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First came Lebanon and Hezbolloh, then came Tunisia, next comes Egypt and today Jordan dismisses the government amid protests. There is more happening than meets the eye. If you cannot see it a profound and dangerous situation is emerging, the years of tyrants, monarchies and despots may be ushering in a new Islamic middle east. What we do not know is if the emergence of all this change will bode well for stability in the long run or absolute chaos. But its happening, its real and there is no stopping it now. The markets are going to drop like rock and futures on precious metals is going to jump. Oil prices are going to skyrocket and economies around the world are going to crawl to a halt in their recoveries. Michael Ruppert has been predicting this for some time now, and its coming true. He was thought a crackpot by many but today he has been vindicated.First came Lebanon and Hezbolloh, then came Tunisia, next comes Egypt and today Jordan... more
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[edit] SubsidiariesAmong Koch Industries’ better known subsidiaries across various industries[15] are:
Georgia Pacific paper and pulp company, maker of Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper, Mardi Gras napkins and towels and Quilted Northern toilet paper.
Invista, a polymer and fibers company that makes Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra fiber, among other products.
Koch Pipeline Company LP, that owns and operates 4,000 miles of pipeline used to transport oil, natural gas liquids and chemicals.
Flint Hill Resources LP, that operates oil refineries in six states.
Koch Fertilizer, LLC, owns or has interests in fertilizer plants the United States, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and Italy, among others.[16][17] In October 2010, a plant in Venezuela was nationalized by the government.[18]
[edit] Environmental and safety recordKoch Industries' subsidiaries are regulated by many local, state and federal agencies around the globe.
[edit] Environmental designationsIn 2005, Koch's Flint Hills Resources refinery was recognized by the EPA's Clean Air Awards program for reducing air emissions by 50 percent while expanding operations.[19] Koch Industries' headquarters in Wichita has been certified for meeting the Energy Star standards for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection. As of 2010[update] it is the only Wichita office building to be so recognized.[20][21] A Tulsa, Oklahoma site of the Koch-owned John Zink Company site was part of the EPA's National Environmental Performance Track program from 2003 until 2009 when the program was suspended.[22][23]
Koch's Matador Ranch in Texas earned the Lone Star Land Steward award for outstanding natural resource management in 2010.[24] The Montana ranch has earned several environmental stewardship awards, including the EPA Regional Administrator's award.[25]
In 2010, Koch Industries was ranked 10th on the list of top US corporate air polluters, the “Toxic 100 Air Polluters,” by the Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[26][27]
[edit] Pipeline AccidentsWhen announcing a settlement over pipeline leaks with the USDOJ and the state Texas in 2000, Koch Pipeline cited improvements in their pipeline accident rate.[28]
Koch's Sterling butane pipeline had a leak in Lively, Texas, on August 24, 1996. Two teenagers on the way to report the leak drove into the unseen butane cloud, and were killed when the gas exploded and burned. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that severe external pipeline corrosion was the cause of the failure, and recommended to Koch to improve corrosion evaluation proceedures. Although Koch distributed pamphlets about safety around the pipelines, they failed to maintain an up-to-date mailing list. Only 5 out of 45 residences in the area of the accident had received pamphlets. The families of the dead had not.[29][30]
[edit] FinesIn March 1999, Koch Petroleum Group, a Koch Industries subsidiary, pled guilty to charges that it had negligently allowed aviation fuel to leak into waters near the Mississippi River from its refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, and that it had illegally dumped a million gallons of high-ammonia wastewater onto the ground and into the Mississippi River. Koch Petroleum paid the Dakota County Park System a $6 million fine and $2 million in remediation costs, and was ordered to serve three years of probation.[31]
In 1999, a federal jury found that Koch Industries had stolen oil from government and American Indian lands, had lied about its purchases more than 24,000 times, and was fined $553,504.[32]
In January 2000, Koch Industries subsidiary, Koch Pipeline, agreed to a $35 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Texas. This settlement, including a $30 million civil fine, was incurred for the firm's three hundred oil spills in Texas and five other states going back to 1990.[33][34][35] The spills resulted in more than three million gallons of crude oil leaking into ponds, lakes, streams and coastal waters.[36]
In 2001, the company reached two settlements with the government. In April, the company reached a $20 million settlement in exchange for admitting to covering up environmental violations at its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.[37][38] That May, Koch Industries paid $25 million to the federal government to settle a federal lawsuit that found the company had improperly taken more oil than it had paid for from federal and Indian land.[39][40]
In June 2003, the US Commerce Department fined Koch Industries subsidiary Flint Hill Resources a $200,000 civil penalty. The fine settled charges that the company exported crude petroleum from the US to Canada without proper US government authorization. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said from July 1997 to March 1999, Koch Petroleum (later called Flint Hill Resources) committed 40 violations of Export Administration Regulations.[41]9]
[edit] SubsidiariesAmong Koch Industries’ better known subsidiaries across... more
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As of ,....THIS "moment".... ( ( ( ding ) ) )
- I have only looked up 3 citizens o' c u r r e n t ,..........so far,........
janforgore : 59,750 total votes
33,311 submissions ( thats CRAZY nuts )
17, 269 rantings,....uhm, comments
(I kid , .....I kid , -The anointed prophetess of Gaia , Gaea,...Ge,....( U KNOW,...heap BIG avatar of the EARTH GODDESS )
all time winner ! ( for now. . . .)
pjacobs51 : 24,131 total votes ( he sticks with it, fer sure, fer sure )
2793 submissions
6923 comments
- - - a VERY bored man,.....but he tries his best to keep amused,...and knowledgeable,... I think the rest of us are the better for it.
- - - - ( I think they win,....but I need help with data---- lend a hand
this is a fun NEW YEAR " c u r r e n t " - thing . )
me 7535 total votes
1077 submissions - - - -( + this one )
16,269 comments GOD,....but I talk a lot, - - - not more than the "earth itself", ....mind you,.........
I need
----------- HELP ------------
( with this ) ..................add NAMES !
graphic
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/ppart/ppart1002/ppart100200029/6416468-gold-star-in-a-gold-circle.jpgAs of ,....THIS "moment".... ( ( ( ding ) ) )
- I have only looked up... more
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By JULIE ZHUO
Times Topic: Social NetworkingTHERE you are, peacefully reading an article or watching a video on the Internet. You finish, find it thought-provoking, and scroll down to the comments section to see what other people thought. And there, lurking among dozens of well-intentioned opinions, is a troll.
“How much longer is the media going to milk this beyond tired story?” “These guys are frauds.” “Your idiocy is disturbing.” “We’re just trying to make the world a better place one brainwashed, ignorant idiot at a time.” These are the trollish comments, all from anonymous sources, that you could have found after reading a CNN article on the rescue of the Chilean miners.
Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the fourth century B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and morality in his parable of the ring of Gyges.
That mythical ring gave its owner the power of invisibility, and Plato observed that even a habitually just man who possessed such a ring would become a thief, knowing that he couldn’t be caught. Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly.
This certainly seems to be true for the anonymous trolls today. After Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old Long Island girl, committed suicide earlier this year, trolls descended on her online tribute page to post pictures of nooses, references to hangings and other hateful comments. A better-known example involves Nicole Catsouras, an 18-year-old who died in a car crash in California in 2006. Photographs of her badly disfigured body were posted on the Internet, where anonymous trolls set up fake tribute pages and in some cases e-mailed the photos to her parents with subject lines like “Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive.”
Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.
Many forums and online communities are looking for ways to strike back. Back in February, Engadget, a popular technology review blog, shut down its commenting system for a few days after it received a barrage of trollish comments on its iPad coverage.
Many victims are turning to legislation. All 50 states now have stalking, bullying or harassment laws that explicitly include electronic forms of communication. Last year, Liskula Cohen, a former model, persuaded a New York judge to require Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger who she felt had defamed her, and she has now filed a suit against the blogger. Last month, another former model, Carla Franklin, persuaded a judge to force YouTube to reveal the identity of a troll who made a disparaging comment about her on the video-sharing site.
But the law by itself cannot do enough to disarm the Internet’s trolls. Content providers, social networking platforms and community sites must also do their part by rethinking the systems they have in place for user commentary so as to discourage — or disallow — anonymity. Reuters, for example, announced that it would start to block anonymous comments and require users to register with their names and e-mail addresses in an effort to curb “uncivil behavior.”
Some may argue that denying Internet users the ability to post anonymously is a breach of their privacy and freedom of expression. But until the age of the Internet, anonymity was a rare thing. When someone spoke in public, his audience would naturally be able to see who was talking.
Others point out that there’s no way to truly rid the Internet of anonymity. After all, names and e-mail addresses can be faked. And in any case many commenters write things that are rude or inflammatory under their real names.
But raising barriers to posting bad comments is still a smart first step. Well-designed commenting systems should also aim to highlight thoughtful and valuable opinions while letting trollish ones sink into oblivion.
The technology blog Gizmodo is trying an audition system for new commenters, under which their first few comments would be approved by a moderator or a trusted commenter to ensure quality before anybody else could see them. After a successful audition, commenters can freely post. If over time they impress other trusted commenters with their contributions, they’d be promoted to trusted commenters, too, and their comments would henceforth be featured.
Disqus, a comments platform for bloggers, has experimented with allowing users to rate one another’s comments and feed those ratings into a global reputation system called Clout. Moderators can use a commenter’s Clout score to “help separate top commenters from trolls.”
At Facebook, where I’ve worked on the design of the public commenting widget, the approach is to try to replicate real-world social norms by emphasizing the human qualities of conversation. People’s faces, real names and brief biographies (“John Doe from Lexington”) are placed next to their public comments, to establish a baseline of responsibility.
Facebook also encourages you to share your comments with your friends. Though you’re free to opt out, the knowledge that what you say may be seen by the people you know is a big deterrent to trollish behavior.
This kind of social pressure works because, at the end of the day, most trolls wouldn’t have the gall to say to another person’s face half the things they anonymously post on the Internet.
Instead of waiting around for human nature to change, let’s start to rein in bad behavior by promoting accountability. Content providers, stop allowing anonymous comments. Moderate your comments and forums. Look into using comment services to improve the quality of engagement on your site. Ask your users to report trolls and call them out for polluting the conversation.
In slowly lifting the veil of anonymity, perhaps we can see the troll not as the frightening monster of lore, but as what we all really are: human.By JULIE ZHUO
Times Topic: Social NetworkingTHERE you are, peacefully... more
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Odds are that you know Mother Teresa was Catholic, but what religion is the Dalai Lama?
How about Maimonides?
And - no Googling - what's the first book of the Bible? How about the first four books of the New Testament?
Americans who can answer all of those questions are relatively rare, a huge new study has found.
In fact, although the United States is one of the most religious developed countries in the world, most Americans scored 50 percent or less on a quiz measuring knowledge of the Bible, world religions and what the Constitution says about religion in public life.
The survey is full of surprising findings.
For example, it's not evangelicals or Catholics who did best - it's atheists and agnostics.
It's not Bible-belt Southerners who scored highest - they came at the bottom.
Those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God did slightly worse than average, while those who say it is not the word of God scored slightly better.
Barely half of all Catholics know that when they take communion, the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, according to Catholic doctrine.
And only about one in three know that a public school teacher is allowed to teach a comparative religion class - although nine out of 10 know that teacher isn't allowed by the Supreme Court to lead a class in prayer.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is behind the 32-question quiz, polling more than 3,400 Americans by telephone to gauge the depth of the country's religious knowledge.
Read CNN Belief Blog contributor and Pew adviser Stephen Prothero's take on the survey
"When it comes to religion, there are a lot of things that Americans are unfamiliar with. That's the main takeaway," says Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the think tank and one of the main authors of the survey.
Smith has a theory about why atheists did so well on the quiz - they have thought more about religion than most people.
"Very few people say that they were raised as atheists and agnostics," he explains.
About three out of four were raised as Christians, he says.
"They were raised in a faith and have made a decision to identify themselves with groups that tend to be fairly unpopular," atheists and agnostics, he says.
"That decision presupposes having given some thought to these things," which is strongly linked with religious knowledge, he says.
The single strongest factor predicting how well a person does on the religious knowledge quiz is education - the more years of schooling a person has, the more they are likely to know about religion, regardless of how religious they consider themselves to be, Pew found.
"The No. 1 predictor without question is simply educational attainment," Smith said.
The think tank also asked a handful of general knowledge questions - such as who wrote "Moby-Dick" and who's the vice president of the United States - and found a link between religious knowledge and general knowledge.
Very few people scored high on religion questions and badly on general knowledge, or vice versa.
People who were members of religious youth groups also did well, he said.
"Religious education is an important factor that helps to explain knowledge - people who participated in youth groups get an average of two extra questions right," he said.
Jews and Mormons were close behind atheists and agnostics as the group who did best overall on the religion questions, and white evangelical Protestants also tended to get more than half right.
White Catholics averaged exactly half right, followed by mainline Protestants and people who said they were "nothing in particular," both of whom got just under half right.
Black Protestants got just over a third of the questions right, and Hispanic Catholics just under a third, the Pew Forum found.
The survey was inspired partly by CNN Belief Blog contributor Stephen Prothero's 2007 book, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't."
Because the Pew Forum couldn't find any indication that such a survey has ever been done before, it can't say if Americans today know more or less about religion now than they did in the past.
And the organization doesn't claim too much for its 32 questions.
They "are intended to be representative of a body of important knowledge about religion; they are not meant to be a list of the most essential facts," the Pew Forum says.
Only eight of the 3,412 survey respondents got all 32 questions right. Six got them all wrong.
Posted by: Richard Allen Greene - Newsdesk editor, The CNN Wire
Filed under: Atheism • Catholic Church • Christianity • Culture & Science • Faith Now • Islam • Judaism • Mormonism • United StatesOdds are that you know Mother Teresa was Catholic, but what religion is the Dalai... more
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News | July 12, 2010
source: http://del.ico.us
Alice Huffman's explanation of the California NAACP's endorsement of Proposition 19, the state initiative calling for the regulated legalization and taxation of marijuana, was well reasoned and smartly put. But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including "more than 20 African American religious and community leaders" headed by one Bishop Ron Allen.
Mr. Allen's statement was illogical, and insulting and condescending to the multitudes of African American civic leaders, including law enforcement officers and members of the clergy, who are working to end a drug war that has had devastating effects on communities of color.
Young black men have been hit particularly hard. As a new study by the Drug Policy Alliance points out, young blacks consume marijuana at rates lower than young whites. Yet in the 25 largest counties of California where blacks constitute 7 percent of the population, African American men are being arrested at double, triple, or even quadruple the rates for whites. This is not accidental.
Born of bigotry and sourced in fear, U.S. drug policy began with conveniently legalized discrimination against the Chinese, then Latinos, and finally African Americans.
That many of today's law enforcement officers deny overt racism in enforcing drug laws, that they claim they're simply responding to citizen complaints of street corner dealing and open-air drug markets, makes the practice no less ruinous to the lives of young black men.
As Huffman points out, ending the drug war -- or, more modestly, bringing a halt to the indisputable madness of marijuana prohibition -- is imperative if we are to help halt the institutionalized denial of civil rights and civil liberties in African American communities.
Yet, speaking as "President and CEO" of the "International Faith-Based Coalition," a pro-drug war organization that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere to combat Proposition 19, Bishop Allen addressed a news conference on the steps of the state capital. "Why would the NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?" he said. "It's going to cause crime to go up," he said. "There will be more drug babies," he said. Huffman "must resign," he said.
Stop and think, Mr. Allen: Huffman was hardly urging blacks to "stay high," or even to pick up a single joint; marijuana legalization will cause crime to go down, not up; and there will be fewer drug babies.
How do we know this? History, science, and common sense. Between 1920 and 1933, alcohol prohibition produced an explosion of violent crime, drive-by shootings, overdose deaths (think bad bathtub gin), and obscene profits for bootleggers -- yesteryear's drug cartels and street dealers. It took only 13 years for Americans to come to their senses and repeal the Volstead Act. In so doing, we put the skids to an illicit industry whose monopolized commerce had guaranteed street violence. Alcohol was "re-legalized," its wholesaling and retailing "re-regulated." Taxes, once again, were collected. Crime went down.
And that feckless comment about "more drug babies"? Ponder this, Mr. Allen. If a parent chooses not to consume marijuana solely because it is illegal, is that really the kind of law-abiding, conscientious parent who, under a newly legalized system, would put his or her baby at risk?
The great majority of today's 25 million or so regular marijuana consumers don't drive stoned, beat their partners, rob convenience stores, or feed THC-laced brownies to their toddlers. They've simply chosen to consume an illegal drug that they know to be demonstrably safer and healthier than alcohol, with far fewer harmful effects than tobacco.
Of course, some consume too much marijuana. In Mr. Allen's words, they "stay high." But under a system of regulated legalization, these individuals would be treated as medical patients, not law-breakers. With no criminal stigma attached they'd be more likely to seek help for their affliction. And, under a public health vs. criminal justice orientation, they would be more likely to get that help.
Why continue to criminalize behavior we know, scientifically, to be safer than today's legal, commercially marketed alcohol and tobacco products? Why force millions of Americans to rely on a distribution system that cannot guarantee quality, a product free of dangerous additives? Why feed the self-perpetuating violence and greed machine that is the current "cartel" and street-gang system? Why suffer year after year the loss of tax revenues (pot's the country's top cash crop) that the government could be using to fund public safety, abuse prevention, education, and drug treatment?
Fortunately, Huffman, a tough woman with no quit in her when it comes to justice, has made it clear she's not backing off. She's received strong support from other notable black leaders, including a former chairman of the national NAACP. Julian Bond told her that, "...you and the California NAACP are as right as you can be. The war on drugs is an absolute failure. It targets black people."
The black community has from the beginning suffered far more drug war casualties than any other segment of our society. Who, ultimately, will capture the larger African American community's imagination when it comes to future drug policy? An angry, ill-informed man of the cloth whose "lock 'em and throw away the key" strategy promises to make matters worse?
Or Alice Huffman, whose spirit of logic, compassion and courage promises to rally support for the passage of Proposition 19?
Legalized marijuana, taxed, regulated, and controlled, would go a long way toward ending a uniquely destructive form of American racism and discrimination.News | July 12, 2010
source: http://del.ico.us
Alice Huffman's explanation of... more
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Alice Huffman's explanation of the California NAACP's endorsement of Proposition 19, the state initiative calling for the regulated legalization and taxation of marijuana, was well reasoned and smartly put. But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including "more than 20 African American religious and community leaders" headed by one Bishop Ron Allen.
Mr. Allen's statement was illogical, and insulting and condescending to the multitudes of African American civic leaders, including law enforcement officers and members of the clergy, who are working to end a drug war that has had devastating effects on communities of color.
Young black men have been hit particularly hard. As a new study by the Drug Policy Alliance points out, young blacks consume marijuana at rates lower than young whites. Yet in the 25 largest counties of California where blacks constitute 7 percent of the population, African American men are being arrested at double, triple, or even quadruple the rates for whites. This is not accidental.
Born of bigotry and sourced in fear, U.S. drug policy began with conveniently legalized discrimination against the Chinese, then Latinos, and finally African Americans.
That many of today's law enforcement officers deny overt racism in enforcing drug laws, that they claim they're simply responding to citizen complaints of street corner dealing and open-air drug markets, makes the practice no less ruinous to the lives of young black men.
As Huffman points out, ending the drug war -- or, more modestly, bringing a halt to the indisputable madness of marijuana prohibition -- is imperative if we are to help halt the institutionalized denial of civil rights and civil liberties in African American communities.
Yet, speaking as "President and CEO" of the "International Faith-Based Coalition," a pro-drug war organization that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere to combat Proposition 19, Bishop Allen addressed a news conference on the steps of the state capital. "Why would the NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?" he said. "It's going to cause crime to go up," he said. "There will be more drug babies," he said. Huffman "must resign," he said.
Stop and think, Mr. Allen: Huffman was hardly urging blacks to "stay high," or even to pick up a single joint; marijuana legalization will cause crime to go down, not up; and there will be fewer drug babies.
How do we know this? History, science, and common sense. Between 1920 and 1933, alcohol prohibition produced an explosion of violent crime, drive-by shootings, overdose deaths (think bad bathtub gin), and obscene profits for bootleggers -- yesteryear's drug cartels and street dealers. It took only 13 years for Americans to come to their senses and repeal the Volstead Act. In so doing, we put the skids to an illicit industry whose monopolized commerce had guaranteed street violence. Alcohol was "re-legalized," its wholesaling and retailing "re-regulated." Taxes, once again, were collected. Crime went down.
And that feckless comment about "more drug babies"? Ponder this, Mr. Allen. If a parent chooses not to consume marijuana solely because it is illegal, is that really the kind of law-abiding, conscientious parent who, under a newly legalized system, would put his or her baby at risk?
The great majority of today's 25 million or so regular marijuana consumers don't drive stoned, beat their partners, rob convenience stores, or feed THC-laced brownies to their toddlers. They've simply chosen to consume an illegal drug that they know to be demonstrably safer and healthier than alcohol, with far fewer harmful effects than tobacco.
Of course, some consume too much marijuana. In Mr. Allen's words, they "stay high." But under a system of regulated legalization, these individuals would be treated as medical patients, not law-breakers. With no criminal stigma attached they'd be more likely to seek help for their affliction. And, under a public health vs. criminal justice orientation, they would be more likely to get that help.
Why continue to criminalize behavior we know, scientifically, to be safer than today's legal, commercially marketed alcohol and tobacco products? Why force millions of Americans to rely on a distribution system that cannot guarantee quality, a product free of dangerous additives? Why feed the self-perpetuating violence and greed machine that is the current "cartel" and street-gang system? Why suffer year after year the loss of tax revenues (pot's the country's top cash crop) that the government could be using to fund public safety, abuse prevention, education, and drug treatment?
Fortunately, Huffman, a tough woman with no quit in her when it comes to justice, has made it clear she's not backing off. She's received strong support from other notable black leaders, including a former chairman of the national NAACP. Julian Bond told her that, "...you and the California NAACP are as right as you can be. The war on drugs is an absolute failure. It targets black people."
The black community has from the beginning suffered far more drug war casualties than any other segment of our society. Who, ultimately, will capture the larger African American community's imagination when it comes to future drug policy? An angry, ill-informed man of the cloth whose "lock 'em and throw away the key" strategy promises to make matters worse?
Or Alice Huffman, whose spirit of logic, compassion and courage promises to rally support for the passage of Proposition 19?
Legalized marijuana, taxed, regulated, and controlled, would go a long way toward ending a uniquely destructive form of American racism and discrimination.Alice Huffman's explanation of the California NAACP's endorsement of... more
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Judge rejects gay marriage curb
Ruling in Hub calls US law unconstitutional, infringing on state’s right
By Michael Levenson
Globe Staff / July 9, 2010
US district court judge in Boston yesterday declared unconstitutional a 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
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5/27/10 State AG’s office seeks reversal of marriage act
7/9/09 Massachusetts is 1st to fight US marriage law
Judge Joseph L. Tauro, ruling in two separate challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, declared that the law “induces the Commonwealth to violate the equal protection rights of its citizens’’ and “plainly intrudes on a core area of state sovereignty, the ability to define the marital status of its citizens.’’
“This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status,’’ Tauro wrote.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who brought one of the two challenges, said the decisions would apply only to the approximately 16,000 same-sex couples who have married in Massachusetts since gay marriage became legal here in 2004. They will now become eligible for the same federal benefits extended to married heterosexuals, she said.
“Judge Tauro’s decision does not technically apply to other states,’’ Coakley said. “It doesn’t change anything in terms of how they treat marriage or how they’re treated by the federal government.’’
But opponents as well as proponents of same-sex marriage predicted that the Obama administration will appeal the rulings to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston and that the constitutionality of the law will be decided by the US Supreme Court. During an appeal, it is likely that the law would remain in effect, lawyers said.
The law was defended in court by lawyers from the US Justice Department, even though President Obama supports repealing the law and has called it discriminatory.
In a hearing before Tauro in May, a Justice Department lawyer argued that Congress and President Clinton, who signed the law, had a legitimate interest in preserving marriage as a heterosexual institution.
Yesterday, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, declined to comment on Tauro’s decision, saying only, “We’re reviewing the decision.’’
Opponents of same-sex marriage condemned Tauro’s ruling and predicted it will be overturned on appeal.
“The fact that the judge could, with a straight face, conclude that after several millennia there is no rational reason why Congress might want to define marriage as one man and one woman, even though it has existed that way for thousands of years, is irrational,’’ said Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for CitizenLink, the political arm of the group Focus on the Family.
Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, called Tauro’s decision “another blatant example of a judge playing legislator.’’
“We believe it’s an egregious decision by obviously an activist judge, and it runs counter to previous federal decisions in other districts,’’ he said. “The federal government should have the right to determine [who receives federal] benefits.’’Judge rejects gay marriage curb
Ruling in Hub calls US law unconstitutional,... more
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By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: April 22, 2010
WASHINGTON — In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.
Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago.
Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like picking off Osama bin Laden in a cave, if the right one could be found; taking out a North Korean missile while it is being rolled to the launch pad; or destroying an Iranian nuclear site — all without crossing the nuclear threshold. In theory, the weapon will hurl a conventional warhead of enormous weight at high speed and with pinpoint accuracy, generating the localized destructive power of a nuclear warhead.
The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines.
In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right.
Partly as a result, the idea “really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” But he added that it was “embraced by the new administration.”
Mr. Obama himself alluded to the concept in a recent interview with The New York Times, saying it was part of an effort “to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons” while insuring “that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”
The Obama national security team scrapped the idea of putting the new conventional weapon on submarines. Instead, the White House has asked Congress for about $250 million next year to explore a new alternative, one that uses some of the most advanced technology in the military today as well as some not yet even invented.
The final price of the system remains unknown. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing on Thursday that Prompt Global Strike would be “essential and critical, but also costly.”
It would be based, at least initially, on the West Coast, probably at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Under the Obama plan, the Prompt Global Strike warhead would be mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey toward a target. It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. (In that regard, it is akin to the problem that confronted designers of the space shuttle decades ago.)
But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.
The Pentagon hopes to deploy an early version of the system by 2014 or 2015. But even under optimistic timetables, a complete array of missiles, warheads, sensors and control systems is not expected to enter the arsenal until 2017 to 2020, long after Mr. Obama will have left office, even if he is elected to a second term.
The planning for Prompt Global Strike is being headed by Gen. Kevin P. Chilton of the Air Force, the top officer of the military’s Strategic Command and the man in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal. In the Obama era — where every administration discussion of nuclear weapons takes note of Mr. Obama’s commitment to moving toward “Global Zero,” the elimination of the nuclear arsenal — the new part of General Chilton’s job is to talk about conventional alternatives.
In an interview at his headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, General Chilton described how the conventional capability offered by the proposed system would give the president more choices.
“Today, we can present some conventional options to the president to strike a target anywhere on the globe that range from 96 hours, to several hours maybe, 4, 5, 6 hours,” General Chilton said.
That would simply not be fast enough, he noted, if intelligence arrived about a movement by Al Qaeda terrorists or the imminent launching of a missile. “If the president wants to act on a particular target faster than that, the only thing we have that goes faster is a nuclear response,” he said.
But the key to filling that gap is to make sure that Russia and China, among other nuclear powers, understand that the missile launching they see on their radar screens does not signal the start of a nuclear attack, officials said.
Under the administration’s new concept, Russia or other nations would regularly inspect the Prompt Global Strike silos to assure themselves that the weapons were nonnuclear. And they would be placed in locations far from the strategic nuclear force.
“Who knows if we would ever deploy it?” Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on unconventional weapons, said at a conference in Washington on Wednesday. But he noted that Russia was already so focused on the possibility that it insisted that any conventional weapon mounted on a missile that could reach it counted against the new limit on the American arsenal in the treaty.
In a follow-on treaty, he said, the Russians would certainly want to negotiate on Prompt Global Strike and ballistic missile defenses.
If Mr. Obama does decide to deploy the system, Mr. Samore said, the number of weapons would be small enough that Russia and China would not fear that they could take out their nuclear arsenals.By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: April 22, 2010
WASHINGTON — In... more
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Link at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/4/31/science/earth/13trash.html?ref=science
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: April 12, 2010
HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.
Johan Spanner for The New York Times
A plant in Horsholm, Denmark, uses new technology to convert trash into energy more cleanly.
Should the U.S. Burn or Bury Its Trash?
Why is Europe ahead of the U.S. in embracing clean incinerators that turn garbage into energy?
The Vestforbraending plant in Copenhagen, the largest of the 29 waste-to-energy plants in Denmark. Their use has reduced the country's energy costs.
Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.
In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen’s downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.
With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.
Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.
By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.The latest activity in your network... Latest activity in your networkRecommend... more
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SEC charges Goldman Sachs with fraud
By Colin Barr, senior writerApril 16, 2010: 12:05 PM ET
(Fortune) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged Wall Street's most gilded firm, Goldman Sachs, with defrauding investors in a sale of securities tied to subprime mortgages.
The SEC said it charged New York-based Goldman (GS, Fortune 500) and a vice president, Fabrice Tourre, for their failure to disclose conflicts in a 2007 sale of a so-called collateralized debt obligation. Investors in the CDO ultimately lost $1 billion, the SEC said.
Hedge fund manger John Pauslon.
The SEC's civil fraud complaint alleges that Goldman allowed hedge fund Paulson & Co. -- run by John Paulson, who made billions of dollars betting on the subprime collapse -- to help select securities in the CDO.
Goldman didn't tell investors that Paulson was shorting the CDO, or betting its value would fall. When the CDO's value plunged within months of its issuance, Paulson walked off with $1 billion, the SEC said.
"The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple," said Robert Khuzami, director of the Division of Enforcement for the SEC.
A Goldman spokesman didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
Goldman shares tumbled 10% in midmorning trading on the SEC charge, and the shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) and other big banks declined between 2% and 3%.SEC charges Goldman Sachs with fraud
By Colin Barr, senior writerApril 16, 2010:... more
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It has come to light that convicted criminals who are in prison have managed to scam the IRS out of fifteen million dollars and the scam has been going on for years. Prisoners trade food or canteen products or protection from temporary prisoners OUI, first time drug offenders for their social security numbers. They then create companies that don't exist use the social security number and scam the IRS for refunds on taxes never paid in the first place with fictitious companies. The IRS has claimed they are developing software to combat this problem. Now thats a scam. Bernie Maddoff would be proud of these guys.It has come to light that convicted criminals who are in prison have managed to scam... more
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A recent New York Times article has brought to light that postings in major newpapers online will soon end up requiring a person who posts a comment to also end it with name and address. Anonymous postings are an easy way to inflame public discourse on any subject. People hide behind screens writing things they would never say in person or in public. Freedom of speech is the major question in this equation. One's right to freedom of speech also should require personal responsibilty for what they say or write. Civil discourse would be enhanced by signiture and town of any person who posts. With the exception of current all major newspapers I post in I sign my name and town & state. I believe people should welcome all comers in the discussion of public policy and law.
In the end freedom of speech is enhanced by this requirementA recent New York Times article has brought to light that postings in major newpapers... more
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I would like to welcome jubal (http://current.com/users/jubal.htm) to the club. By the number of comments that he has left you can tell we have a writer on our hands. He also does a lot more than write, if you do not believe me check out his website.
Kudos!
Until next time, "Men lie, Women lie, Number's don't"- Jay-Z
(if you leave a comment or vote for this post you will be one step closer to being a member yourself)I would like to welcome jubal (http://current.com/users/jubal.htm) to the club. By the... more
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Frank B. Porter Jr.
Meltdown’s causes are still in place
By Frank B. Porter Jr.
December 9, 2009
E-mail this article To: Invalid E-mail address Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: Invalid E-mail address
Sending your articleYour article has been sent. E-mail| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + WHILE EVERYTHING was falling to pieces in September 2008, James Stewart tells us in The New Yorker, a perplexed President Bush said to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “Someday you guys are going to need to tell me how we ended up with a system like this.’’ If they ever told him, he never told us. But we’ve got some clues.
Discuss
COMMENTS (1)
It appears to have been an equal opportunity meltdown with both sides of the political aisle being ably represented. From the left came earnest but misguided social engineering which, under the banner of affordable housing, pressured the money lenders to provide credit to the uncreditworthy. On the right was flagrant pandering to Wall Street’s big dogs, which allowed them to create the obscenely over-leveraged capital structures that ultimately brought them down and should have been unthinkable from the get-go to anyone with an MBA.
However we ended up with this system, it is becoming clear that little is going to change. Community groups are trying to reinflate the housing bubble, the Dow is rising, bankers are smirking again, and Wall Street lobbyists, perhaps with inside assistance, are drilling bigger and better loopholes in the administration’s flaccid efforts at regulatory reform.
We certainly can’t expect changes in the bankers’ hard-wired behavior. The only financial animals who can survive in dead water are the investment advisers. They extract their fees whether the tide’s ebbing or flooding.
For the rest of the sharks, inactivity spells death. Like troops caught in the open, they’ve been trained to “do something, even if it’s wrong’’ or has no purpose other than generating fees and commissions. This is highly rational behavior, because, by the time any particular toxic mess explodes, its purveyors will have moved on.
We can expect the customary dance to continue. Go public. Go private. Stir. Serve. And repeat. Acquire. Divest. Leverage. Flip. Borrow. Hedge the borrowing. Refinance the borrowing. And do it again. Write “fairness’’ opinions. Price public stock offerings artificially low so favored insiders will benefit when the market recognizes the issuer’s real value and the share price jumps.
Much of this wouldn’t have happened without the complicity of those sleeping sentinels, the ultimate enablers, the rating agencies. Having been paid by the issuers of the securities they were analyzing, the rating agencies assigned them the magnas and summas that made even the most rotten tranches eligible for purchase by regulated financial institutions.
OK then, what’s to be done? Answer: plenty, but how about starting with this - have the federal government take over the rating of securities. Give this function to the SEC or create a new agency, but, in either case, make certain the new entity’s funding is not subject to legislative meddling and that it is staffed by persons talented enough to cut through complexity, spot mutton dressed up as lamb, and not be threatened or penalized for making that call.
Strip Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch of their power to determine whether a security is a permissible investment for regulated purchasers and, by rule or statute, transfer this function to the new federally chartered entity. Thank the rating agencies for their diligence, then hire their ablest analysts.
Without something like this, we can expect another debacle in less than a decade as we keep disassembling the few remaining Depression-era protections. Future products will have different names, but their sale will, as always, be predicated on the “greater fool’’ theory and they will, of course, be old wine in new wineskins. When will we learn that outsized returns are always accompanied by comparable risks?
Who might lead this brave new entity? Why not someone who’d be eager to tackle grade inflation and not be expecting a job on Wall Street when he completed his tour of duty? How about David Swensen, Yale’s respected chief investment officer, a man who, inexplicably, is not entirely focused on maximizing his personal bottom line? Whoever is chosen must pass the Bernie Madoff test. Owning more than three Rolexes is an automatic bar. So is direct or indirect support from the bankers.Frank B. Porter Jr.
Meltdown’s causes are still in place
By Frank B.... more
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