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Archive for December, 2009

Cop15 – Clinton says: “We Are in a Common Boat”

Posted in Children, Climate, Communications, Feminism, Finance, Human Rights, Justice, Men's Rights, Nature, Politics, War, Women's Rights, tagged , , , , , , , on December 17, 2009| 2 Comments »

Politico has a lot to say about Cop15 today:

By GLENN THRUSH | 12/17/09 7:20 AM EST

Updated: 12/17/09 10:23 AM EST

[COPENHAGEN — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton threw a climate change Hail Mary on Thursday in hopes of salvaging the Copenhagen talks from collapse – pledging U.S. participation in a multinational fund to provide poor nations with a $100 billion a year by 2020. This is considerably more than the 10 billion originally promised, though not as much as some would like the US to commit….]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30723.html

Since, however, President Obama is still planning to show up at the Conference on the 18th, we are all hopeful that she is again paving the way for one of his triumphant entrances.

Just in case you weren’t sure we had enough USAns rampaging through Copenhagen, Nancy Pelosi took 20 house members with various interests in Science, there on Thursday. Should I hazard a guess that this is the contingent of House members that will be expected to support the 100 billion pledge Clinton promised, to poor countries to keep from drowning when their islands disappear? Sub Saharan Africans, too are in the process of drowning in an ocean of sand, as skyrocketing maternal mortality rates, starvation, coastal fishing loss, and loss of water are enveloped by desperate and futile wars.

The consensus is that 90% of the new emissions will come from poor and developing countries, not China and the USA. We already reached close to our “full” capacity at production of airborne water and landborne garbage.

In counterpoint, certain senators, including one Ben Nelson, of recent abortion news fame, think that even though the US has been THE leading polluter, and therefore one of the MAIN causes of warming, the poor countries ought to just fix it themselves. After all, we are having such a difficult time at home, they ought to just give us a break. Can you believe this?

“They’ve got to come up with their own,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). “We’re not asking them for money, as far as I know.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30690.html

Why aren’t they suing us? Careful guys, your caste mentality is showing.

Finally, Dipnote sends a lovely factoid. Did you know that traditional cook stoves, per unit, are the considered the worst polluters in the world?

And who usually winds up slaving over them?

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December 16th, H.R. 3590

Posted in Children, Feminism, Health Care, Human Rights, Humanism, Justice, Politics, tagged , on December 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Part 6 of the continuing saga of H. R. 3590, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Today, one motion to table was agreed to by a vote of 56 yeas, 41 nays and 3 not voting.:

Question:

On the Motion to Table (Motion to Table Hutchison Motion to Commit H.R. 3590 to the Committee on Finance )

There are now FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR submitted amendments. Less the 15 amendments that have been dispensed; that leaves FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE amendments to go.

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Cop 15 Negotiations Strained, but Ongoing

Posted in Climate, Finance, Humanism, Justice, Nature, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on December 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Against the background of the Chinese refusal to allow monitoring of green house emissions and insistence that the 1992 treaty be honored in which they are to receive assistance toward the reduction of such emissions, the US Agenda was that of “pragmatism”.  Meanwhile smaller nations, notably from Africa, walked out briefly in protest on Monday over proposed assistance and perceived sidelining of the Kyoto Protocol.

Through the week concerns continued that progress of the overall climate negotiations regarding technical, financial and emotional issues, for an interim agreement, was too slow and would leave too much unsettled when world leaders sit down to negociate a binding global accord next year.

SOS Hillary Clinton was scheduled to attend today’s conference and leaders events in advance of the President’s arrival on the 18th.

Then today, Japan Times reported the following:

Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009

Gridlock threatens to doom COP15

By ERIC JOHNSTON and SETSUKO KAMIYA

Staff writers

[COPENHAGEN — U.N. negotiators at the COP15 conference worked through the night Tuesday, increasingly desperate to reach agreement before more than 120 world leaders gather Thursday night and Friday and following an official warning that the stalemated negotiations could doom the conference….

…One of the main sticking points on financing is which developing countries should receive financial assistance. U.S. officials have stressed they would refuse to provide China with funds. On Tuesday, China said the world’s poorest and most vulnerable should be prioritized, a sign Beijing may agree to U.S. demands that funding target small island states in the Pacific or African nations threatened by global warming, rather than large, industrialized developing countries such as itself…]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091217a1.html

Neither China nor the US has yet signed the Kyoto Protocol as regarding green house gas emission.  This is a continuing major issue for many signatory countries. Most would prefer to keep the Kyoto Protocol, however, there is negotiation ongoing to develop a second legally binding protocol that the US might sign.

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It’s Almost Scam the Taxpayer Time. Who does yours?

Posted in Feminism, Finance, Justice, Politics, tagged , on December 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We had someone impact our life, like this guy in the article below, once. The really fun part came when we, as clients, had to repay taxes with penalties for the bogus tax credits our preparer had filed, cuz doncha know, the creep’s (our) money was long squirreled away. We were lucky since we had invested relatively little. Others had invested up to $100,000 and more.

The taxpayer is responsible for their own tax filing, since they are the ones that sign on the dotted line. One exception might be when an attorney signs for you.

December 16, 2009

Feds to arrest tax preparer

From Denny Walsh:

[A federal magistrate judge issued a no-bail arrest warrant this morning for a Sacramento tax preparer and investment counselor accused by the Internal Revenue Service of stealing more than $8.5 million from his clients over the past five years….]

http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/crime/archives/2009/12/feds-to-arrest.html

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Cop15

Posted in Climate, Human Rights, Humanism, Nature, Politics, tagged , , on December 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

If you are  on something faster than dial-up, the 15th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark  has a live feed HERE, as presented by the US State Dept. Even if you are on dial up, the link is worth visiting, because it contains the agenda of the conference, running between December 7th and 18th. The list of issues is impressive, there is a summary of each below, and there are many .pdf documents available for download at this site.  Today’s agenda in Copenhagen time is:

Wednesday, December 16
9:00-10:00 AM Climate Federalism: U.S. States in Partnership with U.S. EPA
10:15-11:15 AM The U.S. Transportation Sector: A Part of the Climate Solution
11:30-12:30 PM The Science of Climate Change
4:45-5:45 PM Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Bioenergy: a New Tool for Reporting and Comparing Lifecycle Analyses
6:00-7:00 PM National Security Implications of Climate Change
Copenhagen is 9 hours ahead of San Francisco.

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December 15th, H.R.3950, Health Care

Posted in Health Care, Humanism, Justice, Politics, tagged , , on December 16, 2009| 1 Comment »

Part Five in the continuing saga of H.R.3950

Today, the 15th of December, the Senate conducted four record actions regarding H.R.3950. One amendment was agreed to, one amendment to an amendment was rejected, an amendment was rejected and a motion was rejected. (Again remember, as you read below, that H.R. 3950 was changed from the homeowner’s bill to the Health bill.)

S.AMDT.3183, submitted by Senator Bacus, on 12/11/09 was agreed to. It amends HR. 3950 as follows below:

[At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. PROTECTING MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES FROM TAX INCREASES.

It is the sense of the Senate that the Senate should reject any procedural maneuver that would raise taxes on middle class families, such as a motion to commit the pending legislation to the Committee on Finance, which is designed to kill legislation that provides tax cuts for American workers and families, including the affordability tax credit and the small business tax credit.

TEXT OF AMENDMENT AS SUBMITTED: CR S13047]

The Motion by Senator Crapo, presented on Dec. 13th, to commit HR. 3950 to the Committee on Finance was rejected by a vote of 45 yeas, 54 nays and one not voting.

S.AMDT.2793, submitted by Senator Dorgan on 12/1/09, was to amend, agreed to amendment S.AMDT.2786, which in turn amended H.R.3950. (It is listed on the pages as S.AMDT.2792. I’m not sure why.) After consideration over four days, it was rejected. Although the vote was 51 yeas and 48 nays, with one not voting, it failed because it did not meet the minimum 60 votes needed, as agreed to at the beginning of this health care battle.

The text is 16 pages long, running from S12072-S12087.

It begins by it’s proposed insertion on page 1738, between lines 3 and 4 of S.AMDT.2786 wherein the proposed amendment runs almost the page amending slightly, conditions, definitions and penalties for various Federal health care offences. It then adds this beginning Section that continues for the next fifteen pages:

[…TITLE X–IMPORTATION OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

SEC. 10001. SHORT TITLE.

This title may be cited as the “Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2009”.

SEC. 10002. FINDINGS.

Congress finds that–

(1) Americans unjustly pay up to 5 times more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in other countries;

(2) the United States is the largest market for pharmaceuticals in the world, yet American consumers pay the highest prices for brand pharmaceuticals in the world;

(3) a prescription drug is neither safe nor effective to an individual who cannot afford it;

(4) allowing and structuring the importation of prescription drugs to ensure access to safe and affordable drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration will provide a level of safety to American consumers that they do not currently enjoy;

(5) American spend more than $200,000,000,000 on prescription drugs every year;

(6) the Congressional Budget Office has found that the cost of prescription drugs are between 35 to 55 percent less in other highly-developed countries than in the United States; and

(7) promoting competitive market pricing would both contribute to health care savings and allow greater access to therapy, improving health and saving lives…..]

As interesting as this section was, the line up of who voted for and against it was just as interesting- paring liberal Democrats with Republicans and centrists. A look at the cosponsors will give you an idea. Those voting against it deserve some scrutiny to see why.

Sen Snowe, Olympia J. [ME] – 12/1/2009

Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA] – 12/1/2009

Sen McCain, John [AZ] – 12/1/2009

Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] – 12/1/2009

Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN] – 12/1/2009

Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH] – 12/1/2009

Sen Shaheen, Jeanne [NH] – 12/1/2009

Sen Vitter, David [LA] – 12/1/2009

Sen Kohl, Herb [WI] – 12/1/2009

Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT] – 12/1/2009

Sen Feingold, Russell D. [WI] – 12/1/2009

Sen Nelson, Bill [FL] – 12/1/2009

Sen Sanders, Bernard [VT] – 12/2/2009

Sen Franken, Al [MN] – 12/2/2009

Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI] – 12/4/2009

Sen Johnson, Tim [SD] – 12/4/2009

Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] – 12/7/2009

Sen Webb, Jim [VA] – 12/7/2009

Sen Tester, Jon [MT] – 12/7/2009

Sen Begich, Mark [AK] – 12/10/2009

Finally, S.AMDT.3156 submitted on 12/10/09 by Senator Lautenberg was rejected. As with the above amendment, the vote failed at 56 yeas and 43 nay, with one not voting, because it did not meet the minimum 60 votes needed. 14 pages long, it too dealt with the importation of drugs and began:

[At the end, add the following:

TITLE X–IMPORTATION OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

SEC. 10001. SHORT TITLE.

This title may be cited as the “Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2009”.

SEC. 10002. FINDINGS.

Congress finds that–

(1) Americans unjustly pay up to 5 times more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in other countries;

(2) the United States is the largest market for pharmaceuticals in the world, yet American consumers pay the highest prices for brand pharmaceuticals in the world;

(3) a prescription drug is neither safe nor effective to an individual who cannot afford it;

(4) allowing and structuring the importation of prescription drugs to ensure access to safe and affordable drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration will provide a level of safety to American consumers that they do not currently enjoy;

(5) American spend more than $200,000,000,000 on prescription drugs every year;

(6) the Congressional Budget Office has found that the cost of prescription drugs are between 35 to 55 percent less in other highly-developed countries than in the United States; and

(7) promoting competitive market pricing would both contribute to health care savings and allow greater access to therapy, improving health and saving lives.

SEC. 10003. REPEAL OF CERTAIN SECTION REGARDING IMPORTATION OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS.

Chapter VIII of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 381 et seq.) is amended by striking section 8…]

I find it interesting that if so many Senators are willing to say that we are being unjustly charged, that we aren’t just going after Pharma for monopolistic practices.

Anyhow, that’s where we are today, except for one more point. The Senate has managed to plow through and dispense fifteen amendments. We are now up to FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN submitted amendments! Only four hundred and twenty two more to go.

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Clinton Speaks on Human Rights at Georgetown

Posted in Children, Human Rights, Humanism, Justice, LGBT, Men's Rights, Politics, War, Women's Rights, tagged , , , on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

What she said HERE.

Amnesty International is calling this an important speech.

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Recent US Status Force Agreement Negotiations

Posted in Politics, War, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Do you know under what rules USA military troops abide when they go overseas and interact with locals? It’s in the Status Force Agreements.

I don’t know if you have been following this, but there has been quiet a bit of ongoing diplomacy and negotiation over USAn agreements with other nations for military installations.

A case in point is the Marine Corps Airbase in Okinawa. In 2006 an agreement was made between the US and Japan to move a portion of US troops, numbering 8000, from Japan to Guam. Since the election of Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, that agreement is coming under scrutiny. Part of the agreement was to move US troops stationed at Futenma to Kadena Air Base. (Both bases are in Okinawa.) Japan is rethinking whether they want the also want the airbase removed and are negotiating for the idea that the Futenma troops will be completely removed to Guam.

Local sentiment in Okinawa is growing over this dispute. Part of the mix is the Japan- US Status of Forces Agreement. The recent incident of an alleged hit and run accident by an Army sergeant has brought the issue to the front. The man has been detained by the US military, to be handed over to Japanese authorities upon indictment. However, local officials are calling for him to be handed over now.

Air force bases are not easy to move. While in Guam recently, Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa to Guam, met with Guam Governor Felix P. Camacho. Camacho said he was confident the stand-off between Washington and Tokyo would be resolved. However, during their meeting Camacho stated that the island did not have the capacity to provide a new home for the Futenma airbase as well.

There are other concerns. As a territory of the US, Guam has representatives in the US House. However, those representatives are unable to vote. This places them in a similar position to Washington DC, and constitutes taxation without representation. The have legitimate concerns over the additional damage that dredging to expand the current military facilities would cause to coral reefs and what is left of their fishing industry. Their economy depends on the US military and tourism, mostly from Japan. Unemployment of the native population, poor structure and educational deficits are all locked into the system.

Upon that textural ground then, walks Ellen Tauscher, until recently, my District’s elected member of the US House of Representatives. She was appointed to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, by Barack Obama and some ways is very like Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom she supported in the presidential election primary.

Last week she and her team concluded an agreement with officials in Poland to install a missile defense system there. While it remains to be ratified by the Polish government it is likely that it will. This will allow certain commitments, agreed to under the Bush presidency to be met.

Alluded to as being a reduced plan that will mollify Russian concerns, of particular interest to the Polish government was the nature of the Status Force Agreement. As the CS Monitor reports, Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister Komorowski said:

“It was virtually the most important provision that we wanted to obtain. The American side expected us to drop this claim, but finally, we’ve established that in every case, the Polish justice system will be given the priority of jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. troops on Polish soil,” Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister Komorowski told the Rzeczpospolita daily. “However, on the US government’s special request and in extraordinary circumstances, we may decide not to use this power,” he added.

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091214 – Monday Ketchup

Posted in 51 Percent, Communications, ERA, Feminist Majority, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s a world sprung anew. Even as we tweet away, others are watching. Transparency will be even more important – it’s time to end the Patriot Act. Only if we are vigilant about our rights, and work to be part of the legal architecture that builds around our new forms of communication, will those rights be upheld. It’s up to us.

Twitter Tapping

Published: December 12, 2009

The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13sun2.html?src=tptw

I drove through Pecos once in 2006. It was in the evening, we were late, and my family, in the back of the RV was hot and already tired of the trip from SF to Leander, where my older daughter lived. There might have been three other cars on the road with me. A man was out on the main road with a big bunch of gorgeous looking cantaloupes – a tired man. His eyes bored right into mine as I passed. I hated myself even as I was doing it, but I passed him and his cantaloupes by.

Later, in the real estate news I saw homes going for next to nothing.  I saw a hundred acre farm, it could have been that tired old man’s, flat and plowed, with water and a home, for sale for less than most RV’s. Desperation builds desperate lives. Profit based prisons sprout and grow is such places. They are a disease of human nature preying on the desperate and less than equal. They do not provide equal protection under the law, as I think of it. They do not profit society. They profit people like those running the Vanguard Group and Geo Corporation and Wackenhut.

A Death in Texas

Profits, poverty, and immigration converge

Tom Barry

The Reeves County Detention Complex burns on the morning of February 2, 2009.

County Clerk Dianne Florez noticed it first. Plumes of smoke were rising outside the small West Texas town of Pecos. “The prison is burning again,” she announced.

About a month and a half before, on December 12, 2008, inmates had rioted to protest the death of one of their own, Jesus Manuel Galindo, 32. When Galindo’s body was removed from the prison in what looked to them like a large black trash bag, they set fire to the recreational center and occupied the exercise yard overnight. Using smuggled cell phones, they told worried family members and the media about poor medical care in the prison and described the treatment of Galindo, who had been in solitary confinement since mid-November. During that time, fellow inmates and his mother, who called the prison nearly every day, had warned authorities that Galindo needed daily medication for epilepsy and was suffering from severe seizures in the “security housing unit,” which the inmates call the “hole.”

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.6/barry.php

As the article below states, in fact, civil rights have been warred against since the law’s inception in 1964 – essentially how long our country has been leading off to the right. Human rights, that include equality by sex, were never achieved, even though some rights have been eked out law by law. It will take years to put us back on the path. The time to start is NOW and this looks like a start.

Civil Rights Division To Clean Up After 8 Years of Bush

Posted Wed, 12/09/2009 – 07:08

“Bush packed the Civil Rights Division with right-wing lawyers and administrators determined to erase even the most elementary gains made by minorities.”

The Obama administration has accomplished one solid achievement that may go down in the history books as at least a partial reversal of fortune for racial minorities in the United States. For eight long years, the Bush administration waged vicious political warfare against the very concept of civil rights, as we had come to understand it in America. Equal protection under the law became a dead letter in the U.S. Justice Department, whose Civil Rights Division was transformed into a bulwark of white male supremacy and petty reaction….]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/civil-rights-division-clean-after-8-years-bush

A settlement from a Democratic administration, and for the individuals who fought for their rights:

Tribal Justice News

[Attorney General Holder, Secretary Salazar Announce Settlement of Cobell Lawsuit on Indian Trust Management (AG) 
On Dec. 8, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a settlement of the long-running and highly contentious Cobell class-action lawsuit regarding the U.S. government’s trust management and accounting of over three hundred thousand individual American Indian trust accounts…



http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/December/09-ag-1312.html
…]

http://nativetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2740:tribal-justice-news&catid=55&Itemid=31

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Lieberman Throws a Spanner into Reid’s Work

Posted in Politics, tagged on December 14, 2009| 2 Comments »

Medicare coverage for those aged 55-64

[POLITICO Breaking News:
—————————————————–

The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which would mean eliminating the proposed Medicare expansion in the health reform bill, according to an official close to the negotiations. Lieberman threw health care reform into doubt Sunday when he told Reid that he would filibuster the bill if it allowed Americans ages 55 to 64 to purchase coverage in Medicare.

For more information…http://www.politico.com%5D

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