Nebraska Rancher: Keystone Pipeline Decision Shows ‘Courage’

We offer several articles for your information. Once you understand the issues, – it means less oil for the United States, it would likely kill as many jobs as it creates, it is an ecological disaster waiting to happen, it means foreign corporations being able to condemn the property of U.S. citizens and more, you will probably agree with us that it is not a good idea and not in the best interests of the nation.

In the interest of full disclosure: Nebraska is my home state. The Sand Hills are some of the most beautiful, pristine grasslands in the world. You can look for miles and not see a sign of civilization and you can imagine how this land looked a century-and-a-half ago when the buffalo roamed. Editor.

In George Zornicks article “Keystone XL Is Dead-Again”in The Nation, he opines that the Republicans are happy that the pipeline has been stopped, temporarily at least, so they can use it as a bludgeon against President Obama.

Meanwhile, real people who will be really affected by the pipeline are very happy over this news. These are not just tree hugging environmentalists and liberals. Nebraska conservatives led the protest and Nebraskans have really begun to question whether their elected officials are serving them or big oil. Read Madeline Ostranders article from The Nation and see about the real concerns of Nebraskans. This is one of the most moving stories I have seen about the pipeline. The Center for Rural Affairs, based in Lyons, Nebraska, also put out a press release praising the President’s decision. You may read that here,

Noah Greenwald wrote in the Huffington Post earlier this week that the President’s decision was a no brainer and gave five reasons why he felt that way.

Those articles appear below, and several more can be found at What do you know about the Keystone Pipeline?  For more disclaimers about the claims of Colorado’s Conservative Cacus, read yesterday’s Coffman & Tipton bash Obama over Keystone, 

Be informed, learn the truth, make up your own mind.

Keystone XL in the ‘National Interest’? No Way.
by Noah Greenwald
Endangered species program director
Center for Biological Diversity

President Obama’s got a big decision on his plate. Sometime between now and Feb. 21, he has to decide whether the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline — which would deliver dirty tar sands oil from Canada to Texas — is in the “national interest.”

That phrase is at the heart of his decision because it’s an international project that’s primarily under the purview of the State Department. So whether the pipeline “serves the national interest” is the threshold for deciding whether it can move ahead.

The decision should be a no-brainer. Here are five reasons why Keystone XL is not in the national interest:

1. It will dramatically deepen our addiction to climate-killing fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions from tar-sands development are two to three times higher than those from conventional oil and gas operations. That’s exactly the wrong direction for reversing global warming. Scientists tell us we must reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million or less. Today, it’s 391 ppm — and Keystone XL would certainly drive that up and worsen the devastating effects of global warming — from rising oceans to melting glaciers to extreme and dangerous weather events — that we’re already seeing around the world.

2. It will spill. The State Department’s review of the project clearly says Keystone XL will spill oil. Not may, but will. … Read More

Coffman Leads Effort to Call on Obama to Reconsider Pipeline

(WASHINGTON) – Today, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, led an effort to urge President Obama to reverse his decision to deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project, a pipeline that would transport crude oil derived from the Athabasca Oil Sands in western Canada nearly 1,700 miles to processing facilities throughout the United States. In a strongly-worded delegation letter co-signed by his fellow Colorado U.S. Reps. Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, and Doug Lamborn, Coffman called on the Obama Administration to consider the adverse effects the decision will have on Colorado’s economy and national security.

“Colorado exports more to Canada than to any other country, and over 143,000 jobs in Colorado depend on our trade relationship with Canada,” the Colorado Congressmen said in the letter, “Degrading this trade relationship, as the rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline does, will only negatively affect job growth and the economy.”

The lawmakers also emphasized the potential for the project to create tens of thousands of jobs and to provide a much-needed boost to Colorado’s economy.

“The $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline project is projected to create 20,000 direct jobs beginning immediately upon approval. This is as ‘shovel ready’ as they come,” the lawmakers said in the letter. “Colorado is home to several nationally and internationally respected world class universities, as well as engineering, environmental, water resource, project management, service, and construction companies who would have the opportunity to bid on various parts of the multi-disciplined project.”

On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced that it would not approve the permit for the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline project because it was “determined not to serve the national interest.” Coffman and his fellow Colorado U.S. Representatives disagree and point out in the letter that all environmental concerns have been addressed.

“TransCanada has re-routed the proposed pipeline around the Nebraska Sandhills, thereby addressing the primary focus of publicly-stated environmental opposition,” the letter states. “Furthermore, all states through which the pipeline passes have now approved the route.”

In the letter, the Colorado U.S Representatives not only highlight the economic benefits of the project, but they also outline how they believe it would greatly benefit our national security interests.

“The project would protect and enhance our energy security, perhaps more than any other action, and increase national security by reducing dependence on unstable and unfriendly oil-producing nations and along unreliable transport routes such as the Strait of Hormuz,” Coffman and his colleagues said in the letter. “If the pipeline is not approved it is likely that Canada will look to transport the oil to the Asian markets, which would have negative commercial, environmental and national security consequences.”

“Reversing your rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline and instead moving towards its timely approval is entirely consistent and aligned with our nation’s goals of energy security, greater energy independence, job and economic growth, and reducing the trade imbalance, national debt and deficit. We should not miss such a unique opportunity for the overall long-term security and well-being of our nation. For this reason, we urge you to reconsider your decision,” the Colorado U.S. Representatives conclude in the letter.

For a text of the letter click here for a PDF.

Mother Jones

A controversial land deal by the presidential candidate robbed a vets’ home of tens of millions of dollars.

Mitt Romney says U.S. Navy is smallest since 1917, Air Force is smallest since 1947

During the Jan. 16, 2012, Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took aim at President Barack Obama’s support for the U.S. military.

“The most extraordinary thing that’s happened with this military authorization is the president is planning on cutting $1 trillion out of military spending,” Romney said. “Our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917. Our Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947. We are cutting our number of troops. We are not giving the veterans the care they deserve. We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth. And I will fight to make sure America retains military superiority.”

This comment includes a lot of separate claims, but after a number of readers contacted us, we decided to focus on two of them: “Our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917,” and, “Our Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947.”

His underlying point: The U.S. military has been seriously weakened compared to what it was 50 and 100 years ago.

We’ll look at both the numbers as well as the larger context. But as you’ll see below, using the number of military ships and airplanes is an outdated practice that one expert says “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test.’ “

Read More

First and foremost, the oil was not destined to give the United States another source of oil. The tar sand bitumen was to be refined and exported, hence the reason it needed to be sent to refineries on the Gulf Coast where shipping is available. It would actually take oil away from refineries at Wood Lake, Illinois. The only “benefit” would be to the multi-national corporations that own the refineries in the Gulf Coast.

The building of the pipeline would offer a few thousand, not tens of thousands, jobs for the two years it would take to build the pipeline. A large percentage of those jobs would go to Canadians. It would cost jobs on farms and ranches along its path and require the  taking of property rights from the owners of those properties. We should oppose the taking of private property under almost all situations, that after all would be a conservative position. Apparently the rules change when it benefits big campaign donors.

The pipeline is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. It is a matter of when, not if, there will be a major leak in a pristine environment and possible distraction of the aquifer. Water is more important for life than oil.

In short, there is no benefit of this project to the United States or its citizens. Even much of the tar sands has apparently been sold to Chinese interests so the benefit will accrue to them and the refiners. For a full treatment please read “What do you know about the Keystone Pipeline“, published last week on the Recorder. Then Read “Who Owns Our Oil Sands?” by the Albert Federation of Labour. For a before and after picture of the land, read “National Geographic Slams Tar Sands – Canadian Politicians Pissed” in Treehugger. 

The Following if from an article in Mother Jones: Read the whole article here: What’s All the Fuss About the Keystone XL Pipeline?

What’s wrong with building a giant pipeline across the US? That existing Keystone line has already leaked a dozen times in just one year of operation. The Keystone XL would cross more than 70 rivers and streams, including the Missouri, Platte, Yellowstone, and Arkansas. The oil spill from another pipeline in the Yellowstone River last month didn’t do much to allay those concerns. It would also cross the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides nearly one-third of the groundwater used to irrigate US crops, supports $20 billion in agriculture, and supplies drinking water to about 2 million people. A recent report from a researcher at the University of Nebraska estimated that there would be 91 significant spills from the pipeline in the next 50 years. A worst-case-scenario spill in Nebraska’s sand hills above the Ogallala Aquifer could dump as much as 180,000 barrels, tainting the vast water supply in the region.

Here are the comments from Coffman and Tipton. They should know better, but they have to parrot the party line even if the accusations they make are untrue. Representative Gardner came in later as did the Sierra Club. I have included them all and will add more as they come.

Coffman Statement on White House Decision to Block Keystone XL Jobs


(WASHINGTON) -  U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) released the following statement today regarding an decision by President Obama to deny permitting for the Keystone XL pipeline project, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of jobs to the United States.

“This decision is not based on the jobs and the energy that our country so desperately needs, but solely on a political calculation that he can’t afford to offend his radical environmental base for his re-election.”

Tipton: Stand Up for American Jobs, Build the Keystone Pipeline

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Stressing the importance of creating new jobs to drive economic recovery, today, Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) urged the President to “quit playing politics” and join in support of the Keystone XL pipeline as reports broke that the White House rejected the proposal.

“We have an opportunity to create thousands of new jobs in this country. The Keystone pipeline will help provide energy certainty for this country in a responsible way while creating American jobs on American soil,” said Tipton. “Today we hear the President is throwing his hands up and turning his back on the American people. The people deserve better.”

Environmental Impact Statements, studies and assessments have concluded that the Keystone pipeline would not cause harm to the health and safety of the land, air, water or people with which it may come in contact with. The company building the pipeline has even offered to address one of the biggest environmental concerns by rerouting the pipeline around the Ogallala aquifer in the Nebraska Sandhills, voluntarily incurring millions in additional costs.

Tipton said, “There is no real reason to oppose this project.  We have a rare opportunity to create thousands of jobs immediately, let’s take it.”

Additionally, the President’s Jobs Council this week recommended in their “Road Map to Renewal” an “all-in approach” for energy development and encouraged investment in infrastructure to create new American jobs.

“Job creation remains my top priority, and I ask the President to listen to the recommendations of his own Jobs Council and join me in supporting this common sense project, rather than deliberately obstructing American economic recovery,” Tipton added. “This is our time, this is our opportunity, and I call upon the President to quit playing politics and join us in putting Americans first.”

Read Tipton’s recent op-ed: Keystone Pipeline offers ‘shovel-ready’ jobs, advances energy security.

Editor’s Note: Roads and bridges also offer shovel-ready jobs and offer a lot more value to the nation. 

A late addition as Representative Cory Gardner adds his voice to cacophony.

Gardner: Obama rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline a missed opportunity

WASHINGTON D.C. – Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) expressed extreme disappointment in the Obama Administration’s rejection of an oil pipeline project that could put thousands of Americans to work and bring significant oil supplies to refiners in the United States.

“President Obama missed an opportunity today to secure our energy future with North American energy and create American jobs,” Gardner said. “This is a shovel ready project that is all set to be built. We could get started on it today. Instead, the President chose to be politically self-serving and sacrificed the creation of 20,000 American jobs. It is time for the President to stop putting special interests before America’s interests.”

Gardner also spoke on the House floor this morning in support of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Transcript:

Mr. Speaker, according to the Canadian government over 143,000 jobs in Colorado depend on our trade relationship with Canada. Further, crude petroleum is our top import, and Colorado is not unique, many of the jobs and energy around the country come as a result of — as a result of our relationship with Canada. It’s been three years since the application was filed which would create a pipeline that extends from the oil sands in Alberta to the gulf coast bringing significant oil supplies into the United States. The United States as a whole both economically and from a national security standpoint will benefit immensely from the approval of this pipeline. In my mind, it’s a very simple question. Why import oil from countries that seek to do us harm when we can get it from our neighbor to the north? I’m continuously awed at how much energy potential we have in North America, and how simple it would be to advance policies that would make us more energy independent. Isn’t that what we are trying to accomplish? Apparently there is an asterisk when it comes to jobs for this administration. Not these jobs, perhaps some others. This administration has done everything it can to stand in the way of a project that can help 100,000 Americans get back to work…. Mr. President don’t put a cork in our economy; let’s get this pipeline built.

Editor’s Notes: Mr. Gardner is mixing apple and oranges again, apparently in order to throw out a large number (143,000) to make it sound as if that is the number of jobs in jeopardy. It is doubtful that not building the pipeline will  endanger any present trade with Canada. Such an argument is called a “Straw man, a made up argument that covers up the real issue. Gardner’s entire speech is such a straw man. Again he talks about the United States getting oil, when none of the output is intended for the US, just as the Alaskan Oil Pipeline is a terminus for shipping refined petroleum products to Asia, not for us in the United States.

I am reasonably certain that if President Obama had approved the pipeline, these three partisans would still have had “negative” press releases about the decision.

The Sierra Club is pleased and also speaks to the false claims of “Big Oil” and the conservatives who support them. Or is it the other way around.

The Sierra Club 

Huge news!

The Obama administration announced that it would deny a federal permit for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, which would run 1,700 miles across six US states bringing toxic, highly corrosive tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries and ports in Texas.

The president stood up to Big Oil, backed by the voices of hundreds of thousands of activists who have built the movement to stop this dirty, dangerous oil project.

Our victory is a victory for the boreal forest, for the Sand Hills and the Ogallala aquifer and for the protection of our climate.

Big Oil companies have launched an all-out assault on the president for not doing their bidding on Keystone XL. We will undoubtedly see a barrage of misinformation on Keystone XL from Big Oil in the form of flashy ads attacking the president.

Thank the president for rejecting Keystone XL and tell him that we aren’t fooled by Big Oil.

Big Oil says the pipeline would ease our pain at the pump? Nope. This is a fight about oil company profits. The pipeline will actually raise gas prices in the Midwest by 10 to 20 cents a gallon, hurting American families and American farmers and putting a damper on our fragile economy.1

Oil companies say the pipeline wouldn’t spill? Not buying it. The last pipeline that was built like this spilled over 12 times in the first year of production.

The oil lobby touts the economic boom and national security benefits from the project. The truth is the job numbers have been inflated and the tar sands oil is destined for export to Europe and Latin America from refineries in a Texas free trade zone — i.e. no taxes collected. 

Now is the time to speak truth to power, to support the president’s decision and push back against Big Oil’s lies about Keystone XL. Thank President Obama for rejecting Keystone XL.

Looking at the Patriot Act and the NDAA

We, that is We The People, of the United States have lost many of our freedoms and much of our civil liberties in the 20 years since I retired from the military. The attacks of 9/11, which Ron Paul so aptly points out were retaliation for some of our interventionist policies in the latter half of the 20^th Century.

While changing the way the United States does business would probably solve the terrorist problem, the government has instead used the pretense of protecting us, to strip us of our civil liberties and to increase its power to control our actions and protest.

Several things have enabled this assault, the inaptly named Patriot Act, the supreme court decision in Citizens United vs the FEC which enables corporations to buy the governance of our country, and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2012, which allows indefinite military detention, without trial, without hearing, of U.S. Citizens. This gives the president of the United States the ability to do what Muammar Gaddafi did to Libyans, “disappear” them. As you see from the first article, we continue to move toward being just like the countries we criticize for their human rights.

We have survived for over two centuries because of our freedoms, we will not survive without them. The stakes here are high.

The Citizens United issue needs to be handled separately.

The following collection of articles from various sources highlights the latest in the chain of events that George Orwell predicted. We can not forget or ignore what is going on lest we become completely enslaved. It is my hope that we can reverse what has happened while keeping the issue alive by keeping the subject in the forefront by publishing the latest thought on the subject. Some of these pieces are from last month, but the ideas are still relevant.

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

By Jonathan Turley, Published: January 13

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit. … Read More

NDAA, Patriot Act, and DHS: Welcome to the Police State of America!

By Gilbert Mercier

President Obama, despite earlier promises to veto it, will sign the National Defense Authorization Act ( NDAA). The NDAA contains dangerous provisions concerning indefinite detention of suspects without trial, and is yet another tool of “legal” repression with the Patriot Act and the omnipresent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to crack down on basic human rights and  civil liberties. It takes the United States away from the rule of law, and  a step further towards a fascist system where “order” and repression  is the number one priority.

In one of his typical flip-flops, President Obama originally said he would veto the Levin/McCain bill, but instead he announced two days ago that he would sign the controversial NDAA into law. Human rights and civil rights organizations worldwide are up in arms against the bill. The ACLU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all condemned the NDAA in the strongest terms. Read More

MotherJones

The Defense Bill Passed. So What Does It Do?

By Adam Serwer

Following the Obama administration’s withdrawal of its veto threat Wednesday, the National Defense Authorization Act passed both houses of Congress easily and is now headed to the president’s desk.

So what exactly does the bill do? It says that the president has to hold a foreign Al Qaeda suspect captured on US soil in military detention—except it leaves enough procedural loopholes that someone like convicted underwear bomber and Nigerian citizen Umar Abdulmutallab could actually go from capture to trial without ever being held by the military. It does not, contrary to what many media outlets have reported, authorize the president to indefinitely detain without trial an American citizen suspected of terrorism who is captured in the US. A last minute compromise amendment adopted in the Senate, whose language was retained in the final bill, leaves it up to the courts to decide if the president has that power, should a future president try to exercise it. But if a future president does try to assert the authority to detain an American citizen without charge or trial, it won’t be based on the authority in this bill.

So it’s simply not true, as the Guardian wrote yesterday, that the the bill “allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.” When the New York Times editorial page writes that the bill would “strip the F.B.I., federal prosecutors and federal courts of all or most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hand it off to the military,” or that the “legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial,” they’re simply wrong. … Read More

A New Year in a New NDAA America

By Tom Loret (about the author)

On December 14, 2011 President Obama thanked our troops at Ft. Bragg, N.C. for all their fine service and capped off the cheers with, “God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America.” The very next day a nearly unanimous multimillionaire Senate and a House count of 283-136 codified the National Defense Authorization Act that effectively overrides the Constitution and cancels our Bill of Rights. It is what George Washington University Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley calls, “… one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country.” It was also a highly charged symbolic gesture since that day was the 220th anniversary of the ratification of America’s Bill of Rights.

Put simply, the NDAA declares that America is in a global war on terror and designates America as an international battlefield so that all citizens and residents alike are now subject to indefinite military detention, interrogation and execution without charge, representation or trial. It also eliminates any need for the president or his military to justify, prove or account for their actions or the fate of those detained. And this, while the rest of us either slept or partied the night away, is what President Obama signed into law on December 31, 2011.

So, as a free-born American with a dedicated belief in and reverence for the Constitution of the United States I am forced into a quandary and am left to ask, What now, … Read More

Montanans Launch Recall of Senators Who Approved NDAA Military Detention. Merry Christmas, US Senate

By Ralph Lopez (about the author)

Disclaimer: I am now a volunteer press contact for this campaign.

From the press release:

Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86 – 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.

Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses.

Section 2 of Montana Code 2-16-603 reads:

“(2) A public officer holding an elective office may be recalled by the qualified electors entitled to vote for the elective officer’s successor.” … Read More

Vying for Detention: Two liberal Democratic Senators Give Us a Police State

By Dan DeWalt

The Police State came a big step closer in the new military authorization bill by ThisCantBeHappening

Predator Odrona is about to sign a military authorization bill [Carl Levin's S-1867] that puts every one of us at risk of being detained by our own military. If the government decides that you are a terrorist threat, the military will be able to kidnap you and deny you the right to a trial or even the right to know why you’re being held.

The arrogant and short-sighted leaders who “govern” us have granted the government the right to detain you anywhere in the world, including inside the U.S., and there is no limit to the amount of time that they can hold you once they’ve got you.

We shouldn’t worry though, they claim, because this new law is only meant for the terrorists among us.

So just who represents a terrorist threat? Well, protesters for starts, according to a Pentagon training test, which defines protests as acts of low-level terrorism. Quaker peace meetings in Vermont and across the country have been registered as “suspicious incidents” by the Defense Department’s secretive TALON snooping system. Once your name has been entered into one of these lovely surveillance systems, you can rest assured that it will never disappear. … Read More

Chris Hedges: Why I’m suing Barack Obama over NDAA

By Gaius Publius on 1/16/2012 03:25:00 PM

The counter-assault continues.

NDAA, if you recall, is the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that Barack Obama signed as his personal gift to a sleeping nation on New Years Eve. It authorized indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military — since the battlefield is everywhere, you can be arrested anywhere. You read that right.

There has been quite the groundswell of reaction, Here’s the latest, from Chris Hedges (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. …Read More

Obama’s words are hollow. Time for Liberals and Conservatives to Unite and Fight the NDAA

By Andrew Steele (about the author)

In a written statement President Obama claimed that even though he supports the NDAA  as a whole, he has serious reservations about it, and doesn’t like the parts of it that allow him to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial.  He goes on to promise Americans that he will never ever use it, arrogantly expecting the American people who have been burned by him– a known liar, promise breaker, and mass murderer disguised as a statesman– time and again to believe him.  This is the same man who escalated George Bush’s wars after promising to end them and created new ones (the latest withdrawal from Iraq is just the last stage in the process of conquering the country, and doesn’t count the contractors that remain), the man who promised not to hire lobbyists and then hired them, the man who claimed to kill bin Laden but won’t release any evidence to prove it, the man who was bought and paid for by Wall Street and then pretends to support the mostly well-meaning people who protest Wall Street’s stranglehold over America.

He’s also the president that, according to Democratic Senator Carl Levin, insisted that wording which protected American citizens from being subject to indefinite detention be kept out of the NDAA. … Read More

 rt.com

ACLU trashes Obama over indefinite detention and torture act

The great economic divide in America finds its roots in politics, in unrestrained capitalism, if you will, and in unrestrained money for politics. The following articles explain some causes and effects.

Some questions for you to think about as your read this.

Before you do,  look at this graph from Moyers and Company; The Triggers of Economic Inequality. Be sure to roll your cursor over the triangles to see what action to place at these critical junctures.

Does the present political/economic system bode well for our country?

Does the present political/economic system bode well for you and your descendants?

Do you approve of the money in politics, is it democracy in action?

What does the death of the middle class mean for the future of the United States? Is it good or bad?

Where do you fit in this political/economic system?

Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson on Engineered Inequality (Video) 

January 13, 2012

Moyers & Company dives into one of the most important and controversial issues of our time: How Washington and Big Business colluded to make the super-rich richer and turn their backs on the rest of us.

Bill’s guests – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.

How, in a nation as wealthy as America, can the economy simply stop working for people at large, while super-serving those at the very top? Through exhaustive research and analysis, the political scientists Hacker and Pierson — whom Bill regards as the “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” of economics — detail important truths behind a 30-year economic assault against the middle class.

Who’s the culprit? “American politics did it– far more than we would have believed when we started this research,” Hacker explains. “What government has done and not done, and the politics that produced it, is really at the heart of the rise of an economy that has showered huge riches on the very, very, very well off.”

Bill considers their book the best he’s seen detailing “how politicians rewrote the rules to create a winner-take-all economy that favors the 1% over everyone else, putting our once and future middle class in peril.”

The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/new-blue-collar-temp-warehouses_n_1158490.html?page=2

By Dave Jamieson

Earlier this year, temporary workers at a Pennsylvania plant packing Hershey products staged a mass walkout over what they described as abusive working conditions. The workers, who were students from Asia and Eastern Europe here on J-1 guest visas for the summer, said they were required to lift 50-pound boxes throughout the day and were threatened with deportation if they couldn’t keep up. Although they packed Hershey goods, the students were employed by a staffing company twice removed from Hershey, which had more than $5 billion in revenues last year. Similar outsourcing has spread to much of the American food-packing industry.

But such sub-contracting isn’t contained to warehouses and plants. In an effort to cut costs, even hotels have started quietly contracting out a considerable chunk of their back-of-the-house workforce to labor agencies. Hyatt, for example, has replaced many of its housekeepers with cheaper temp workers. Hyatt’s direct hires now work alongside many lesser-paid agency workers, some of whom work on a temporary basis for years on end, tracking the minimum wage.

Such subcontracting enables corporations to essentially take workers off their books, foisting the traditional responsibilities that go with being an employer — paying a reasonable wage, offering health benefits, providing a pension or retirement plan, chipping into workers’ compensation coverage — conveniently onto someone else. Workers like Dickerson, of course, aren’t accounted for when Walmart touts that more than CNNhalf of its workforce receives health coverage.

Special Report

The Changing Face of Poverty in America

Millions of Americans live in poverty, more families are suffering and hunger is seen growing.

By Octavio Blanco, CNN/Money staff writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Poverty and hunger are problems that many Americans relegate to the Third World. But the steady growth of poverty has left millions of American families afraid they won’t have enough money to put food on the table.

According to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, nearly 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 2003, an increase of 1.3 million from 2002. And since 2000, 4.4 million more people in this country are living in poverty. The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning $9,393 or less and $14,680 or less for a family of three.

And American families are faring worse than they have in years. Last year 7.6 million American families — or 10 percent of all families — lived in poverty, a big jump from 2000.

The rich get richer …

But these figures don’t complete the story.  Read More

Hard at work but can’t buy food
While the ranks of the working poor grow in number, should employers step up to stop the trend?

By Katie Benner, CNN/Money staff writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Being poor doesn’t mean being jobless, said a recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas report that found more and more working families are living at or below the poverty line.

“Poverty and hunger are rapidly becoming a workplace issue… if for no other reason than the fact that an employee who is worried about where his or her next meal will come from is not going to be very productive,” said John Challenger, company CEO, in a statement.

But that’s just the job placement firm’s assessment. Aside from wage laws, there are no other rules telling businesses what they must give their employees.

“There is no mandate for corporations except for the minimum wage, which is set at $5.15 an hour. After that, the issue’s up to the ethicists,” said William Dickens, a labor economist with the Brookings Institution.

Several economists, labor activists and legal analysts also agreed that placing the welfare of American workers at the mercy of corporate largesse is dangerous for employees because of what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has dubbed Wall Street’s “infectious greed.”

However, some labor economists say altruism could hurt bottom lines, Read More

Living and working without healthcare
For millions, healthcare is secondary to keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.

By Jilian Mincer, CNN/Money contributing writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Even though Maribeth Jones works at a hospital, the Kansas City woman doesn’t have health insurance.

“I can’t afford it,” explained the nurse assistant, who would have to pay $36 a week for coverage.

Jones’s situation is not unusual. An estimated 45 million Americans, or 15.6 percent of the population, was uninsured in 2003, up from 15.2 percent in 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data.

“The number of uninsured has been growing the last several years,” said Catherine Hoffman, senior researcher and associate director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

She blamed, among other things, the sluggish economy and growing cost of health care for the decrease in coverage. As the cost of health insurance has escalated, companies have opted to pass those higher premiums on to employees or to not provide coverage.

“We are in the midst of a weak economy,” said Paul Fronstin, director of health research, at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “That means fewer jobs and fewer people with coverage.”

Job-based coverage — one of the major sources of health insurance in the United States — dropped from 61.5 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003, according to the US Census Bureau. Read More

Report: Child poverty rate hits 20 percent in US as families struggle

Over the past decade, child poverty grew in 38 states. Economic recession and housing foreclosures are among the major reasons, wiping out earlier gains, a new report finds.

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / August 17, 2011

There has been a “significant decline” in economic well-being for low-income children and families over the past decade as the official child poverty rate grew by 18 percent and poverty levels for families with children increased in 38 states, according to a new study.Economic and housing difficulties are the main culprits, reports the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization that focuses on disadvantaged children.

“The recent recession has wiped out many of the economic gains for children that occurred in the late 1990s,” said Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and data at the Casey Foundation, as the report was released Wednesday. “Nearly 8 million children lived with at least one parent who was actively seeking employment but was unemployed in 2010. This is double the number in 2007, just three years earlier.”

“The news about the number of children who were affected by foreclosure in the United States is also very troubling because these economic challenges greatly hinder the well-being of families and the nation,” said Ms. Speer.

In the United States as a whole, nearly 15 million children (20 percent) live in poverty. … Read More

Child Poverty In America Is Absolutely EXPLODING – 16 Shocking Statistics That Will Break Your Hear

If the U.S. economy is improving, then why is child poverty in America absolutely exploding?  If we are experiencing “economic growth”, then why are more than half of all children in major U.S. cities like Cleveland and Detroit living in poverty?  If we are the “greatest economy on earth”, then why are one out of every four American children on food stamps?  The shocking statistics that you are about to read below should absolutely break your heart.  Tonight, millions of precious American children will go to bed without any dinner.  Tonight, millions of American children will shiver as they try to go to sleep because their families cannot afford any heat.  How bad does child poverty have to get before we all finally admit that our economic system is completely failing many of the most vulnerable members of our society?  If you want someone to blame, you can blame Congress, the Obama administration, the Bush administration and the corrupt Wall Street bankers.  But most of all, blame the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that the Fed administers.  Our economy is in the midst of a long-term decline and is slowly but surely dying.  Many of those that are suffering the most from this decline are children.

The following are 16 shocking statistics about child poverty in America that will break your heart….

#1 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#2 According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1.6 million American children “were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year”.

#3 The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.  In the UK and in France the child poverty rate is well under 10 percent.

#4 A higher percentage of American children is living in poverty today than was living in poverty back in 1975.

Read More

US Homelessness: 1.6 Million Children Are Homeless, Up by 38 Percent Since 2007

According to a report released today by the National Center on Homelessness, more than 1.6 million children are currently homeless in America. This amounts to one child in 45. It represents a dramatic increase of 38 percent since the onset of the recession in 2007. The report “America’s Youngest Outcasts” paints a grim picture, and it provides a ranking between the 50 states. It also recommends some policy solutions to be implemented both on  Federal and State levels.

“The recession has been a man-made disaster for vulnerable children. There are more homeless children today than after the natural disasters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which caused historic levels of homelessness in 2006. The recession’s economic devastation has left one in 45 children homeless, an increase of 38 percent from 2007 to 2010,” says MD Ellen Bassuk, President and Founder of the National Center on Family Homelessness and associate Professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. … Read More

I relate some of this so that you will understand that I have some military experience, 30 years, from Viet Nam to Desert Storm, to be specific. I have friends and classmates who died in battle and some who were captured. I have accompanied the body of my best friend to burial in a national cemetery, I have served on the joint staff, I have some knowledge about the conduct of war.

The Korean War was the first war in which the U.S. experienced the systematic torture of prisoners of war. Some were able to resist like my eventual squadron mate, Sgt George Morar, the most decorated U.S. Air Force enlisted man. You can read about Sgt Morar here “Ex-Pows May Be Decorated” and here “Rugged Travis (AFB) Sergeant Marches into the Comics.”

I asked, and George related to me some of the stories of his imprisonment. I was incredulous. First, that one human would treat another in the manner he was treated and second that he was able to resist. Many died in his camp, refusing to eat the maggot infected rice and fish. George ate everything, fifteen years later, it was still an adventure to go to dinner with George as his table manners were imprinted from the camp and drew stares from the other patrons who did not know of his bravery. George was a real life American hero, no doubt about it.

Not everyone was as tough as George. We remember GIs confessing to war crimes that none of us believed. Torture is an effective way to get someone to confess to anything just to stop the pain. I was proud that I served a country that would never do that.

Fast forward 30 years to Guantanamo Bay, the prison. I am no longer proud. The United States has proven to be just as cruel and diabolical as North Korea and North Vietnam.

Indefinite detention of combatants without trial and the use of torture is something I find abhorrent and not what I took an oath to protect on that January morning in 1963. Now the principles can even be applied to American citizens. Just in case you don’t understand, that means you or I could be detained at a Guantanamo type facility.  Read carefully so you know what to expect.

Here are some of the stories that have been published at this, the tenth anniversary of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

America Locked A Children’s Humanitarian Aid Worker In Gitmo For Seven Years

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 9, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Lakhdar Boumediene, the named plaintiff in a seminal Supreme Court case preserving Guantanamo Bay detainees’ right to challenge the legality of their detention, recounts his experience as a man falsely accused of terrorism and imprisoned at Gitmo for seven years in an op-ed in the New York Times. The whole thing is worth reading, but one sentence in particular stands out:

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

Boumediene was not simply arrested and imprisoned for years despite no evidence that he was a terrorist, he was arrested while he was working as a humanitarian aide worker. For children. The man devoted his life to helping the youngest and most vulnerable victims of a terrible conflict, and we locked him up and tortured him.

Sadly, America still has not learned the lesson Justice Louis Brandeis tried to teach us 85 years ago: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

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Exclusive: Lakhdar Boumediene, former Guantanamo detainee

Chris Hayes of MSNBC interviews former detainee.

Guantánamo: Ten Years and Counting

Obama’s and Panetta’s Spending Plan Reassures Defense Contractors, But What About Taxpayers?

Statement of Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project On Government Oversight

President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta may have said a lot of the right things today when outlining the need to rein in military spending—they’ll get no argument from us on the need to move beyond the Pentagon’s out-of-date Cold War mentality.

But beyond the Secretary’s failure to provide specifics on how he’s going to achieve his budget savings, it was what he didn’t say that left us flabbergasted.

Not once did he mention the need to take a serious look at the more than $200 billion the Pentagon spends each year on outside service contractors (the Pentagon spends more on service contractors than on all its uniformed military and civilians combined). A study we released last year found that contractors were billing the U.S. government, on average, nearly twice as much as it would have cost federal employees to do the same jobs. It simply defies logic and stretches the Administration’s credibility to tout the need for a leaner Pentagon without addressing the cost of our contractor work force. We fear Secretary Panetta’s budget cuts ignore hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. …

Editor’s note: There is no mystery here. Lobbying and political contributions keep the money flowing to service contractors. As Bill Moyers says, “the system isn’t broke, its fixed.”