Seattle PostGlobe - Top News

Goodbye and thank you from Seattle PostGlobe

Sally Deneen<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:31:42 GMT

THANK YOU

Thank you to our donors for your support, which made what we did possible. We also wish to extend special thanks to:

KCTS and Moss Bresnahan for free office space and being our fiscal sponsor during our initial months.

Justin Carder and Scott Durham of Instivate for creating the site you've seen for two years, and making us a part of Neighborlogs.

Rennie A. Sawade of Wrenware and WashTech.org for voluntarily creating our original site and in August 2011 moving our site to a new server to serve as an archive.

Andrew Saeger (AndrewSaeger.com) for creating the cool Seattle PostGlobe bird logo.

Attorney Kathy George of Harrison Benis & Spence LLP for her legal assistance.

Attorney Scot J. Johnston for legal assistance. Also, attorney Signe Naeve for legal advice.

Shunpike, our longtime nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

Spot.us, an invaluable resource that helped us drum up donations for our special projects.

Common Language Project and InvestigateWest for use of your full-length projects, and to our other partners whose work we highlighted.

It’s been an eventful two years – sometimes fun, sometimes a mountain of work, but always worthwhile. And now it’s time for the PostGlobe to say goodbye and thank you. It’s time for us to move on.

We started as a nonprofit news site created by laid-off staffers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer after the 146-year-old paper printed its last edition on what for others was a festive St. Patrick’s Day in 2009. More than 100 journalists lost their jobs as the paper scaled down its staff and went online-only. Some ended their journalism careers that day, as newspaper jobs nationally continued to evaporate – nearly 15,000 other print journalists lost their jobs that year.

Part of our purpose for starting PostGlobe was to provide former P-I staffers both hope and an outlet, as Kery Murakami, a former P-I reporter who spearheaded the site, told the Seattle Times in those early days. "We want them to know that it's not over, that you can still write for us, even if you have to get a job at Wal-Mart," he said.

Katrina Beach takes a break from her bike ride to enjoy the fog lifting at Golden Gardens Park. Grant Haller shot the image as part of a September 2009 photo essay. (Photo: Grant M. Haller)

So it was that Seattle Mariners reporter John Hickey still covered the Mariners, foreign affairs editor Larry Johnson blogged about foreign affairs, art-film reviewer Bill White reviewed art films, and so on, as Columbia Journalism Review wrote in this nice write-up. Six months later, Murakami found himself the “primary reporter, editor, art director, accountant, copy chief, IT troubleshooter,” as another CJR piece put it. People left as they found jobs or ways to get paid for their work: Murakami exited in late 2009 (he currently works at Newsday). John Hickey currently writes for P-I sports legend Art Thiel’s operation, SportsPress Northwest, as well as Comcast SportsNet Northwest. PostGlobe over time has morphed into something else -- a community site that does a fair amount of aggregation as well as some of our own enterprise reporting.

A recap of some of our major enterprise:

(Photo by Mike Kane)

Eric Ruthford explored how gangs are turning from selling drugs to selling girls for sex as part of a special series on teen prostitution in Seattle.

Our reality check on the King County 10-year plan to end homelessness revealed shortcomings; no one could think of a single homeless program that will close for lack of demand.

We broke the story about City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco getting a $40,000 bonus from the city. It’s impossible to know if another reporter would have discovered that eventually. But we may never have known had we not been there.
We broke the story of how Seattle might ban smoking in parks.

We “ truth-squaded ” the proposal by King County Council members to have Seattle pay for the downtown bus tunnel and were the only ones to report Metro believes Seattle was already paying its fair share.
We ~~were the~~ ~~only ones first to~~ reported a bit of Seattle history – the sale of four old ferries that cruised Puget Sound for decades. And we chronicled their departure for a scrap yard in Mexico.**

The thanks for these stories goes not just to the journalists, but also to our generous donors, mostly civic-minded citizens who gave in small denominations. You made possible this venue for bridging the gap and more fully informing Seattle readers.

We’ve been proud to be part of what journalism observers are calling a hotbed of innovative journalism models here in Seattle.

But there have been obstacles.

A person shouts in front of a car lit by rioters shortly after the Canucks were defeated by the Boston Bruins in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup in Vancouver, B.C., on June 15, 2011, "As long as it's staying safe, it's good to express yourself." the person said. (Photo copyright - Karen Ducey of KarenDucey.com)

Donations have fallen off. Ads have generated no meaningful revenue -- ever. We began with no startup money. We obtained no grants. All of which actually provided unusual freedom. But as a volunteer-run site, we’ve run out of helping hands as unemployed journalists have left for jobs. (Which is a good thing!)

So this is our final month.

We will attempt to keep the site up for archival value. But we will no longer collect donations through what has been our fiscal sponsor, Shunpike, which had made donations tax-deductible.

This logo greeted theater-goers attending the 2009 Seattle play "It's NOT in the P-I." The P-I wasn't the only paper to close that year. Nearly 15,000 layoffs and buyouts took place at U.S. newspapers in 2009, reports the Paper Cuts blog.

We were called the PostGlobe because of that wonderful big representation of Mother Earth atop the waterfront building where New York-based Hearst Corp. housed the P-I staff before so many were let go. We attempted to follow the “post-Globe” activities of that seasoned group of journalists who for so long had worked under that Globe to offer Seattleites smart, scrappy local insights and superb photography.

As we end SeattlePostGlobe.org, it coincidentally turns out that this week also marks a turning point for the hardworking

but tiny staff of the online-only Seattlepi.com: Its journalists are leaving their Globe-topped building to move into a different space nearby. The future of the Globe itself is uncertain. A fitting symbol for the state of indepth journalism.

We ask that you continue to choose to read the insightful writings of the independent journalists we have attempted to highlight at PostGlobe, including the dogged reporters at ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, Common Language Project, InvestigateWest, and Tom Paulson’s Humanosphere. Please consider bookmarking Paul Nyhan’s Birth to Thrive blog on early learning, Gene Stout’s music reviews, Martha Baskin’s environment reporting, as well as checking out stories from nonprofit Crosscut and local independent blogs, such as Justin Carder’s hyperlocal Capitol Hill Seattle Blog and Jonah Spangenthal-Lee’s SeattleCrime.com.

Seattleites know the power of voting and of spending money at indie establishments. Exercise your power to improve journalism: Support independent journalists. Click on their stories. Spend time with them. “Like” their articles on Facebook. Tweet about them. You will, in this way, show grant makers and advertisers that they’re worthwhile; not all news media must be reduced to fashion photos and cat videos.

We have attempted at PostGlobe to serve as a megaphone for indie journalists, and now it’s your turn to grab the megaphone. Thank you for accepting this easy but powerful charge. You have more power than you may ever know.

Best,

Sally Deneen, co-founder and curator

Seattlepostglobe@yahoo.com

** This story originally incorrectly stated that PostGlobe was the only outlet to report a bit of Seattle history – the sale of four old ferries that cruised Puget Sound for decades -- and that we were the only outlet to chronicle their departure for a scrap yard in Mexico. We regret the error.

In fact, we tried to do a unique take on the subject at the point where the scrap-yard folks were about to haul the old ferries off to Mexico, but the PostGlobe wasn't the only outlet covering the subject, as pointed out by two commenters below. Reached via email today (July 30), reporter Larry Lange set the matter straight. He recalled reporting on the ferries: "There had been other stories on the pending sale of the ferries for scrap in late 2008, before the PostGlobe started up. All the local media, including the P-I when it was printing, the Herald and others reported the ferry system's plan to sell the boats.

"What Grant and I did for the Post Globe months later was a long followup that traced the history of the four boats, the decision first to take them out of service and then the difficulties getting them sold. One previous sale had fallen through because scrap-metal prices had dropped. The ferry system ultimately had to take a lot less money for the boats than it had hoped, just to get them out of the maintenance yard. The PostGlobe story picked up the thread when the state finally got a firm buyer and had his check in hand, hence the new story lead: 'this time, the scrap yard for sure.'" - S.D.

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Afghan judges accuse U.S. of war crimes

David Swanson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:16:53 GMT

I recently sat down for 90 minutes to speak with six Afghan judges, all of them women, and an English-Dari interpreter, a man. They spoke to me as individuals. They aren't preparing any investigations or indictments. The relevance of their being judges is that they know the law. They've studied international law, and they were visiting the United States to learn about our legal and political systems. They believe the United States is guilty of war crimes.

I was the one who raised the subject. I pointed to Italian convictions of CIA agents for kidnapping, Spanish investigations of U.S. officials for torture, etc., and asked what these judges' views were on international law violations, universal jurisdiction, and what appear to be clear crimes committed by the United States in Afghanistan.

The first judge to reply spoke of the horrors of the Taliban, and of the initial gratitude for the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago. But, she said, the mission changed to one of fighting terrorism, and through that "we lost all of our civil rights." She described U.S. troops kicking in doors of houses at night with women and girls asleep in their beds. She described disappearances and accounts of torture. What the United States and NATO are doing, seizing people, locking them up, disappearing them, and torturing them is clearly illegal and against international law, she said. According to international treaties, she went on, when one country occupies another, the host country does not lose its sovereignty, and yet all decisions are now being made by the occupying country without any say by the Afghan government.

A second judge spoke up. "Your Constitution speaks of freedom and a people's government," she said, "but the United States is running secret prisons, torturing, disappearing people, and locking people up for years with no due process." The behavior of the United States, she said, violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for. "It may seem trivial," she continued, "but it affects our daily lives." If a member of the international occupying forces gets into a hit and run with their car, and you go to the base to complain, you are threatened. They have total immunity from any rule of law, she explained.

She said that in a case involving an Australian, he was turned over to Afghan courts for a murder trial, because the military was not involved. But with U.S. forces, she said, we have to rely on the U.S. court system, and we often hear about these people being acquitted. The judge went on to make a broader point. With the great cost to the United States in blood and treasure, she said, we ought to be grateful. But the perception Afghans have of the U.S. forces, she explained, is of a group of arrogant occupiers who kick in doors.

The first judge to have spoken then joined back in, remarking that "the United States tells other countries how to be democratic and operate within a rule of law, but the United States as role model breaks every one of those things."

A third judge expressed her agreement. She said that she had witnessed helicopters coming and taking away all of the men in a compound, leaving the women and children screaming. This is not war, she said, but if it is a police action then who authorized it? There is no probable cause, she said. None! And the men are disappeared.

Judge number two broadened the discussion to the topic of the occupation itself, expressing her belief that the U.S. public was being kept in the dark about the real motivations behind the war. Al Qaeda isn't there and bin Laden is now dead, she pointed out. People should be given some reason for this going on, she said. I replied that actual motivations included the stationing of bases and weapons, a gas pipeline, profiteering, etc. At that, the women all began nodding and talking. A fourth judge to speak up interjected that even a child in rural Afghanistan knew the truth of what I had said, that the Taliban was simply an excuse.

Then it was my turn to answer questions. What does the average American think of war casualties? Why is there so much militarism and patriotism in the United States? Why is it that for centuries the United States has gone abroad to fight wars in other countries? Do Americans know how the rest of the world sees their country? Why do politicians choose policies that kill people? I answered to the best of my ability.

And then, surprisingly perhaps -- although this is quite common in speaking with Afghans, especially better-off urban Afghans -- the discussion swung around to the judges' concern that things might be dramatically worse if the United States were to leave before establishing stability.

I asked them whether, after 10 years, stability was increasing or decreasing. They admitted that it was decreasing but proposed that a change in approach might reverse that. The change in approach that at least one of them recommended was for the United States to get tough with Pakistan, which was to blame for the worst forces within Afghanistan. The interpreter apologetically explained that Afghans blame Pakistan for everything just as every country, he said, blames some other country. Yet it is certainly true that Pakistan has done great damage to Afghanistan for decades, with great assistance from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, not to mention the damage done by the Soviet Union. This does not, of course, mean that a different U.S. approach to Pakistan would create a stable U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation was destabilizing for the same reason the U.S. occupation is destabilizing: people hate being occupied.

Well, what would I do? That's what they wanted to know: what would I advise Obama?

I told them that I would announce that the military occupation was ending soon, that there would be no bases left behind and no weapons left behind, that I would immediately prosecute war crimes, that I would fund educational and civic and aid organizations run and controlled by Afghans, that I would facilitate open and honest elections, and that I would support any temporary international peace-keeping force favored by Afghans' elected representatives. As this was being translated, every one of the six judges began applauding and declaring things like "You speak from our hearts."

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"

http://rootsaction.org

http://warisacrime.org

http://davidswanson.org

http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319

http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson

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Second thoughts on sex and politics

Stephen Engelberg<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:45:25 GMT

The resignation of Rep. David Wu [1] may seem like little more than a blip in the year's cavalcade of sexual misconduct by elected officials, from all-male tickle parties and crotch sexting to craigslist trawling. And the swift departure of this Oregon congressman, who said a recent sexual encounter with a friend's teenage daughter was "consensual," assures his name will fade as quickly as last week's debt reduction plan.

But the Wu story, which has been followed closely by few outside the Northwest, deserves more attention. In fact, it is among the most compelling arguments for why news organizations should aggressively pursue allegations of sexual misconduct, even when they seem like ancient history.

I am a reluctant convert to the value of sex as an investigative subject. In the late 1980s, shortly after Gary Hart's infamous invitation to "follow me," led to revelations about his extra-marital canoodling aboard the good ship Monkey Business, I was asked by an editor in The New York Times Washington bureau to look into a rumor that Vice President George H. W. Bush had fathered a child out of wedlock. I refused, telling my boss that "I didn't become a journalist to peer into people's bedrooms."

A few years later, a thinly sourced version of the story surfaced in the New York Post. Bush, by then president, brushed it off. "I'm not going to take any sleazy questions like that," he bristled. "I'm not going to respond other than to say it's a lie."

Quaintly, a denial from the president put the story to rest.

A few years later, I was in Arkansas for the New York Times to interview Judge David Hale, a peripheral figure in the Clintons' Whitewater land dealings. Jeff Gerth and I repeatedly pressed Hale for details on the couple's feckless attempt to create a vacation wonderland in the Ozarks. Mystified, Hale asked Gerth, who is now a ProPublica reporter, why we weren't more interested in Clinton's sex life. Jeff explained that we were from the New York Times and didn't do sex investigations.

Fast forward to Bill Clinton's second term, and we were all galloping after the Monica Lewinsky story which, typically, had been broken by our competitors. One weekend I went to visit my brother, a lawyer who respected the sober journalism practiced by the Times. We stopped in a supermarket and I bought a copy of The National Enquirer. "You read this?" he asked incredulously. "Yes," I replied. "They've had a lot of stuff first on Monica." Thumbing through the issue, I pointed to an article about a stained blue dress. "Who knows?" I said. "This might even be true."

In 2002, I joined The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., as a managing editor. Within a year, I was part of the management team that bungled one of the most significant sex scandals one could imagine: The story of how a former governor and Carter-administration cabinet secretary had preyed on a teenage girl and covered up his misconduct. Neil Goldschmidt was the golden boy of Oregon politics, a kingmaker with the darkest secret imaginable. We had a plausible tip on the story, but failed to follow up, allowing a competitor, Willamette Week, to break the story and win a Pulitzer Prize.

It marked the second time in modern history that the Oregonian had failed on a big sex story. Earlier, the paper had known about and failed to fully investigate on Sen. Robert Packwood's habit of making unwanted sexual advances. One of his victims had been a reporter in the Oregonian's Washington bureau. The story appeared first in The Washington Post, embarrassing the hometown paper.

In the wake of the Goldschmidt story, I pushed the Oregonian's reporters and editors to run to ground every tip relating to sexual misconduct by a public official.

Our attention quickly turned to David Wu, who was running for re-election in 2004. Wu, a Taiwanese immigrant and lawyer, was an awkward man. Years earlier, the paper had been tipped that he had sexually accosted his ex-girlfriend while a student at Stanford in the mid-'70s. Efforts to confirm the story had been unsuccessful.

We assigned three reporters to try again. The woman at the center of the case politely but adamantly refused to cooperate, saying she had long ago made her peace with whatever had happened. No charges had ever been filed. There was no paper trail of any kind.

But over several months, reporters Laura Gunderson, Dave Hogan, and Jeff Kosseff improbably tracked down witnesses who were willing to go on the record. They found Leah Kaplan, an 82-year-old former therapist at Stanford who had counseled the woman and was suffering from a fatal illness. Kaplan, still angered by the incident, breached patient confidentiality and said that she had pressed Stanford officials to take disciplinary action against Wu. She said they declined to ruin the record of a promising young man who, at the time, was hoping to attend medical school.

Kaplan's statements were intriguing, but not sufficient. We pressed the reporters to find the campus security officers who responded to complaints of a woman screaming in 1976. Find the cop. He'll remember.

And so they did. Raoul K. Niemeyer, then a patrol commander at Stanford, remembered that Wu had scratches on his face and neck. He said Wu claimed that what had happened was "consensual."

Just a few weeks before the election, we had a story ready for publication. Wu hired a lawyer who ferociously counter-attacked, threatening to sue the Oregonian if any story were published. Neither Wu nor the lawyer would answer questions about the incident, but they contacted Kaplan's family and made it clear they were prepared to hold the dying woman legally accountable for her conduct. Wu's campaign manager said the candidate would never respond to "unsubstantiated allegations."

Top editors at the paper were divided about what to do. It was late in the campaign. The incident was decades old. Could one reasonably call it a "youthful" mistake? Was it fair to put someone's college years under a microscope? The victim was unwilling to come forward. Shouldn't that weigh? And what about the threats from Wu's lawyer?

Ultimately, we decided to publish. We concluded that at least some voters would want to know their congressman had this incident in his past. The morning the story appeared, Wu issued a statement saying: "As a 21-year old, I hurt someone I cared very much about. I take full responsibility for my actions and I am sorry. This single event forever changed my life and the person that I have become."

Wu's opponent hammered away at his character -- to no effect. More than 350 readers wrote to criticize the story, and even the paper's ombudsman attacked it, questioning its relevance and reliance on second-hand sources.

Wu went up in the polls, winning re-election easily.

Over the next few months, we heard other stories from other women. None was willing to go on the record. It appeared to us that Wu's aggressive conduct with women may have continued deep into his adulthood. But we were unable to prove it.

The Wu story revived during the 2010 election cycle, when most of his aides quit just after the campaign. Several said his behavior was bizarre. Someone leaked a photo of the congressman in a tiger suit that he had sent aides.

Following the story from New York as an editor at ProPublica, I shrugged. And then came the bombshell disclosure that an 18-year old woman, daughter of a political supporter, had called Wu's offices and left a voice mail stating that she had been the victim of a coercive sexual encounter with him the previous Thanksgiving.

Oregonian reporters Charles Pope, Janie Har, and Beth Slovic broke the story. Once again, Wu initially refused to respond to questions. Once again, the victim declined to participate in the story. Once again, Wu said it was "consensual."

After a few more days of hanging tough, Wu took the advice of Democratic leaders and said he would resign after the debt ceiling debate is resolved. ""The well-being of my children must come before anything else," he said in a statement.

I apologize to the teenager whose distraught call is said to describe a traumatic experience at the hands of a 56-year-old member of Congress. Despite our best efforts, we failed you. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that sex can be a legitimate arena for investigative reporting. It certainly was in the case of David Wu.

Inform our investigations: Do you have information or expertise relevant to this story? Help us and journalists around the country by sharing your stories and experiences. This story appeared originally at ProPublica.

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Cliff Mass: Cloudy weather is at its worst in 60 years

Cliff Mass<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:30:34 GMT

Several of you have noted that it is not the cool temperatures or even the rain that bothered you this last few months, but the lack of sunlight--sort of like a summer version of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). So what is the truth about clouds this spring and summer?

In such situations there is ONE expert on our local murk that I trust, a local scientist who has spent great time looking a the climatology and trends of local clouds. I have mentioned him before---Dr. Jim Johnstone, AKA Dr. Fog, a researcher here at the UW.

Here are some of his depressing results--the average number of hours a day with clouds at Sea-Tac for April through June 2010 and 2011 have simply been the worst over the past 60 years. We are talking about 18-19 hrs a day of cloud on average. And the general trend the last few decades is for more clouds.

FULL STORY...

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Wait, parts of the FAA have been shut down? We explain.

Marian Wang<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:15:50 GMT

Thought Congress had averted a government shutdown by striking a 2011 budget deal back in April? That’s only partly true.

While lawmakers deadlock over long-term deficit reduction plans tied to the raising of the debt ceiling, one federal agency—the Federal Aviation Administration—has been in partial shutdown for nearly a week. The issue has largely been overshadowed by the debt debate, but as the New York Times notes, it’s another example of our current legislative dysfunction that's had real consequences.

So what’s happened?

Last week, Congress adjourned on Friday without reaching an agreement to extend the operating authority of the FAA, meaning the agency currently doesn't have the authority to collect taxes on ticket sales, which it uses to pay for some-4,000 employees' salaries. The lost revenue amounts to about $200 million a week.

As a result, thousands of workers have been furloughed and may not get paid for days missed. And without FAA officials to oversee airport construction projects, the agency has issued stop-work orders to more than 150 projects across the country, putting thousands more private-sector construction workers temporarily out of work as well.

Can I still fly?

Yes, you can still fly. As we explained back in April when the government was at risk of closing its doors, when a shutdown occurs workers are either categorized as essential or non-essential. Air traffic controllers and plane safety inspectors, of course, have been deemed to be essential and are still on the job, and so far the shutdown doesn’t seem to have affected airline schedules.

Who’s benefitting from this?

Probably not you. Initial reports suggested that minus the ticket taxes, consumers could reap some savings on air travel—and some may have at first. But some airlines soon changed their minds and raised their prices so that tickets now cost about as much as if the tax were still there. In other words, money that would have gone to funding the FAA has gone straight into the pockets of some major U.S. airlines.

“This short-term additional revenue for airlines, which does not mean a fare increase for consumers, benefits all stakeholders—customers, employees and investors—by temporarily improving tiny industry margins to better cover costs and enable airlines to invest in their product and service,” a spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association, the trade group for large U.S. airlines, told NPR.

So why did Congress force the shutdown?

Several minor disputes have led to this impasse.

The first is an industry-backed provision by House Republicans that would make it harder for aviation and railroad workers to unionize, essentially by counting workers who didn’t vote in a union election as having voted against the union. President Obama has threatened to veto any FAA bill containing this measure, but it’s included in the House version of the bill anyway.

The second dispute is over a program—called the Essential Air Service Program—that provides subsidies to airlines that fly into tiny airports servicing more than 100 rural communities. House Republicans have tried to reduce those subsidies and phase them out in all states except for Alaska and Hawaii. The move has been opposed by some lawmakers whose states’ subsidies will be ended.

It’s worth noting that the Government Accountability Office has recommended that Congress reexamine whether funds for the Essential Air Service Program are being used efficiently. But it’s also unclear whether the lawmakers who've proposed cutting the program care much about it one way or the other. Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Transportation committee, assured a conference of airport executives earlier this month that the House added the provision as a bargaining chip to win concessions on the unionization issue, reported Aviation Week. “It’s just a tool,” Mica told the executives.

The third dispute is over the number of flights that should be allowed at Washington’s Reagan National Airport—another sticking point for lawmakers who frequent the airport more than the general public. The Washington Post describes the dispute this way:

The number of flights that should be allowed at National has long been a source of friction between members of Congress from the Washington region, who are concerned about noise and the region’s two other major airports, and their colleagues from distant states, who want more direct flights home.

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Though these disputes are relatively minor, there's also a bigger backstory we should mention, and it dates back to 2007. That’s the year that the FAA's last long-term operating authority expired. Ever since, Congress has been unable to agree on new long-term legislation and has instead kept the agency operating through short-term extensions—20 of them, to be exact. They’re currently trying to work out the 21st short-term extension, even though Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has for months said the agency needs the sort of long-term reauthorization given to other federal agencies.

Who’s to blame for this?

Well, Transportation Secretary LaHood has placed the blame squarely on Congress: "Because Congress didn't do its work, FAA programs and thousands of public- and private-sector jobs are in jeopardy,” he told reporters earlier this week.

Democrats have insisted that Republicans drop the labor provision, which they view as an industry-backed assault on unions. Republicans have criticized Democrats for unwillingness to eliminate “wasteful programs” such as the rural airport subsidies.

Meanwhile, at the estimated cost of $30 million a day, the nearly weeklong stalemate has already wasted about as much than the $200-million subsidy program costs in a year.

When will it be resolved?

The House has passed a bill—with the controversial union measure included—but the Senate is delaying a vote because of the debt negotiations, the Associated Press reports.

Rep. Mica, a key lawmaker in the dispute, has said he has “no idea” when the shutdown will end. And at least one anonymous Senate staff member told the Post: “Don’t hold your breath.”

Inform our investigations: Do you have information or expertise relevant to this story? Help us and journalists around the country by sharing your stories and experiences. This story appeared originally at ProPublica.

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Fact check: Debt ceiling raised at last minute under Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush

FactCheck.org<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:24:46 GMT

President Barack Obama's communications director said we’ve "never" been in danger of defaulting before. That's not true. Congress has come close to failing to raise the debt ceiling before defaulting more than once in recent years, under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that if Congress does not raise the current debt limit — the amount of money that the federal government is allowed to borrow to pay for things such as benefits for entitlement programs and the interest on the national debt — the country will begin to default on its obligations on Aug. 2.

But is this the first time the country has been in "danger" of defaulting, as Pfeiffer claimed?

Hardly. We came close at least three other times, as recently as President George W. Bush's first term, according to a Congressional Research Service report on the history of the debt limit increases.

FULL STORY...

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Years later: Human Rights Watch announces that Bush and Cheney tortured -- what gives?

David Swanson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:31:53 GMT

COMMENTARY

Statutes of limitations for torture not resulting in death have passed. The Department of Justice has refused to prosecute 99 of 101 cases of torture-to-death that it looked at. Obama has long since publicly told the DOJ not to prosecute the CIA for torture. Obama's torture of Bradley Manning has been widely ignored. Rendition has been established as normal. Torturers have published confessional/bragging memoirs. Habeas corpus has been formally ended. The Bagram-Gitmo archipelago is here to stay. Torture continues in Iraq, Afghanistan, elsewhere. Assassinations have been established as the truly big new fashion. Harold Koh has replaced John Yoo as the Guy Who Will "Legalize" Anything. We've got more illegal wars going at once than ever before. Congress has practically dropped the pretense of a rule of law. The President can't clear his throat without opposing "relitigating the past," as if on the planet he comes from it is common to litigate the future. And Human Rights Watch has chosen this moment to announce that Bush and Cheney might just have been responsible for torture?

"(Washington, DC) - Overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration obliges President Barack Obama to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Obama administration has failed to meet US obligations under the Convention against Torture to investigate acts of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, Human Rights Watch said."

Hey, thanks, Sherlock. What was your first clue?

I'm glad someone still cares. But why not care a little faster? This report ends by reviewing foreign efforts to step in where the U.S. justice system has failed, and U.S. efforts -- successful thus far -- to prevent that.

If Human Rights Watch turns against illegal wars someday, we can perhaps expect a review of the bombing of Libya several years after it ceases. And we'll be better off, I guess. But why not speak up at the time? If Bush and Cheney belong in prison, why would it have been so unacceptably impolite to impeach them and remove them from office?

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"

http://rootsaction.org

http://warisacrime.org

http://davidswanson.org

http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319

http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson

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Whistleblowers say Nuclear Regulatory Commission watchdog is losing its bite

John Sullivan and Cameron Hickey<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:45:17 GMT

When he retired after 26 years as an investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of the Inspector General, George Mulley thought his final report was one of his best.

Mulley had spent months looking into why a pipe carrying cooling water at the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois had rusted so badly that it burst. His report cited lapses by a parade of NRC inspectors over six years and systemic weaknesses in the way the NRC monitors corrosion.

But rather than accept Mulley's findings, the inspector general's office rewrote them. The revised report shifted much of the blame to the plant's owner, Exelon, instead of NRC procedures. And instead of designating it a public report and delivering it to Congress, as is the norm, the office put it off-limits. A reporter obtained it only after filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has thrust the NRC's role as industry overseer squarely in the spotlight, but another critical player in U.S. nuclear safety is the NRC's Office of the Inspector General, an independent agency that serves as watchdog to the watchdog.

Now, Mulley and one other former OIG employee have come forth with allegations that the inspector general's office buried the critical Byron report and dropped an investigation into whether the NRC is relying on outdated methods to predict damage from an aircraft crashing into a plant.

The inspector general's office, they assert, has shied away from challenging the NRC at exactly the wrong time, with many of the country's 104 nuclear power plants aging beyond their 40-year design life and with reactor meltdowns at Fukushima rewriting the definition of a catastrophic accident.

"We're in the nuclear power business. It's not a trivial business; it's public health and safety," said Mulley, who won the agency's top awards and reviewed nearly every major investigation the office conducted before he retired as the chief investigator three years ago.

"We have to have somebody that's going to look over the NRC's shoulder and make sure they were fulfilling their obligations," he said.

Inspector General Hubert T. Bell [1] declined to comment, but Joseph McMillan, the assistant inspector general for investigations, said the office has continued to vigorously pursue cases. He confirmed that the aircraft crash case has been closed but said it was proper. Regarding the Byron case, McMillan acknowledged disagreements but said: "I stand by the work we have done."

The U.S. nuclear industry can point to an enviable safety record -- no member of the public has ever been injured by an accident at a plant. Nonetheless, critics point to issues like the NRC's drawn-out effort to enforce fire rules [2] as evidence that the five-member commission and the agency it runs are too close to the industry.

The inspector general's office has traditionally filled a key oversight role, conducting dozens of investigations that have changed how the NRC regulates nuclear waste, fire protection and security, among other things. Its regular reports to Congress [3] cover waste, fraud and agency performance.

Many federal agencies have similar independent offices to ferret out wrongdoing and improve efficiency. The NRC's was established in 1989 and has been led for the past 15 years by Bell, who was appointed by President Clinton after nearly three decades in the Secret Service.

'Everything Seems to Die'

In the office's history, Mulley has left a big mark.

For years, he documented how the NRC dropped the ball on the handling of nuclear fuel and security in nuclear plants. His reports on defective fire barriers led to congressional hearings and ultimately to a complete overhaul of the agency's fire protection regulations.

He retired in 2008 as a senior-level assistant for investigations but continued work as an OIG consultant for two more years. Before he retired, Bell and a deputy wrote that Mulley was "so thorough and knowledgeable of all aspects of investigations, that even NRC management recognizes the value added to having Mr. Mulley's expertise on all cases."

Mulley is not alone in his concerns about the inspector general's office. Another former employee told ProPublica that the office has become reluctant to probe anything that could become controversial or raise difficult questions for the NRC.

"They don't want to do anything," said the ex-employee, who left out of dissatisfaction with the direction of the office and asked not to be named to protect his current job. "Everything just seems to die."

The former employee told ProPublica that the OIG's office had dropped an inquiry into whether the NRC could accurately predict the damage to a plant from an airplane crash, and Mulley confirmed his account, saying the office received a tip in 2007 that the NRC was using an outdated method.

Because a wrong prediction could lead to insufficient protection for the plants, the inspector general's office opened an investigation, Mulley said. "We went to several experts who said that thing is antiquated, you can't use it," he said.

Mulley said that the NRC's experts insisted that their method was accurate. He said the aim of the investigation was not to prove that the NRC experts were wrong but to show there was a dispute and question whether the NRC should update its predictions.

"In my mind, the OIG was not going to resolve it," he said. "It raised a valid question."

The 2001 terrorist attacks drew attention to the potential hazard of an aircraft crash for nuclear plants, and afterward the NRC and nuclear industry examined whether new precautions were needed.

The main industry trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, commissioned studies that showed U.S. plants could sustain a direct hit [4] from a modern airliner without any radiation release.

Following 9/11, the NRC adopted a rule requiring nuclear operators to take steps to minimize possible damage [5] from major natural disasters or an aircraft crash. Two years ago, the commission required new licensees [6] to assess whether their reactors could withstand an airliner crash.

Eliot Brenner, an NRC spokesman, said the agency's method of evaluating the risk to plants has been thoroughly checked and relies on "realistic threat parameters."

McMillan said that OIG completed its investigation into the crash prediction issue and that the case was "closed to the file," meaning that no report was issued.

The decision to forgo a report usually means that the inspector general found no public safety concerns. McMillan declined to comment on the report or to describe any conclusions. He said it was available only through a Freedom of Information Act request, which ProPublica filed today.

The Byron Plant's Rusty Pipe

Mulley spent more than a year investigating why the pipe blew out at the Byron plant.

On Oct. 19, 2007, a worker using a wire brush to clean a thick coating of rust from the massive steel pipe ripped completely through the metal. Water shot out [7], triggering a 12-day shutdown of the plant's two reactors located outside Rockford, Ill.

The 24-inch pipe was part of the plant's Essential Service Water System [8], a network of eight huge pipes that carries water to cool emergency equipment. During an accident, it can be critical because it protects the generators and pumps that keep the reactor from overheating.

"It's a safety-related system," Mulley said. "If it doesn't operate, you can't operate the plant."

After the pipe ruptured, the NRC assigned a special inspection team to find out whether Exelon could have prevented it. Mulley put together a four-person team to start a parallel investigation into whether the NRC inspectors should have caught the problem beforehand.

His team interviewed workers and NRC inspectors assigned to the Byron plant since the early 1990s. They concentrated heavily on the inspectors' actions in 2007, when Byron engineers began scrutinizing pipe sections, called risers, that were partly buried in concrete in a below-ground vault.

Plant engineers performed ultrasonic tests on the thickness of the risers. Originally, the pipe walls were three-eighths of an inch thick [9], but over the span of three tests, engineers stepped the acceptable thickness down to three-hundredths of an inch [10] -- equivalent to seven sheets of paper.

Mulley's team found that the NRC's on-site inspectors had not checked the Byron engineers' work even though repeated drops in safety margin should have been a red flag. Corrosion in Byron's essential water system had been discussed in plant meetings, and because testing the risers required repeated use of a crane to gain access, inspectors should have suspected something.

"The NRC is supposed to -- if they're overseeing this thing -- take a look at it and say, 'Oh, wait a minute, what's going on?'" Mulley said. "But obviously, they didn't look at that one."

Mulley found that NRC's on-site inspectors had repeated opportunities to check the pipes over the years but had not done so. In interviews, the inspectors told Mulley's investigators that they had been busy with other work. Although inspectors had preformed a required number of equipment checks, Mulley's report found that their inability to set priorities [11] was a weakness in the inspection program.

The NRC, it turns out, had received a warning about a similar pipe break at the Vendellos nuclear plant in Spain [12], Mulley's team discovered. Peter B. Lyons, then an NRC commissioner, had even mentioned the Vendellos break in a speech, saying the agency was on top of the problem. But the word was never sent to NRC inspectors in the field, Mulley found.

"I don't think anybody up there was purposely saying, 'Hey, this is not so important,'" Mulley said of the Vendellos information. "I think they knew it was important. I think they intended to. I don't think anybody followed up on it, and then it falls into the cracks."

Report Revised, Kept From Public

Because the Byron incident touched broadly on NRC inspection policies, Mulley opened his case as an Event Inquiry -- a report normally intended for release to Congress and the public. He stayed on after retirement to complete it, submitting it in 2009 with some tough conclusions.

The NRC "provided little meaningful regulatory oversight of corrosion of piping in the Byron essential service water system, one of Byron's most risk significant systems," his version states [13]. Moreover, the NRC "did not take full advantage of lessons learned" from Vendellos.

Mulley said no one raised questions.

"The report languished for a year," he said. "Nobody ever got back to me once to let me know, although I emailed them asking what's going on, what's happening with this thing."

Then, in September 2010, the inspector general's office issued a new version. Mulley's draft had been thoroughly rewritten, and although the facts were similar, the conclusions were not.

The report said NRC oversight "was not successful" [14] and that guidance for inspectors "was not specific enough," [15] but pointedly blamed Exelon [16] for the inspectors' failings.

"Although the (NRC) resident inspectors carried out routine oversight responsibilities in accordance with agency requirements, the licensee's failure to analyze a problem correctly resulted in the resident inspector's lack of awareness of a significant problem," it states.

By contrast, Mulley's version squarely faults NRC inspectors [13] and procedures.

"From 2000 to 2007, the NRC did not conduct any documented inspection activity of essential service water piping," it states, while inspectors "provided no regulatory review 2026 to support the licensee's lowering of the acceptable minimum wall thickness" in the piping.

The revised report did not mention Vendellos or the NRC's failure to inform inspectors about it. And instead of being issued publicly, the report was classified for internal use only.

"I was amazed," Mulley said. "This had never happened before in all my years."

Mulley said the official report left out systemic problems his team uncovered and was not published so that shortcomings in NRC oversight would be hidden from the public and Congress.

"I think changes that could have been made, pressure that could have been applied to improve the process, improve our oversight, are not going to be done," Mulley said.

'We Stand by the Report'

Brenner, the NRC spokesman, said the commission has upgraded procedures as a result of its own review [17] of the Byron incident. In particular, he said inspectors were told to prioritize inspections of areas that had limited access and of equipment that repeatedly degraded, like the pipes at Byron.

McMillan declined to answer any specific questions about the Byron report because the matter has been referred to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, which has the authority to investigate allegations of wrongdoing against inspectors general.

He said he believed the Byron case was handled appropriately. "We can have disagreements over how the reports are handled," he said, "but at the end of the day, we stand by the report."

A spokesman for the council's integrity committee said he could not comment. Marshall Murphy, an Exelon spokesman, also declined to comment. The company previously has said it improved procedures after the pipe rupture at Byron.

The significance of a strong, independent inspector general is not lost on the NRC, which is struggling with how to respond to the Fukushima accident after a special agency task force called for a potentially far-reaching reworking of regulations covering catastrophic events.

Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who has come under fire recently for pushing too fast on reforms, reflected on the inspector general's role in a statement last month.

The office, Jaczko said, "plays an important role in enabling the American people to continue to have confidence that my focus as chairman -- and the entire agency's focus -- is on effectively carrying out the NRC's vital safety mission."

Mulley said that mission is too vital for him to remain silent.

"I am coming forward because I spent my entire life, most of my professional life, doing this," he said. "We get the power to write these reports, we get the power to talk to you. We've got the power to go to (Capitol) Hill, at least keep it in line a little bit as much as we can.

"We can't be every place but at least try to keep them in line, and I think it's vital."

This article appeared originally at ProPublica

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Dispatch from inside the Malawi protests: An African spring?

Tom Paulson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:30:33 GMT

Malawi is in upheaval.

Just as when Tunisians first rose up against their government, few outside are paying much attention.

The same basic forces — unemployment, high food prices, human rights abuses and mistrust of government — which sparked the revolt in Tunisia and then led to today’s widespread popular revolution across the Arab world, is now at play in this small, southeastern African nation.

Time magazine sees From Malawi to Senegal, signs of a Sub-Saharan Arab Spring:

Malawi is the latest in a series of sub-Saharan countries to face political unrest in recent months — what some analysts claim are echoes of the Arab Spring that swept North Africa and the Middle East earlier this year.

Continue reading →

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Newborn screening breakthroughs create challenges

Paul Nyhan<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:15:47 GMT

Bioethical issues during pregnancy and childbirth likely will only get more complicated for parents and doctors in the coming years. This week The Wall Street Journal explores new challenges posed by breakthroughs in newborn screening.

Technology allows hospitals to test newborns for a growing number of disorders, the newspaper reported, even though parents can’t do much to treat some of the illnesses found during testing.

Some states have expanded their checks, including testing for amino-acid and metabolism disorders. Many of the new conditions being looked at have no definitive treatment or it isn't clear whether immediate intervention is necessary. That can present an emotional dilemma for parents... (more)

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Debt is a crisis

David Swanson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 23:15:30 GMT

COMMENTARY

What if the imminent banging of Uncle Sam's skull into the looming debt ceiling isn't a crisis, but the very concept of debt is? The debt ceiling has been lifted numerous times without fanfare or fainting spells. All we face this week is a fabricated opportunity to gut social programs and trusts under the guise of a phony crisis and a discourse constricted to exclude taxation of the wealthy or cuts to the war machine.

But what if more deficit spending isn't a safe answer? I am completely aware that those who want to ruin this country by defunding everything but Wall Street and wars are opposed to deficit spending. I am familiar with the notion that the Great Depression required deficit spending in order to boost the real economy, after which the government's books could be more readily put in order. I don't imagine that a nation is the same thing as a household or any such simpletonian hooey. And yet…

A different sort of argument is made in this paper: http://www.monetary.org/yamaguchipaper.pdf

and on this website: http://www.monetary.org

Now, I'm no more an economist than a physicist or an astrologer, and am by no means clear which of those two comparisons is more apt. But I know that when a small group of private gazillionaires unaccountable to public censure is freed to do what it wants, it usually tries to screw everyone else to its own benefit. And I know that even more than the United States Senate, that description fits the Federal Reserve. So, I don't feel I need a theoretical calculation to prove to me that a better chance at a decent monetary policy would come from bringing monetary decisions under something approaching public control.

It's also clear that deficits could be eliminated, even without progressive taxation, purely by reducing military spending to sane levels, a glaringly obvious point often avoided by both rightwing pseudo-spending hawks and liberal deficit defenders.

The paper linked above argues that the gold standard failed in the 1930s, the gold-dollar standard failed in 1971, and the dollar standard will fail, in all likelihood prior to either John Boehner or Barack Obama favoring a decrease in military spending. Then there's this:

"Even in the scenario of debt crisis due to the runaway accumulation of debt fails to be observed in the near future, still there exist some ethical reasons to stop accumulating debts. First, it continues to create unfair income distribution in favor of creditors, that is, bankers and financial elite, causing inefficient allocation of resources and economic performances, and eventually social turmoil among the poor. Second, obligatory payment of interest forces the indebted producers to continue incessant economic growth to the limit of environmental carrying capacity, which eventually leads to the collapse of environment. In short, a debt money system is unsustainable as a macroeconomic system."

The alternative proposed is a non-debt public money system. If such a system really can maintain checks on limitless money-invention and spending, while avoiding the disasters of plutocracy and environmental collapse, dethroning "growth" and raising up the ideal of sustainable prosperity decoupled from international competition, why would we not consider it? Why, after all, should we get together collectively as a government and invent money, but pay interest on that money to a gang of pirates who send their kids to summer camp on private jets while pursuing a prison and poorhouse economy for the rest of us?

In this vision of a decent society, individuals and businesses could still go into debt. We just wouldn't be obliged to do so in order to eat or visit a hospital. And the terms of loans would not be legislated to suit the wishes of the usurers.

I don't know what Percy Bysshe Shelley would have thought of this, but he did write:

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

David Swanson

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"

http://rootsaction.org

http://warisacrime.org

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_______________________________

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State view of federal debt debate: There will be no happy ending

Jason Mercier<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:14:29 GMT

With the August 2 deadline less than a week away before the federal government reaches its debt limit, state budget officials across the country are preparing for the potential impact on state budgets depending on what Congress and the President agree (or don't agree) to.

According to at least one state budget director, there will be "no happy endings" for states regardless of what occurs.

Washington's budget director, Marty Brown, however, is a little more optimistic.

I had a chance to talk with Brown today about the state's contingency plans depending on what scenario unfolds in D.C. on the debt debate. He said for at least 6-8 weeks after August 2, Washington would be in position to ride out the storm due to the state Treasurer's cash management strategy of moving away from investing in short term treasuries and into cash holdings. Here are details on a letter Washington's Treasurer sent the state's congressional delegation earlier this week about the need for quick resolution of this problem.

The biggest unknown for state officials is how the federal government would prioritize payments if the debt ceiling is reached. While the state could weather reductions in most federal matching funds for the short term, it could not withstand prolonged absence of Medicaid matching funds.

In an ideal world according to Brown, a deal would be reached that raises the debt limit and makes reductions in federal spending except for Medicaid funds.

Brown's biggest concern about a short-term failure to resolve the debt debate is the impact on the state economy and future revenue forecasts (Washington currently has an ending fund balance of only $163 million or less than 0.5% of spending).

With little traction to date on solving this problem, some in Congress have floated the possibility of providing a framework for the federal government to prioritize which bills it pays if the debt limit is reached.

This has drawn another warning, however, from Standard and Poor's. According to Reuters:

"Prioritizing debt payments to avoid a default would be 'deeply disruptive' to the economy, Standard & Poor's global head of sovereign ratings said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

David Beers' warning comes as Republican and Democratic leaders scramble to agree on a plan to raise the U.S. debt ceiling before the Treasury runs out of cash to service its obligations on August 2.

Beers said the Treasury could 'theoretically' prioritize debt payments over other government obligations for some time while negotiations continue in Washington.

'But it's worth remembering what that would mean -- it would mean a very sudden fiscal shock that the longer it lasted would filter powerfully through the system,' Beers said.

'Potentially that would be deeply disruptive to the economy.'"

If there is one positive that can come from all this it is perhaps the recognition in D.C. that the way to avoid this problem in the future is to stop approving budgets that require credit card payments. Since the discipline to do so voluntarily has proven to be elusive, one option is to follow the lead of the states that structurally require themselves to balance their budgets.

We may know later his week if Congress agrees. A vote is being discussed in the House to consider a proposed constitutional balanced budget amendment.

Jason Mercier is the director of the Center for Government Reform at the Washington Policy Center. He serves on the Executive Committee of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force and is the private sector chairman of ALEC’s Fiscal Federalism Working Group. He is a contributing editor of the Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News, serves on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and was an advisor to the 2002 Washington State Tax Structure Committee. In June 2010, Governor Gregoire appointed Jason as WPC’s representative on her Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Panel. Jason holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Washington State University.

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Art House Beat: "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and "The Tree" Coming to the Varsity in August

Bill White<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:08:17 GMT

The Man Who Fell to Earth (August 6-11)

Both Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s youthful personae were not only poly-sexual, but trans-species. Nicholas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth” is a companion piece to “Performance,” but without the demonic subtext co-director Donald Cammell gave to the earlier picture. Where Jagger’s Turner was a devil who had lost his demon, Bowie’s Mr. Newton is an angel who has lost his wings.

Both men have their Mephistophelean double. Turner has Chas, the gangster who attempted to destroy his feminine side by murdering the male lover of his boyhood. Mr. Newton has Nathan Bryce, a scientist who has dodged his destiny by becoming a co-ed seducing professor. Newton also has Mary Lou, who unknowingly sabotages his mission (to bring water from Earth to his dying planet) by destroying him with alcohol and sex. Turner channels his bisexuality into a ménage a trios with two girls, one masculine and one feminine. In one scene, it appears that has is making love with Turner, but in he following shot, Turner has transformed into the boyish girl whom Chas fancies. In “Performance,” Chas and Turner eventually fuse into a single personality. The parallel event in “The Man Who Fell to Earth” occurs between Newton and Mary Lou, in a shot reminiscent of the fusion of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman in “Persona.”

Turner eventually follows a bullet he fires into Chas’ head and comes out the other side of Chas’ psyche. In contrast, when Newton fires a gun at Mary Lou, he is shooting blanks, and the playful scene that follows restores individual personalities to both characters, and they go their separate ways to a mutual desolation. Bryce is not completely left out of the picture, as he has a tryst with Mary Lou that keeps him in the sexual web.

In “Performance,” past, present, and future are compressed into a single, flickering moment. Each action is made up of actions taking place in different time modes. In “The Man Who Fell To Earth,” time is linear, but elliptical, as Newton speeds through the years without existing within the years. He neither feels the passage of time nor is aged by it. As a result, it is difficult to keep pace with the story’s time-line. With Chas, sexual acts and violent acts exist in the same psychic space, and that space is the domain of infernal creativity from which Turner has been cast out, and to which he manages to return by following the bullet through Chas’ brain. Newton, having been humanized through intercourse with humanity, is unable to regain his paradise. Both films carry the theme of merging into the economic sphere with the gangsterism of the corporate merger. Chas murders his boyhood lover, Joey Maddox, because Joey resists the takeover of his company. Farnsworth, president of Newton’s company, is murdered because he refuses the offers of a merger. Both films are based on this “Merge or Die” ultimatum. Turner merges with Chas, Newton merges with Mary Lou. When the devil merges with the human, he regains hell, but when the angel merges with the human, he loses paradise.

The Tree (Varsity Opens Friday, August 12)

The thing that keeps “The Tree” from being a first-rate picture is the tree itself. Judy Pascoe was not content to write a novel about a grieving widow and her children. She had to put the spirit of the deceased husband and father into a fig tree, and turn the widow and one of the daughters into human tree-houses. When the symbols get too heavy to lug across the finish line, the novelist tries to blame the fall of this rural Australian dynasty on the tree roots interfering with the property’s sewerage. But we all know the reason this house cannot stand is because too many people are pretending the dead patriarch haunts the tree.

Writer/director Julie Bertucceli’s adaptation of Pascoe’s novel is a photographic gem and a narrative embarrassment. One can get lost in Nigel Bluck’s cinematography and at the same time recoil from the unfolding of the trite tale laden with heavy-handed symbolism. But then there are the children, “The Tree” boasts remarkable performances from all of them, with some of its most convincing moments arising from simple, honest reactions of the youngsters to surprising events such as discovering frogs living inside their toilet bowl. Charlotte Gainsbourg gives an obedient performance, but it is a superficial one, rarely suggesting either the depth of her grief or the dizziness of her impending joy.

But even when the story slogs through the most obvious of romantic arcs, Bluck’s images of Northeastern Australia prove more than worthwhile to the curious eye. One can get lost in his series of tightly composed pictures and forget all about the ghost in the tree who talks to his little girl who tenaciously welds herself to its uppermost branches when the villains arrive to cut the head of the family down.

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Fact check: Both Boehner and Obama indulged in manipulating the facts

FactCheck.org<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:45:05 GMT

The president and House speaker restated familiar positions in their dueling debt ceiling speeches, but they took their points too far at times or made them without enough context.

Obama described raising the debt ceiling as historically "routine." It is true that every president, with the exception of Truman, has signed such a bill since the 1940s. But this request is the largest in history, even in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Boehner claimed Obama is adamantly against "fundamental changes" to entitlement programs. In fact, the president has proposed $650 billion in cuts to the future growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

FULL STORY...

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Commentary: Impeach Obama

Sherwood Ross<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:45:05 GMT

COMMENTARY

It's time to impeach President Obama and urge candidates who stand for peace to run in the upcoming presidential primaries.

President Obama is no Democrat in the traditional meaning of the word. He has not only failed to tackle the nation's unemployment woes and retraining needs, as a real Democrat would do, but he's been a player in the Bankers' Bailout and he's indicated his willingness to compromise Social Security and Medicare, two highly successful, humanitarian systems that are a lifeline to the vast majority of the nation's elderly, sick, and infirm.

Mr. Obama has also failed to lift his hand effectively in behalf of the struggling poor, particularly our Hispanic, African-American and rural poor. Again, as in the time of Franklin Roosevelt, we see one-third of a nation ill-housed, while true unemployment hovers at Depression-era levels, closer to 20 percent than 10 percent and college graduates cannot find jobs.

Yet worse than anything Obama has done or not done domestically are the illegal wars he's waging across Asia and Africa, several of which he inherited from the preceding criminal in the Oval Office and to which he might have made a speedy end. Quite on his own, however, he has expanded the war in Pakistan and has initiated new wars in Libya, Sudan and Yemen. These wars are being pushed despite a building majority opposition of Americans who are telling Congress and the pollsters they want the return of our troops from distant battlefields and bases.

Mr. Obama has also granted himself kingly powers to destroy human beings on suspicion of wrongdoing, and has sent hundreds of innocent people, children included, to their deaths in the process via drone plane attacks. He continues to operate countless prisons around the world created by his criminal predecessor President George W. Bush, a mass murderer, where human beings have been tortured and murdered, denied due process of law, and where kidnapped men are suffering year after year in gray limbo, and, incredibly, where even children have been tortured and raped. He is keeping Guantanamo open despite his promise to close it and he denies those imprisoned there, as elsewhere, lawyers and fair trials. If he is the best Harvard Law School can produce it should be shut down. A constitutional lawyer who conducts himself this way should be disbarred; a president who conducts himself this way should be impeached and prosecuted.

One tipoff to Mr. Obama's character has been his cruel punishment of Army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning (pictured at left) for performing a humanitarian service---blowing the whistle on U.S. helicopter pilots in Baghdad who killed defenseless civilians and reporters. You would think that the Pentagon would want to know if any of its soldiers committed war crimes. Instead, it looks the other way. No president in our history ever has gone after whistle-blowers with the vengeance of this man; and only his immediate predecessor has shown so great a proclivity not to prosecute the guilty torturers and murderers among the jailers of the military, CIA, and contract fighters.

The United States has attacked Iraq based on lies so that today an innocent nation lies in ruins, its infrastructure shattered, its electricity in short supply, suffering tragic unemployment levels, reeking from sewerage wastes and radioactivity that is sickening and killing its people, yet who has heard from Mr. Obama about restitution for America's war crimes, for rehabilitation of Iraq's people and for rebuilding of its ravaged population centers?

Instead, Iraq's oil resources are being looted by the occupiers. What's more, the Iraq War is costing this country thousands of lives in killed and wounded and an estimated $3 trillion in treasure. Yet it has cost the people of Iraq far more, an estimated one million lives, and no American candidate, including the president, is talking about it. That is our national disgrace. Undoubtedly, the ugly and misplaced thirst for vengeance over 9/11 that animates our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan likely will be viewed by future historians as lunacy---particularly as the attacks of that day, like the anthrax attacks that followed a month later, give off the stench of “inside jobs.”

We tolerate President Obama, the war-maker and tyrant, at our peril. He is a menace to America and humankind, the palpable, living symbol of the military-industrial complex run amok. He should be impeached. Viable candidates to replace him need to step forward and stand for election. The Democrats still have a number of capable prospects. And the Green Party is calling for an immediate withdrawal from the Middle East and its candidates should be rewarded accordingly at the polls. President Dwight Eisenhower may not have been the greatest American president but he had the vision to run on a platform that made sense to the electorate: “Peace and Prosperity.” That's what this country, like the world, urgently needs today. We Americans can never put right the destruction and death we have wrought in recent years. Sadly, we are not even thinking about it. #

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based journalist who formerly was a columnist for major dailies and wire services and now directs the Anti-War News Service. To comment or contribute to his operation, e-mail him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com. Photo sources: George W. Bush here, Obama here.

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Two views on East Africa crisis: Famine is a crime; famine is bad science

Tom Paulson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:30:14 GMT

As the United Nations and the international community ramps up to airlift food and supplies into East Africa, mostly for starving Somali refugees, two perspectives on this crisis seemed especially interesting to me.

In Foreign Policy, Charles Kenny contends that, in this day and age, allowing a famine to occur is basically a crime against humanity:

For all its horror, starvation is also one of the simpler forms of mortality to prevent — it just takes food. Drought, poor roads, poverty — all are contributing factors to the risk of famine, but sustenance in the hands of the hungry is a pretty foolproof solution.

As a result, famine deaths in the modern world are almost always the result of deliberate acts on the part of governing authorities. That is why widespread starvation is a crime against humanity and the leaders who abet it should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

FULL STORY...

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What's a toxic colorless chemical doing in my house and how is it harming Puget Sound?

Martha Baskin<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:16:21 GMT

Over 80,000 synthetic chemicals are used in products from shower curtains and laundry detergent to vinyl flooring and shampoo. It’s well known that toxic chemicals pose a major threat to the health of Puget Sound. But how do they get from products in our homes to water and wildlife? Martha Baskin looks at some of the mysterious pathways for phthalates (pronounced thalates), a family of chemicals that causes problems with male reproductive development and the survival and reproduction of aquatic organisms.

You might call the colorless liquid the uninvited guest. First it shows up unexpectedly in your home. Then when it leaves, it’s not really gone at all because it’s taken up permanent residence in the waters of Puget Sound. Phthalates, a colorless but toxic chemical, are found in hundreds of everyday products, vinyl flooring, food packaging, shampoo, laundry detergent, wall paper and shower curtains.

Heather Trim, Toxics Program manager for People For Puget Sound, shows a phthalate-free shower curtain from Ikea. (File photo: Grant M. Haller)

“Because PVC vinyl is by nature a hard plastic, in order to make a shower curtain out of it you need to add a plasticizer and typically what's used are phthalates," says Erika Schreder, staff scientist with the Washington Toxics Coalition. She says phthalates can make up to 50% of a shower curtain's weight. Schreder is co-author of the study, “Down the Drain, How Everyday Products Are Polluting Puget Sound.”

Added to plastics in order to make them flexible, phthalates literally go down the drain from households, industry or as runoff from hard surfaces. Eventually they make their way to a sewage treatment plant, but says Schreder, “they're not completely removed and they end up getting dumped into the Sound.”

The study looked at homes in six geographic areas of Puget Sound and found phthalates in the dust and laundry water in all of them.

Phthalates leach from household products, are absorbed by dust and cling to clothing.

“When we looked at the numbers, we found that it could contribute about 17% of the total load of phthalates to Puget Sound just by this one pathway of dust clinging to our clothes and getting washed down the drain," Schreder says.

The phthalate called DEHP, widespread in the environment, was measured at levels high enough to exceed standards at 15 sewage treatment plants. Adverse health concerns include problems with human male reproductive development and the survival and reproduction of aquatic organisms.

Phthalates adhere to mud and have been found in 13 federal Superfund sites in Puget Sound.

Even low concentrations of phthalates, says Jim Meador, Aquatic Toxicologist with NOAA Fisheries, can disrupt the metabolism of juvenile fish, inhibiting their growth.

“It’s absolutely critical that they attain a certain size and robustness to be healthy in the environment and avoid predators," Meador says. "Everything is so finely tuned in critters.”

Meador focuses on salmon. Juveniles often begin life in estuaries such as Puget Sound. “And a lot of our estuaries are contaminated. They’re in industrial areas so they’re there for several weeks and they can accumulate these compounds which can affect them throughout the rest of their life," Meador says. Some metabolic disruptors stimulate appetite at the wrong time. “They’re feeding at the wrong time. Everything is inappropriate for what they've been evolving for tens of thousands of years to go through this normal cycle of coming out into the ocean, the migration, being in the ocean and then growing to a different size and coming back."

A huge amount of research has been conducted on many chemicals, says Meador, but very little on phthalates: “It’s kind of one of the orphans that's been forgotten about and people are starting to say we need more information.”

Meador last week began a new lab experiment to see how young salmon respond to specific doses of di-ethylhexyl phthalate, one of the most common.

“We have concentrations in the environment but we don't know how bad those are. We’re basically looking for thresholds, the cause effects that we think will affect the population, which is kind of the whole big picture."

Seventh Generation detergent doesn't contain a toxic chemical called phthalates but this toy plastic dinosaur and liquid Tide laundry detergent displayed do, according to Washington Toxics Coalition. At laundry time, phthalates go down drains and some eventually reach Puget Sound. (File photo: Grant M. Haller)

There are consumer alternatives. See alternativeconsumer.com. PEVA shower curtains are chemical- free. Fragrance-free products of any kind are phthalate-free because phthalates are the chemicals that hold the fragrance. Companies that disclose ingredients in their products, like Seventh Generation, says the Washington Toxic Coalition’s Schreder, are also good bets.

In the US, full disclosure is not a legal requirement. But things may change. Consumer and non-profit pressure and a law in Europe are turning the tide.

Heather Trim is toxics manager at People for Puget Sound and co-author of the study, “Down the Drain, How Everyday Products are Polluting Puget Sound.”

“We’d love to have the regulation changed at the state and national level just like they're doing in Europe," Trim says. In 2007 a European law called REACH was enacted to regulate the safe use of chemicals. “So this is a big deal because in the US we export a lot of products to Europe and what we're finding is that there's, say, a shampoo or a mousse -- the same exact brand and name and everything -- was being sold with one formulation in the US and a different one in Europe."

Trim and allies want to see the same law in the US. So far the effort has failed, but there’s been some progress. The Children’s Safe Product Act sets strict standards for phthalates, lead and cadmium in children’s toys. Washington state is phasing out copper in brake pads and in boat paint. And the $50 billion US cosmetics industry, responding to a campaign called safecosmetics.org, has removed dibutyl phthalate from nail polish. But as those working to limit the use of toxic chemicals will tell you, there’s still a long way to go.

Green Acre Radio is brought to you with support from the Human Links Foundation. Engineering by CJ Lazenby. From the studios of Jack Straw Productions and KBCS. Green Acre Radio airs on KBCS at 4:45pm on Thursdays & 7:45 am & 2 pm on Fridays.

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Mark Your Calendars: Monte Hellman's "Road to Nowhere" Opens at Grand Illusion August 12

Bill White<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:47:47 GMT

There is no shortage of movies about making movies. Plenty of them, from “The Big Knife” to Contempt,” have been damn good. But none of them comes close to “Road to Nowhere,” a movie that goes outside what most people think a movie is supposed to be. Director Monte Hellman is so far into his own dream that he loses, or pretends to lose, the movie. “Road to Nowhere” is all about letting go of the reins and being dragged though the crimson pastures by a movie gone loco.

Take a look at Monte Hellman’s filmography and you’ll find half a dozen masterpieces throughout a half century of film-making. His best pictures were so out of step with what his so-called peers were making that he never got a piece of that “golden era” pie that everyone was saying was so sweet. 1965’s back-to-back westerns “The Shooting” and “Ride in the Whirlwind” weren’t much like westerns at all, yet their existential dread fixed the direction of the “new westerns” that would follow. “Two Lane Blacktop, “ which pitted James Taylor on a cross country drag race against Warren Oates, was about the slowest fast-car movie anyone had ever made, and had the misfortune to be released just four months after the heart-stopping “Vanishing Point.” Then there is “Cockfighter,” with Oates under a vow to keep his mouth shut until he wins the cockfighter of the year award. So we have a movie in which the protagonist doesn’t speak a word until the end, Not only that, but it was released to drive-in theatres under the lame title “Born to Kill”, in the same month that saw the release of Sam Peckinpah’s higher-profile but similarly offbeat “Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” also starring Warren Oates. Then there is “Iguana,” a cautionary fable about a deformed man who crowns himself king of an island and enslaves all those who wash up on his beaches. It was a brilliant film with many fearsome touches but went unseen and unappreciated. Now, twenty-two years later, Hellman returns to prove that when the light is on his side, he is still a damn good movie director.

From the beginning, we can’t be sure if we are in the right theatre. A journalist who has sold her article about some mysterious woman named Velma pops a DVD into her computer. A voice tells us Velma is the entrance into the film, but what do we know of any Velma except such a name was once given to a character in a Raymond Chandler novel? We have come to see a Monte Hellman picture, and the credits tell us we are watching a film by Mitchell Haven.

When a director holds a shot longer than seems necessary, it is usually because there is something in that shot that he is giving the audience time to discover. Not so here. Velma, or the actress playing Velma, possibly before she even knew she was playing Velma, or maybe when she actually was Velma, paints and blow dries her fingernails. The length of the shot seems to be determined by the length of the song (“Help Me make It Through the Night”) that Velma listens to while doing her nails, but the shot doesn’t end with the song. When the song is over, the sound of the blow dryer fills the space, and the shot doesn’t end until Velma finishes drying her nails, and the following shot depicts Velma directing the dryer to her face. The opening sequence, comprised of these two shots, ends in the silence when the blow dryer is turned off. So why did we spend so much time watching a girl with her blow dryer? Because she is the entrance to the dream.

If ninety percent of a director’s job is in the casting, Mitchell Haven comes across as ninety percent of an idiot, having turned down Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson in favor of a has- been leading man gone to seed and an inexperienced girl. In his own words, he is not the kind of director to cast celebrities simply because they will enable his films to make money. But his Laurel Graham is such a bad actress that she is liable to cost him the movie. To emphasis how bad she is, Hellman follows a screening of the abysmal dailies with a scene of Graham and Haven watching “The Lady Eve” in a hotel room. Not only is Graham no match for Barbara Stanwyck, but Haven is certainly no Preston Sturges. And they both fall into that chasm standing between inspiration and capability.

The difference between a dream and a nightmare is that a nightmare has a plot. Dreams are held together by associations so free that the dreamer is always certainly mad. Haven’s scriptwriter tries to hold the movie together, but Haven has already cut it to ninety pages and the film is still running four hours. There is no time for narrative coherence. The actors are losing their lines as the film becomes completely about Velma, and the film crew watches drearily as the shoot goes into the toilet. Or so it seems. It is the syndrome Fellini explored in “8 1/2,” in which the director is the only person who knows what the movie is about and the director doesn’t know what the movie is about. However, if he keeps looking for the movie, at the expense of simply filming the script, the movie has a chance of breaking out of its doldrums and emerging as a real work of art.

Instead, Haven’s picture becomes a dream that trespasses against reality, and ends in a crime scene where the camera-wielding director is ordered by the police to drop his weapon. And what about Hellman’s picture? For one thing, Hellman doesn’t get lost , as does Haven, in Laurel Graham. Instead, he searches for the lost Laurie Bird, who starred in both “Two Lane Blacktop” and “Cockfighter” before shacking up with Art Garfunkle and committing suicide at the age of 25. “Road to Nowhere” is dedicated to Laurie, and she is the real key to the film, just as Warren Oates was the spectre that haunted and informed “Iguana.”

How far into his dreams does the filmmaker dare travel in the attempt to resurrect the dead from the ruins of memory? Hellman goes all the way, knowing that art is his only means of bringing the dead back to life. In the title song, Tom Russell sings, “ Even Lazarus keeps staggering down that eternal road to nowhere.” And so does Hellman. His movie is filled with his love for the movies and all the people who make them, from the anguished scriptwriters who despair at seeing their work reach the screen intact to the actors and actresses whose inner light isn’t always enough to light up the movie screen.

Art cannot be made from stale templates that provide easy access to a mass audience. Hellman has always made genre pictures, but has always subverted the genres and, in so doing, has stretched the possibilities for the genre filmmakers who followed him. It always takes someone who is willing to sacrifice logic for a higher truth to break open a genre and share the goods inside it. “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” would have been impossible without “Ride in the Whirlwind.” “Iguana” would have been impossible without “Aguirre, the Wrath of God.” And “Road to Nowhere” would have been impossible without “The Big Sleep.” Where most directors are content to tell a story, the best of them want to break through the story into the dream where it had its inception.

There is a scene about forty minutes into the picture in which Haven talks with Nathalie Post, the blogger who broke the true-crime story upon which his film is based. When Post complains that the motives of the criminals don’t make any sense, Haven replies, “If it all made sense, I wouldn’t be interested.” I am sure this line echoes Hellman’s sentiments exactly.

"Road to Nowhere" screens at the Grand Illusion Cinema Aug 12 -18

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Commentary: Balance the budget on the backs of billionaires

David Swanson<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:16:17 GMT

The wealthiest nation on earth is not actually obliged to starve our senior citizens. We don't need a military 670% more expensive than the next largest one on earth. We don't need to fund health insurance corporations instead of healthcare. And we don't need tax breaks for billionaires. In fact, we don't need billionaires. That's the message RootsAction is taking to Congress.

Forbes magazine has been listing the 400 wealthiest Americans every year since 1982. Thirteen billionaires appeared on the original Forbes list. Now all 400 rate billionaire status. These 400, collectively, possess more wealth than the poorer half of America's population put together. Sam Pizzigati explains how we got here.

The United States now has a level of inequality that shocks much of the world. If Washington wants to balance its budget, it should do so on the backs of these 400 people, not the hundreds of millions of us who can't afford it. Tax these billionaires into non-billionaires, and Washington's financial worries -- and our economic worries -- will be gone for generations to come. The vast majority of us favor this approach.

Only 1 percent of us are millionaires, with an "m". Each billionaire has a thousand times that much money, or more. Sixty-six percent of senators are millionaires, as are 41 percent of House members, but they aren't billionaires. They just work for them.

Last year a list was leaked of attendees of an important rightwing planning conference organized by Koch Industries. This is an annual meeting at which the servants of plutocracy plot its further entrenchment. Eleven members of this year's Forbes 400 were on the list. These are the hardcore plutocrats. These are the people who personally take the time to destroy our political system for their own short-term gain -- and that of their families if their aristocracy of wealth is allowed to continue. These 11 people pay a fraction of the rate you pay on your income into Social Security and Medicare. They have no need for Social Security or Medicare. And they participate in a political movement that is trying to dismantle those programs. Meet your masters, fellow Americans.

Philip Anschutz

Anschutz has $7.5 billion and got his start in oil and gas. He remains a board member of the American Petroleum Institute (API) which President George W. Bush's Energy Secretary credited for Bush's decision to kill the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. API's president and leading members met in secret with Vice President Dick Cheney as an Energy Task Force planning the energy future of the United States and how to get their hands on the oil of Iraq. API has more recently organized astroturf activism against any efforts to limit climate change.

In spring 2009, Anschutz bought the rightwing Weekly Standard from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the rightwing Washington Examiner, despite reports that these have "little hope of making any money."

Anschutz has funded Colorado's 1992 Amendment 2, an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative, and the Discovery Institute which promotes creationism, among other similar causes. In 2004, the Washington Post reported that he, his companies, and members of his family had given over a half a million dollars to Republican candidates and committees. In 1987, Anschutz's family foundation gave Focus on the Family founder James Dobson an award for his "contributions to the American Family."

Anschutz is not always so generous. In 2002, Anschutz gave $4.4 million to law schools and charities only when forced to as part of a deal in which New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer dropped a case charging Anschutz with making $1.5 billion in "unjust revenue."

Anschutz also sold $1 billion in Qwest shares before they tanked, but avoided the charges that stuck to Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio. In recent months, however, Anschutz lost a case charging him with selling $375 million in oil company shares as part of a tax dodge. The IRS wants $144 million. Every little bit helps, right? But Anschutz is appealing.

Balance the budget on his back!

Stephen Bechtel Jr., San Francisco, Calif.

Bechtel has $2.9 billion, and got rich by inheriting his money from his father. Our top concern should clearly be encouraging that sort of initiative!

The Bechtel Corporation, now run by Stephen Jr.'s son, is one of the top recipients of funds from Washington and from state governments. Bechtel has contracts at most U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.

Bechtel Corp. is also a leading violator of laws and regulations, including violations of nuclear safety regulations, water quality laws, radioactive waste policies, and asbestos emissions laws, not to mention having dug the Big Dig tunnel in Boston with such criminal incompetence that it collapsed.

Bechtel Corp. spends hundreds of thousands each year on lobbyists and hundreds of thousands more on funding political candidates' campaigns. George Schultz, former Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State, and former Bechtel president and director, lobbied as a Bechtel board member in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

By sheer coincidence, Bechtel got the very first Iraq "reconstruction" contract for $680 million. Bechtel's performance was so scandalously bad that it had contracts in Iraq canceled and was early to pull out of Iraq entirely.

Yet Stephen Bechtel, Jr., is still rolling around in mountains of your hard-earned dollars.

Balance the budget on his back!

Joseph Craft, Tulsa, Okla.

Craft has $1.9 billion and made it by helping a coal corporation, MAPCO, later renamed Alliance Resource Partners (ARP), pay lower taxes. As CEO of this coal company, Craft advocates for coal as the solution to our energy needs. ARP claims that coal is cheap, but of course that's because the cost of the environmental and health and climate damage gets passed on to us.

ARP also believes that coal is in our best interests whether we like it or not. When townships in Pennsylvania have banned mining, ARP has taken the towns to court.

Following hundreds of citations for safety violations in 2010, the company's Dotiki Mine in Kentucky collapsed, killing two miners.

According to Source Watch, Alliance Coal employees were among the biggest campaign donors in Kentucky's recent state primary election.

Is this man making the world a better place? Can we afford to have him sitting on $1.9 billion?

Balance the budget on his back!

Richard De Vos, Ada, Mich.

DeVos has $4.2 billion, which he made from Amway, a company that later became part of Alticor, and which is now run by his son. Another of his sons was a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan in 2006.

Amway may be a legitimate way to make obscene amounts of money, but last year Amway agreed to pay $56 million to settle a class action suit alleging fraud, racketeering, and operating a pyramid scheme.

DeVos and Amway have been big funders of Republican campaigns for decades. Amway and its sales force chipped in half the money that elected Amway distributor Sue Myrick of North Carolina to Congress in 1994.

In 1996, Amway tried to give $1.3 million to the funding of Republican infomercials but was forced to refrain by public uproar over campaign financing.

In 1997, a Republican Congress slipped a last-minute provision into a bill to give Amway a $19 million tax break.

During the 2004 elections, DeVos gave $2 million and Amway a total of $4 million to the Project for America Voter Fund, which spent almost $29 million supporting George W. Bush's "reelection," having found a way around campaign finance restrictions.

Balance the budget on his back!

Ken Griffin, Chicago, Ill.

Griffin has $2.3 billion and gets a special tax break for being a hedge fund manager, also known as a bankster. He doesn't produce anything other than money.

Before the collapse, Griffin praised shady practices that helped cause it:

"The market for credit derivatives has effectively created a huge new pool of risk-taking capital for our debt markets. By unbundling and trading credit risk without having to transfer the underlying asset, this market has introduced an entirely new and vital way of spreading risk. Credit derivatives, to use one example, let banks transfer risk from their portfolios, allowing them to create new loans." -- from a 2005 presentation to Goldman Sachs.

Griffin spreads what to you and I would seem like a lot of money around our electoral system, funding Republicans and Democrats alike, inlcuding Barack Obama - the current world record holder in money received from Wall Street.

Balance the budget on his back!

Diane Hendricks, Afton, Wis.

Hendricks is hoarding $2.2 billion. She is the only woman on our list of 11 leading plutocrats.

Hendricks and her husband were business partners from 1982 until his death in 2007. She then took over ABC Supply, which is the nation's largest roofing, window, and siding wholesaler.

Last year, ABC Supply acquired its top competitor, Bradco Supply Co., a move that's sure to help competition and benefit consumers.

Hendricks told Forbes in 2010: "We need Washington to stop putting new burdens on businesses. That's the best way to encourage job creation."

Burdens?

Balance the budget on her back!

Stanley Hubbard, St. Paul, Minn.

Hubbard has $1.9 billion. He inherited his wealth, just like you would have done if you'd been a better capitalist.

Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc., owns television and radio stations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, and New Mexico.

As restrictions on media ownership are stripped away, corporations like Hubbard's monopolize more outlets. As this happens, a handful of Stanley Hubbards acquire the means to rewrite more laws, creating a vicious cycle.

Hubbard gave Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future (a Gingrich phrase before an Obama one) $100,000.

He funds lots of candidates, most of them Republican, including Michelle Bachmann.

Balance the budget on his back!

Charles Koch, Wichita, Kan.

Charles Koch has $22 billion, and his brother David another $22 billion, giving them fifth and sixth places in the list of grotesquely wealthy U.S. citizens. Together they probably do more damage than the four people above them or the 394 people below them on the list. All eleven billionaires in this collection have attended their annual rightwing retreats.

The Kochs' father invented a way to turn heavy oil into gasoline. The Kochs inherited a fortune, as all truly responsible people do.

Koch industries is invested in gas and oil pipelines and refineries, fertilizer, fibers and polymers, and chemicals. In 2010, Koch Industries was named one of the United States' top 10 air polluters by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute.

Charles cofounded the Cato Institute. He is a board member and funder of the Mercatus Center. He funds the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. Koch Industries funds the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Charles Koch has said he's been pleased by the Tea Party's accomplishments. The Kochs have given more than $100 million to rightwing groups since the 1980s. Their political action committee gives more to federal candidates than any other oil-and-gas PAC.

The Kochs also pressure their 50,000 employees to vote the "right" way, sending them letters warning of harm to their families, jobs, and country, if they don't vote as the Kochs advise.

Balance the budget on his back!

David Koch, New York, NY

Like Charles Koch (see his entry), David Koch has $22 billion and got rich by inheriting a fortune.

If anything, David does more damage than Charles. He founded and chairs the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is a director of the Cato Institute, and serves as a trustee of the Reason Foundation. Americans for Prosperity has spent $45 million on rightwing candidates.

David Koch himself was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980, running on promises to end Social Security, welfare, minimum wage standards, campaign spending limits, corporate taxation, the EPA, the SEC, and OSHA, among other things.

Here's a blogger pretending to be David Koch gaining all kinds of access to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: audio.

Here's an interview with the real David Koch: video.

Balance the budget on his back!

Kenneth Langone, Sands Point, NY

Langone has $1.3 billion. He doesn't work for a living, so taxing his income is not a real priority. He makes money from investments.

Langone co-founded the ChoicePoint data-mining company whose subsidiary DBT Online, under a no-bid contract from Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, gave Florida a list of felons to remove from election rolls in 2000, including 8,000 mostly African-American and Latino names of people who were not actually felons.

Langone also co-founded top Bush contributor Home Depot, which picked up a $48 million tax break in a Bush-Cheney energy bill, and which saw one of its stores used as the setting for a Bush speech on the economy -- which may have helped the speech, but certainly not the economy.

Langone chaired the New York Stock Exchange's compensation committee and was forced to testify when Eliot Spitzer prosecuted Richard Grasso, the former chief of the Stock Exchange who had been given $187 million. Langone also attempted to purchase the New York Stock Exchange, a move that might have given him freer reign.

Balance the budget on his back!

Stephen Schwartzman, New York, NY

Schwartzman has $5.9 billion, every cent of it earned by others. He doesn't work; he invests. Schwartzman served as Managing Director of Lehman Brothers. Then he cofounded and became the CEO of the Blackstone Group.

The Blackstone Group is partially owned by the American International Group (AIG) and by Kissinger Associates. The Blackstone Group was Enron's principle financial advisor for its restructuring.

Schwartzman raised $100,000 for Bush, his former Yale classmate, in 2004. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the JP Morgan Chase National Advisory Board.

Schwartzman gave $100 million to New York Public Library which has now named its main building after him. Frank Rich commented:

"At the centennial gala, you couldn’t escape the paw print of Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group billionaire whose library gift had entitled him to blast his name on any stray expanse of marble on the 42nd Street building. Schwarzman is nothing if not a representative 21st-century titan. His principal monument has been to himself, namely a notorious over-the-top 60th-birthday party, exquisite in both its bad timing and bad taste, that he threw the year before the crash. (If you’re shelling out a million bucks for an entertainer, is Rod Stewart the best you can do?) He is perhaps most renowned of late for comparing Obama to Hitler because the administration dared propose taxing private-equity firms’ share of client profits at a rate higher than 15 percent. (He later apologized.)"

Balance the budget on his back!

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"

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Will Obama ever hold the Republicans accountable?

Paul Rogat Loeb<noreply@www.seattlepostglobe.org> — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:46:49 GMT

Will Obama ever hold the Republicans accountable for their reckless and destructive actions? No matter how outrageous their demands, he keeps giving them legitimacy, first resisting, then compromising, then praising the result as bipartisanship. He’s forgotten the basic lesson of negotiation–you don’t hand everything over before you start, particularly to people who have utter contempt for your values and goals. He’s also forgotten the importance of fighting for your principles, so people have a reason to support you.

FULL STORY...

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