Economic Policy Discussion

This is a discussion on economic policy, national debt, Wall St. bailouts, military spending, peak oil, tax policy, U.S. reserve currency flight, etc.

Israeli Policy protest

http://nwahomepage.com/content/fulltext_news/?cid=130591#at
http://www.4029tv.com/video/21445582/index.html
http://www.kfsm.com/news/kfsm-news-nwa-ehud-olmert-israel-speech-protest,0,6728903.story

Policy discussion on drug war/clean energy

This is a discussion on the issues of clean energy and the drug war

Policy discussion on Healthcare

This is my Youtube political channel where I will be posting videos of my new cable access show OMNI Vision, as well as other political videos. This one is about healthcare and more.

Nothing Else Matters

Oil. It causes wars, dictatorships, pollution, sickness, cancer, and it will be the greatest national security threat America has ever faced. I am not even speaking of global warming, but something easier to understand and imminently dangerous.

Oil is a limited nonrenewable resource, and we will be running on empty in the near future. The American empire reached peak oil in the 1970s, and our domestic production declined ever since, causing a corresponding dependency on foreign oil from unstable dictatorships in the Middle East.

Not only has cheap, easily accessible oil been drying up for America, but a recent report by the British government indicates global peak oil may be reached in the next decade or two. Sure, a few large oil fields are discovered every couple years, but these finds are drops in the bucket compared to the immense and growing international consumption.

We will very likely see gas soaring toward $10 per gallon in the near future. Our central national priority must include finding ways to reduce consumption, increase efficiency, find alternatives and conserve the remaining fuel for imperative transitional energy to a sustainable, clean energy future with solar as the dominant source.

Not only would gas near $10 per gallon hurt individuals directly, drastically impacting our economy in obvious ways, but this cost would vastly increase the cost of oil-subsidized food production. In addition to consumption of millions of gallons of oil for our most essential necessity, we rely on millions of gallons of fertilizer and pesticides produced from nonrenewable fossil fuel that will soon become exorbitantly costly. Additionally, all the countless plastic products, chemical drugs, artificial food additives and household materials made from petrochemicals will eventually become incredibly more expensive.

What will we do? For our children to survive, we must immediately transform toward a sustainable food system. We waste billions subsidizing unsustainable, monopolized corporate factory farms and agrichemical industries that produce the unhealthiest foods, which also increases critical healthcare costs. Instead, we must subsidize smaller, localized, sustainable, healthier and environmentally wise farms. We also need to deeply invest in non-petrochemical alternatives, such as advanced plant breeding, organic fertilizers and advanced water conservation technologies.

Because our incompetent government is ignoring this extreme national security threat, and the potentially dark future increasingly promised for our children, I am strongly considering a second campaign for U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, I do not have the wealth or elite connections to run as a major party candidate. I am also morally opposed to taking campaign donations from lobbyists of dangerous and unethical corporations that are diametrically opposed to democracy and the public interest.

Unlike the cowardly, self-interested political shapeshifting from “professional” Blue Dog politicians, I will take only one principled position, and that is fearless representation of the Public Interest and the Public Good, not elite private interests on Wall Street.

Please google Crude Awakening and please God, help Homo sapiens survive the extreme global security threat of the oil crash.

Corporations Violated Clean Water Act Over 500,000 Times in Last Five Years

NYT Investigation Exposes Severity of Nationwide Water Contamination; Corporations Violated Clean Water Act Over 500,000 Times in Last Five Years
Duhiggarticle-web

A major investigation by the New York Times has found that chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years. Most of the violations have gone unpunished, with state regulators taking significant action in just three percent of all cases. An estimated one in ten Americans has been exposed to drinking water that has dangerous chemicals or falls short of federal standards. We speak with Charles Duhigg, the New York Times reporter who carried out the investigation. [includes rush transcript]

HACKING DEMOCRACY (Corruptible Electronic Voting Documentary)

Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system.

In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections.

In 2002, Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris asked officials in her county why they had acquired electronic touch screen systems for their elections. Unsatisfied with their explanation, she set out to learn about electronic voting machines on her own. In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system.

Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results.

As the scope of her mission grew, Harris drew on the expertise of other computer- science experts, politicians and activists, among them: Andy Stephenson, candidate for secretary of state in Washington state; Susan Bernecker, Republican candidate in New Orleans; Kathleen Wynne, an activist from Cleveland; Dr. Herbert Thompson, chief security strategist, Security Innovation, Inc.; Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections for Leon County, Fla.; and Harri Hursti, a computer-security analyst. Academics, public officials and others seen in interview footage include: Deanie Lowe, supervisor of elections, Volusia County, Fla.; Mark Radke, marketing director of Diebold; David Cobb, presidential candidate, Green Party; and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio.

Diebold software, or other software like it, is installed in thousands of counties across 32 states. David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford, says the problem is that there are "lots of people involved in writing the software, and lots of people who could have touched the software before it went into that machine. If one of those people put something malicious in the software and it's distributed to all the machines, then that one person could be responsible for changing tens of thousands of votes, maybe even hundreds of thousands, across the country."

In Florida, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho presided over a trial "mini-election" to see if the vote could be hacked without being detected. Before votes were actually cast, computer analyst Harri Hursti "stuffed the ballot box" by entering votes on the computer's memory card. Then, after votes were cast, the results displayed when the same memory card was entered in the central tabulating program indicated that fraud was indeed possible. In other words, by accessing a memory card before an election, someone could change the results - a claim Diebold had denied was possible.

Ultimately, Bev Harris' research proved that the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America's public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race. With the electronic voting machines of three companies - Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia - collectively responsible for around 80 percent of America's votes today, the stakes for democracy are high.

One of the executive producers of HACKING DEMOCRACY is Sarah Teale, whose previous HBO credits include "Dealing Dogs" and "Bellevue: Inside Out."

HACKING DEMOCRACY was directed by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels; produced by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels; executive producers, Earl Katz, Sarah Teale and Sian Edwards; edited by Sasha Zik. For HBO: supervising producer, John Hoffman; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.