28 pages
I am so tired of living in a country where everything is withheld from us for our own good — especially since it’s so often to protect the powerful. Just sayin’!
On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol’s new underground visitors’ center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files. One of those files is titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” It is twenty-eight pages long. In 2002, the Administration of George W. Bush excised those pages from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.”
“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch maintains. Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is “very disturbing,” and that “the real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through.” Now, in a rare example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution requesting that the Obama Administration declassify the pages.
The Saudis have also publicly demanded that the material be released. “Twenty-eight blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has declared. “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages.”
H/t Patrick Rooney.
It’s about time
Seven Philadelphia parents and the Parents United for Public Education group are suing over the conditions of Philadelphia’s public schools. The petitioners are represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia.
In the suit, to be filed against acting Pennsylvania education secretary Carolyn Dumaresq, the parents say the state has failed in its constitutional mandate to “receive and investigate allegations of curriculum deficiencies.” Parents United says it delivered 825 complaints about school conditions to Dumaresq that were not followed up on.
Per the lawsuit, the allegations included “overcrowded classrooms, the lack of classes such as art, music, foreign language and physical education, cancelled programs for the mentally gifted, the absence of facilities such as libraries or school materials such as textbooks that resulted in loss of instruction for students, shortages of staff … and unsafe or unsanitary conditions that interfered with students’ ability to respond to the curriculum.”
Continue reading “It’s about time”
Gotta love it
#Lobsterboat Trial criminal charges for Jay O'Hara and Ken Ward dropped to civil fine. Celebratin' time. pic.twitter.com/bR8lfpTOsU
— Sarah Moon (@Sarahrmoon) September 8, 2014
When a DA actually seeks justice instead of a win:
Bristol Massachusetts District Attorney Samuel Sutter gave an usual explanation for dropping charges against two environmental activists who had blocked a shipment of coal to a power plant – he is worried about climate change.
The two activists, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara, blocked a shipment of coal to a Massachusetts power plant as an act of civil disobedience. Ward and O’Hara were planning on using a defense strategy relying on the necessity of stopping climate change to protect people and the planet. The trial resulting from the arrest would have served as a platform for a discussion of climate change with NASA scientist James Hansen and environmental activists Bill McKibben set to offer testimony to support Ward and O’Hara’s case.
All was going to plan until the DA dropped the charges and issued a statement more or less endorsing the protest.At the courthouse, Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter said that the decision to drop the charges “certainly took into consideration the cost to the taxpayers in Somerset, but was also made with our concerns for their children, and the children of Bristol County and beyond in mind. Climate change is one of the gravest crisis our planet has ever faces. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been sorely lacking.”Ward and O’Hara were going to use the defense of protecting others to justify their blocking the 40,000-ton delivery to the Brayton Point plant in Somerset in May 2013. It was the first time such a defense would have been used in a climate change case in America, activists have said.
Absolute horse manure
Once again, the special interests are sharpening their knives to go after Social Security and Medicare. I mean, Council for Foreign Relations’ “Renewing America” project? The name alone makes me want to puke:
While other large wealthy countries have been cutting their entitlement programs, the United States has left Medicare and Social Security mostly untouched. Recent U.S. budget cuts have instead focused on discretionary spending, which goes toward areas such as education, infrastructure, and research and development—all of which constitute investments in future economic growth.
“By 2040, public debt is projected to top 110 percent, equal to the highest levels reached during the Second World War,” Renewing America Associate Director Rebecca Strauss writes. “And absent any policy changes it will likely keep climbing afterward into uncharted territory for the United States.”
Americans will have to make difficult choices to get the public debt load under control. Sequestration, which took effect in 2013, only affected government spending projected to decline as a share of GDP. Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers left cutting entitlements or increasing tax revenues largely off the table, despite the fact that entitlements will account for nearly all new federal spending in the future.
“Just to slow debt growth to the rate of GDP growth (or a steady debt-to-GDP ratio) from today through 2040, changes to current policy would have to be dramatic: cut entitlements by 10 percent, cut discretionary spending by 23 percent, increase tax revenue by 6 percent, or some combination of the three,” Strauss notes. “Adjustments to actually lower the debt-to-GDP ratio would be even more painful.”
You already know why this is crap, right? I don’t have to explain why all over again?
H/t Price Benowitz LLP.
Riding the health care bus
I spent much of my day in the hospital yesterday, getting my sinuses evaluated. (I have to admit, I was thrilled when getting a CAT scan was as simple as walking over to the next office.) The verdict? They’re perfectly clear! I thought I had another sinus tumor, because I had the same symptoms as the last time.
“Then why does my ear vibrate when I talk or sing?” I asked the specialist. “And why did the CPAP machine give me an earache on that side?” Off to another office for a hearing test.
Turns out my hearing is borderline — not quite hearing aid territory, but close, they said. (Hah! And here, all those years, I was such a good little girl, wearing earplugs to concerts.) The thing is, there’s nothing actually wrong with my ear drums, yet my hearing on one side is erratic — so now they want an MRI of my brain.
Continue reading “Riding the health care bus”
Too big to punish
I’m beginning to think that they really do want a revolution, or they wouldn’t keep doing shit like this, right?
The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing to waive sanctions against Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:AG) that would prevent it from managing pension money in the wake of the bank pleading guilty to criminal charges. The little-noticed waiver was outlined in an announcement published in the Federal Register. The government will accept public comment on the proposal until mid-October, and then make a final decision.
The proposed waiver from federal sanctions comes amid criticism that the Obama administration has gone too easy on major financial institutions that break the law. The proposed waiver for Credit Suisse, whose employees weremajor financial backers of Obama’s election campaigns, also comes a few months after a study showed a linkage between campaign contributions and lighter enforcement actions by federal agencies.
In its announcement outlining the waiver, the Department of Labor notes that Credit Suisse “operated an illegal cross-border banking business that knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of U.S. clients in opening and maintaining undeclared accounts” and in “using sham entities” to hide money. The bank pled guilty to felony charges in May.
Under existing Department of Labor rules, the conviction would prevent Credit Suisse from being designated a “Qualified Professional Asset Manager” (QPAM). That designation exempts firms from other federal laws, giving them the special status required to do business with many pension funds. The Obama administration’s proposed waiver would exempt Credit Suisse from existing anti-criminal sanctions, and allow Credit Suisse to get the QPAM designation.
Credit Suisse declined International Business Times request for comment.
Truthiness
From yesterday’s Senate hearing on the militarization of police. Catch this little exchange:
Figures released Tuesday by Congress showed that some police departments with fewer than 10 full-time officers had received large mine-resistant trucks designed to withstand roadside bombs in Iraq. Many police departments received enough automatic rifles, such as M-16s, to give several to each officer.
“Bayonets are available under the program,” said Alan F. Estevez, the principle Defense Department undersecretary for acquisition. “I can’t answer what a local police force would need a bayonet for.”
“I can give you the answer,” replied Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. “None.”
Police chiefs know changes will be made to the federal programs, whether from Congress or the administration, according to Jim Bueermann, the president of the Police Foundation, a research group in Washington, who testified Tuesday. He recommended that, before receiving equipment, police departments be required to prove that they informed the public, trained their officers and set policies for using the gear.
Mr. Kamoie, from Homeland Security, noted that his agency’s grants do not pay for weapons. He said infrared, helicopter-mounted surveillance gear purchased with federal grants, was instrumental in locating Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston bombing.
Mr. Coburn corrected him. Mr. Tsarnaev was discovered not by police but by a Watertown, Mass., resident named Dave Henneberry who — once police allowed people to leave their homes — walked outside and noticed a pool of blood in his boat parked in his back yard. Mr. Coburn presented an article from The Boston Globe recounting the events.
Mr. Kamoie seemed surprised. He said his colleagues had credited the helicopter camera. “I look forward to reading that article,” he said.
Where have all the flowers gone
Peter, Paul and Mary:
http://youtu.be/1QZq-wKaBWc
Love me I’m a liberal
Still applicable, I’m afraid. Phil Ochs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw