Obama’s Shame: Alabama Bingo Battle Reflects Failure on Justice Issues

How could the failure of an electronic-bingo bill in the Alabama Legislature have national implications?

Because it reflects the Obama administration’ utter failure to repair the colossal damage done to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under George W. Bush. In fact, the Alabama episode makes us wonder if Obama is even trying to fix the DOJ.

A bill that would have allowed citizens to vote on a plan to regulate and tax electronic bingo died in the Alabama House of Representatives late last week when a count showed it did not have the 63 votes needed to pass. The bill had passed the Alabama Senate, but shortly after that vote, federal authorities informed legislators that they were investigating possible corruption connected to the bill.

Read more.

MCM

Big Oil Fought Off New Safety Rules Before Rig Explosion

Scroll down to see the proposed safety regulations and BP’s objection

As families mourn the 11 workers thrown overboard in the worst oil rig disaster in decades and as the resulting spill continues to spread through the Gulf of Mexico, new questions are being raised about the training of the drill operators and about the oil company’s commitment to safety.

Deepwater Horizon, the giant technically-advanced rig which exploded on April 20 and sank two days later, is leaking an estimated 42,000 gallons per day through a pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The spill has spread across 1,800 square miles — an area larger than Rhode Island — according to satellite images, oozing its way toward the Louisiana coast and posing a threat to wildlife, including a sperm whale spotted in the oil sheen.

Read more.

MCM

Theodore B. Olson Retained to represent Paul Minor in Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court

Former United States Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson-one of the Nation’s premier appellate attorneys and Supreme Court advocates-will represent Mississippi attorney Paul Minor in his upcoming appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. (continued in attached document)

OlsonMinorRelease

Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People: New Book

NEW YORK – Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.

The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.

The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.

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Learn This, America!
The Final Report of the Commission to Crush the Strains of Weakness, Socialism, and Unpatriotic Thought in our Schools
By Jeremy and Daniel Lehrer-Graiwer | April 25, 2010

After an exhaustive review of the educational materials for K-12 students throughout the United States, we were shocked to discover factual inaccuracies and ideological biases marring what is being taught to our children in subjects ranging from mathematics to grammar.

Fortunately, some Americans are starting to get the message. Recently the Texas Board of Education decided to reevaluate the state’s curriculum, implementing common sense reforms all Americans can get behind, from significantly reducing noted secularist Thomas Jefferson’s billing in American history to a much-needed second look at McCarthyism’s sunny side. However, a state-by-state approach to reform is insufficient.

That is why we propose a single set of national educational standards we refer to as REGRESS (Rational Education Guarantees Real Excellence and Student Success). It is our belief that REGRESS will take our children into the year 5,700 SCEG (Since the Creation of Earth by God) and beyond.

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First police Tasers, now hypodermics?
A Police Federation article that appears to advocate the forced chemical sedation of suspects is a move into dangerous territory

Over the last decade or so, the police have had the run of things – vast investment, a huge increase in numbers (17,000), regiments of Police Support Community officers (16,000) to do the unglamorous jobs, and permission to write controversial policy that by-passes parliamentary scrutiny. That is why I took notice of an article from the Police Federation about “excited delirium” which subtly advocates the forcible chemical sedation of suspects by officers.

Kevin Huish, the custody specialist for the Police Federation, has returned from the conference of
the Institute for the Prevention of Deaths in Custody – yes, there truly is such an organisation – with
a description of excited delirium syndrome and the protocols for dealing with it.

The syndrome is defined in the Police magazine article by a multitude of symptoms, some of which may seem unnervingly familiar – running for no apparent reason; running wildly; being naked (trying to get cool); stripping off clothes (trying to get cool); apparent superhuman strength; seemingly unlimited endurance; violent resistance; violent resistance after being restrained; muscle rigidity; and the subject claiming “he can’t breathe”. In other words, pretty much anyone who is an agitated state, possibly because they have been wrongly arrested, have missed the last train out of Sheffield or cannot breathe because a police officer is kneeling on their windpipe.

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Why we need ACORN
The group, once a top anti-poverty organization, fought to empower those whose interests and needs get short shrift.
By Frances Fox Piven and Lorraine C. Minnite

This is a eulogy for ACORN as we knew it. Our premier anti-
poverty organization has been forced into a massive
reorganization, and its future is unclear. If we care about
democracy, we should study the story of what happened to
ACORN, or the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform
Now. It is true that in its rush to recruit people and build
its organization, ACORN was sometimes sloppy and should have
supervised its people more closely. But those faults could
have been corrected and ACORN’s singular contributions to
our polity sustained.

Read more.

A brilliant meditation by Tim Wise:

http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html

Coal disaster company Massey Energy denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals.

Coal baron Don Blankenship’s Massey Energy has prevented miners from attending funerals of the 29 victims of the killer explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, WV. Massey has taken steps to keep up the mining in the grief-stricken community. The “threat of job loss” from Massey’s non-union mines, “be it spoken or simply understood – has created a culture of fear in some corners of Southern West Virginia, where coal is the only real industry, and Massey is king of the hill”:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative – one of the victims of the April 5 disaster – remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Read more.

BILL MOYERS INTERVIEWS MICHAEL J. COPPS

As Big Telecom tightens its grip over broadband, is your access to the Web at risk? Bill Moyers talks with FCC commissioner Michael Copps to discuss the future of ‘net neutrality’, the fight for more democratic media and the future of journalism in the digital age.

Watch the Video here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04232010/profile2.html

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps is passionate about the
role of media in the United States. That’s why two recent court rulings are troubling him. One rolled back restrictions on cross-media ownership (owning a broadcast entity and a newspaper in the same market). The other, in a big victory for telecomm companies, basically states that the FCC has little authority under current law over Internet service providers.
Find out more about these and other media issues below.

The Comcast Case and Net Neutrality

In 2006 Bill Moyers investigated the complicated debate about net neutrality in the documentary THE NET @ RISK. Some activists describe the ongoing debate this way: A few mega-media giants owns much of the content and controls the delivery of content on radio and television and in the press; if we let them take control of the Internet as well, immune from government regulation, who will pay the price? And how can we assure equal access for all materials and ideas? Their opponents say that the best way to encourage Internet innovation and technological advances is to let the market – not the federal government – determine the shape of the system. As Michael Copps defines it: “This isn’t about regulating the Internet, this is making sure that the Internet is kept open and that others don’t close the doors and become gatekeepers or the keepers of those tollbooths.”

In early April 2010 a federal appeals court handed a set-back to the FCC’s ability to police the Internet – ruling that the FCC’s purview under current law gives it little authority over broadband services. Copps believes that the companies providing and making a profit from Internet services are not the right people to police the system. And Copps doesn’t mince words about the importance of the net neutrality issue:

Our future is going to ride on broadband. How we get a job is going to ride on broadband. How we take care of our health. How we educate ourselves about our responsibilities as citizens. This all depends upon being able to go where you want to go on that Internet, to run the applications that you want to run, to attach the devices, to know what’s going on. That’s what net neutrality is all about.

More About Net Neutrality

* “Court rules for Comcast over FCC in ‘net neutrality’ case,” Cecilia Kang, WASHINGTON POST, April 7, 2010.
* “U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic,” Edward Wyatt, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 6, 2010.
* Watch The Net @ Risk
* Net Neutrality Resources

Where Does the US Stand?

Connectivity Regulating broadband content speeds is just one of the Internet issues facing the US public and government. Some people look upon high-speed Internet access as akin to a right. Michael Copps terms it “more transformative than anything since the printing press” and yet for many Americans high speed broadband is either not available or too expensive. A quick look at the OCED’s statistics on broadband penetration and cost shows the US’s standing. The US has fallen from second to 15th in broadband penetration. Our average download speed is far slower than Japan, Korea, France and a host of other countries. As for price, the US hovers above the middle of the pack in average monthly prices.

Media Ownership

Under the administration of two previous FCC chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin media ownership rules had been relaxed. The FCC then reinstated some of the restrictions prohibiting cross-ownership. But in early 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit lifted the ban on cross-ownership. It’s a move which leads many media watchers to fear a further narrowing of voices in mainstream media. As Michael Copps notes: “If your big issue is energy dependence, or climate change, or health insurance, or expanding equal opportunity, this issue of the future of the media, now the media on broadband, has to be your number two issue. Because, on that one, depends on how that big issue that your number one issue gets filtered and funneled to the American people.”

* “Court lifts ban on media ownership restrictions,” Joelle Tessler, AP, March 23, 2010
* Find out who owns the media nationally
* Find out who owns the media locally
* Federal Communications Commission on media ownership

Michael J. Copps

Michael J. Copps was nominated for a second term as a member of the Federal Communications Commission on November 9, 2005, and sworn in January 3, 2006. His term runs until June 30, 2010. He was sworn in for his first term on May 31, 2001.

Mr. Copps served from 1998 until January 2001 as assistant secretary of Commerce for Trade Development at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In that role, Mr. Copps worked to improve market access and market share for nearly every sector of American industry, including information technologies and telecommunications. From 1993 to 1998, Mr. Copps served as deputy assistant secretary for Basic Industries, a component of the Trade Development Unit.

Mr. Copps moved to Washington in 1970, joined the staff of Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and served for over a dozen years as his administrative assistant and chief of staff. From 1985 to 1989, he served as director of government affairs for a Fortune 500 Company. From 1989 to 1993, he was senior vice president for legislative affairs at a major national trade association.