UC Berkeley (2005, Level 3 aerosolized, weaponized Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever). From 2005-2006, University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) researchers made and manipulated copies of the Ebola virus genome even though the federal government stipulates that such research must take place at a BSL-4. (It should be noted that Level-3 pathogens can be every bit as dangerous as Level 4s and include many of the more contagious germs; it’s just they’ve been shown to respond to antibiotics). All these cases occurred after 2001, when the through-the-mail anthrax attacks supposedly led to tighter security and more sophisticated protocols at BSL-3s and BSL-4s.
The dangers posed by biolabs often fly under the radar, but that may be changing. The General Accounting Office, in a report released this past September 21st, stated that the rapid – and often unregulated – proliferation of Level 3 and Level 4 labs places the public at significant risk. The public would do well to question the knee-jerk “security at all costs” policy of the federal government which threatens to build up stores of the world’s deadliest organisms across the United States. As for proponents’ arguments that the labs are absolutely safe and absolutely necessary, we shall address them soon in another post.
Kelly has been found. My Prayers go out to the Family and Friends of Kelly Currin Morris, as sad as this day is at least Scott Morris is closer to his judgement day and where he belongs finally. He was arrested last evening (11/17/09) and according to the SBI Final Deposition Report he was charged with First Degree Murder and Fraudulently Burning a Dwelling. You can read his arrest warrant here .
I am sure there is a special place in Hell waiting for Scott. As for Kelly, she can rest now in heaven.
Feel free to share your thoughts for Kelly’s family and friends, support is heartfelt and needed now more than ever.
There’s so much going on in the USA that warrants attention these days that it’s hard to know where to start. But, since I’m an economist I’m going to start here.
“There are families not eating at the end of the month,” said Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, and “literally lining up at midnight” at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts.
Among the steps Wal-Mart is taking to address the changes in shopping habits, Mr. Quinn listed an overhaul of the retailer’s private-label brand, Great Value, which is promoted in commercials describing how families can fix dinners with Great Value products “for less than $2 a serving.”
The really sad thing about this blurb is that I got it from the Media & Advertising section of the NY Times. It did not come from the op-ed page, it did not come from the business section nor the politics section. It’s there because Walmart is having to work on its product mix to reflect hunger in those families living below the poverty living in one of the richest countries in the world –The United States–and I am deeply ashamed as a citizen of that country to read this anywhere STILL after all these years.
There’s been an academic discussion about the disconnect between what some of our nation’s statistics tell us is going on and the reality on the ground. There was a conference this weekend to talk about re-working the way the nation calculates its GDP. This is extremely important. Because of globalization, we are most likely over stating our performance in way that is throwing off our policy targets. We are losing per capita income from the lowest to middle quintiles and we are hemorrhaging well-paying jobs for our most vulnerable citizens. They are not able to get enough to live on and they are not wealthy enough to buy health care insurance or to pay premium taxes to feed an already over-bloated, costly, and inefficient industry.
A widening gap between data and reality is distorting the government’s picture of the country’s economic health, overstating growth and productivity in ways that could affect the political debate on issues like trade, wages and job creation.
The shortcomings of the data-gathering system came through loud and clear here Friday and Saturday at a first-of-its-kind gathering of economists from academia and government determined to come up with a more accurate statistical picture.
The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.
American workers lose their jobs when carburetors they once made are imported instead. The federal data notices the decline in employment but fails to revalue the carburetors or even pinpoint that they are foreign-made. Because it seems as if $100 carburetors are being produced but fewer workers are needed to do so, productivity falsely rises — in the national statistics.
The most interesting thing about this is that the argument is that our workers supposedly have become increasingly more productive over the last decade or so. What we might be measuring are impacts from trade instead. This goes a long way in explaining why the returns on labor (MRP or marginal revenue product) and the returns on capital are becoming so disparate.
The statistical distortions can be significant. At worst, the gross domestic product would have risen at only a 3.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter instead of the 3.5 percent actually reported, according to some experts at the conference. The same gap applies to productivity. And the spread is growing as imports do.
That may help to explain why the recovery from the 2001 recession was a jobless one for many months and why the recovery from this recession is likely to generate few jobs for many months.
In addition, more detailed import data would help to explain wage inequality, by linking some low wages more accurately to particular industries exposed to import competition.
On another front, many argue that labor productivity is rising faster than the pay of workers who made the greater productivity possible. That argument would be watered down if more accurate data showed that productivity had been overstated.
Just as more and more working class families fall into the cracks, we also have the latest sham of health care where families now struggling to make ends meet with face a tax if they don’t buy health insurance from overpriced insurance industry plans. Let me point you back to a piece in Politico for this beauty.
Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”
And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”
The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.
The House bill also refers to the penalties for not carrying insurance as a tax. It calls for a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage” and amends the tax code to implement it.
I have to ask what it is wrong with this country? It seems to pushing its poor to the brink of destruction during a time of when its also funding (through direct funds and also extremely low interest rates) arbitrage profits for the already rich at places like Goldman Sachs. We might as well just call them all Princes and call ourselves the new corporate serfs because we’re going to be paying for our indentured status for some time under what’s going on right now. We’re tithing for the benefit of huge financial institutions be they investment bankers, insurance, or mortgage brokers. They’ve become the residents of the neoGothic cathedrals of the 21st century dark ages of America. We’re back to ‘Still Hungry in America’ and this is ever so wrong.
Oh, meanwhile, via CNN breaking news:
The Dow hits 10,170 in intraday trading, its highest level in more than a year.
The criminal activities of the firm first came under scrutiny after a group of the firm’s members who were tasked to guard US diplomats in Iraq opened fire on civilians in Baghdad on September 2007, killing 17 people.
Erik Prince
Photo: PressTV
(BAGHDAD PressTV) – New disturbing charges have emerged against XE, the infamous private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, whose operations came under spotlight after its 2007 carnage in Baghdad.
According to a report by MSNBC and based on alleged sworn declarations by two Blackwater employees in federal court, the firm used child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
The declarations added Iraqi minors got involved in sexual acts with Blackwater members in exchange for one dollar. It is further alleged that Erik Prince, the firm’s owner, “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”
Based on other statements, the firm was involved in another sex scandal; “Prince’s North Carolina operations had an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by many of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”
The two employees also alleged that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” The Nation reported.
Prince also allegedly forced health professional to endorse the redeployment of those Blackwater members who had been mental problems, such as excessive drinking and drug abuse.
Other charges against the firm include arms smuggling, money laundering and tax evasion.
The criminal activities of the firm first came under scrutiny after a group of the firm’s members who were tasked to guard US diplomats in Iraq opened fire on civilians in Baghdad on September 2007, killing 17 people.
According to federal contract data obtained by The Nation, the Obama administration has recently extended a contract with Blackwater for more than $20 million for “security services” in Iraq.
North Carolina’s prosecutors say they are increasingly concerned about the erosion of state services for people with mental illness who are accused of crimes.
In a letter sent last month to Gov. Bev Perdue and her secretary of Health and Human Services, Lanier Cansler, the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys said its members are worried by a lack of available beds in the forensic unit at Central Regional Hospital in Butner. Evaluations are performed there to determine whether defendants are competent to stand trial.
The pre-trial evaluations have long been done at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, but the unit is set to move to Butner early next year.
“As North Carolina’s mental health system has evolved over the last decade, we have seen an alarming trend; forensic bed space has been significantly reduced, while the demand for pre-trial forensic beds has been increasing,” said the Oct. 19 letter, signed by 27 of the state’s elected prosecutors. “We feel that if this trend is not reversed, the criminal justice system, criminal defendants, and our citizens will suffer the consequences.”
Though the letter was sent more than two weeks ago, conference director Peg Dorer said Wednesday the group has not received any response from Perdue or her administration.
So here we are, today is November 3rd, 2009, this date represents the first municipal election in Butner, North Carolina’s history. On this date the citizens will choose our future Mayor and six Town Council Members; thus shaping the future of our newly incorporated town of Butner.
I’ll be the first to admit the past two and a half years have been trying times for Butner, especially for those of us who fought against the Department of Homeland Security’s National Bio and Agro Defense facility (NBAF) so adamantly. I know that for most of you the battle to defeat the facility is a distant memory however it should serve as a reminder of what happens when a town’s government is out of touch with the wishes and best interest of its constituents for special interest incentives.
I feel it is important to recap this event because there will be other projects that may provide economic benefit in the beginning only to be a red herring years later. But truthfully who will decide our town’s future? The Town council, the Kerr Tar COG, Granville Couny Economic Development or the citizens? Consider that with the NBAF came no public hearings, to hear the citizens concerns or even what we had to say. The Sept 06, dog and pony show in Creedmoor was nothing more than a pep rally for the lab supporters not a venue for citizen discussion. Could it be the then sitting Town Council and Mayor were not concerned about the potential burden a BSL 4 AG facility would be for the citizens of Butner, hence they believed the snake oil salesman with the dollar signs, peddling their wears. But who would have to cough up the needed funds to support the labs infrastructure? Thank God “we the people” won that round but what of the next one?
Why do we have an empty warehouse facility beside I- 85, oh that’s right that is Falls Lake Commerce Center, there’s just no commerce? Why are citizens of Southern Granville County paying four times the amount surrounding counties are paying for water and sewer service? Furthermore, to add insult to injury, SGWASA was once a source of revenue for the town of Butner until legislation re-structured it into a water authority and now its a source of hardship for many living on fixed or low incomes. Where is the necessary transparency and open government to the citizens? Why do so many council meetings go into executive session? The last time I checked things like, land acquisition is public information, isn’t it? Why do so many town employees of Butner reside in other towns and cities i.e. Town Manager and town planner just to name two? Why is the town attorney also representing Kerr Tar COG, Granville County, SGWASA and lastly Butner? This is a clear and evident conflict of interest; hypothetical cases in point, a case involving Butner’s interest against Granville County or vise versa. Better yet a case brought by the town of Butner against SGWASA for um, I don’t know let’s say spraying sewage sludge that contaminants drinking water or how about a breach in contract with an interested party the current attorney represents? I can go on but I believe you get my point.
Think long and hard before you cast your vote today whether it is for Butner’s Mayor, Town Council or the Granville County Commissioners each candidate should be considered on their merits and also is the community better off due to their service and decisions? I believe the following candidates have already proven themselves in the community, I personally am endorsing James Jones for Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Linda Jordan, Bill McKellar, Terry Turner, Dana McKeithan, Michel Branch and I’m still undecided on the last council seat. Folks tomorrow’s the beginning of a new day in Butner’s future; with leadership that supports the citizens and not the special interest Butner can grow and still keep our small town appeal. So make sure your voice is heard and VOTE!
WASHINGTON, DC, October 29, 2009 (ENS) – Public employees have filed a lawsuit demanding documents related to the U.S. EPA’s plans made “in secrecy” to allow public exposure to increased levels of radioactivity following nuclear accidents or attacks.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility under the Freedom of Information Act claims that the agency “wrongfully withheld” comments submitted by EPA and other federal and state agency officials and by representatives of private corporations or trade associations to the EPA Office of Radiation and Indoor Air as it prepared its updated Protective Action Guides.
The radiation guides are protocols for responding to incidents ranging from nuclear power plant accidents to transportation spills to dirty bombs.
“The new draft standards have been promulgated in secrecy despite sharp controversy about allowing public exposure to radiation levels vastly higher than those EPA had previously deemed unacceptably dangerous,” claims PEER, a national nonprofit alliance of resource professionals employed by government agencies at the local, state and federal levels.
“EPA has bypassed open dialogue on how much radiation the public will be allowed to receive in the event of a release, and is now suppressing evidence of internal dissent on these controversial proposals,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.
PEER said in a statement Wednesday that it has received “verbal reports that both internal and external reviewers registered grave concerns about the radical relaxation of radiation exposure limits being proposed.”
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.
Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy Newspapers investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.
To this day, I like many of you are waiting for someone, anyone to be held accountable for the market violations that lead to our economic collapse. Now with some digging by McClatchy there is supportive evidence at least for Goldman Sachs it was all one big game. If this tidbit of information isn’t enough to send you over the edge with anger, continue reading ”Goldman secretly bet on the housing crash“
