The WAWG Blog

Go forth and spread the truth.

Rick Perry’s Texas is Failing Us on Child Hunger – Texas is No. 1 in child hunger. KXAS, the NBC TV affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, says “Texas leads the nation in child hunger.” The Texas Hunger Initiative website says “Texas has the highest food insecurity rate among children in the nation.” And even Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said in June 2009: “Texas ranks first in the nation in children who are food insecure.” Do you want to continue to live in Rick Perry’s Texas? So what are you going to do about it?

Rick Perry’s Texas is Failing Us on School Graduation Rates – The Legislative Budget Board’s 2010 Texas Fact Book ranks Texas’ estimated public high school graduation rate for 2009 — 43rd out of 50 states. The budget board’s depressing ranking indeed matched that from CQ Press, a widely-regarded nonpartisan publisher of information related to American politics and policy, which used data from the National Education Association in Washington and the National Center for Education Statistics. Do you want to continue to live in Rick Perry’s Texas? So what are you going to do about it?

Rick Perry’s Texas is Failing Us on Mental Health Care – According to data published by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Texas was ranked 50th for spending for mental health care spending for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Do you want to continue to live in Rick Perry’s Texas? So what are you going to do about it?

Rick Perry’s Texas is Failing Us on Decent Jobs – A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Texas had the nation’s highest share of workers earning at or less than the federal minimum wage. Texas was even worse than coal-mining West Virginia, which had the second-most residents earning the minimum wage or less. The report also showed that the condition is getting worse in Texas, with the number of workers making below Federal minimum wage going from around 200,000 to around 320,000 in just one year (2008-2009). Do you want to continue to live in Rick Perry’s Texas? So what are you going to do about it?

Republicans Are Lying to You About Fixing the Deficit – Republicans are clamoring about the federal deficit, but at the same time, they are saying tax cuts for the rich should be an exception. As an example, in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday, Kyl argued that Congress and the Obama administration should extend the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush, even if it adds to the deficit.

Extending the entire package of tax cuts would cost the US $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years. The Obama administration has argued in favor of allowing to expire at least the part of the tax cuts that applies to people earning over $250,000 a year. That portion is estimated to be $678 billion over 10 years.

Republicans Are Lying to You About President Obama’s Record – Republicans are trying to make the president look bad so they can associate all Democratic candidates with him. But, the facts are that only about a year and a half into his first term, President Obama has successfully completed 119 of his campaign promises, he has worked compromises on another 37 of them, and broken only 19.

Regards,

Jim

In a recent conservative without conscience (CWC) email (You know one of those forwarded emails with mixed font and colors, false comparisons, and statements of problems that don’t exist.), there was a list of situations where one might be asked for an ID.

• Pulled over by the police.
• Making purchases on your department store credit card.
• When you show up for a doctor’s appointment.
• When filling out a credit card or loan application.
• When applying for or renewing a driver’s license or passport.
• When applying for any kind of insurance.
• When filling out college applications.
• When donating blood.
• When obtaining certain prescription drugs.
• When making some debit purchases, especially if you’re from out of state.
• When collecting a boarding pass for airline or train travel.

This list is then followed by a false comparison to the new Arizona law on immigration and implications that some group is exempt from showing an ID.

This is my response to that fear-mongering email.

What’s going on in Arizona is nothing like asking for an ID for the situations listed above. What Arizona is proposing amounts to asking for an ID just because someone doesn’t look like they belong – supposedly non-citizens. Just what does a non-citizen look like? Probably like a citizen.

Also, these non-citizens are not exempt from any of those checks above. If they were caught breaking the law or applying for a loan or donating blood, they too would be asked for an ID regardless of their immigration status. But, in reality these non-citizens can’t do anything in that list.

The more thought provoking question is, what would happen to this nation if it were to miraculously deport 12 million undocumented, low wage, but skilled, workers? (Remember, it took Nazi Germany several years to gather and ‘deal with’ only half as many of those ‘who didn’t belong.’) Food crops won’t get picked and will rot in the field. Work places won’t get cleaned at night. Fewer homes will be built and new roofs won’t get installed. In other words, small businesses will lose a source of cheap labor in a cash based economy and our cost of living will increase.

For those who are so eager to support the Arizona law, maybe they should check out the new Take Our Jobs internet site where they can volunteer to be a farm worker. So far, they have gotten only 4 volunteers including one late night celebrity. Here’s the job description:

“Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis.”

Paranoid, fearful, extremely nationalistic citizens need to chill out. As they chill, the flow of fear driven adrenaline will slow and the cognitive function of their brains will return. Maybe then they can see the effect of their self-inflected feelings of terror – stupid laws, loss of needed workers, and a higher cost of living.

Each of these videos reports on several subjects, so be patient to get to the crazy Republican Texas part. (Some computers have trouble showing these videos, some don’t. I hope it works for you.)

Colbert – The Crazy Texas Republican Party Platform

Colbert – The Crazy Texas State Board of Education

Colbert – Texas Can’t Afford Crazy New Textbooks Thanks to Rick Perry

And for contrast, some sanity:
Colbert Interviews the Mayor of San Antonio

Regards,

Jim

One of the categories for this blog is Powerful Nationalism.

In a recent Pew Research survey of 1,001 adults, some measures of this powerful nationalism were captured. These metrics confirm what has been posted previously in this blog and add to recognition of theRight-wing Authoritarian (RWA) among us.

Here is what the survey confirms about RWAs and their extreme nationalistic pride:

These older, white, Republican RWAs:

• Are more likely to fly the US flag
• Believe they are more patriotic than those not like them
• Are angry [driven by fear] with their federal government
• Agree with the Tea Party

Being powerfully nationalistic is one of Lawrence Britt’s fourteen common threads that link historical fascist or protofascist regimes “in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power.”

A falsehood uncorrected may as well be truth.” – Elon Musk

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Member and Congressional Republican Want to Raise Taxes on the Poor While Providing Tax Cuts for the Super Rich – The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in January. President Obama has expressed a desire to preserve the cuts for the middle class while letting tax rates for the wealthy reset to where they were during the Clinton administration. On CNBC, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore went so far as to say that he can’t “see the sense” of allowing cuts for the rich to expire, and then advocated that taxes be raised on the poorest Americans in order to finance more tax cuts for the rich.

This is a stunning admission from Moore, as he explicitly advocated raising the lowest tax bracket while simultaneously cutting the highest. But he’s not the only one on the right who would like to see such a plan implemented. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has crafted a budget plan that raises taxes on 90 percent of Americans while cutting them for the richest 10 percent.

Adopting such a plan would only exacerbate income inequality that is already the worst it has been since the 1920’s. According to the latest data, “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.” The top 1 percent of families now receive nearly 25 percent of the country’s income, after earning less than 10 percent in the 1970s.

At the same time, tax cuts for the rich have pushed the difference in tax burden between the wealthy and the middle class to the smallest in modern history. In fact, this year the Bush tax cuts will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will make in total income.
Retaining the tax cuts for the rich in a time of long-term structural deficits and vast income inequality would be bad enough. To actually cuts those rates while raising rates for those on the bottom of the income scale would be unconscionable.

[The Poor, Poor, Mega Rich – They Are Just So Over Taxed]

Republicans Have Been Lying to You About Mortgage Defaults – The biggest defaulters on mortgages are actually the rich. They have stopped paying their mortgages at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

Republicans Have Been Lying to You About Jobs and Spending – Why are so many people angry at the long-term unemployed? We’re down 8 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. We aren’t even creating enough new jobs to keep up with population growth. So what jobs are the unemployed not taking?

Economist Dean Baker suggests that the Republicans are trying to keep unemployment as high as possible right now because they think that high jobless numbers will spell disaster for the Democrats in November. And if we give the unemployed extended benefits, that money will act as a stimulus, generating more jobs. Well, we can’t have that! It’s better for the Republicans if the economy stays in the ditch.

Will the grim belt-tightening to cut all spending (except for war and weapons) in order to reduce the deficit really bring back the 8 million jobs we lost? No.

We’re at a critical point in the jobs crisis. Nearly 30 million of us don’t have jobs or have been forced into part-time jobs. There’s work that needs doing. We have millions and millions of kids to educate. We desperately need to slash our energy use–and with an army of workers, we could weatherize every home and business in the country. Our bridges and roads will take decades to repair. We need to build an entire national system of efficient public transit.

When Wall Street is in trouble, we come to the rescue with trillions in bailouts. We’ve poured hundreds of billions more into two wars. But when it comes to investing in our people to get needed work done, we can’t seem to summon the will or find the cash.

There’s a one-sided war going on between financial elites and the rest of us. They’ve engineered the economy to enrich themselves at our expense, with Wall Street taking the lead.

The numbers don’t lie: In 1970 the top 100 CEOs earned approximately $45 for every dollar earned by the average worker. By last year, it was $1,081 to one. (See The Looting of America.)

There is no economic theory that can explain this obscene gap. It has nothing to do with talent or productivity or even luck. It’s just raw power.

Conservatives Have Been Lying to You About the Amount of Influence of the Bible on our Country’s Founding Documents – Many conservatives have been pushing their rewrite of American History that they say is based on a study conducted by Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston, published in 1984 in The American Political Science Review. However, they misrepresent that study in several ways to make it appear that our founding documents were based primarily on the Bible.

What revisionists typically do to distort this study is to accurately present some of the charts of the study’s findings, but omit the parts of Lutz’s explanations of these findings that explain what the numbers in the charts actually mean. Here’s one example:

The revisionists like to use the 34% number from the top-right cell of the table shown below. However, Lutz highlighted the writings from 1787 and 1788 as most important, being the crucial two year period when our government was actually being formed. The revisionists completely omit this part of the study. Why? Because Lutz found hardly any biblical citations during the time that the Constitution was being written and debated in the press, and, on top of that, not a single one of these biblical references were found in any of the federalist writings in support of the Constitution. The only ones he found were used by the anti-federalists to argue against the Constitution. Look at the chart from Lutz’s study below:

Regards,

Jim

Republican Says Fox News Helps Us Get Our Message Out ‘Unfiltered’ – Last month, former Republican Senator George Allen spoke at a luncheon of the conservative Heritage Foundation about how Republicans need to use Fox News as the one television news source that could be counted upon to pass along the Republican message without filtering. (In other words, without fact-checking.)

Allen owes Fox some gratitude after some of the network’s pundits ignored and even defended his outrageous ‘macaca’ slur” to describe an Indian-American who was filming one of his campaign events. Allen now runs a lobbying firm in the Washington, DC area and heads the American Energy Freedom Center, an anti-regulatory group backed by the oil industry.

Republican Senator Lies About Disgraced Staffer Working on Women’s Issues – On Wednesday, Republican Sen. David Vitter denied categorically denied that Brent Furer, who pled guilty in 2008 to attacking his girlfriend with a knife, worked on women’s issues in any way. But numerous records and published accounts prove otherwise.

Several DC-based information services publish detailed listings of staff assignments and contact information for Capitol Hill offices. And multiple directories, both online and in hard copy, name Furer as Vitter’s legislative assistant on women’s issues.

Regards,

Jim

Rick Perry Campaign Consultant Named in Ballot Scandal – A document surrendered under court order identifies Rick Perry campaign consultant, Anthony Holm, as a key person working with Green Party leaders to use Republican money to fund a signature gathering campaign to qualify Green Party of Texas candidates for the 2010 ballot.

Holm is a principal of the Patriot Group , which is a well- known GOP political consulting firm that lists Republican Governor Rick Perry as its client. During the current election cycle, the Rick Perry Campaign has paid the Patriot Group at least $90,000 (Source: Texas Ethics Commission). Holm also worked as an aide to Rick Perry calling himself, “Special Projects Director for Texas Governor Rick Perry” (Source: Patriot Group Website ).

Anthony Holm is the spokesperson for millionaire Texas homebuilder and Republican financier, Bob Perry (Source: Dallas Morning News, March 5, 2009). Bob Perry has long been one of the nation’s largest contributors to Republican candidates and causes, particularly those in Texas. Bob Perry helped pay for the infamous Swift Boat attack ads in 2004 (Source: Dallas Morning News, March 3, 2010). He has contributed millions of dollars to the Republican Governors Association, various Rick Perry campaigns and to current Republican members of the Texas Supreme Court (Source: FEC, Texas Ethics Commission).

Green Party of Texas Statewide Coordinator Kat Swift reports via e-mail to the party’s executive committee that she can finally identify an individual who can help provide signature gathering funds. In her email, swift says, “So I just got a call that a republican in texas [sic] wants to give us 40% of the cost of petitioning…I got his name! Anthony Holm.” A copy of the document can be seen here.

Ultimately, more than $500,000 was received from a secret donor and then funneled through a nonprofit corporation to pay for the Green Party signature gathering effort.

Republicans Are Trying to Mislead You About the Deficit – Republicans are saying we shouldn’t spend money on infrastructure, clean energy, jobs, or unemployment insurance. But all those things are investments in our country that will pay back many times more than what they cost. Yesterday, one of the Bad Deeds showed how the Bush tax cuts for the rich is the largest contributor to the future deficit. Well, here’s another: the “Defense” budget.

The Pentagon‘s budget for 2010 is 693 billion dollars, more than all the government‘s other discretionary spending combined. If you subtract the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it still accounts for more than 42 percent of total discretionary spending.

The U.S. spends more now on military spending than it did during the Cold War. We spend more on military spending than Russia, China, all the Middle East, all of NATO and all the rest of Europe combined.

We are operating 11 large nuclear powered carriers—no other country even has one—a navy that can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as everyone else in the world combined, 57 nuclear submarines, more than the rest of the world combined, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, with 460 military installations around the globe in 38 countries, not including Iraq and Afghanistan. We still have 15,000 Marines on Okinawa.

If you ask the American people what‘s unpopular in the budget, foreign aid always comes up high. The most expensive form of foreign aid is the aid we give England, Denmark, Italy and Japan by allowing them to have a military budget that‘s very small, because they count on us for their defense.

Republicans Are Trying to Mislead You About the Climate Bill – Republicans are talking a lot about the cost of the proposed climate bill. But, they don’t mention that the savings are greater than the cost.

Congressional budget experts say the climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade, a key selling point for advocates who are struggling to move the bill through a divided Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the bill would increase federal revenues by about $751 billion from 2011 to 2020, mostly though the sale of carbon credits in so-called a cap-and-trade plan applied to utilities and other sectors of the economy. The measure would increase spending by about nearly $732 billion.

Republicans Have Been Trying to Mislead You About “Climate-Gate” – An independent report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world’s leading climate research centers largely vindicated the scientists involved, saying they acted honestly and that their research was reliable.

“We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell said. “But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness.”

Russell’s inquiry is the third major U.K. investigation into the theft and dissemination of more than 1,000 e-mails taken from a back-up server at the university. All three investigations have cleared the climate scientists of any scientific wrongdoing.

Louisiana’s Republican Governor Signs Bill Allowing Guns in Church – If you’re like most Americans, there’s probably been a time in your life when you’ve been sitting in church, listening to a particularly ennui-inducing homily or enduring another warbly version of “Holy Holy Holy” and thought, “Man! I could really reach for some steel right now, squeeze off a few rounds, and let these fools know what the score is!” Well, in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal has recently signed into law a measure that would allow you to at least feel comforted by the presence of your gun in the house of the Lord. “Go ahead, Pastor, make my day!”

Republicans Yell About Needing Resources for the Oil Spill, But Don’t Use What They Have – All along the Gulf coast, local officials (especially Republicans) have been demanding more help from the federal government to fight the spill, yet the Gulf states have deployed just a fraction of the National Guard troops the Pentagon has made available.

That’s a particular problem for the state of Louisiana, where the Republican governor has been the most vocal about using all resources. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s message has been loud and clear, using language such as “We will only be winning this war when we’re actually deploying every resource,” “They (the federal government) can provide more resources” and “It’s clear the resources needed to protect our coast are still not here.”

But nearly two months after the governor requested – and the Department of Defense approved the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops – only a fraction – 1,053 – have actually been deployed by Jindal to fight the spill.

“If you ask any Louisianan, if you said ‘If you had those troops, do you think they could be put to good use? Is there anything they can do in your parish?’ I think they’d all tell you ‘Absolutely,'” Louisiana state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, said.

As of June 24, 2010, the federal government had authorized a total of 17,500 National Guard troops across four Gulf states, all to be paid for by BP. But CBS News has learned that in addition to Louisiana’s 1,053 troops of 6,000, Alabama has deployed 432 troops of 3,000 available. Even fewer have been deployed in Florida – 97 troops out of 2,500 – and Mississippi – 58 troops out of 6,000.

Gulf of Mexico Has 27,000 Abandoned Oil And Gas Wells That Could be Leaking – More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one – not industry, not government – is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing. The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells – those characterized in federal government records as “temporarily abandoned.”

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s – even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

According to experts, the BP oil spill is now the second-worst leak in U.S. history, after Michael Steele’s mouth.

Conservative Terry Savage Attacks Little Girls for Giving Away ‘Free’ Lemonade – The Tea Party/conservatives really are losing their minds. Here’s Terry Savage:

Last week, I was in a car with my brother and his fiancée, driving through their upscale neighborhood on a hot summer day. At the corner, we all noticed three little girls sitting at a homemade lemonade stand. …

The three young girls — under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them — explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars. Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

“Oh, no,” they replied in unison, “they’re all free!”

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: “But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I’m really thirsty!”

His fiancée smiled and commented, “Isn’t that cute. They have the spirit of giving.” That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”

Savage goes on to explain how he thinks this illustrates what’s wrong with America today. I think his comments illustrate what’s wrong with Conservatives [without Conscience] today.

Regards,

Jim

One of the tools used by the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) or “Conservatives Without Conscience” (CWC) leaders (Rep. Senators, Dick Arm…, Rush Lim…, Glenn Be.., Bill O’…, Newt Ging…, Michele Bach…, Sharron Ang…, Ann Coul…,) is the Noble Lie. These lies by the RWA leadership are used to manipulate the RWA followers, deny guilt, label their enemies, and create issues that don’t exist. But the point of this posting is to show how the nature of these lies has changed.

Over the last forty years, RWA lies have morphed and become more caustic to our political system. Decades ago, they were simple statements of denial when crimes were exposed. Now, many are accusatory in nature – even when crimes are exposed. They have gone from “I’m not a crook” to ‘You’re the crook’ (liberal, commie, socialist, racist, Nazi, etc.).

Here’s an example of how lying was done forty years ago:

Here’s an example of the false accusations of today as described by Lewis Black:

Regardless of their approach or how accusatory they become, RWAs and CWCs lie to hide the truth. The truth is, they are either what they deny being – “I’m not a crook.” – or they accuse others of being what they are – RWAs (Nazis).

FEC Finds Right-Wing Film Group Free From Disclosure Rules – A little-noticed Federal Election Commission ruling that expands the definition of “media” to include a partisan film production group is the latest in a series of actions eroding legislative limits on the influence of money in politics.

“We’re really returning, seemingly inexorably, toward an entirely deregulated system,” said Thomas Mann, who studies campaign finance at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “It was a rather breathtaking decision.”

The commission voted June 10 to designate the filmmaker Citizens United a “press entity,” equating its often highly partisan work — including films attacking Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama — with the work of nightly newscasts.

The result, analysts say, is that the group is not required to disclose its role in sponsoring political projects or activities, or reveal the source of its funding. Thus, it becomes impossible to discern its influence in the political process.

Elect Me; I Can Kill Things! – Here’s a campaign ad for Republican congressional candidate Pamela Gorman firing a machine gun. She says she is a Conservative Christian. Who would Jesus shoot?

Tea Party Supporters and Republicans in Lockstep Against Issues That Affect Most Americans – Tea Party supporters and Republicans are also in close agreement on the things that don’t constitute serious threats: Unemployment; discrimination against minorities; the power of large corporations; the environment.

In summary, they believe:

· If you don’t have a job, it’s your fault.
· If you’re treated unfairly, it’s your fault.
· If our coastline is polluted and our seafood is poisoned, it’s not a corporation’s fault.

Tea Party supporters and Republicans are also in lockstep agreement on what they think constitutes the biggest threat to America’s well-being: the size of the Federal debt. But, as seen from the chart below, the biggest factor contributing to the future growing federal debt is the Bush-Era tax cuts for the rich, which Tea Party supporters and Republicans actually support. If the Bush-Era tax cuts for the rich are allowed to expire, they’d improve the deficit outlook by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years — and more after that. Tea Party supporters and Republicans are totally illogical. [It’s more about their strict father upbringing and believing everyone has full control of their own destiny – they don’t believe in luck or systemic causation.]

Read this analysis of what’s driving the deficit by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

U.S. Taxpayer Dollars Are Being Used to Buy Well-Connected Afghans Posh Villas in Dubai – Your hard-earned taxpayer dollars are also being used to buy well-connected Afghans posh villas in Dubai. Huge amounts of money [are] regularly being secreted out of Afghanistan by plane in boxes and suitcases. According to some estimates, since 2007, at least $3 billion (€2.4 billion) in cash has left the country in this way. The preferred destination for these funds is Dubai, the tax haven in the Persian Gulf. And, given the fact that Afghanistan’s total GDP amounts to the equivalent of $13.5 billion, there is no way that the funds involved in this exodus are merely the proceeds of legal business transactions.

Over the past nine years, Afghanistan has been a goldmine for quite a few adventurous businesspeople. The most successful of them are often related to members of the [Afghan] government, who give them unsurpassed access to the top decision-makers. And their financial transactions are, of course, far from transparent.

Here’s Your Chance to Help Expose Bad Deeds – There’s tons of you that watch news shows and hear people saying crazy things — or catch excellent news reports that get little cover elsewhere — and would love just for the sake of it to see them get broader promotion.

Do you watch a lot of political television? Do you know how to upload TV clips to YouTube? Or — do you watch a lot of political television and are able to find clips on YouTube quickly after someone else uploads them, and can toss us an embed link, or even do a brief analytical write-up?

Flat out: we’re not looking for people who are too partisan that they can’t write up a video without an analytical style. The reality is, most video clips speak for themselves, and they’re more effective if your own personal opinion isn’t inserted. But I know we have thousands of readers who catch brilliant news reports — and not so brilliant news reports — every single day. If this sounds like the job for you, please email us at rawstorytech@gmail.com.

We Can be Stupid Sometimes – Science is confirming something successful politicians seem to know instinctively – support your local football team.

The success of major college teams in the two weeks before an election can have a measurable impact on how well incumbent politicians do at the polls, researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Events that government had nothing to do with, but that affect voters’ sense of well-being, can affect the decisions that they make on election day,” the researchers said.

Regards,

Jim

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell Decides That Homeless Veterans Do Not Deserve Assistance – As Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) office explained, her Homeless Women Veterans and Homeless Veterans With Children Act would “expand assistance for homeless women veterans and homeless veterans with children and would increase funding and extend federal grant programs to address the unique challenges faced by these veterans.”

It was approved in committee with bipartisan support, and Murray brought it to the floor this morning, seeking unanimous consent. She didn’t get it — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected on behalf of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who apparently was concerned about funding. In the Senate, a single objection halts a bill.

With an estimated 107,000 homeless veterans, this is pretty low, even for Republicans.

Another Blowout Preventer Failure; This One on Dry Land – On June 3, a natural gas well in central Pennsylvania erupted despite the fact that it too was outfitted with a blowout preventer, spewing gas 75 feet into the air for 16 hours before it was brought under control. “[The BOP in Pennsylvania] was supposedly tested the morning before the accident,” said Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Rathbun.

Hard data about the reliability of blowout preventers is hard to come by. But back in 2002, West Engineering conducted a test of seven BOPs “at the most demanding conditions to be expected.” Five were successful in sealing the pipes, but two failed. The study concluded that the data “paints a grim picture of the probability of success.”

It appears you don’t have to be a mile under water to have a problem.

Blowout Preventers Have Common Problems Including Design and Operation – Blowout Preventers have come under scrutiny in the past for common problems that are going unaddressed. In 2003, a report warned that the oil production industry as a whole was not taking the time to properly inspect for and repair problems typically associated with BOP’s. In addition, the report warned that with the increase in the strength and durability of modern drill pipes, many of the rams are now unable to break through and stop the flow as intended.

The 2003 report, released to industry insiders at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston that same year, indicated that an industry-wide focus on uninterrupted drilling had resulted in companies being eager to pay higher maintenance costs in order to avoid any downtime. Unfortunately, it is during this downtime that drilling equipment is able to be thoroughly inspected for problems that are known to manifest with use. The report even noted that downtime caused by low BOP reliability is quite a common occurrence, with each incident costing upwards of $1 million. These dependability issues were the result of oil production companies failing to provide adequate design specifications to the BOP manufacturers. This caused BOP designers to create devices that did not necessarily meet the exact needs of each particular drilling operation. In fact, the devices tended to be hastily placed on the market without proper testing and when one failed, the pressure to continue drilling meant that the devices were rarely studied to determine why they had malfunctioned.

Moral: Haste makes waste (of our shorelines and wildlife).

The U.S. Senate was Warned Over Seven Months Ago About the Dangers of Sloppy Operations in the Gulf – Below is a map of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. This map comes from testimony by SkyTruth president John Amos to a Senate panel five months before the BP oil gusher in the Gulf. Mr. Amos warned of possible catastrophes in the Gulf, including failure of blowout preventers, even in shallow water. Mr Amos stated there were 18 blowouts and 13 losses of well control in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico since 1983. He also discussed the problems of spills from the network of pipes in the Gulf. On the map below, the green lines represent active pipes (25,000 miles in all). Yellow dots represent oil rigs. Of the 3,600 yellow dots, only 33 would be affected by the moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Regards,

Jim