CORVALLIS, OREGON'S SYNOPSIS OF THE MOST
INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT NEWS, LINKS, OPINIONS
Local News 101
A Report for Busy or Napping
Students, Intellectuals, Plumbers and Vagrants
CITY STAFF STAYS TRUE TO
FORM, IGNORES SCIENCE TO KISS UP TO 1% Ignoring
reports that the amount of plastic in the
ocean has increased 10,000% since the advent of the plastic bag, the city staff
last night recommended the city forego a ban on the bags and instead embrace the
proposal of the plastics industry giant and do nothing instead, except babble.
LOCAL 'SUPERHEROES'
GET WORTHY OPPONENT AT LAST
Left: Phoenix Jones
The trend of Northwesterners, originating with Phoenix Jones in
Seattle, of local people dressing up in superhero costumes to patrol the streets
may have taken a new turn, with at least one Northwesterner opting to become a
super-villain, Rex Velvet.Mr. Velvet refers
to Mr. Jones as "a hobo snitch in a mask".
Cops
say they think Mr. McClintock intentionally
jumped to his death from the top of Covell Hall.Amyspace page
identifying itself as belonging to Mr. McClintock has a comment "Moose I miss
you. I haven't seen you in such a long time. Promise me we'll hang out this
spring and if not then this summer". Mr McClintock's own comment on a friend's
page
reads: "we require more rock and roll and less bullshit." Oh man, were YOU in
trouble in Corvallis. On both counts.
SARA GELSER ISSUES PLEA
FOR RE-ELECTION SUPPORT With the May Primary just around the
corner, it's time to launch my 2012 re-election campaign. We’ll officially kick
things off with a party in Corvallis on May 2 with special guest, Rep. Peter
Buckley. (Event details below!) The 2012 campaign is essential to regaining the
majority in the Oregon House. In addition, thanks to redistricting, I now have
several thousand new voters I must introduce myself to. This means there is much
work to be done over the next several months, but I can't do it without you!
I need your help to build a successful campaign this cycle. I am seeking
re-election because I want to keep working for the things that matter most-- a
strong economy, quality public education, affordable health care, a clean
environment, efficient transportation, initiatives that support our must
vulnerable neighbors, equality for all Oregonians and a woman's right to choose.
Please keep reading to learn about the four simple things you can do to help me
return to Salem.
One: Please consider making a financial contribution to my campaign.
You can contribute online through ActBlue ( here)
or send a check to
Sara Gelser for State Representative
922 NW Circle Blvd.
Unit 160, #307
Corvallis, OR 97330
Don't forget each Oregon tax payer receives a $50/year political tax credit.
This means the first $50 (or $100 for a couple filing jointly) you contribute to
an Oregon campaign each year can be claimed as a tax credit on your 2013 return!
Two: Please sign up to volunteer and publicly endorse the campaign!
It would be an honor to list your name as one of my supporters on my website and
campaign materials! Displaying a lawn sign, writing a letter to the editor or
participating in phone banking and canvassing are other ways you can help the
campaign. Just email me at repsaragelser@yahoo.com to let me know what you’d
like to do!
Three: Keep up to date on campaign, community and legislative events!
Social media makes it easier to share information in real time. Please sign up
to follow me on Twitter (@repsaragelser) and Facebook (the link is here)--- and
please recommend me to your friends. My Facebook page is also a great place for
you to ask questions, engage in conversations about current issues with other
subscribers and let people know about upcoming community events.
Four: Please join me for my Campaign Kick Off on Wednesday, May 2 at 6:30pm in
Corvallis!
This will be a chance to meet your neighbors, talk with Ways and Means Committee
Co-Chair Rep. Peter Buckley, and learn more about what’s at stake this election
cycle. Light refreshments will be provided.
What: Rep. Sara Gelser’s 2012 Campaign Kick-Off Party with special guest, Rep.
Peter Buckley
When: Wednesday, May 2, 2012. 6:30-8:00pm
Where: The Aquarium at the home of John and Jo Acres in Corvallis. Please park
in the main parking lot of Crescent Valley High School to catch a shuttle to the
event site. (We'll provide you with the private address when you RSVP)
Suggested contribution: $50/individual or $100/couple. However, smaller and
larger contributions are gratefully accepted! You can bring checks to the event,
contribute via Act Blue ( here), or mail them (please see above).
RSVP to: repsaragelser@yahoo.com or to (541) 757-6128. Please be sure to RSVP so
that we can have enough refreshments and event shuttles, and so that I can
provide you with the specific event address. RSVPs are kindly requested by
Monday, April 30.
You can also RSVP via the Facebook Event Page ( here)
Accessibility: The event is held at a private home, but we want it to be
accessible to all. If you have accessibility needs please let us know in advance
so that we can ensure the event is enjoyable and convenient for you. Parking at
the event site will be provided to those with mobility or endurance needs—just
let us know so we can have your spot ready!
Thank you in advance for your support! As always, please don't hesitate to call
or email me with your questions, concerns and ideas.
Sincerely,
Sara
3 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS EMPLOYED BY STAHLBUSH FARMS CONVICTED OF MURDER OF 4th
(LEGAL) IMMIGRANT Three men convicted of the crime
traditional among poor immigrants coming to this country over centuries - get
blind drunk and engaging in violence upon one another - were convicted of
beating a coworker to death in Linn County. "The three men then
put the body in a sleeping bag, wrapped it
with twine and dumped it in some brush nearby — between Interstate 5 and the
warehouse on Belts Drive."
OSU "TRYSTING TREE", A SYMBOL OF
STUDENTS' FIGHT AGAINST SEXUAL REPRESSION - LISTED AS "STATE HERITAGE TREE"
The Tree, left in
1927. The new one, sprouted from the old, today
The famed "Trysting Tree" of OSU has been designated
as a state heritage tree. During the early years of OSU, when men and women were
confined to barracks- like dormitories, the branches of the tree provided lovers
with a place to trade kisses and more. The Baptist president of OSU from Texas,
August Strand, who made mandatory participation in religious activities, put a
spotlight up to illuminate the tree, a tactic which was not eminently
successful. Mr. Strand's successor used the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 as an
excuse to cut the entire tree down. Today, the tree is an anachronism. Students
now have all sorts of venues for their sexuality.
Leader of "Jail Beavers" Joe Avezzano
Dead in Italy Joe Avezzano, the OSU football coach who managed a single
win against Fresno State between 2 14 game losing streaks, has died in mafia
infested Milan, Italy, which is appropriate since Mr. Avezzano's football teams were
in court so often he was reputed to be recruiting exclusively at parole board
hearings, not an unexpected development from a Florida State alumna. He couldn't have been recruiting at high school football games, since
his record was so miserable, losing 47 games and winning six during his tenure.
He may have been responsible for the rules changes in the NCAA after the last
scoreless college football game, the Toilet Bowl, against UO. But Mr. Avezzano was
only the latest in a string of mediocrities at OSU, commencing with Dee Andros
and ending only after Mike Riley took the helm. The first time.
City Council Meeting Disrupted by Local Whackos from Teabag Party
The City Council hearing on ridding the city of those
terrible little plastic bags resembled hearings on styrofoam cups years ago.
Everyone sane is against them, and the lunatic surrounding Bruce Harmon was true
to form. The Teabaggers have been circulating emails from the John Birch Society
telling one another - and anyone else who isn't too busy watching paint dry -
that any attempt at controlling pollution is a communist plot.
Twenty years ago, under Republican George H.W. Bush, the US signed onto a nice
and meaningless UN "sustainability plan" called the Rio Declaration on
Environment and Development, or Agenda 21. The response of the whackos
everywhere is the same: they want to stop any programs for clean energy or
energy efficiency, because “blackhelicopters UNplotMichele
BachmanncrazeyesSatan.”
Army, CIA Money Bankrolling Benton County Republicans - Demand an Investigation
Oregon legislator Brian Boquist's "Boquist Leadership Fund"
is a corporate
front organization opposing the Oregon
referenda on increasing taxes for the ultra-rich, among whom he can count
himself, thanks to his raiding of the public treasury. A
list of contributors to the "fund" is a
Who's Who of corporations: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Waste Mangement, Philip
Morris, etc. And of course, Boquist himself, although a new
lawsuit
saysthat money came when Boquist
"misappropriated 'thousands of dollars' from a U.S. military contractor and
funneled the money to Republican Party candidates and causes in Oregon,
according to a federal lawsuit filed by Boquist's former business partners."
Like all Republicans who scream about cutting taxes, he does so only to
divert you from the hand he has rifling through the public's purse. Mr Boquist's
International Charter Inc. (ICI) firm has had his hands out for $156 million
in "defense" funds since the "election" of George Bush. ICI maintains a
public image far removed from reality. In Nevada, for example, a Wells
native
says that ICI lodged a request to rent
the hanger, saying the corporation had "a grant for the reforestation of
Pinion Pines – which are generally considered to be an invasive nuisance to
ranching... It also came out that the land granted to him from BLM would
also be used as a private military training facility."
The latter seems closer to the truth, with ICI
described as "a paramilitary force of
well-armed Russian and American veterans who serve as military proxies". In
Liberia and
Sierra Leone, NGOs
referred
to ICI as "a bunch of spies". The corporation's helicopters in combat areas
are Russian in manufacture, often with
Russian pilots, but sport huge American flags on either side of the
fuselage.
It hasn't always been easy.
In Liberia,
where the CIA was replacing one
dictator (Sam
Doe) for another (Charles
Taylor, now in the Hague for war crimes) of its choice, and
Mr. Doe's allies were fleeing to the U.S. embassy: "Four
months into the contract, rebels from the countryside spilled into the
capital city of Monrovia, shooting people and burning homes. While black
smoke hung over the city, refugees trying to escape the violence poured into
the U.S. Embassy compound. All around them, corpses lay in the street. Boquist and his colleagues fled to the embassy from their downtown hotel—but
when they got there, their superiors from DynCorp were nowhere to be found.
'They had left the day before,' Boquist says. 'Just disappeared.' Boquist
tried to contact the company for several days and finally reached DynCorp's
U.S. offices by telephone. 'Do the best you can to get your personnel out,'
he recalls being told. By then, though, the airport in Monrovia was closed.
Stranded in the burning city, Boquist and his colleagues armed
themselves—buying weapons on the black market and picking up abandoned guns
from the street—and defended the embassy and the refugees inside until U.S.
military reinforcements arrived. 'It's easy to be patriotic when you don't
have anyplace to go,' he says. Boquist hasn't forgiven DynCorp ('it was hell
on earth'), but notes that it's only natural for businesses to be concerned
with their bottom line."
The same appears true for Boquist own banking account. The lawsuit also says
that Boquist diverted funds to the Powder River Cartridge Company, which Boquist and his wife own, and "had been secretly diverting money from
the firm" to. Powder River, together with ICI are the
ONLY contributors to the Benton County
Republicans' "Benton Victory Campaign". In other words, the Defense
Department's funds are being regularly diverted to support Republicans in
Benton County. Others should demand an investigation.
The path is not a direct one. ICI's funds come as a subcontractor for
Defense Training Systems in Orlando
Florida, which is a trade name of
ILSC Holdings LC in Payson,
Arizona, which in turn is a subsidiary of Katmai Government
Servicesin Anchorage, Alaska. Katmai in turn is
wholly owned by
Ouzinkie Native Corporation, a native
American firm based in Ouzinkie, Alaska, on the Kodiak archipelago. Why so
indirect? A 1971 law, from the Nixon administration, allows firms owned by native Alaskans to be given
no-bid contracts. Of the $29 billion secured by "native Alaskan" firms, most
- according to a 2010 series in the Washington Post, benefit sleazebags like
Boquist. There are
some who are even worse. One more step
in a long campaign to rip off the natives of all they have left.
The City's "Hip Chicks" Discover St.
Patrick's Day and Celebrate with a Typical Irish Pastime like... Like WINE
TASTING?!! Everyone knows the
Irish love a Guinness, or a good stout whiskey. But... but... wine?! In
Corvallis, on St. Patrick's Day? Guess the "chicks" aren't so very "hip" after
all. In fact, anything but... you'd have trouble finding something
more clueless on St. Patrick's... maybe English pot pie.
OH SHOCK! SURPIIIIZE! CITY
TURNS TO BIG EAST COAST PLASTICS CORPORATION FOR "GUIDANCE" ON PLASTICS POLICY Readers of this column will not be
startled to learn that the city has invited a huge plastics corporation to
"participate" in the Administrative Service Committee's "discussions" about the
proposed ban on plastic bags, backed by 50 businesses downtown and by 1000 who
signed a Sierra Club petition. What would have been a slam dunk for the ocean's
creatures has instead turned out to be a free- for- all for a huge South
Carolina corporation, Hilex Poly, which has a long and ugly
history of trying to bully those who don't
agree with them. Based in South Carolina, where there is no anti-SLAPP law
forbidding the use of lawsuits to discourage free speech, the company has been
active.But of course, there has long been an active
element in the city council who have dedicated themselves to service on behalf
of corporate management. They do the same to neighborhoods and our associations.
CITY MANAGER'S CHOICE FOR
POLICE CHIEF WILL GRATE ON MANY The city of Corvallis has now learned the
liability of having a fresh city manager on the job, in the appointment of the
new city police chief. At times, over the past few years, the police in
Corvallis have exhibited traits of being no more than an officially sanctioned gang. And in
conversations, whether with citizens or privately with officials, of those events, the
name of Jon Sassaman has come up as part of a small clique of in-force managers
encouraging that
Right: Jon Sassaman
culture of unaccountable violence, which has
included even "official"
kidnapping at gunpoint. Now, he has
been chosen by the newbie City Manager to head the force, contrary to the
tendency of his predecessor to choose managers from outside the culture.
Corvallis citizens should brace for a new round of assaults, killings,
misbehavior and
subsequent lawsuits, if Mr. Sassaman proves to be the thug that many believe him
to be. And as we expect he is.
LOCAL TEABAGGER
FRONT GROUP OF KOCH "BILLIONAIRES FOR BILLIONAIRE'S PROSPERITY" TRIES TO FIND SOME
SIGN OF LIFE IN CORPSE
Above: Case in point; The gazette caption reads:
"Linda Weimer, the Benton County chair of Americans for
Prosperity". The operative word here is "chair".
Earlier post: The moribund corpse of the Tea Party in Corvallis, which has managed
a whopping 3 posts in the past 18 months on its Facebook page, is trying to move
past its flatliner status, to re-create the proxy group for the rich. Both took a
stand seat this week in front of the Courthouse at the same time as the Peace
vigil.That was a fun photo-op. You could
tell the difference. The two morbidly obese in lawn chairs are the
"Tea Party". Their funding group, "Americans
for Prosperity", is one of those designated as "astroturf",
as opposed to "grassroots", to point to its origin in the wallets of the rich.
They received $40 million in the last year statistics are available, 2010. They
have little to show for it locally. But they're not giving up - the billionaire
Koch brothers
plan to steer $200 million to their proxies
this year. It's worth it for for the Kochs, since the little group screams in
favor of tax breaks for the rich and fewer environmental regulations on the
Koch's oil burning. Still, it's a lot of money for the
hack who
fronts the group locally.
LOCAL FIRM STILL IN
DEEP TROUBLE
Kwaplah, a firm located in the basement of the Madison
Plaza (where Starbucks is located, at 4th and Madison), was once touted as a
"success story" by the Bush administration's SBA. Like
many of the firms given prominence during
the Bush era, its reputation is now badly tarnished by charges of corruption.
After the World Bank banned the firm for "fraudulent practices and corruption",
other banks with cross-disbarment agreements -which includes the African Development Bank
Group, Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, the World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank Group
have announced intention to follow suit.
"Kwaplah" is a
Klingonword, but it also, according to the patent attorney firm,
Eric Pelton
& Associates, "means 'all of us' in Liberian", which is nonsense. There is
no "Liberian" language. There are more than 30 languages in Liberia, although
the official language is English, from the American ex- slaves
introduced by the American anti-slavery Societies in the nineteenth century
(These ex-slaves mimicked the plantation owners of the Deep South, themselves
engaging in forced labor and dominating Liberia until 1980, when Samuel Doe, of
indigenous Liberian (Krahn) stock, overthrew their rule, which sent most packing
to the U.S.) But
you wouldn't expect anything but nonsense from a patent lawyer, would you? Like
Baron Munchausen, they just "sorta make things up as they go".
Kwaplah
claims to be "a corporation organized and existing under
the laws of Liberia, engaged in the businesses including procuring
agricultural equipment, automobiles, electrical equipment, general
electronics appliances and accessories, laboratory equipment and other
basic items for international NGOs, Liberia government and other
foreign and domestics corporations." Kwaplah's website says it is "a disadvantaged and minority owned
firm with its headquarters located at the Madison Plaza, in Corvallis,
Oregon (USA), as well as continental Africa office in Monrovia,
Liberia." And despite its African basis, the Bush administration extended
tax-payer guaranteed loans through the Small Business Administration and
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (despite its name, OPIC is a federally
entity, established by the Nixon administration). Kwaplah
received aid of
$1,665,000 in
2005 alone and a similar amount in 2004. In fact the SBA
issued a story line lauding Kwaplah as one
of the Bush administration's "success stories", a story which continues to be
carried on the company's website. Those loans
raised eyebrows when Kwaplah's Liberian manager
Abednego Dahn sold a mere 2 vehicles to the Liberian government for $166,080.00
and
pocketed the money to startup his own firm,
Global Network.
Mr. Mahn said at the time that " We have reason to believe that some
government officials from Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Liberia
assisted Abednego in this criminal act." The investigation
showed Mr. Dahn "purchased several vehicles
set up his business, bought land and built houses with the stolen funds. Mr.
Dahn, for his part,
claimed the dustup was an employee action
and that "he wrote Mr.
Sherlock Mahn the President/ CEO Kwaplah International, and insisted
that he would hold on to the checks until 'reasonable explanation in
strict reference to his employment contract were addressed.'" The same
reporter wrote that Daniel Mahn "a member
of the Board", claimed "Dahn has been boasting to me personally that
he will bribe his way up to the Supreme Court and he will never step
in jail for this crime as long as he has this money to spend... To our
management surprise, the CID has not taken the balance of the money
Abednego has in his possession to date. Instead, he is allowed to keep
spending it to bribe his way through the system."
Kwaplah did not, apparently, blink an eye at the
loss of the money on the vehicles as to doing business in such a questionable
environment, since "Mahn also said his company will continue its
plan to invest US$2 million in Liberia, including the construction of
the new car dealership on the Tubman Blvd and Police Academy Road" (in
Liberia, likely at US taxpayer expense). Liberia has its own
questions for Kwaplah, citing $40,000.00
apparently given over for a vehicle which can't be found, according to
the GAC's 2007 report.
Dahn was not the first sketchy person to be associated with Kwaplah. A
predecessor as CEO of Kwaplah Liberia, George Bolo, was one of the
recipients of $1.4 million in questionable expenditures, according to
a
report submitted by the General Auditing Commission (GAC) to the
Liberian legislature regarding the country's NASSCORP ("a statutory public trust charged
with the administration of Liberia's Social Insurance Program. Its
primary responsibility is to replace part of lost income due to
injury, invalidity, old age or loss of life." And in the
trial which followed the theft, the Kwaplah attorney was Lavalah
Supuwood, who is
listed in the declaration of war criminals
by the Liberian Forum for the Establishment of a War Crimes Court in Liberia
and maintained by the Voice of Liberia for having "ordered and
witnessed the execution of 18 persons in Voinjama. The blood of the
victims was drained in a white bucket for unknown reasons". Supuwood is also
currently the attorney for his former ally,
Charles Taylor (whom Supuwood served as Secretary of Labor),
now in the UN international war
crimes trial on 17 counts. Mr. Taylor was arrested in Nigeria on an
international war crimes warrant after being thrown out by the guerrillas (see Boquist article at far right column). Mr. Taylor's crimes were committed
in Sierra Leone: "Churches and mosques were desecrated
and despoiled as the remains of butchered bodies were common scenes:
A dead woman’s body hung from a Lutheran Church window with brains
scattered while her baby cried tied to her back after a massacre of
over 600 innocent people; A two years old boy’s stomach was ripped open
during a butcher practice in Duport Road; hundred other bodies were
discovered burned, or badly mutilated; The Tellewoyan hospital, in
Voinjama, diametrically served as the roasting room for almost two
hundred innocent people, mostly women and children accused of loyalty
to a warring party; they were taken hostage, jailed in the hospital
and the building set ablaze."
Supuwood is not Mahn's only link to Charles Taylor. He has had his
photo taken with
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the country's current ruler.
At Taylor's trial he mentioned that Johnson-Sirleaf was one of those
who was a co-founding member of his group, and the country's Reconciliation
Commission named her as a war
criminal and recommends she be barred from holding office for 30 years (most of
the politicians currently active in the governments of Liberia and Sierra Leone
have been accused, at one time or another, of war crimes or crimes against
humanity). American taxpayers will wonder how in the hell the public's funds have
gotten so intertwined in such a scenario but it gets work. At Taylor's
UN trial, a deposition recounts how he was being held for embezzling
nearly $1 million, but was
freed from the jail by the CIA as it was
changing the ruler of Liberia from one stooge (Doe)
to another (Taylor) during the
Reagan administration. The CIA denied the charge, but Taylor
confirmed it in his war crimes trial.
Taylor later became not only an ally of Republican George H. Bush, but a
business partner with the Republican evangelist
Pat Robertson.
When Taylor was told by the G.W. Bush administration to step down in order to
bring Liberia's Civil War to an end, Robertson went
livid. "So we're undermining a Christian,
Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how
dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of
another country, 'You've got to step down.'". Robertson had
used planes from his tax- exempt TV
religious organization for the gold mining operation. "Elected" in the case of
Charles Taylor was a euphemism for terror. There is, incidentally a god. There
must be, since Robertson gold mining operation never found any of the ore.
As for Kwaplah, subsequent to the Dahn affair, it was business as usual.
"Business as usual"
says the World Bank, was "engaging in
corrupt and fraudulent practices in Bank-financed projects implemented in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Ghana, Gambia and
Liberia". The bank has "banned Kwaplah International Co. Inc, a US-based company
and its owner, M. Sherlock Mahn, together with any organization they directly or
indirectly control for 12 years", the 2nd longest ban in the history of the
bank. The Bank's agreements mean the African Development Bank Group, Asian
Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the
World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank Group are all bound to
bar the company as well. That left West Coast Bank, which Kwaplah says extended
$1 million in credit (Kwaplah
says "this amount is inadequate for the
level of business we have" (the FDIC
issued West Coast "a cease-and desist
letter over unsound banking practices" and the company paid a $390,000.00
fine for gouging customers),
Wells Fargo and US bank to front for the tax-payer's loans. Oh,
and you - on gobignetwork, Kwaplah says it has a "very profit potential from
35% to 40% in margin". They want more of your money.
Kwaplah
blames OSU student employed by the firm for the fraud and
corruption cited by the World Bank: "Kwaplah's personnel consisted predominantly
of Oregon State University students. At that time, Kwaplah compensation plan was
based on the number of bids each employee submitted. This pay scheme coupled
with lack of direct supervision and oversight led to few employees submitting
improper bid securities to the countries listed in the World Bank Press
Release". Uh huh.
CORVALLIS LEGISLATOR FRANK MORSE WANTS
TO SEND OUR LOCAL STUDENTS AND OUR ELDERLY TO PRISON FOR USING CELL PHONES,
EMAIL AND THE INTERNET FOR JOY
Maybe you saw the beautiful performance at Christmas time of
Handel's Hallelujah by a "flash" chorus who suddenly appeared in a mall and went
“viral” on youtube.
Or you might have caught the flash mob of hundreds of OSU students who suddenly appeared at
the campus library last year or the flash mob of Bollywood dancers at OSU. Or
perhaps you saw the Occupy the Post Office movement to save rural mail delivery
or even the flash mob of Corvallis seniors from four retirement centers who
suddenly descended on the mall and sang carols and danced at Christmas time.
Now, Corvallis's Frank Morse, in the legislature, wants
to make flash mobs a felony. Technically, flash dancers and singers are
"trespassing" and even "violating copyrights" , but frankly – FRANK -who
really cares? Except you?
This bill could make felons of five Corvallis Middle School students who lip
synched Justin Bieber’s “Baby" for youtube.
The Kappa Delta sorority sisters and Lambda Chi Alpha brothers could also be
charged with felonies for
organizing lip synchs ("Mock Rock") to benefit the Corvallis Center Against Rape and Domestic
Violence and other charities - Frank Morse wants to see those students doing some serious time
for that offense. To say nothing of what would be done to the local buskers who
successfully tested the city ordinance with the help of the ACLU last year.
And the local tribute bands - Joey Porter, Mad Dogs and No Englishmen, Stairway
Denied,
etc.
Yes, technically, that's a crime for violating copyrights. Who really cares, Frank, except YOU?
Who suffers, except you and a handful of other Republican legislators who seem
to lie awake at nights scheming up new ways of hindering people from spreading
happiness?
Senate Bill 1534: "A person commits the crime of aggravated solicitation if,
with the intent of causing two or more other persons to engage in specific
conduct constituting a crime, the person uses an electronic communication to
command or solicit other persons to engage in that conduct at a specific time
and at a specific location...In a prosecution under this section, the state need
not prove that the electronic communication was received by specific persons or
that the defendant intended for specific persons to engage in the criminal
activity...a Class C felony if the offense solicited is a misdemeanor or a Class
C felony."
Send Frank a message
,
Inform him that these old guys who didn't grow up with
smart phones or the internet should get a grip. This is one more infringement on
our civil liberties.
Tell Morse to stop trying to mess things up. Tell him you weren't surprised to
learn that this legislature has an agenda of overturning the public referendum
(Measure 67) so they can cut the taxes of the ultra-rich even further (HB4070,
etc.), or that they want to decimate wildlife for the sake of the developers and
the finance corporations which back them (HB4006, etc.). But this - this is too
much. Here we draw the line. We stopped S.O.P.A. (look it up, Frank), and we'll
stop this bill too.
Note: After emails, phone calls and testimony inundated the
clowns like Morse who carried this bill forward, and magazine articles in Mother
Jones, DailyKos, and the Salem News, this little piece of Nazi paraphenalia
seems
dead in the water.
Behind its bland front façade, the house is an asylum for victims of a darker
side of society: the child sex-trafficking industry.
With few models to base the shelter off of, the dedicated group of community
organizations that drew together to create the new long-stay refuge essentially
built it from the ground up. Portland's shelter is more or less flying blind,
pouring $300,000 and years of work into an innovative program. The experts who
put the shelter together are putting their faith in a surprising place: trusting
teens.
Building an honest and open relationship with adults is vital to the young
victims' recovery. Rather than being a traditional lockdown facility, the
shelter is built around the idea of openness and inclusion.
MISSING THE NUMBERS
Statistics about child sex trafficking are completely unreliable, as victims
rarely report cases, so there's no irrefutable evidence that child sex
trafficking in Portland is more prevalent than in any other major city. But
unlike other major cities, Portland has put real money toward the problem. The
youth shelter, which opened in December after years of behind-the-scenes work,
is, sadly, more of a unique situation than it should be. Multnomah County
Commissioner Diane McKeel, one of the leading supporters of the county's efforts
to fund the shelter in August, has been working hard to secure more solidified
shelters across the city for this need.
"I always thought of sex trafficking as more of an international, rather than a
domestic, issue," says McKeel. "But it's happening here and now. These are our
children. Let's take this to the next level."
Nationally, the US State Department estimates that around 100,000 children are
trafficked each year—but it's equally hard to count on the accuracy of this
approximation. The challenge of identifying these victims, as well as their
pimps, biases statistics of the local trafficking problem, minimizing the
enormity of the issue. Sergeant Mike Geiger at Portland Police Bureau's (PPB)
Human Trafficking Unit estimates that the unit picks up an average of two
trafficked children a week. But, "it ebbs and flows," he says.
A PRICKLY PAST
Whether its reputation is deserved or not, Portland launched into the national
media as a hotspot for child sex trafficking in 2009, when a cross-country FBI
sex work sting picked up seven underage prostitutes in the Rose City—ranking
second only to Seattle and scoring us the nickname "Pornland" from Dan Rather.
["Confessions of a Teenage Prostitute," Feature, Sept 3, 2009]. Following the
negative publicity, the Oregon House of Representatives passed a bill
distributing stickers about the state's human sex-trafficking hotline. But if an
underage sex worker called the hotline looking for help, the best they could
hope for was to wind up in a local youth shelter that deals with all sorts of
kids, not just those exploited by sex trafficking. In November 2010, Mayor Sam
Adams announced that "Portland has a reputation for sustainability, as a livable
place," but that reputation has been "stained by becoming a hub for juvenile sex
trafficking."
For the first time in decades, local child-sex-trafficking combatants have hope
and excitement for real, long-term change.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL SHELTER
With few examples on which to model the shelter, the dedicated group of
community organizations that drew together to create the new long-stay refuge
essentially built it from scratch.
Unlike the handful of other sex-trafficking shelters in the country, Portland's
shelter is aiming to feel more like a friendly home than an institution—it won't
be locked down, so the youth can leave whenever they want. It's also the only
shelter to work with kids of all genders (it already has one transgender teen
client). Welcoming victims with diverse backgrounds—and getting them to
voluntarily stick around—is complicated.
"What if the child is Native American? Has children of their own? Doesn't speak
English?" asks Joslyn Baker, collaboration specialist at Multnomah County's
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) program. "There are lots of
teenagers with lots of layers that need individual attention. We have developed
a place that responded to these needs."
Instead of solely targeting the issue at hand, sexual abuse, the shelter
encompasses all relevant adolescent problems, completing the picture.
Along with seven bedrooms, a kitchen, and living room, the space offers on-site
tutoring for students who may be years behind their grade level, on-call
counseling, and legal advocacy. The shelter will work with anyone under 18, but
according to the PPB's Geiger, the average age for child sex workers in Portland
is between 12 and 14 years of age. The shelter is designed to focus on all the
bumpy aspects of adolescence with the added trauma of being exploited by
trafficking.
"Now that there is a long-term, population-specific shelter available, we have
the next step to care in place," says Esther Nelson, program manager for
Portland's Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC), who usually deals with
emergency, short-term situations. "I am hopeful."
FROM THE GROUND UP
According to Baker of the CSEC, it took the right combination of people—and some
financial support—to get the shelter up and running.
"We were already on the right path in 2009—we just needed that extra boost,"
Baker says. "The system was overwhelmed with need and underwhelmed with
funding."
In 2010, they got that boost by receiving a $47,000 grant from a melting pot of
city and local church funds and then $258,000 in funding from the county in
August, cementing the shelter's future. Five organizations teamed up to develop
the shelter: PPB's Human Trafficking Unit, social service agency Janus Youth,
SARC, CSEC, and counseling center LifeWorks NW, which works with adult sex
workers.
"We feel strongly that long-term, consistent attachments to safe adults is one
of the key factors that can assist youth in their healing process," says Nelson
of SARC.
SETTING THE STAGE
Prior to the shelter's development, child sex-trafficked victims taken off the
street were sent to Harry's Mother, a Janus Youth runaway crisis shelter, or the
program's main office. "A crisis shelter is always in crisis," says shelter
director and Janus Youth veteran Kevin Donegan. He and others think it's crucial
to not just make another crisis shelter, but to establish a calm environment
where children are surrounded by similar peers, with the intention of setting an
entirely new stage for growth.
"This isn't an institutional, lockdown facility. I won't be tackling anyone who
wants to leave," says Donegan. "All I ask for is a conversation before they
leave to make sure they're safe."
The inside of the house echoes this idea. The seven bedrooms each look like
pages out of a Pottery Barn catalog, equipped with colorful, comfortable
furniture, stuffed animals, a box of chocolates, and a basket of first-aid and
health needs. The living room hosts a large wrap-around couch fit for movie
watching—Donegan offers his Netflix account to all guests—and a hefty stack of
board games. The only unusual decor is a pair of surveillance cameras in each
hallway. The shelter aims for rescued kids to stay among the counselors and
comfy sofas for at least 30 days, but they can stay for as long as a year.
Parents have to consent to their kids' stay at the facility, though Donegan says
that most family members are happy to have their child in a safe space rather
than in an unknown, dangerous location.
Up to the point where they reach the shelter, the adult authority figures that
most of the troubled teens have come into contact with is often the least
trusted: the police.
"The child's pimp teaches these children that the police are the bad guys," says
PPB's Geiger. "The biggest challenge we face is redirecting a child's thought
that we are safe and that they are not the criminal, but the victim." Once the
police find the child, it could take months to get the name of their pimp from
them, giving the trafficker ample time to leave the area. Geiger says he hopes
the new shelter's comfortable and stress-free environment will bring more
victims out of the woodwork.
"With this level of trauma, there's no quick solution here," says Geiger. "But I
think we can be encouraged that we've not just abandoned the issue, we're moving
it in the right direction."
Weekly Column from ColorofChange.org
COLOR US AMERICA
You and thousands of other ColorOfChange members are making a huge impactin our
campaign urging corporations to stop supporting the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC). We want to give you a quick update on our progress and
let you know how you can help.
Major companies are leaving ALEC in response to our campaign. After hearing from
us about ALEC's work spreading laws which suppress the Black vote — and ALEC's
link to the "shoot first" law used to justify the killing of Trayvon Martin —
companies including Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kraft,1 McDonald's,2 Mars,3 and Yum
Brands4(which owns KFC and Taco Bell) have all stopped supporting ALEC.
Two weeks ago, news broke that several corporations had left ALEC in response to
our campaign, and we've been working hard to convince more companies to follow
suit. ColorOfChange members have made thousands of phone calls to companies that
refuse to leave ALEC, and we've shone a spotlight on these corporations in the
media.
It's working. A steady stream of big companies has continued to leave ALEC — at
least 12 have now stopped funding ALEC's dangerous agenda.5 Our campaign has
been covered by major news outlets including NPR,6,7 CNN,8,9 MSNBC,10,11,12 the
Washington Post,13 Time,14 the Associated Press,15 Reuters,16 the New York
Times,17 Current TV18 and Democracy Now.19 Meanwhile, Fox News20 and other right
wing media outlets have attacked us as the campaign gains steam. And ALEC is
retreating — this week they announced that they are ending their "Public Safety
& Elections Task Force" — the committee within ALEC that was responsible for
discriminatory voter ID and "shoot first" laws.21ALEC is saying they will only
focus on "economic" work moving forward.
We've forced ALEC to admit that much of its agenda is simply indefensible, and
that's a testament to the power of everyday people to hold corporations and
organizations like ALEC accountable. But ALEC's latest move is a PR stunt to try
to stop their corporate donors from leaving. We have no reason to believe ALEC
when they say they won't continue working to disenfranchise voters. And we know
that ALEC's so-called "economic" work consists of policies designed to benefit
rich and powerful corporations at the expense of people of color,22,23
workers,24 and the environment.25 Many major corporations are continuing to fund
that toxic agenda.
It's incredibly inspiring what we've been able to achieve together so far. Our
partners and allies have been a huge help in this fight. Members of CREDO
Action, People for the American Way, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,
SumOfUs, and United Republic have joined ColorOfChange members in signing
petitions and making phone calls to companies that support ALEC. Overall, more
than 450,000 people have called on companies to stop funding ALEC. And
organizations like the Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for American
Progress, Common Cause, and Progress Now have done excellent work to expose ALEC
and hold its members accountable.
We hope you'll take a moment to celebrate what we've accomplished so far, and
join us in taking this campaign to the next level.
Thanks and Peace,
-- Rashad, Gabriel, Dani, Matt, Natasha, Kim and the rest of the
ColorOfChange.org team
A Weekly
Column from Emily's List
A WORD FROM EMILY'S
Frankly, I'm disgusted that I even have to write
this message. You would think that if any issue was safe from political
posturing, it would be violence against women.
But no. Next week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on renewing the Violence
Against Women Act, and Republicans can't stop playing politics for a single day
on an issue this important. Many, many Republicans in Congress have announced
their opposition to renewing the Act -- including some of those running against
our women.
This vote could actually be close. It's enough to make me want to throw up my
hands and scream. But that won't help the women who need the protections in this
law.
What will help them? Showing them that we're standing together to protect
women's health and safety.
Since President Clinton first signed it, the Violence Against Women Act has
given law enforcement agencies the tools they need to stop domestic violence,
and given women resources to protect themselves. This legislation has saved
countless lives, and every time it has come up in Congress for renewal, it has
passed easily and with bi-partisan support.
But now we're facing a new political reality, one where the Republican Party is
run by its most extreme elements. Something that used to be a no-brainer is now
just another political football for Republicans to use to impress the Tea Party
radicals who are calling the shots for them.
Make no mistake: they are playing politics with women's lives.
We can win this. There are Republicans wavering, a few who know this is too
important for politics and are ready to buck their party to support renewing
VAWA. But they need to hear from you.
I don't need to tell you that our EMILY's List champions in the Senate are
leading the fight to protect women. And we're going to keep working to elect
more pro-choice women to fight for us -- like Barbara Mikulski and Patty Murray
and Dianne Feinstein -- so the next time VAWA comes up for renewal, there is no
fight. But there's no time to waste if we want to win this fight today. Thanks
for your support.
Warmly,Stephanie Schriock
President
SPORTS NEWS
dan savage's
"savage love" column
Dear Savage,
I'm a 43-year-old woman, married for 19 years, and I need your help! Like most
middle-aged moms, I read Fifty Shades of Grey. I understand that it is fiction.
But it has motivated me to spice things up in the bedroom. The problem is that
my husband is a dud. He's not open to trying anything that isn't missionary or
doggy. That's the extent of it. I feel as if I've tried everything. He's happy
with the way things are. Period. What do I do?
-Woman Has Interesting Perversions
Here's what you do: Get in a time machine and go warn your younger self not to
make the same mistake that so many women make in their 20s. That is, dumping
guys with relatively harmless, easily indulged kinks—the foot fetishists, the
guys who wear panties, the guys who want their girlfriends to wear superhero
costumes while they peg their ass—because kinky guys are "weird," "not normal,"
or "probably gay."
Backing way the hell up for a moment: I've been writing about sex and
relationships, men and women, kinky sex and vanilla sex for 20 years. It is my
informed opinion that men typically become aware of their kinks—they typically
become hyperaware of them—when they're teenagers. Many women, on the other hand,
don't seem to become aware of their kinks until they're in their 30s or 40s.
Maybe it has something to do with the sexual peak, which men are believed to hit
in their teens and women in their 30s (and which many people believe to be
bullshit), or maybe it simply takes women longer to overcome the misogynist
slut-shaming that they're subjected to as girls and to openly embrace their
sexualities and sexual interests.
Whatever the cause, I've seen it happen again and again: A woman tosses aside a
series of decent but somewhat kinky guys until she finds a guy whose sexual
interests are "normal," e.g., missionary, doggy, and
no-hands-on-the-back-of-the-head oral. And that's the guy she marries. Then, 10
or 20 years later, she develops some "weird," "not normal," "probably gay"
sexual interests of her own. Now she wants to spice things up, but—fuckadoodledoo—20
years ago, she dumped a nice kinkster and married a total sexual dud instead.
So here's what you do: Get in a time machine and go tell your twentysomething
self not to dump someone because he's kinky, WHIP, because one day you're going
to come into your own kinks. And when that day comes, you'll want to be able to
say something like this to your husband: "So, hey, you know how I've been
jerking you off with my feet/letting you wear my panties/dressing up like
Aquagirl and fucking your ass for the last 19 years? It's been a lot of fun,
honey, and you know I love you and you know I love your kinks. But it's payback
time. I just finished reading this book, and it really turned me on and now I
wanna get caned and you're going to cane me."
If you don't have access to a time machine, WHIP, tell your husband that while
he may be happy with the way things are, you're not. Which means things have to
change. -
Dan Savage
Dear Mexican
DEAR MEXICAN: Why do Mexicans change their names, seemingly at whim? For
example, Antonio Garcia Rodriguez is Antonio Garcia on Monday and Antonio
Rodriguez on Wednesday. And by Saturday, he might call himself Pedro Garcia! Is
this a plot to confuse whitey? It's working if it is!
No More Nombres
DEAR GABACHO: From the moment a Mexican is born until the day he's seis pies
abajo, a Mexican's sole goal in life is to confound gabachos—commanded so by
diosito en el cielo in Leviticus, it is. But the long-winded names Mexicans use
isn't part of that conspiracy. You can actually find a version of your question
in my ¡Ask a Mexican! book (BUY BUY BUY in the next week, and you get a free
¡Ask a Mexican! tote bag . . . or not), but let me reiterate: Traditionally, a
Mexican's full name constituted four parts—a first name, a middle nombre, a
surname and the mother's apellido (more than a few Mexis drop the middle name
and use those initials to create cool belt buckles). This insistence on honoring
the maternal and paternal sides of the familia, however, wrecks desmadre on
American legal forms, which frequently mistake the maternal name for the last
name, a middle name for a surname or a surname for a middle name. And now you
know why far too many Mexis get pulled aside by the TSA—oh, and that whole Tío
Lencho-looks-like-Saddam Hussein thing. '-
Gustavo
Arellano
The Ice is Melting Too Fast!
The Climate is Changing Too Fast!
CORVALLIS, OREGON
CHRISTY'S
CRIME BEAT:
See archives from preceding weeks
here. This Week's Terrible Crimes:
Left: Philomath's Travis Marshall Weiner,
busted for theft, burglary, felon with a weapon, burglary tools
The week has been a quiet one, maybe because the Risland clan is out of town
(except Tyson, who was busted again). Or the residents of Philomath and Linn
County - who are responsible for 90% of Corvallis's crime. are too busy planning
the summer Frolics and County Fair. Most of the crimes which did occur have a
familiar Corvallis ring - the theft of pot, potting soil (likely for
sprouting pot), the re-arrest of Linus Ezra Morgan, who was busted for trying to
steal 2 books in March, etc. There was that one incident with the prank which
turned into a h false bomb alert, and another hoax where cops intervened after
neighbors reported a 15 year old screaming as she was chased down the street by
an adult male. The latter turned out to be a case of teens re-enacting the
century old ritual of ringing some stranger's doorbell and running - repeatedly.
There was also a case of some guy trying to keep somebody from dialing in a 911
domestic violence call.
Right: Toledo's Joshua Loren Vanhoorebeke,
wanted at the Coast, was busted for meth, burglary tools and lying to
the cops about who he is.
Most of the arrest news this week involved Republican politicians, including
that of Gregory Alvin Taylor, of Klamath
Falls, after he was arrested here in Corvallis when a heroic little kid "younger than 6" screamed at him, "Let
go of my penis!" and the family came running.
Left: Republican legislative candidate Gregory
Alvin Taylor, busted for child sex abuse.
Above: Sarah Phillips and Nilesh Pradesh, from
the Deadspin site
Above left: NOT Sarah
Phillips, though this picture was posted on her blog. Above right: Sarah
Phillips' high school album photo.
The most interesting news related to alleged crimes this week involves a local
couple alleged to have bilked others on the web out of money and access to their
web sites. Sarah Phillips, above right, was the public image of the couple,
though not quite since she also posted another woman's photo as herself,
according to the site which exposed her. Ms Phillips was partnered with another
Corvallis resident, Nilesh Prasad, who also worked at T-Mobile. The Deadspin
website, which first exposed the pair,
quotes a source who says the 2 were fired
in 2010 for selling T-mobile phones on e-bay, activating them, and then claiming
a commission from T-mobile, which they say was unaware of the scheme.
Ironically, Ms Phillips
works at the AT&T store at present, a job
she is likely to lose as her past employment history becomes better known and
publicized.
Various websites have quoted
classmates saying the pair went to high
school at Sheldon in Eugene together, but dropped out of sight inexplicably. To
make a long story short, the various web sites investigating the strange story
have pieced together the following, whether accurate or not: Mr. Prasad,
the sites say, spent his time in high school learning how to pick winners in
sports games. After, he went to work writing for Covers, a web site dealing with
sports gambles, but his sidekick Sarah was the front for the couple, largely in
name. When ESPN invited "her" to join them, Sarah's picture was not, apparently
regarded as sexy enough, and they began
posting another woman's
photo instead,
say those who claim to know. The 2 then, says Deadspin, launched their plan to bilk established authors of their material
and/or money. One or more of them complained to
Deadspin. The rest is History.
The local law enforcement authorities have not charged Ms. Phillips although
that may come. Probably not, since none of the law enforcement in town seems to
be especially adept at, or even interested in, arresting white collar criminals
accused of swindling people who live elsewhere.
Where are the headlines - and the votes - in THAT?
Mr. Marker's Facebook
page says he has lived in Albany,
Philomath, Fort Leonard Wood and Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, but was born in
Corvallis. He was arrested in November. Cops say he "sneaked into the room of
the 22-year-old woman and sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping. He was
charged with first-degree sex abuse and attempted sexual penetration with an
object.
Marker dated the woman for about a month, police said, but the couple broke up
at the end of October. They were still living together at the time of the
attack, which allegedly occurred Nov. 1." He's been charged this week with 1st
degree sex abuse. Mr. Marker's case illustrates a curious phenomenon: half the
sex criminals in Oregon are veterans.
There is a Jesse Sutter,
same exact age, who was a Santiam Christian wrestler. And these Christian
schools are notorious for producing kids without the slightest idea of sexual
ethics, the law, STDs or pregnancy. It's no coincidence that the highest rates
of teen pregnancy
come from schools with Christian abstinence
programs.
Case in point: Bristol Palin. Ms Palin is setting the record straight about
‘putting a ring on it’ vs ‘trial marriage’ (getting laid). Despite her past
struggles of tagging hockey players, having a child out of wedlock and being a
Christian, Bristol is super totally not “doing it” with the hot dude Wonkette
said Bristol was totally doing it with. Bristol is a good Christian, but now she
wants to show how bad it is for everyone else but her to get it without being
married first. Bristol, through her years of experience, has found the only way
to have sex and be ok with it is to put a shiny piece of metal on her finger and
getting the ‘do it’ from Jesus.
Bigger case in point; right wing Christian sheriff of Orange County, Mike Carona,
now doing federal prison for his
role in trying to cover up a millionaire
buddy's son organizing a gang rape.
The lack of ethical guidance in Christian schools should come as no surprise
since the "blood diamond" business partner of the schools' primary backer, Pat
Robertson, was
convicted for his role war crimes this week
involving the most barbaric treatment of kids. And the star of the Christian
Right, Sara Palin, this week is
saying that the outlawing of child labor
(not the predominance of the Christian right wing nuts in the Republican Party) is
the source of "America’s decline". And this year's Republican mantra upheld:
"Leave no child a dime." If you want ethics, stay away from churches and church
schools. That's the last place you'll find some.
Cops say it was a week of obsession among women. Above: Desirea Lynn Clay (left),
busted for violating a no- contact order (an earlier sheriff's report
says she was also arrested 6 days earlier),
and Christina Marie Clay, busted for a string of offenses on Adair Road. Cops
say Ms. Curry "walked into her
ex-boyfriend’s house unannounced, took his phone and got into his pickup. The
man got his phone back, but then Curry took a shovel and broke the sliding glass
door at the residence. She was arrested on charges of first-degree burglary,
second-degree theft, first-degree criminal mischief, first-degree criminal
trespassing, possession of burglar’s tools and unlawful entry into a motor
vehicle. She caused an estimated $1,601 damage"
Cops say she's from Salem, and there is a Christina Curry in Salem, who works at
the Waxx Spot there, doing body waxing. Her
Facebook photo looks remarkably like the
mug shot.
Left: the Facebook photo. The Facebook page
reads: "if you search craigslist sexual encounters stay the fuck away
from me."
One can only wonder if that statement refers to the guy cops say was her victim.
Right: Tanner Levi Abbott
Mr. Abbott - from Albany, of course - has been busted here before. Last June, he
claimed a bunch of guys pissed him off so
he broke out a bus window. This time around, he's been charged again with
disorderly conduct and a weapon violation.
We've said it before. The local sheriff is always saying she needs a bigger
jail. Not true. Albany and Philomath need bigger jails, not Corvallis. And since
the freeloaders in those towns don't want to pay for one, we can do the next
best thing. Put up a toll booth at both ends of town, with a $50 toll charged
incoming traffic, applicable to bail when the inevitable occurs.
Left: Yamhill County klepto Travis Wayne Ingram was busted here
again for burglary and theft.
Mr. Ingram has a long history of thievery, and
was busted with fellow Yamhill klepto James Moss, arrested in Mcminnville for
his 49th time, in February. Mr. Ingram is this week's winner of the Risland
scholarship, with its free case of adult diapers (see below). Something needs
done about these little Republican shitholes where the parents walk down to the
polls every year to vote for
known criminals then spend the next year
wringing their hands about why their kids turn into such major ne'er- do- wells.
Jail the parents.
Left: Michael Todd Morefield
Mr. Morefield is charged with failing to register as a sex offender, with 4 counts of ID theft,
with theft and forgery. He has previously been charged with meth, selling pot,
guns, etc. He is listed as a registered sex offender from Mississippi,
which is significant since even bestiality is widely accepted as normal in the
South, where a Republican candidate for Governor
says that in the region, "your first
girlfriend is a mule". The state's most honored figure
married his cousin when she was in the 7th grade. He was 22 and she was his 3rd
wife. Who knows what sort of mayhem you have to commit in Mississippi to become
a registered sex offender?
But the strangest crime locally was the bust of Chase Smith and Kara Bemoll for
trespassing, with Mr. Smith also
busted for criminal trespassing with a
firearm. At 180 NW 5th. 180 NW 5th is the address of the police station.
Local Tweaker and petty thief Stephen
Christopher Griffin
Mr. Griffin is only 30 and has managed to splash his mug shot around Oregon many
times as a helpless meth addict and thief. He is another candidate for the
Risland scholarship (see below), which comes with a case of adult diapers. This
week, in Corvallis, he's been charged with various thefts, possessing burglary
tools, giving cops a fake name, etc. But at least it's not Oklahoma, since Mr.
Griffin wasn't carrying an exploding portable meth lab in his pants:
Perennial local turd Mr. Reeves has been in jail almost as much as out for
thievery and meth, but also for trespass, possession of burglary tools, stealing
ID, pretty- you- name- it, if it has to do with drugs or theft. Mr. Reeves needs
to go to Albany, where he would fit in with the locals quite well. He's really
out of his league - and his element - here.
Left: Joan Jeris Wall
Fellow turd-ette, Philomath's Ms. Wall is accused of continuing her habits of
the last several years, doing drugs and stealing - especially IDs and credit
cards - from cars as once again, Linn County, Philomath and the Risland clan
accounted for 90% of Corvallis crimes.
Maybe, just maybe, the answer to Oregon's crime problem is to
cancel the town plats of Albany and Philomath, forcing the crooks
residents to move elsewhere (anywhere but here). Or we could simply legalize
drugs, as was done with alcohol, and treated abuse as a health problem instead.
It would also reduce violence along the border and beyond in Latin America.
When’s the last time you saw Bartles kill Jaymes with a machete?
Right: Brandon Wayne Sanchez
Mr. Sanchez is charged with rape, 2 counts of sex abuse in coercion. In Oregon,
sex abuse can arise from physically forcing oneself on an unwilling party or
from kiddie sex. You might think it's significant that Mr. Sanchez's Facebook
page claims he is 16, rather than 19, as both the police blotter
and his myspace
page say. You'd be right. He is accused of
handcuffing and raping an 11 year old girl 3 years ago. Two years he was
accused of molesting a 5 year old boy.
But of course the king of kiddie rape this week was George Bush's old pal, Sylvio
Berlusconi - former prime minister of Italy - on
trial for his role in child sex trafficking.
And the crimes reported this week involving kids aren't just about sex. Walmart
was exposed for a huge bribery operation in Mexico, where Walmart
relies upon a labor force of 19,000
children. Oh who cares, right? It’s just a little mantequilla to grease
the wheels of commerce for Los Creadores de Empleo. And while Wal-Mart brags a
lot about all the jobs they create in Mexico, in 2007 Wal-Mart de Mexico had
19,000 teenagers (between 14 and 16 years old) working for them as grocery
baggers for nada. Wal-Mart said, “Yeah? So?” and the world turned over, farted
and went back to sleep. Pinches pendejos. In that same year, Wal-Mart de Mexico
earned more than $1.1 billion in profits. If they had paid 19,000 baggin’ slaves
at the Mexican minimum wage of about $5 a day, they’d be looking at more than
$34 million in extra expenses. Also too, if you figure in one bathroom break per
day, a cookie, a pair of plastic sandals for each teen and no healthcare
coverage (because they’re part-time, 14-hour-per-day employees, of course),
well, Wal-Mart’s looking at a serious chunk taken out of their profits: 3%.
Híjole cabrón. Hush, hush, those of you (3) who cry, “But what about the
children?” Wal-Mart’s fiscally responsible corporate decision makers (who are
smarter than you, so STFU) must weigh the realities of doing business in the
land of sinsemilla and raicilla: $24 million in government bribes so they can
get their stores built really fast so they can enslave more teenagers OR $34
million to pay undeserving teenagers to work in stores that haven’t been built
yet. Maybe it’s simply a case of what comes first, la gallina o el huevo.
Right: Nathan Gilbert Olivas
Mr. Olivas was busted on ID theft charges. He's from Linn County, where he was
busted in March of last year at a major
meth operation. Like most other inmates hailing from Linn County, Mr. Olivas'
mugshot is widely distributed in Oregon, for doing what Linn County does mostest -
meth and stealing.
Left: Steven Oliver Sletten
Mr. Sletter is charged with 4 counts of sodomy, sex abuse and online corruption
of children. Sodomy II requires the victim be less than 14. Mr. Sletter's
Facebook page says he's from Yamhill County, another little Republican holdout
in the Willamette Valley where what is regarded as "quaint" notions of romance
are crimes elsewhere. It's not all that rare. A prominent Teabag Party activist
was
busted for kidnapping and sexually
assaulting a woman this week. In this case, cops say a 13 year old kid told of being molested on a
regular basis by the Yamhill County man.
The good news is that he's not blaming anyone but himself for his dilemna.
That's not traditional in these little Republican holdouts.
Left: Jesse James White
Councilman Jesse James White, for example, crashed his Corvette drunkenly into a
parked car and when his auto caught fire, he ran to try to avoid detection,
leaving his 4 year old son bleeding in the blazing car. When caught, his
statement was: "My campaign will continue;
I will not be deterred from initiating a petition to cut the huge executive pay
raises in Riverbank rather than a sewer rate increase. This is at the core of
recent events, liberal progressives who want to raise taxes. None of the recent
events alters that I am the only candidate who has been, and continues to work
for you before asking for your vote. I have kept my promises as a Riverbank city
councilman. I shall continue my crusade." Believe these people?
Left: Tyson Risland
The weekly crime report wouldn't be complete without one of the Rislands, for
whom the Risland Rehab Clinic (see below) is named. This week, it's Tyson again,
busted 78 9 times since August a year ago, this time for
failing to show up on meth and theft charges. The
parents of these guys did something seriously wrong and could hold enlightening
seminars on How NOT to Raise Children. One of the 3 is in jail almost weekly and
have become cartoons in the community (see the 3 in court video below). Without the Rislands, Philomath and Albany, 90% of thecity's crime would dry up and we could
use our funding for better purposes than policing the yahoos.
Right: Dusty Risland, busted 10 times since
November.
About the Risland Rehab Clinic
Dusty Risland, for whom the Risland Rehab Clinic (see above) is named, is
back in jail. Mr. Risland as busted for criminal trespassing, criminal
possession of a forged instrument (counterfeit $20), felon in possession of a
weapon and meth. The Dusty Risland Clinic mentioned in this column is strictly
online, consisting of repetitive viewing of the video below, until the technique
is mastered. The assumption of the Clinic is that there is a small subset labelled criminals
who actually just do not know how to change their adult diapers when they full and are showing
up, bewildered, seeking police assistance. That is the only possible explanation
a rational person could come to. NOBODY could POSSIBLY be so stupid and inept,
as criminals, as people like Mr. Risland pretend to be.
Note: there are several sleazy websites across the country posting mugshots,
utilizing photos owned by the public, in the public domain, all run by
Portlander Kyle Ritter, which will remove your mugshot for $39 or such from their sites.
This is not one of them. Do not send in cash trying to have a mugshot removed.
It would just be a waste of your time and your money. Instead, put your time
into turning your life around. And your money into your kids.
Your Breaking Election News for 2012 -
Pretty Much the same as Last Year's
Left: Michelle Bachmann
Others seemed less inspired. As the speech wore on, Jindal’s applause lines drew
less and less of a response, and tables broke out into their own visible side
conversations, while Jindal joked about how the vacuums used to clean up after
the Deepwater Horizon spill were the same ones used to empty “port-o-potties
after a football game on a Friday night.” Dinner waited in the wings until he
finished, right around the 45-minute mark. “I can assure you that I will speak
shorter than our prior speakers, because the food is here,” said State Senate
Majority Leader Dean Skelos when he finally took to the podium, to laughs and
cheers. No, bring Bobby Jindal back! We want to hear more about his dad for five
hours, and jokes about port-o-potties while people are waiting to eat. Mitt
Romney should look no further, Bobby Jindal is the future of zzzzzzz.
order here BUY DAN'S BEES' HONEY AT THE AMAZING PRICE OF $10 A QUART
Support a Musician
LOCAL
MOVIES
playing at the darkside downtown,
215 SW 4th Street
Friday, April
26, through Thursday May 3 Holding over for another week. Some
titles will have limited shows.
THE ARTIST: Nominated For 10 Oscars. WON Best Picture!
A SEPARATION: Winner of best Foreign Film. Iranian.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly
NEW!
FOOTNOTE: The Story of A Great Rivalry Between A Father and Son.
FOOTNOTE --PG
FOOTNOTE (Subtitled Hebrew) is the tale of a great rivalry between a father and
son. Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are both eccentric professors, who have
dedicated their lives to their work in Talmudic Studies. The father, Eliezer, is
a stubborn purist who fears the establishment and has never been recognized for
his work. While his son, Uriel, is an up-and-coming star in the field, who
appears to feed on accolades, endlessly seeking recognition. Then one day, the
tables turn. When Eliezer learns that he is to be awarded the Israel Prize, the
most valuable honor for scholarship in the country, his vanity and desperate
need for validation are exposed. His son Uriel, meanwhile, is thrilled to see
his father's achievements finally recognized but, in a darkly funny twist, is
forced to choose between the advancement of his own career and his father's.
Will he sabotage his father's glory? FOOTNOTE is the story of insane academic
competition, the dichotomy between admiration and envy for a role model, and the
very complicated relationship between a father and son.
Watch Trailer.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN --R
Many people will come away from "We Need to Talk About Kevin" too stunned to
talk about Kevin, or much else either.
Others may find themselves unable to shut up about the film. About Tilda
Swinton's amazing performance - way too risky for mere Oscar gold - or the
film's nature/nurture parenting arguments, or just on the sheer horribleness
that is Kevin himself.It couldn't happen, could it? It isn't happening is it?
Director Lynne Ramsay, writing with Rory Kinnear, has come up with the ultimate
bad seed story here.
It's a tale of a child who from birth is spiteful, mean, cruel and potentially
murderous.
The boy is born to a normal enough Mom, Eva (Swinton), a travel writer who finds
herself from infancy tied to the manipulations of her son, who handles his
enabling father (John C. Reilly) like so much putty.
Kevin refuses to be potty-trained marching around defiantly in diapers until
he's six. When a younger sister is born he - literally - tortures her. Pets go
missing. Kevin never accepts blame for anything, and directly taunts his mother
with his own madness.
Director Ramsay makes Kevin's impact all the more felt by coming at it from all
angles. In flashbacks and forwards we see Eva rebuilding her life, hated by
neighbors, after Kevin (Ezra Miller, grown) has gone on a school shooting
rampage - it happens early, though not graphically - in the film, even as we see
her struggle to reason with this devil of a child and her husband while
protecting her younger daughter.
Swinton's cracked porcelain performance - at one point she takes the infant
Kevin to a site filled with jackhammers just to drown out the sound of his
screams - is the film's essence. The question isn't whether such a monster could
exist?
The question is, what if he were your son?
Take a gander at the trailer.
THE ARTIST -- PG-13
Hollywood 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie superstar. The
advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall
into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), it seems the sky's
the limit - major movie stardom awaits. THE ARTIST tells the story of their
interlinked destinies.
NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE!
View Trailer
A SEPARATION --R (Subtitled)
'A Separation" manages such a sublime balance of complexity and clarity, of the
unique and familiar, that it's breathtaking.
This is, simply put, one of the best films I've ever seen. And I've seen a few
films. Written and directed by Iranian Asghar Farhadi, "A Separation" starts out
as a domestic drama, then morphs into something resembling a murder mystery, all
the while wrestling with the natures of truth and justice, right and wrong. It's
about family, and society, and honor, and love ... good heavens, what isn't it
about?
Well, it's not about space aliens or superheroes. Possibly the most stunning
thing about "A Separation" is its remarkable originality.
The film begins with wife Simin (Leila Hatami) arguing in court for a divorce
from husband Nader (Peyman Moadi).
She wants the family to move away from Iran for the good of their daughter,
Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director's daughter). He does not want to abandon
his dementia-riddled father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi). She pleads for a divorce so
she can leave; the court denies her.
OK, so the movie's about a family dealing with divorce and dementia, right?
Hardly.
Simin moves back in with her family, Nader and Termeh continue to care for the
old man. Nader hires a lower-class woman named Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to care for
the man during the day, while he's at work and Termeh's at school.
Unfortunately, Razieh is distracted by both her own little daughter (Kimia
Hosseini) and tensions at home with her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini). This
leads to a literal falling out with Nader that ends up endangering both
families.
For a long while, director Farhadi offers up lies while keeping the truth
elusive, both in terms of the story and the characters themselves. The facts of
the situation are eventually resolved; the effect of those facts may never be.
Aside from Simin's initial motivation to take her family out of Iran, "A
Separation" is not a political film or a film that is in any way critical of
Islam. It moves with complete comfort within the norms of its culture, and that
ease makes the film simultaneously more fascinating and genuine feeling.
But if the film is comfortable in its surroundings and culture, it is in no way
satisfied with the universal human condition. Messes pile upon messes here, the
way messes might pile upon messes anywhere, and the results range from wearying
to devastating.
The film's most effective moment finds the teen Termeh silently exchanging a
wary, worried look with Razieh's much younger daughter. This is the world they
will inherit? This is the future?
"A Separation" offers a complex and layered story about flawed characters trying
to make their way through life, stumbling, fumbling and often desperate. These
people seem so real they might live next door. And they probably do.
See the Trailer.
OTHER STUFF: Ads!
This is the time of year when we start seeing our attendance drop at the DS.
It's the nice weather and all that. (I'm looking out the window while I am
typing this and thinking, 'What nice weather?' Had to get the 65mpg motorcycle
home and trade for the 25mpg car before I got totally drenched. But, we need the
rain....) Anyway, biz drops off this time every year. But, something that really
helps with these lean times is income from the pre-show screen ads. That being
said, I want to encourage you awesome film viewers to support the people who buy
on screen ads from the DS. Please patronized these advertisers when you can and
let them know you saw their ad on the DS screen. By doing this you are
supporting the Darkside, even if you're not in for a film! Thanks!
Darkside Cinema
215 SW 4th
Corvallis, OR 97333
darksidecinema.com
SEARCH CORVALLIS COMMUNITY PAGES:
CORVALLIS AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN TED COX'S THE
TOLEDO, OREGON INCIDENT OF 1925
WEEKLY COLUMN ON ISSUES RELATED TO THE INTERNET, PRIVACY,
FREE SPEECH AND PATENT/COPYRIGHT REFORM
Hyman Strachman is a 92-year-old WWII vet from
Long Island who has spent nearly a decade supporting the troops in his own
special way: By sending them free-of-charge bootleg DVDs of first-run films
by the box-load.Strachman — "Big Hy" to his customers — is estimated to have
sent some 300,000 illicit DVDs to soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan
since he took up the hobby following his wife's passing in 2003. "It's not
the right thing to do, but I did it"..Many of those whose disbelief is
temporarily suspended thanks to Strachman's piracy are thankful for that.
"It was pretty big stuff - it's reconnecting you to everything you miss,"
said Army Reserve Jenna Gordon who toured as a medic with the 883rd Medical
Company near Kandahar City.
Soldiers like Gordon and those in her care are what kept Strachman going
despite the illegality of his endeavor. "Every time I got back an emotional
e-mail or letter, I sent them another box," he said. Added his son, Arthur:
"I wouldn't say it kept him alive, but it definitely brought back his joie
de vivre."
Strachman notes that none of his DVDs are copies of commercial DVDs — just
in-theater recordings and studio screeners. He says no one has ever asked
him to pull the plug on his operation."We are grateful that the
entertainment we produce can bring some enjoyment to them while they are
away from home," Gantman said in a tone the Times remarks "dripped with the
difficulty of going after a 92-year-old widower supporting the troops."
[Note: If a bill in
the Oregon state legislature co-sponsored by Corvallis's Senator Frank Morse
had succeeded, Mr. Gantman would have been marked as felon, and sent to the
penitentiary.
Here's their next move: The Cyber Intelligence
Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, would obliterate any semblance of
online privacy in the United States.
And CISPA would provide a victory for content owners who were shell-shocked
by the unprecedented outpouring of activism in opposition to SOPA and
Internet censorship.SOPA was pushed as a remedy to the supposed economic
threat of online piracy -- but economic fear-mongering didn't quite do the
trick.
So those concerned about copyright are engaging in sleight of hand,
appending their legislation to a bill that most Americans will assume is
about keeping them safe from bad guys.
This so-called cyber security bill aims to prevent theft of "government
information" and "intellectual property" and could let ISPs block your
access to websites -- or the whole Internet. CISPA also encourages companies
to share information about you with the government and other corporations.
That data could then be used for just about anything -- from prosecuting
crimes to ad placements.
And perhaps worst of all, CISPA supercedes all other online privacy
protections. Thanks for fighting for the Internet.
Interested in starting a radio station in
your community?
Black radio has played a vital role in the lives of Black folks across the
nation. From giving voice to Soul Train legend Don Cornelius (WVON Chicago)
to providing a lifeline for Hurricane Katrina evacuees (KAMP "Dome City
Radio" Houston), radio has been a critical platform for amplifying Black
voices, helping to shape our identity and imparting a sense of community.
Massive media ownership consolidation over the past 16 years has allowed
corporate-owned stations — which fail to fully represent Black folks'
talents, values, aspirations and struggles — to largely supplant local Black
radio powerhouses. Today, we have what may be a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to reclaim the airwaves.
Thanks to the new Community Low Power Radio Act, people like you can take
advantage of a brief application window to get licensed to run a
non-commercial radio station in your community. ColorOfChange has teamed up
with Prometheus Radio Project to make the process easy and affordable. Click
the link below to receive information on how to start your own community FM
station:
It's time to reclaim the airwaves
If Black folks and our allies take advantage of this milestone opportunity,
we can impact thousands of lives. Large numbers of people are still
faithfully tuning in to their radios: twice as many people get their news
from talk radio as from the TV evening news on ABC, NBC and CBS combined.
The signal from low-power FM radio reaches just 3 to 10 miles, but those who
listen to community stations tend to be loyal supporters, listening for
longer periods and keeping their radio dials fixed on these stations.5 And
now, thanks to Internet streaming and digital wireless reception, local
community broadcasts can be shared world-wide.
In the 1960s and '70s, local Black radio stations served as the political
and social "drumbeat" of Black communities. At WERD Atlanta, the nation's
first Black-owned station, DJ "Jockey Jack" Gibson regularly slipped
political news and commentary between record plays. With WERD's studio
located directly above the offices of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, Gibson was also known to lower his mic out the window to Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. whenever Dr. King wanted to make a statement on air.
A large number of local Black stations were shut down after Congress
deregulated the airwaves in 1996. This gave deep-pocketed corporations the
green light to buy up thousands of stations in one fell swoop. To cut
production costs, corporate owners slashed local programming in favor of
nationally-syndicated content that could be broadcast across a large number
of stations.8 The Community Low Power Radio Act was designed to bring local
programming back to the airwaves by making broadcasting licenses available
to nonprofit community groups and individuals.
Why radio matters
Albert Knighten, a community activist and retired Navy air traffic
controller, knows firsthand the profound need for locally-driven radio
broadcasting in communities of color. In 2009 — before passage of the
Community Low Power Radio Act — Knighten began running an unlicensed radio
station out of his home in the majority Black, working-class Dunbar
neighborhood of Fort Myers, Florida. Everyone from city council members to
local pastors listened to the station that broadcast news about political
events, economic development and crime, as well as played gospel and R&B
favorites. One avid listener remarked that Knighten's broadcasts "made
people feel like they had...a voice in their tomorrow."
In 2011, Knighten was arrested for operating Dunbar Radio 107.5 without a
license — a felony in the state of Florida that is punishable by five years
in prison. (New Jersey and New York have also criminalized operating a radio
station without a license.) Thanks to widespread community support and
on-the-ground advocacy, the state eventually agreed to drop the charges
against Knighten, and he will only have to do community service. However,
his absurd arrest and broadcast shut-down speaks to the formidable power of
the corporate media lobby in dominating the means of public discourse, as
well as to the potentially transformative shift the upcoming licensing
window can create in our media landscape.
The next few months will likely be the last time in a generation that we can
expect to create new homes for our voices on the radio dial. Please join
ColorOfChange in making the most of this moment. To learn how to become a
part of this movement to reclaim our communities through the airwaves, click
below to sign up:
Thanks and Peace,
-- Rashad, Gabriel, Dani, Matt, Natasha, Kim, Kira and the rest of the
ColorOfChange.org team
It seems like Facebook will do everything
they can to sacrifice your online privacy -- even going so far as to
publicly support a bill pending in the US Congress that would allow Facebook
to hand over your data -- and the data of Facebook users around the world --
to other corporations or the US military, without a warrant.If the Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passes, companies could
intercept your text messages and emails to share with each other and the
government -- giving the US military the power to track, control, and share
almost all of your online information without the use of a warrant. They
could even block access to websites, or cut off your internet connection
altogether. Like SOPA (which Facebook opposed), CISPA is a major threat to
internet freedom and gives the government broad power to protect big media
companies at your expense.
Facebook’s opposition was instrumental in shutting down SOPA, but now
Facebook is fighting FOR CISPA. That's why we're teaming up with our friends
at Demand Progress to get Facebook to side with its users instead of
military spy agencies, and in the process start a powerful, organized
opposition to this dangerous bill.Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook,
has said “We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the
Internet’s development.” Yet with CISPA, he is supporting a far-reaching law
that could dramatically limit our freedom on the internet. CISPA strips away
previous privacy laws, and by creating a broad immunity for companies
against both civil and criminal liability, it robs citizens of any means of
fighting back.
Today vast amounts of our information is routed through the internet -- our
shopping history, our Google searches, our love letters and personal
communications, and much of our activism -- and all of it would become a
fair target for the US military under a definition of “cybercrime” so broad
that anyone could be a suspect.Thank you for all you do.
- Taren, Claiborne, Emma, Becky, Kaytee and the rest of us
Right now, the US is poised to pass a new law
that would permit US agents to spy on almost everything we do online. But we
can stop them before the final vote.
Companies that we trust with our personal information, like Microsoft and
Facebook, are key supporters of this bill that lets corporations share all
user activity and content with US government agents without needing a
warrant in the name of cyber-security -- nullifying privacy guarantees for
almost everyone around the world, no matter where we live and surf online.
f enough of us speak out, we can stop companies that profit from our
business from supporting cyber-spying.The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act (CISPA) would allow companies doing business in the US to
collect exact records of all of our online activities and hand them over to
the US government, without ever notifying us that we are being watched. No
warrant, no legal cause and no due process required. To make matters worse,
the bill provides the government and corporations with blanket immunity to
protect them from being sued for violation of privacy and other illegal
actions.
The bill’s supporters claim that consumer information will be protected, but
the reality is that huge loopholes would make everything we do online fair
game -- and nowadays, from banking to shopping, our private information is
all stored on the Internet.
CISPA is being moved forward in Congress and will be voted upon in days.
Let’s raise a massive outcry to stop corporations from giving the US a blank
check to monitor our every move. This year, we helped stop SOPA, PIPA and
ACTA -- all dire threats to the Internet. Now, let’s block CISPA and end the
US government attack on our Internet.
WIth hope and determination,
Dalia, Allison, Emma, Ricken, Rewan, Andrew, Wen-Hua, and the rest of the
Avaaz team
A Weekly Column On Environmental News AND GMO-FREE
BENTON COUNTY
Their methods are brutal: poisons, traps,
snares, aerial gunning. And their toll is simply astounding. Each year,
Wildlife Services kills more than 100,000 animals. Wildlife Services -- a
program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- is tasked with resolving
conflicts between people and wildlife. But an outdated kill-first mentality
has become so engrained at the agency that they too often appear to be at
war with wildlife, particularly in the West.
According to a recent exposé by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom
Knudson1, this federal program has killed millions of animals including
coyotes, birds and other wildlife since 2000.
Hundreds of wolves have fallen victim to Wildlife Services' deadly methods
-- including 14 wolves gunned down from above Idaho's Clearwater National
Forest to artificially boost game populations. Wildlife Services' killing
methods are often expensive, ineffective and can cause more problems than
they solve.
Eliminating key predators like wolves and mountain lions in an area can
cause severe imbalances in local ecosystems -- increasing disease and even
starvation in prey animals. Culling coyotes can actually lead to smarter and
more abundant populations that can cause even more conflicts with people.2
And Wildlife Services' deadly tools have killed tens of thousands of animals
by mistake over the past decade -- including family pets and federally
protected wildlife. The problem with Wildlife Services is simple: The
federal program relies too heavily on lethal tools to resolve conflicts with
wildlife.
The solution for Wildlife Services is simple as well: Stop the kill-first
mentality -- and focus on using proven non-lethal deterrents to effectively
resolve conflicts between people and wildlife. Sincerely,
Jamie Rappaport Clark
President
Defenders of Wildlife
This weekend, the eight most powerful leaders in
the world will meet at the G8 summit and could agree to a plan that could
literally stop climate change!
It’s crazy, but right now, our governments give nearly $1 trillion a year of
our taxpayer money to Big Oil and Coal to destroy our planet. Key leaders,
including President Obama who is hosting the G8, have already agreed to stop
these polluter payments. Now, if we demand they act on their word and divert
this huge sum into renewable energy, experts say we could actually save our
planet!
It's a simple no-brainer that our leaders have already agreed to. Let's hold
their feet to the fire, and push President Obama to lead the world's largest
economies to turn these polluting subsidies green. The only reason we shovel
cash into the coffers of Big Oil is their lobbyists have a stranglehold on
our governments. But if we demand that our leaders green our tax-money,
we’ll increase total global green investment by 400% making solar and wind
energy cheaper than oil and coal -- in the process saving the planet by
putting Big Oil out of business!
We’re rapidly reaching a point of no return on climate change and a treaty
to prevent catastrophe is years off. Fortunately, momentum behind this new
planet saving plan is building. New Zealand, Mexico and Switzerland are
calling for an agreement now, and policy makers from 20 countries including
the US, Brazil, and China have just voiced their support. All G8 leaders
have publicly committed to ending these dirty subsidies, and right now
President Obama is pushing for US legislation to stop them.
Our planet is being destroyed at a terrifying rate and this is our best
chance to stop it. Now is the time for action, but without massive public
support, the powerful polluters could stall the proposal. It's up to us to
counter the lobbyists with extraordinary people power. For too long,
progress on a global solution to climate change has been held back by
self-interest and the profits of Big Oil, Coal and Gas. But, finally
governments are realising that cutting subsidies will benefit the climate
and help balance out the global economy. If we speak up now, together, our
movement can force our leaders to action and free the world from the tyranny
of fossil fuels.
With hope,
Iain, Joseph, Alice, Ricken, Diego, Kya and the rest of the Avaaz team
The first generation of biotech crops has failed. And failed
badly.
In the last year alone, new studies have shown that Monsanto’s
genetically-engineered Bt insecticide corn has not only created a new breed
superbugs tolerant of the plant’s genetically engineered insecticide, but
that those Bt toxins have also been found in the blood of 93 percent of
woman and 80 percent of fetal blood samples in a Canadian study, despite
Monsanto's claims that this was not be possible.
At the same time, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn and soybeans and their
flagship herbicide have been linked to an increase in crop disease and
livestock infertility.If that weren't enough, the excessive use of
Roundup has led to the rampant rise of superweeds, which have grown tolerant
to the herbicide and have infested millions of acres of farmland,
threatening the livelihoods of America’s farmers.
Now, Dow Chemical is petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the
approval of a new genetically engineered “Agent Orange” corn that tolerates
the extremely toxic chemical herbicide 2,4-D, a major component of the
Vietnam War era defoliant Agent Orange.
Numerous studies have linked exposure to 2,4-D to major health problems that
include cancer (particularly non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma), lowered sperm counts,
liver disease and Parkinson’s disease.[6] In addition, dozens of
peer-reviewed studies have found the use of 2,4-D to contribute to
hormone-disrupting activity linked to reproductive problems and thyroid
dysfunction.
Now they want to spray this chemical on our crops and fields!Along with
these major health impacts, the approval of Dow’s "Agent Orange" 2,4-D corn
will likely lead to a massive explosion in the use of 2,4-D across the U.S.
once the herbicide is approved for corn crops, a fact that has greatly
alarmed scientists, environmentalists and farmers alike.
If the potential health problems and the escalating chemical arms race
weren’t bad enough, 2,4-D is widely known among farmers for the problems
with drift and volatilization, which means it's difficult to control when
applying and frequently leads to serious damage to neighboring farmer's
fields.
This concern over toxic chemical drift and damage to neighboring fields is
so severe that it has led to the creation of a new farmer led organization,
Save Our Crops Coalition, made up of more than 2,000 farmers and food
companies who are petitioning the USDA to stop the approval of Dow’s 2,4-D
corn.
In a recent article by Reuters, John Bode, an attorney representing the
group called 2,4-D one of “the most dangerous chemicals out there.” It
should be noted that Bode was also a former assistant Secretary of
Agriculture under President Ronald Reagan.
Considering the serious human health concerns, the threat to the environment
and family farmers themselves, the USDA should move quickly to reject
approval for Dow Chemical’s 2,4-D corn. Not only does it not serve the
public interest, but it will lead to an ever increasing reliance on deadlier
and more toxic chemicals to grow our food.Thanks for participating in food
democracy,
Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! team.
Deadly cocktails of pesticides could spell doom for already struggling
Pacific salmon and steelhead populations.
Yet these deadly poisons continue to course through our waterways,
threatening the very survival of these fantastic fish -- and posing a threat
to human health.
Take action now. Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to protect our
water, our wildlife, and our communities from dangerous pesticides.
It's a recipe for disaster for already struggling salmon and steelhead
populations.
Pesticides like oryzalin, pendamethalin and trifluralin can kill fish, kill
the insects they feed upon, affect their ability to find and return to
spawning streams and make them more susceptible to predators.
Federal officials are considering new standards that could affect the amount
of these deadly pesticides that enter our waterways -- and they need to hear
from you. These pesticides are bad news for salmon and steelhead. But they
can and do enter our drinking water sources putting us all at risk.
Strong protections will not only keep our salmon and steelhead safe, but
also keep our drinking water safe and protect human health.
Jason Rylander
Senior Staff Attorney
Defenders of Wildlife
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin has less than two weeks to either stand with
the 90% of his constituents who support a mandatory labeling bill for
genetically engineered foods - or cave in to Monsanto's threat to sue the
state if legislators pass H.722.
The bill that once appeared destined to pass on the merits of scientific
evidence, overwhelming public support, and support of the majority of
Vermont's progressive legislators, now appears doomed - unless Vermont
voters succeed in changing the Governor's mind.
If the Governor's words this past week are any indication, he's already
surrendered to Monsanto. But Vermonters, not known for backing down from a
fight, are challenging legislators to take on the biotech industry. They're
even offering to raise money for the state's defense.
In the U.S. and Canada, Monsanto has sued more than 150 farmers and
threatened thousands of others, for refusing to pay for "intellectual
property theft" after their fields were contaminated by Monsanto's patented
genetically engineered crops.
In Argentina, thugs assaulted a well-known scientist, Andres Carrasco, who
had carried out experiments demonstrating the extreme toxicity of Monsanto's
herbicide, Roundup.
In Argentina, industry-hired gunmen invaded the homes of activist mothers,
threatening them for trying to stop their children from being poisoned by
the massive aerial spraying of herbicides on Monsanto's genetically
engineered soybeans.
Please take action in solidarity with Argentinian activist Sofia Gatica who
was visited by an armed man who warned her not to "screw around with the
soybeans" when she launched a campaign to ban Monsanto's Roundup-resistant
soybeans, after her 3-day-old daughter died of kidney failure from pesticide
poisoning. Commercial beekeepers have filed an emergency legal petition with
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend use of a pesticide
that is linked to massive honey bee deaths. The legal petition, which
specifies Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticide clothianidin, is backed by over
one million citizen petition signatures. Add your voice and learn how to
protect your neighborhood bees.OCA and our lobbying ally, the Organic
Consumers Fund, put our money where our mouth is. With the 2012 California
Ballot Initiative, and GMO labeling legislation gaining momentum in Vermont,
Connecticut, Hawaii and other states, we have a real chance to hit Monsanto,
corporate agribusiness, and the supermarket chains with the skull and
crossbones they fear so much: mandatory labels on genetically engineered
food, and a ban on the industry practice of marketing billions of dollars of
GMO-tainted foods as "natural." At the same time we are continuing our
struggle to strengthen organic standards and significantly expand the market
for organic food and products, especially those produced locally and
regionally; while warning consumers about the dangers of junk food and
chemical agriculture.
If you thought that Pink Slime was going away just because
the ammonia-treated meat filler byproduct has received a ton of bad press
and the USDA finally said it would allow it to be labeled, think again.
Right now, Beef Products Inc., Cargill and the Industrial Meat Empire are
launching an all out spring counter offensive to keep their degraded meat
products on our shelves and in our nation’s school lunch programLast week,
Iowa State University became ground zero in Industrial Meat’s efforts to
revive Pink Slime’s lagging public image. In what can only be called an
appalling PR stunt to promote industrial agriculture, Iowa governor Terry
Branstad and Congressman Steve King held a press conference at Iowa State,
one of the nation’s leading land grant universities and turned it into a
propaganda backdrop for slimewashing.
Branstad took to the stage wearing a T-shirt with Industrial Meat’s new
slogan, “Dude it’s Beef” and railed against what he claimed was a “smear
campaign” against a "safe" and "nutritious" product. Branstad’s enthusiasm
for slime is not surprising considering that in 2010 his campaign received
more than $150,000 in political donations from Regina and Eldon Roth, the
founder of Beef Products Inc., the world’s largest producer of Pink Slime,
aka "lean, finely textured beef" (LFTB).
Rather than sit back and watch this latest Industrial Ag PR effort unfold
without a fight, Food Democracy Now! joined with family farmers to hold our
own rally, “Truth: Pink Slime vs. LFTB”, so farmers could speak out against
the blatant politicization of the latest scandal to emerge from our
industrial food system..
In case you haven’t heard, an estimated 70 percent of hamburgers sold in the
U.S. contain a byproduct of left over beef parts treated with a blast of
ammonia hydroxide that 20 years ago was sold as dog food. Yes, dog food!
Already McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell have removed Pink Slime from
their products, but we need to make sure that our nation's children don't
get stuck with this garbage in their school lunches. This year the USDA has
already promised to buy 7 million pounds of Pink Slime. Our children deserve
better!
Here's the buzz: American honey bees are disappearing at an
alarming rate and the government knows why.
Scientists say a pesticide called clothianidin, made by chemical giant Bayer, is
strongly linked to the rapid decline in bee populations. When exposed to the
chemical, bees get lost: they are literally unable to find their way home back
to the hive and drop dead from exhaustion.
Susan Mariner uses her backyard garden to grow extra fruits and veggies for her
family and teach her children where their food comes from -- and in the past few
years, she's seen the decline in bees firsthand.
When Susan heard about the recent studies linking this specific chemical to the
widespread death of the bees who pollinate our food, she started a petition on
Change.org to getOne-third of the U.S. food supply relies on honey bees. Without
bees to pollinate crops, many essential (and favorite) foods are at risk,
including apples, squash, tomatoes, strawberries, almonds, and even chocolate.
Several countries, including Germany and France, have already banned
clothianidin. And after the bans, bee populations began to rise again.
But in the U.S., clothianidin is used on millions of acres of crops and American
beekeepers report losses of up to 90% of their bees. Many worry that their hives
won't survive another season. the chemical banned. Thanks for being a
change-maker,
- Corinne and the Change.org team
Our country has literally no limits on the carbon pollution
that is causing catastrophic climate change and that is freely spewed by power
plants.
On Tuesday, The Environmental Protection Agency finally proposed a rule to
change that. Unfortunately, not by very much.1
The EPA's first ever rule limiting carbon pollution — known as the Carbon
Pollution Standard — applies only to unlikely-to-be-built, new coal-fired power
plants. It is riddled with loopholes allowing new sources of pollution including
some new coal plants. It does nothing to reduce carbon pollution from much more
significant existing sources.
It's sad that our political climate has been made so toxic by climate change
denying Republicans — who literally voted to deny the science of climate change2
— that the very acknowledgement of the need to regulate carbon pollution by EPA
is a victory and a positive step forward.
But in today's actual climate — where much of our country just experienced
record-shattering March heat waves after a disturbing lack of winter — it is not
nearly enough. It is not only disappointing but profoundly dangerous that this
rule does little if anything to effectively reduce unregulated climate
pollution.
The EPA will now accept public comments on the rule — and as it weighs the
public's reaction, we need to show that we expect much, much more from EPA to
regulate carbon pollution.
Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from existing and future
sources of carbon pollution.
Having proposed a rule for new power plants, the EPA is now legally required to
develop a rule to limit carbon pollution from existing power plants, a much more
significant source.
But even in Tuesday's announcement, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson — who has
been one of the few people in the Obama administration willing to fight to
address climate change and defend the Clean Air Act — appeared to have her hands
tied when it came to moving forward on rules that would address existing power
plants, literally saying in a press conference, "we have no plans to regulate
existing sources."3
If EPA fails to take action on existing power plants, then the measured progress
represented by this rule will go down in history as a symbolic though
essentially empty gesture.
Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from existing and future
sources of carbon pollution.
EPA Administrator Jackson is to be commended for her leadership on this rule,
despite a begrudging White House whose hand was forced by a court mandate, and a
Tea Party Republican majority in Congress so openly hostile and obstructionist
to climate change policies that their continued tenure is a literal threat to
our future survival.
That this rule was all the EPA could muster in the face of the clear and present
danger of climate change and extreme weather shows the fierce urgency of
changing our political climate in order to achieve the stable climate we need to
survive.
That's why CREDO is fighting back on two fronts. We're already working through
the CREDO SuperPAC to change the political climate by defeating anti-science,
climate change denying Republicans in the House who have so effectively blocked
Congress and EPA from taking the bold action necessary to fight climate change.4
And we're pushing back on today's announcement with public comments to the EPA
asking for a stronger greenhouse gas rule that does what's necessary to
dramatically reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants.
Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from existing and future
sources of carbon pollution.
We encourage you to take a hard look at the proposed rule, which while
symbolically important, is clearly weak in a number of important respects.
The carbon pollution limit for new power plants — 1,000 pounds of CO2 per
megawatt hour of energy produced — is low enough to limit new coal fired power
plants, but high enough not to affect natural gas plants.5
But because of the rising cost of coal, the low price of natural gas, and the
tireless work of activists across the country raising concerns about the health
and climate impacts of coal, we've already been able to block all new coal power
plants. This rule does serve as an additional roadblock against building new
coal plants if the economics of coal become favorable again, but otherwise, the
rule essentially codifies the status quo — making into regulation the facts on
the ground already established by the hard work of community and environmental
activists.
Also, the rule exempts carbon pollution that is created by burning biomass —
which can have higher greenhouse gas emissions than coal — and even allows new
coal plants to continue polluting freely for ten years, if they install carbon
capture and storage (CCS) system, which remains an unproven technology.6
Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from existing and future
sources of carbon pollution.
It's important to acknowledge progress. And to be upfront about the massive
barriers that block even the most modest measures to address climate change. But
it's also essential that we recognize that fighting climate change is one of the
most urgent challenges facing us as a nation and a planet. Nothing less than
bold action is required, and we must not be satisfied with symbolic but
essentially empty gestures no matter how hard won.
At CREDO we will continue to fight climate change on every front. We'll take
direct action to stop the northern and southern legs of Keystone XL. We'll work
with community activists to shut down dirty coal plants. We'll have President
Obama's back when his administration stands up to Republican obstructionists on
climate. And we'll hold his administration accountable when they fall short.
We'll defeat climate change denying Tea Party Republicans who are running for
reelection. And we'll push hard for a Carbon Pollution Standard that does what
scientists say we must do if we are going to start to slow the planet's
disastrous warming.
We hope you will continue to stand with us.
Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Elk hunters are now giving tens of thousands of dollars to
help the federal Wildlife Services program more aggressively kill wolves.1
Defenders has long promoted a better way -- a healthy population of wolves
increasingly accepted by local communities through non-lethal preventative
strategies that reduce conflict between wolves, livestock and people. Wildlife
Services -- a program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- is supposed to
reduce conflicts between people and wildlife. But for too long, they've relied
on aggressive wildlife killing.
Their record on wolves speaks for itself: From 2000 to 2010 -- when wolves were
still endangered -- Wildlife Services was responsible for more than 3,000 wolf
deaths.2 And most recently, Wildlife Services employees gunned down 14 wolves
from a helicopter in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest to artificially boost
elk populations.3
This federal agency should not be paid tens of thousands of dollars by special
interests to collar and kill wolves.
Killing wolves at all costs shows that we have a long way to go in getting past
the old notion that "the only good predator is a dead predator." Killing wolves
is not an effective solution to livestock loss.
Defenders' on-the-ground work has proven time and time again, that there is a
better way. Our pioneering work with ranchers in the heart of wolf country has
saved countless wolves by using non-lethal deterrents. Now we're preparing for
another season of these proven efforts to keep wolves out of harm's way.
Unfortunately, the Elk Foundation is not alone in the quest to kill more wolves.
Other groups paid a wolf bounty last year in western Montana.4 Another group
even posted instructions for poisoning wolves on their website.5
Defenders will continue our work proving that non-lethal methods are an
effective way to keep wolves and livestock safe.
Jason Rylander
Senior Staff Attorney
Defenders of Wildlife
With yesterday’s vote in the state house, Vermont is
now the first state to call for an amendment to abolish the doctrine known
as “Corporate Personhood” which gives corporations constitutional rights
meant to protect people.
Hawaii and New Mexico have passed resolutions against the Citizens United v.
FEC ruling by the Supreme Court, but the Vermont resolution goes beyond
simply overturning that case and aims to remove corporations from the
constitution altogether and make clear that money is not speech and that
campaign spending and political contributions can be regulated by
government.
Support for the resolution in the state legislature comes from a mandate set
forth by Vermont’s citizens. Last month 65 town meetings passed similar
resolutions, calling on the legislators in the state to stand up and urging
Congress to send an amendment to the states for ratification.
“Americans of all political persuasions are tired of the big money in
politics and tired of corporations running the country,” said David Cobb,
spokesperson for the Move to Amend coalition, a grassroots national
organization spearheading resolution efforts across the country. “We salute
the good people of Vermont for standing up first to make clear that an
amendment that addresses this issue at its core is what’s needed now.”
While Vermont is the first state to clearly call for an end to corporate
constitutional rights, this is far from the first resolution passed. Nearly
half of the states have seen passage of resolutions at the local level
through city and county councils, and a handful of cities have also passed
measures using the initiative process. This week Salt Lake City, Utah became
the latest city to join the effort when Move to Amend volunteers turned in
11,400 signatures collected in 60 days to qualify a resolution for the
ballot in their town.
“Communities across the country are standing up to show their outrage and to
demand that their legislators pass an amendment to overrule the Court,”
stated Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, National Field Organizing Director for Move
to Amend. “We recognize that an amendment is a big task, but Move to Amend’s
volunteers are ready to rise to the challenge.”
ALEC is dead. Long live ALEC. Yesterday, the American
Legislative Exchange Council — a national clearinghouse of pre-written
right-wing bills, helpfully provided to conservative state legislators too
dumb to come up with their own ideas — announced that it was abandoning the
task force that pushed voter-surpression bills and "Stand Your Ground" laws
like the one that led Sanford Police to free George Zimmerman the night he
killed Trayvon Martin. "We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and
Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues," the group's
statement said, "and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that
focus on the economy."
Which is a victory, sort of. But even when it's not actively trying to arm
every white person and deny the vote to every black person, ALEC is creepy
as fuck. Here's your guide.
What is ALEC?
According to its website, ALEC, or the America Legislative Exchange Council,
is a non-profit "forum for state legislators and private sector leaders to
discuss and exchange practical, state-level public policy issues."
I don't know what that means.
Basically, ALEC is the highway rest stop where huge corporations meet with
state legislators to draft — or just hand over — "model legislation" that
the lawmakers can take back to their home states.
How does that work, exactly?
Every year, ALEC throws an all-expenses-paid retreat, attended by its 2,000
legislative members and representatives from its hundreds of corporate
partners. They hang out, party (child care is provided), recount frat hazing
stories, and "discuss and exchange practical, state-level public policy
issues." Sometimes, this means outlining and drafting legislation together;
more often, it means introducing and explaining pre-written bills for the
legislators to propose, either wholesale, or with modifications.
You have an example?
Take The Council on Efficient Government Act, a bill mandating the creation
of "a council on efficient government," composed entirely of people "engaged
in the private sector," to "leverage resources and contract with private
sector vendors." Written by one of ALEC's many "task forces," that bill has
in the last few years been introduced verbatim to legislatures in South
Carolina, Arizona and Illinois, copied with changes in Virginia, Oregon,
Maryland and Kansas, or proposed in a modified form in several different
states.
But why would state legislators do that?
Well, the obvious answer is that state legislators are not the sharpest Law
Tools in the Democracy Shed, and they are easily-swayed by glad-handing
Captains of Industry at ALEC's yearly retreat. The other answer is that they
genuinely believe in the values espoused by ALEC and see no problem with
introducing its bills without announcing their source. Also, they're lazy,
and "writing laws" is not as a fun as "collecting Nazi memorabilia" or
"installing cameras in the Starbucks women's restroom," or whatever it is
that state senators do.
What, exactly, are the values espoused by ALEC?
ALEC's principles — located on the front page of its website — are "limited
government, free markets [and] federalism."
Those are just meaningless conservative platitudes.
Well, it's a weird definition of "federalism," as ALEC's job is essentially
to provide top-down, one-size-fits-all legislation across the country. But
bills they introduce, as the ALEC Exposed project has documented, tend to
focus on conservative obsessions like busting unions or limiting their
power, blocking health-care reform, dismantling safety and environmental
regulations, and generally pushing for as many government functions as
possible to be taken over by profit-driven private companies — education in
particular.
So they're, like, "economic" conservatives.
Because their biggest donors and strongest supporters tend to be big
corporations, most of their model legislation has to do with traditionally
pro-corporate issues. But until recently the "ALEC Public Safety and
Elections task force" was pushing a lot of right-wing laws like Voted I.D.
that tend to suppress minority votes — and, as the news has been noting,
pro-gun laws like Stand Your Ground.
Ahhh, yeah. This is why they're in the news right now?
Yeah: For weeks now, liberal advocacy organizations like Color of Change
have been putting pressure on ALEC's corporate sponsors to sever their ties
with the group over its drafting of and lobbying for Stand Your Ground laws.
After it became clear that Florida's Stand Your Ground law — which ALEC was
involved with — was one of the reasons Sanford police didn't arrest George
Zimmeman the night he killed Trayvon Martin. Shutting down the Guns and Poll
Tax Squad, or whatever it was called, is ALEC's white flag; as Alex Pareene
says, "major corporations... hadn't signed on for the full right-wing
culture war."
Hey! Good for us, right?
Sure — it's always good when an organization like ALEC gets rolled. But
activists have been aware of ALEC's influence on the lawmaking process for
years, and it took a major national tragedy — plus "ALEC Exposed," last
year's 800-page document leak spearheaded by the Center for Media and
Democracy and The Nation — to generate enough momentum to convince
corporations to quit. All the rest of ALEC's task forces (Civil Justice,
Education, Health and Human Safety) still exist, and are still writing and
promoting gross legislation.
Oh.
I mean, sorry, don't get me wrong, it's great! Power to the people, or
whatever! But ALEC is still trying to bust unions, repeal taxes, end minimum
wage laws, fight climate-change laws and environmental regulation and
promote "tort reform."
And Ted Nugent, too. Right? I bet they're behind Ted Nugent.
No.
Note: A measure will be on the ballot in Corvallis this
year to repudiate the Supreme Court opinion that corporations are people and
money is free speech.
WORLD NEWS
Weekly COLUMN ON YOUR WEll
Being
It's Stupid, the Economy, And if You're Behind on
the Story...
Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In
fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its
caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse
that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while
discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich
to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about
Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his
personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and
shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing
about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the
ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”Heard it all before. At a
rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the
socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea),
I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My
question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did
not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the
all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of
other people of the Christie persuasion did.
Cut a check and shut up, they said.
If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.
Tired of hearing about it, they said.
Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve
known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would
rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance
around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle
Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings
into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a
year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving
equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a
scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does
the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch
brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it
doesn’t go far enough.
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s
national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education
of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its
staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or
lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation
does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write
a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff
comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United
American citizenry.And hey, why don’t we get real about this? Most rich
folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their
income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t
strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then
pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do
give away is—like the monies my wife and I donate—totally at their own
discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don’t tell us how
to use our money; we’ll tell you.
The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they’re giving right-wing
creepazoids. Here’s an example: 68 million fine American dollars to
Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won’t do
squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish
are now showing up with black lesions. It won’t pay for stronger regulations
to keep BP (or some other bunch of dipshit oil drillers) from doing it
again. It won’t repair the levees surrounding New Orleans. It won’t improve
education in Mississippi or Alabama. But what the hell—them li’l crackers
ain’t never going to go to Deerfield Academy anyway. Fuck ’em if they can’t
take a joke.
The folks who think we should get rid of the estate tax and continue tax
breaks for capital gains also want us to believe in the “self-made man”
(yes, “man”). Of course it ain’t so. Individuals don’t do it by themselves.
Thankfully there are business owners who speak the truth in an important new
book, The Self-Made Myth: And the Truth About How Government Helps
Individuals and Business Succeed. Authors Mike Latham and Brian Miller and a
group of local business owners will be talking that truth on We can’t wait
to introduce you to Mike and Brian; they are critical to the national
organization of which Tax Fairness Oregon is a part, United for a Fair
Economy (UFE). Brian Miller is the Executive Director of UFE, and Mike
Lapham is the project organizer for Responsible Wealth. The Tax Fairness
Organizing Collaborative is another project of UFE, supporting organizations
like ours across the US.
We’ve known Mike since the inception of TFO back in 2003 when we were the
Coalition to Preserve the Estate Tax—where we first met many of you! Of
course as we broadened our efforts, we needed a broader name, thus Tax
Fairness Oregon.in Portland.
Uzbekistan's President is forcing doctors to cut out women's uteruses
without their knowledge or consent to promote "birth control" across the
country. It’s a vile and bloody crime against women being orchestrated by an
odious dictator, and now is the time for it to end.
Uzbekistan's Karimov is one of the world’s worst dictators, he’s even boiled
opposition activists alive. Yet he’s propped up by millions of dollars from
the US government who pay him for military transport across the country.
This latest round of brutality, this time against his country’s women, has
turned the global spotlight on this monster. Let’s use this awful moment to
persuade his biggest backer to ditch him.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can cut him off. She has already
publicly condemned Karimov for human rights abuses and this most recent
assault on women's rights - a topic she champions - only ups the stakes.
Activists estimate tens or even hundreds of thousands of women were
sterilised secretly when they went into the hospital for a routine procedure
or to give birth -- waking up with no idea that their uterus has just been
removed. One Uzbek gynecologist admitted, 'Every doctor is told...how many
women are to be sterilised ... my quota is four women a month'. The use of
arbitrary arrest and torture is so widespread that women don’t speak out for
fear of reprisals, and foreign journalists and human rights activists are
routinely thrown out of the country.
It doesn’t have to be like this -- the US could play hardball with Karimov,
who relies on the steady flow of money from transit to Afghanistan to fund
his lavish lifestyle. The human rights horror show in Uzbekistan has gone
under the radar for years -- but we have a real chance to break the silence
now, using the explosive BBC report that details forced sterilisations, and
stand with the brave Uzbek women who have dared to tell their stories in the
face of stunning oppression.
The human rights horror show in Uzbekistan has gone under the radar for
years -- but we have a real chance to break the silence now, using the
explosive BBC report, and stand with the brave Uzbek women who have dared to
tell their stories in the face of stunning oppression.
Time and again, Avaaz members have stood up for the rights of women around
the world. Let’s join together now and remind the US that opting for human
rights or national interest is a false choice -- and that we’ll continue the
fight for women's rights wherever they are threatened.
With hope and determination,
Stephanie, Pedro, Morgan, David, Emma, Dennis, Lisa, Wissam and the rest of
the Avaaz team
Right now, a mountain of loopholes make it possible for millionaires and
billionaires to cut their tax rates to absurd levels. Warren Buffett's
secretary pays almost 36%, while Mitt Romney pays less than 14%. That's just
wrong. Secretaries and schoolteachers shouldn't pay a higher tax share than
Warren Buffett or Mitt Romney. Even Buffett himself agrees.
Next week, the Senate will vote on the "Buffett Rule," which would close
these loopholes and make sure that corporate CEOs don't pay a lower tax rate
than the rest of us.
But standing in the way of this common sense reform are extreme Republicans,
backed by billionaires like the Koch Brothers. President Obama and
Democratic leaders need to know you stand behind them in this.Republican
leaders are doing everything they can to obstruct basic fairness. But with
your immediate help today, President Obama and Senate Democrats can fight
back.Please, stand with us right away.
Sincerely,
Patty Murray US Senator
Site Dedicated to the Memory of Eric McKinley,
d. Iraq, 2002
Eric McKinley was our local connoisseur of ska
music and cafe denizen whose unit was activated and sent to Iraq to patrol with
inadequately armored vehicles. When Congressional funds for armoring the
vehicles were diverted by the notorious Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska
(later convicted on corruption charges), Eric's unit was reduced to using
plywood to give their vehicles some additional protection. When an insurgent's
IED hit Eric's vehicle, his horrified teammates were forced to watch as the heat
of the burning plywood began exploding the grenades strapped to Eric's body.
Eric, you are not forgotten and will live forever in our hearts.
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