Bob Morris Feb 8, 2012, 7:30 am It is now nonsensical to say Holder didn’t know. The head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and Attorney General Eric Holder’s highest-ranking deputy, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, called Operation Fast and Furious and gun walking a “terrific idea” in emails to now-former Acting Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Ken Melson back in late 2009, according a report released by Republican staff of the House Oversight Committee.
The Republicans will unquestionably (and rightfully) try to make gunwalking as well as Solyndra into major campaign issues. The gunwalking was so far beyond stupid that I question the integrity of anyone associated with it. As for Solyndra, I have no problem with US investing in and supporting new technologies. I do have a big problem with the sweetheart deal the private investors in Solyndra got, especially since some are big contributors to the Democratic Party. That reeks. Pat H Feb 8, 2012, 5:30 am  Incantation, 1905. Anne W. Brigman, American (Metropolitan Museum) On Friday the 9th Circuit Federal Court ruled that the US Forest Service’s plan to open national forest land in the Sierra Nevada to increased logging and road building and less restricted stock grazing needs to address how those changes would impact water sources and the fish that live in them. The Court’s 3-judge panel sent the plan back to district court which will decide what steps must be taken by the Forest Service next. “In the same way the water in the Sierra is used by millions of people, it’s also the water resource that fish require all the way down to the ocean,” said Chris Frissell of the Pacific Rivers Council, which sued the Forest Service. “Our main objective is not to stop a bunch of projects,” Frissell said. “Our goal has been to raise the bar for how the Forest Service treats water resources and fisheries.”
The original plan that was adopted in 2001 after years of study would have done more to protect the environmental health of the national forests. But private interests, including timber companies and ranchers, complained that they were being shut out and the Bush administration was intent on permitting more development on public land so changes were made that allowed increased exploitation of public land for private gain. The Sierra Forest Legacy, whose member groups include The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Friends of the River, and the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, is another entity focused on the health of the region. Bob Morris Feb 7, 2012, 9:45 pm Google stores all your web searches and much more by default. Google Web History allows you to remove all your web history and to tell Google not to do it in the future. Perhaps you don’t want people to accidentally learn about your Albanian midgets on trampolines fetish. Just saying… If you do an incognito search in Chrome, Google says it won’t track browser or search history or leave cookies. Dave Buccola Feb 7, 2012, 7:57 pm I considered writing something with Black Bloc in the title, but does that mean anything at this point? After the latest misadventure by Chris Hedges, “The Cancer of Occupy,” Hedges does a wonderful job of obscuring and misinforming his readers. It’s not often that such a crack reporter gets his very first sentence with his very first fact so horribly wrong: The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement.
Whether the tactic causes cancer in movements, I cannot say. But by way of a point of information, there are no “Black Bloc anarchists.” It is a tactic, not a group or an organization. Anarchists don’t even have a monopoly on the use of the tactic. In fact, anarchists didn’t even really come up with the tactic. But I digress. But instead of treading in the murky waters of Black Bloc, I just wanted to say a few things about the underlying issue: Violence vs nonviolence. I’d hate to know how many people have learned the hard way, like Dr. Michael Parenti and scores of others, that merely putting up your hand when a police officer is bashing your skull in with his baton can result in charges of assaulting a police officer. If someone is hitting you it’s pretty hard not to protect yourself. It’s a basic reaction. And yet that meek act of self-defence is considered violence by the police. In contrast, when the police surround a group of peaceful Americans, who are committing no crimes, in full riot gear, deadly weapons at the ready, and plenty of potentially deadly less lethal weapons ready to be used at the drop of a hat, this is not considered violence. They irrationally bark out demands and no matter how ridiculous or irrational those demands are they are expected to be followed to the T in seconds. Any number of things can set these uniformed thugs off resulting in any number of injuries up to and including death. And yet this is not considered violence. It may be deemed an excessive use of force–interesting phrase. But it will not be deemed violent. If you think back to Oakland’s latest mass arrest this really stands out. On the one hand you have a group of peaceful Americans marching, protesting, standing together. They are doing nothing wrong. They are in turn surrounded by a paramilitary force that simply announced that they were under arrest and that they should submit to their arrest. Rubber bullets were fired. Flash grenades and tear gas was used. People were beaten. Later as prisoners at the jail they were tortured in various ways. Female arrestees were forced to strip in front of male guards and perform urine tests. People were left with bound hands for hours. And yet the violence we hear about again and again is some minor property destruction. There are bigger questions than one particular tactic at stake here. Why on earth would we let the 1% frame this debate for us? It’s not violence vs nonviolence. It’s a question of basic self-preservation. They use their media to diminish, demonize, and misinform people about what Black Bloc is; they never mention that police have been caught carrying out so-called Black Bloc tactics. They never mention the people saved from arrest by Black Bloc tactics. Do we have the right to protect ourselves? What does that look like? This is the discussion we should be having. Bob Morris Feb 7, 2012, 5:47 pm 
I don’t recall Chris Hedges being voted Moral Compass of Occupy, do you? Yet his temper tantrum in Truthdig implies just that. He knows what is best for the movement and it sure isn’t those icky Black Bloc anarchists. Yes, I think the Black Bloc are often misguided. But saying Occupy’s problems are due to them is simply not true. He also seems to think that lying around passively waiting to get your head cracked is a fine strategy indeed. To me, this seems almost as pointless as tossing a rock through a Starbucks window. There’s a cancer in Occupy, says Hedges, blaming the Black Bloc. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power.
He almost seems to be saying if you fight back you might not get shut down but if you’re nonviolent you surely will. Well excuse me Chris, put what possible good is a movement that meekly waits to be shut down? Chris Hedges’ very public meltdown
It doesn’t even make rational sense. For example, Hedges claims that violent police crackdowns on Occupy encampments came “precisely because they were nonviolent.” And yet he and others make the contradictory claim that the police justified their violent crackdowns on Occupy encampments because of “the Black Bloc anarchists” and their supposed violence — which is patently false. He attacks a writer for an anarchist journal that’s no longer published for criticizing the Zapatistas. He falsely asserts that Black Bloc is yet another of the innumerable Occupy Movement hijackers, yet he can point to no example of hijacking by Black Bloc — in a Movement that was founded by anarchists. Anarchists are the ones who made the intellectual and initial physical space for there to even BE an Occupy Movement.
This is the crucial point. Occupy wasn’t started by Marxists (or the Democratic Party) operating through front groups. It came from anarchists, who exist in all shades and stripes, not just the Black Bloc. Marxists are mostly clueless about Occupy as are the Democrats. The standard attempts by both to jack a growing movement have failed. This is definitely a good thing. Occupy is something new, a viral movement with no national leaders that has successfully resisted being jacked by the Democratic Party or the Marxist fringe. Sure, its’ got problems now but that’s hardly all due to the Black Bloc. Bob Morris Feb 7, 2012, 3:19 pm 
The primary cause of unemployment, says a survey a business owners, is poor sales. Concerns about regulations are a distant third. It’s not surprising that regulatory uncertainty seems to have such marginal economic effects. Regulations do impose burdens on businesses, but the numbers are relatively small compared to everything else that affects a business, from wages to sales trends. You wouldn’t expect uncertainty about a secondary factory like regulation to have significant economic impact. The Obama Administration’s regulatory efforts may be good or bad, and the same can be said about Republican efforts to roll them back. But either way, the impact of the resulting uncertainty on the economy is simply not a big deal.
Ten Bears Feb 7, 2012, 12:00 pm Steve M, No More Mr Nice, is trying to figure out what sort of Chrysler [Superbowl] ad actually would have met with the Republican Party’s approval. Probably something like this: Look, that evil Kenyan put a gun to our heads and forced us to take his filthy socialist money. We never should have done it — in fact, we never should have tried to survive at all. We should have been left to die. Creative destruction, y’know? That’s really the American way. We’re sorry we exist. We’re sorry we’re still making cars, and directly and indirectly keeping hundreds of thousands of people employed. A real American president would have kicked our union thugs to the curb and cut them off without unemployment benefits. But since we’re all still here wasting America’s money by working and producing actual consumer goods rather than exotic financial instruments, maybe the few bleeding-heart liberals out there who aren’t too effeminate to be watching the Super Bowl could throw us a few bucks and buy a car. If you do that, of course, it’s because you hate America. But we know all you goddamn liberals really do hate America, so this is a perfect opportunity for you. We’re Chrysler. Regrettably for America, we’re not going anywhere. Bob Morris Feb 7, 2012, 9:30 am 
Even though he strongly supported high speed rail in his recent State of the State speech, Gov. Jerry Brown is now hedging that support. He says the cost will not be anywhere near $100 billion and that alternative forms of funding can be found. However, he’s not given much in the way of details as to how this might be accomplished. The proposed HSR line between southern California and San Francisco was initially funded by a state bond initiative in 2008 for $9.95 billion. Construction has yet to start as determined NIMBYs, skeptical city councils, a blistering report from the state auditor, and more have all made the future of the project doubtful. However the biggest problem by far is the cost. The original estimate was $33 billion. The current estimate is $100 billion. The federal government was expected to fund much of it, but that’s almost certainly not going to happen. Federal funding for HSR has already been decimated and a California Republican member of the House plans to file an amendment to a transportation bill to specifically block any federal money being used for California HSR. So, how does Gov. Brown plan to resuscitate HSR? First off, he says the cost won’t be $100 billion because that’s way too high. Second, he wants to use cap-and-trade revenue to repay HSR bonds. Third, speed up the construction to save on inflationary costs. Inquiring minds want to know, just how does Brown propose to slash costs when everyone who has looked at the project says it’ll cost $100 billion? He’s not saying. But hoping something will be so does not make it so. Also, have you ever known a big public construction project to be completed on time and at budget? I didn’t think so. It’s a given that the final cost will be over $100 billion. California’s new cap-and-trade program, whereby those who generate greenhouse gases pay a fee for doing so, is expected to raise substantial amounts of money, maybe billions. But as seemingly is always true of rosy projections of revenue in California, no one is quite sure if the money is actually there. Also, cap-and-trade is a tax by another name and could raise costs for goods. Even worse, cap-and-trade has expected revenues of $500 million a year for the next three years. That’s hardly enough to finance high speed rail. Speeding up construction would certainly save money in the long-term. But it means more money has to be spent now. California simply doesn’t have the money and has no apparent way to raise it, especially since public opinion has shifted sharply against the project and financial projections say it will never make money. California can’t borrow the tens of billions needed to finance HSR. It already has a crushing debt load. Any attempts to borrow that much would be at steep interest rates too, adding to the burden. Most of all, given California’s creaky infrastructure of roads, bridges, and water delivery plus an educational system which badly needs revitalizing, California needs to put the money there and not into high speed rail. (crossposted from IVN) Pat H Feb 7, 2012, 6:45 am  Study for Science Instructing Industry, 1898. Kenyon Cox, American (Smithsonian American Art Museum) Six people, who were part of a review committee for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have filed a suit in federal court alleging that the agency retaliated against them because they tried to expose flaws in the process for approving medical cancer-screening devices. The lawsuit filers include two licensed doctors, one M.D./Ph.D., one other scientist, an engineer, and a statistician, all of whom sat on scientific review committees for the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which judges the efficacy of cancer-screening devices. The lawsuit alleges that senior FDA officials approved certain devices despite poor scientific reviews. The lawsuit mentions just a few devices—most prominently, one for colon cancer and one for breast cancer—but the complaints stretch to more than 10 different devices overall, says Stephen Kohn, the lead counsel for the filers and the director of the National Whistleblowers Center. Kohn added that in at least one case, officials pressured an engineer to change the warning labels on a device, removing negative language.
The complaints cover a period beginning in 2006 and the lawsuit was triggered when the individuals involved recently discovered that the FDA had used spyware to monitor them. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), the senior Republican on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, opened an investigation into the matter last week, sending a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg asking for more information. Bob Morris Feb 7, 2012, 6:00 am 
That’s the message to Hollywood from those crazed radicals at Forbes, who clearly think Hollywood is running on empty, greedy, and filled with dinosaurs who refuse to change. I completely agree. I believe in paying money for products that earn it. I do not believe in a pricing and distribution model that still thinks it’s 1998. And I really don’t believe in censoring the internet so that studio and label executives can add a few more millions onto their already enormous money pile. Treat your customers with respect, and they’ll do the same to you. And that is how you fight piracy.
Hollywood’s plan to impose ACTA on Europe is blowing up in their faces. Europe rises up against ACTA – Politicians protest in Anonymous masks  European politicians protest ACTA with Anonymous masks Wow, politicians with actual spines who aren’t openly and obviously bought and paid for. Can you imagine senators in the US doing this? They’d have to clear it with their corporate ‘contributors’ first, no doubt. Meanwhile, that fighting progressive, Sen. Al Franken, appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Hollywood Corp. Techdirt Poland’s prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA.
If Europe doesn’t join ACTA, it’ll be another well-deserved kick in the teeth to Hollywood (and the US political class.) | Independent Voter NetworkArticles by Bob Morris on California and Arizona renewable energy, budget and border issues Foxpro and Clipper migration |
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