Against the Grain: Biofuel v. Grain

According to reports based on United States Department of Agriculture information one quarter of all US grain crops now go into manufacturing ethanol based bio-fuel. This is a result of bio fuel programs and incentives started in the Bush administration. The impact is now showing up in world food supplies and costs.
Studies show that the grains grown in 2009 and used for fuel was enough to feed 300 million people for one year at average world consumption levels .

"Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the US federal government in its renewable fuel standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in world hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol to the tune of some $6bn each year, US taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world," said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank that conducted the analysis.

read the story at guardian.co.uk

Vermont’s Recovery Website Fails Transparency Test

The Vermont Recovery Office information website is rated among lowest in the nation. Vermont’s official recovery web site scored 13; it’s at the bottom with 11 other states.
We are tied with Alaska and fall below Louisiana’s score of 16.
Online news site Vtdigger tells about the study conducted by Good Jobs First, the results of which were released by VPIRG. This updates an earlier effort to rank how effective state recovery websites are in basic transparency. Vermont scored low in that review also.
States are judged on how well their sites convey information in these areas:
• categories of stimulus spending
• distribution of spending in different parts of the state
• details of specific projects funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants and contracts incl. impact on employment

One of Tom Evslin’s prime tasks as Vermont’s Chief Recovery Officer was to make public information available about how our money was being spent.
It was the order of the day.
ARRA mandated that federal, state and local government organizations receiving stimulus funds report data on how and where these funds are being spent, so that citizens could monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds.

The Burlington Free Press reports that Vermont officials now claim they wanted a no frills web page to save money. No estimate of the alleged savings is available. When asked about specific information one Vermont official said it was available by request and added

“We don’t withhold information. We have elected not to put it all on the Web. ... It would take a contractor to do that.”

Frills aside, they offer no explanation why, according to this study, even the basic website fails to meet so many requirements for accountability and transparency.

After less than one year as Chief Recovery Officer and with the state at the bottom of the pack by this assessment, Evslin moved on .He was appointed by Governor Douglas as Vermont Chief Technology Officer. In this capacity he will be in charge of reviving the stalled E-State initiative and overseeing the state’s new smart grid technology applications.

The Douglas borne manner of upper bracket tax relief

Vermont Governor Jim Douglas is asking all Vermonters to make sacrifices during these difficult times. State services are being cut to the bone, state fees are being increased and there is talk of cutting unemployment benefits.

However minus any hint of shared sacrifice Douglas has proposed replacing a 40% capital gains tax exemption removed last year that favors those in upper income brackets. This move and other changes he proposes would, according to the Times Argus, result in $9.9 million loss of state revenue.

He attempts to justify this by rising the fear that Vermont’s rich will have no incentive to stay unless their taxes are lowered.

Douglas would revoke the first of those changes, restoring the old capital gains exemption, but not the second, leaving the reductions in the top income tax brackets in place.

Douglas acknowledged last week that if his proposal were enacted it would effectively be a tax reduction for top earners. Vermont's having among the highest top margin rates risks driving wealthier Vermonters out of the state, Douglas said.

"We have to make sure there are people in those brackets in the years to come," he said. "I think we are going to see fewer of them."
In addition, Douglas would roll back changes made last year that reduced how much money could be excluded from Vermont's estate taxes.

How deeply Governor Douglas’ fear will touch those experiencing Catamount health cost increases, cuts in human services, housing support service cuts and limited state Medicaid programs remains to be seen.
No explanation was offered why an exodus of upper bracket Vermonters didn’t leave the state in droves over the past year. Perhaps some sympathy could be had if he were to document the coming exodus, show the empty mansions, the derelict condos, the luxury cars packed high with goods abandoned along the highway in hurried flight from the tyranny of a closed capital gains tax loophole.

Private Jesus Sights with Bible Codes

UPDATE:In a release on Thursday, Mr. Bindon’s son, Stephen Bindon, wrote, “Trijicon has proudly served the US military for more than two decades, and our decision to offer to voluntarily remove these references is both prudent and appropriate.”

These reference numbers 2COR4:6 and JN8:12 are biblical passages from the New Testament and unbelievably are intentionally stamped inside the tritium illuminated rifle sights supplied to the US military by defense contractor Trijicon.The UK is deciding what to do about the sights but New Zealand will remove the stamped inscriptions.

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.

The Trijicon company says it is "Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom." They received a $660million long-term contract to supply sights to the Marine Corps.

It is reported that Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw from combat use equipment found to have inscriptions of Biblical references


2COR4:6 "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Second Corinthians 4:6

JN8:12 "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Book of John 8:12

Living Containerization: or You May Keep the Box

Worldwide,by the early 2000s, 300 million 20-foot containers were moved by sea each year, with over a quarter of those shipments coming from China. It has even been predicted that, at some point, container ships will be constrained in size only by the depth of the Straits of Malacca—one of the world's busiest shipping lanes—linking the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This so-called Malaccamax size constrains a ship to dimensions of 470 m in length and 60 m wide (1542 feet by 197 feet).

The millions of containers used to ship the wealthy world’s products may now be used to house the poor. Intermodal shipping units (metal shipping containers) are widely being considered as potential housing pods. Emergency housing for use in disasters such as Haiti’s recent earthquake and even longer term housing uses are being explored.

I guess we should be pleased that a secondary use can be found for the ubiquitous symbol of world trade. It is a practical, well intentioned reuse of these containers but is this the best we can do for the chronically poor nations of the world? Wealthy nations should put some thought into changing this system that litters the globe with giant metal boxes, only to hand them down to the poor for housing after discarding them.

A university press release this week touts this container industry funded effort.

Many Caribbean countries import more containers than they export, which leads to the surplus of containers in those nations.
“The project has a double mission: to address the local need of providing adequate housing for people in need while solving a global problem of recycling – giving purpose to empty containers that would otherwise be discarded,” said a Clemson University professor involved in the container industry funded project

As part of this research, the group is studying the cycles of natural disasters by looking at the larger picture through mapping and logistics to understand how containers move, available surpluses and ultimately coordinating the cycles of natural disasters with the ebb and flow of container supplies worldwide.

Also posted at Green Mountain Daily

Minute Added to the “Doomsday Clock”

Well the originators of the “Doomsday Clock”, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are feeling optimistic this week!
My guess is this is not your average jolly bunch of academics. They may not habitually be a pessimistic bunch, but that is just my assumption.

In a symbolic gesture reflecting how close humanity teeters on the edge of destruction, scientists turned the hand of the "Doomsday Clock" back one minute on Thursday in New York, citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs."

For the first time in two years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists changed the setting of the symbolic time piece, moving the clock to six minutes to midnight from five to midnight.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) was founded in 1945 by former Manhattan Project scientists troubled by their role in the creation of atomic weapons. In 1947, they created the Doomsday Clock to mobilize support against the use of nuclear weapons.

Tylenol,steroids and Ari Fleischer

Tylenol, steroids and baseball, stories land at the feet Ari Fleischer.
I noticed some odd connections between two news items today. Stories surfaced this week about James W. Lewis and his wife, who have supplied DNA and fingerprint samples to the FBI. Both were under suspicion for the 1982 Chicago-area Tylenol tampering case. Lewis served 12 years for attempted extortion, but no one was ever found directly responsible for the seven deaths from taking poison laced Tylenol.

The steps Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, used to mitigate the PR problem surrounding the poisoning is recognized as being perhaps the birth of modern corporate crisis management. Since then, events that could otherwise have been total disasters are seen as manageable crises that, with the correct spin, can be handled in a way which lessens or blunts the PR damage.
The full flowering of crisis management (as pioneered in the Tylenol case) is in the sports pages today. Some characteristics are described in the book Damage Control:

The blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and the rise of the Internet is making aggressive responses to corporate crises more important than ever, Dezenhall and Weber write. Businesses will have to function like modern politicians: communications targeted at sympathetic audiences and pre-emptive attacks on opponents who will seek to undermine companies are the new rules of the game.

Now a man who helped Bush sell the Iraq War is controlling the spin.

The one-day plan — coordinated over the past month by Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary who runs a crisis-communications company, and the St. Louis Cardinals, who recently hired McGwire as their batting coach

He did it all in one afternoon, starting with a statement that was distributed widely to the news media, and that came across the Associated Press wire at 3 p.m.
The A.P. followed quickly with a story that featured an interview with McGwire, who subsequently spoke to numerous other news media outlets — including USA Today and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Tim Kurkjian and John Kruk of ESPN (both by telephone, not on the air); KTRS Radio in St. Louis; and The New York Times, before talking to Bob Costas live at 7 p.m. Eastern on MLB Network.

Mark McGwire’s full frontal corporate media blitz aimed at rehabbing his steroid tainted image is being managed by none other than former Bush White House press spokesman.Ari Fleischer the man that spun the Iraq War.

Vermont Yankee Groundwater Test Positive for Tritium

With a sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground …



Around the same time today Entergy Vermont Yankee officials dealt with the news that their aging plant’s monitoring wells had tested positive for tritium (a radioactive isotope)Vermont Governor Douglas was urging the legislature to vote to extend the operating license and allow regulatory boards to handle the issue.
Today’s evidence of tritium in monitoring wells and an alarm caused by the oil level in a pump used to control the power level in the reactor come on the heels of Vermont Yankee new feel good about nukes PR blitz called I am Vermont Yankee

Reports say The problem at the 38-year-old reactor is similar to those cropping up at nuclear plants around the country, with the discovery of a radioactive isotope called tritium in a monitoring well.
Both Spokesman Rob Williams and William Irwin, radiological health chief for the Vermont Department of Health, said there was no threat to the public health and safety from the level of tritium reported. They said the 17,000 picocuries of radioactivity per liter of water measured at Vermont Yankee was 3,000 less than the 20,000 picocurie safety limit set for drinking water by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

But Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry engineer who has consulted with the Legislature on issues related to Vermont Yankee, on Thursday called the discovery of tritium on the plant site "a big deal."

"It's a sign that there's a pipe or a tank leaking somewhere" at the plant, Gundersen said. "It's highly unlikely that the highest concentration in the ground would happen to be at the monitoring well," he added.

This is a problem with older plants and its effect the cost of decommissioning could be significant.For a much more thorough run down of all things Yankee and tritium leaks in general Green Mountain Daily's Maggie Gunderson has more more.
Link here New Tritium Leak at Vermont Yankee

We are living in the future ...

One of my favorite blogs The Hyper Kitchen has the future now.
To be more precise The Hyper Kitchen has a great list of predictions made in 1981 for the year 2010 .Take at look at the World that was predicted.

Here are two past looks into the future:

In the year 2010

-A robot can now cross a busy highway without being hit

-Authoritarian governments in various nations are using mind and behavior control chemicals on their subjects to suppress dissent.

Sneigwh blogs's End of the Year food issue: The Hamburger Helpers

Or : What’s your beef?

Beef Products Inc.uses contaminant susceptible beef fat trimmings, which in the past had been used for pet food or cooking, oil to manufacture hamburger sold to the majority of burger-doodles and many schools.
The stuff that was formerly only safe for pet food is run through a process with ammonia and magically its food. The process so thorough it isn’t even subject to routine inspection!
Well...wash it with ammonia and call it inspected

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.
But government and industry records obtained by
The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated

The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels.

Climate change legislation cools in the Senate

It is shaping up like another stall, delay and lobby free for all in the U.S. Senate.Looks like the Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body [TM] may courageously kick vital legislation down the road. Who could have predicted?

Center for Public Integrity reports…the 60 or so venture and investment firm lobbyists together with the 170 alternative energy lobbyists and 160 environmental lobbyists, and they are still outnumbered 5-to-1 by the approximately 2,000 representatives of major sectors that are looking for a slow-down or hand-out - traditional manufacturers, power companies, oil and gas, transportation, and agriculture.
The total number of climate lobbyists working for all those interest groups, new and old, stands at about 2,780 - five for every member of Congress. That's 400 percent more than when lawmakers first considered a nationwide greenhouse gas emissions reduction program six years ago.

Three Senatorial profiles in courage------

Senator Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) said that winning passage of climate change legislation in an election year had “very poor prospects”

Senator Ben Nelson (D- Nebraska) said that he would “just as soon see [climate change] set aside until we work through the economy”.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.)"I don't think the Senate has an appetite for another such epic, polarized legislative war this session,"

"Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people once a year."

"Santa Claus has the right idea.
Visit people once a year"

Børge Rosenbaum,January 3, 1909 – December 23, 2000 Danish comedian, conductor and pianist

The Washington Post:“Death Panel”assertion,a controversy

Zombie Death Panel lie lives The Death Panels were and are simply lies and the Washington Post today fails to mention that fact and instead refers to them only as controversial. The Pulitzer Prize winning non-partisan Politifact.com Truth-O-Meter run by the St. Petersburg Times awarded Sarah Palin’s death panel assertion

It’s online biggest political lie of the year. Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

But some prominent Republicans didn't reject the death panel claim. The Post’s Shailagh Murray reports today on the Senate passage of the Health care bill. The bill passed 60-39 early this morning and not one Republican voted in favor. In her summary of why no Republican supported the bill Murray says

One of the toughest critics, as the debate drew to a close, was Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who last summer had spent months trying to craft a bipartisan reform package with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (Mont.).
Grassley abandoned the quest after the "death panel" controversy erupted in August and the debate took a sharply ideological turn. The Iowa Republican said Wednesday that he concluded that Democrats were ceding too much authority over health care to the federal government, while failing to aggressively contain costs.

Friday Cat Blogging with a rocking chair

Hell, I'm an old man. I'm 70 years old. I'm supposed to be sitting on a rocking chair watching the sunset.

M.Emmet Walsh

The actor M. Emmet Walsh appeared in Blade Runner, Little Big Man,and Slap shot (Also TeeVee's Starsky and Hutch !)

Health care reform ?

Here is Robert Reich’s assessment of health care legislation as it stands .

The political reality right now is that Harry Reid will do anything to get sixty votes -- which means Lieberman, Nelson, and even Olympia Snowe are able to use extortion on behalf of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, the AMA, and abortion foes. The President, meanwhile, remains eerily above the fray. Having closed deals months ago with Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the AMA -- in order to get their support in exchange for guaranteeing them big profits -- his only apparent interest is keeping the deals going while helping Reid corral sixty votes for just about anything.(The deals have caused some awkwardness for the White House. Drug importation would have cost Big Pharma far more than the $80 billion price tag it agreed to, forcing the White House to oppose importation even though the President had publicly supported it during his presidential campaign last year, and even though John McCain supported yesterday's amendment.)

I was only thinking about health care legislation, not really giving a thought to the fact that it also applies to the climate change talks, as I hauled out the following bit from Thomas Pynchon (second time this year!).

"There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. "

Gravity's Rainbow

Kerry, Graham, Lieberman and the Copenhagen “crime scene”

Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham held a news conference last week and announced their bare bones Framework for Climate Action and Energy Independence.

Obviously the event was timed to have an impact in Copenhagen.Both Kerry and Lieberman said explicitly that their intent was to send a message to countries hashing out a climate treaty: the U.S. Senate is on the job.

The document, referred to as “a starting point, inviting our colleagues’ constructive input” is short on specifics. They do state a near term pollution reduction target in the range of 17 percent below 2005 emissions levels by 2020. On Friday, in Copenhagen, a draft text released by conference chairman asked wealthy countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 to 45 percent below 1999 levels by 2020. The Senate framework cuts amounts to about a 4 percent cut below 1990 levels. However, it does call for nuclear power as an “essential component” of the climate strategy along with federal incentives to boost US production of land, offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
Independent Senator Lieberman (who recently torpedoed Senate health care legislation) said “there are well over 60 votes in play in the Senate, not that we have 60 votes yet.” by way of noting the changeable nature of this framework.
Perhaps last week’s announcement only had an effect on a domestic audience because about half way into the Copenhagen talks most of the World, is apparently unmoved by news that US Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham are on the job, if they noticed at all.

Marcelo Furtado, Executive Director, Greenpeace Brazil, said on Monday morning that negotiators had done so poorly last week that they left a “crime scene” for the arriving heads of states, and that developed countries had clearly “failed to do their homework.” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the current drafts from the developed world on the table would deliver an increase in emissions.

With President Obama scheduled to arrive later this week and after a brief protest walk out by “underdeveloped nations” the prospects are described in stark terms at Earth2tech blog

.....It remains to be seen what the heads of state can actually do upon their arrival this week. But to reach any kind of agreement there will have to be significant shifts in their statements and emissions reductions targets. A few are starting to inch forward —India has offered to adopt the guidelines under the UNFCCC, and report to Parliament on its domestic goals. But China and the U.S., as expected, will be the ones that will need to move closer.

ACORN video altered

What would you believe,video or your own recollection?
Without supporting video pumping up a media fury how far would the recent attack on ACORN have gone? Congress quickly caved and cut funding on the basis of a shock wave of pressure based on an altered video.
This past week a federal judge blocked U.S. officials from enforcing a funding ban on Acorn.
Questionable video evidence and a concerted right wing attack worked wonders. However after the dust settled and with some investigation; From a report commissioned by ACORN and conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

The power of video on memory
Researchers in England have found that faked video can alter a person’s perception of events that they were witnessed to and took part in. An amazing 50% of people shown footage of an event they participated in believed the altered video version rather than their own recollection of events. Participant took part in a computerized gambling task. The exercise involved a shared pile of money and prizes.

After the session, the video footage was doctored to make it look as if the member of the research team sat next to the subject was cheating by not putting money back into the bank.
One third of the subjects were told that the person sat next to them was suspected of cheating. Another third were told the person had been caught on camera cheating, and the remaining group was actually shown the fake video footage. All subjects were then asked to sign a statement only if they had seen the cheating take place.
Nearly 40% of the participants who had seen the doctored video complied. Another 10% of the group signed when asked a second time by the researchers. Only 10% of those who were told the incident had been caught on film but were not shown the video agreed to sign, and about 5% of the control group who were just told about the cheating signed the statement.

IRS auctions 20% of Crow Creek Sioux tribal land

Land taken for disputed back taxes
The IRS is formidable but many people might have thought taking Native American’s lands was frowned upon. Apparently not.
The IRS just auctioned off 7,100acres of land (twenty percent of the tribes land) owned by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. The dispute is about employment taxes owed since 2003.The tribe council has filed suit to attempt to stop the sale claiming that the Bureau of Indian Affairs(BIA) had advised them that a tribal nation was not liable for these taxes.

The land, located within the tribe’s ancestral territory, included a swath being readied for a potential wind farm project that tribal leaders were negotiating. Although valued at $4.6 million, the 7,100 acres was sold for less than $2.6 million to an undisclosed buyer.

More about it here AllGov.com

Twittering DARPA's balloons for big bucks

UPDATE NEWS Flash ........Congratulations Massachusetts Institute of Technology WINS !

A team led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spread the wealth far and wide to locate 10 red balloons in undisclosed locations across the country on Saturday and win a $40,000 cash prize from the Pentagon's think tank.
DARPA said the balloons were raised in Atlanta; Charlottesville, Va.; Christiana, Del.; Katy, Texas; Memphis, Tenn.; Miami; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and Santa Barbara, Calif.; and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Well they must be all right,as I understand it; they did invent the internet 40 years ago. "Zoom ahead 40 years,and you can hardly find anyone who hasn't been touched by, and whose life hasn't been improved by the Internet.” says Peter Lee, director of Darpa’s transformational convergence technology office
DARPA, the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is sponsoring a $40,000 prize for the first person or team that can locate all 10 of the eight foot wide balloons that are located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways...
DARPA says it is studying how social networks can be used by foreign enemies to gain information. And also how fast-breaking information can be organized on a battlefield.

Darpa’s transformational convergence technology office Red Balloon test focuses on tech and social trends that by give participants an incentive, like the prize money, the contest tests how people organize themselves and how they validate information. “Relatively little is known about how those networks respond when trust is a factor,”Lee said.

Its all about informational flow patterns and control. The one that controls the flow controls the battlefield.
In the meantime find those balloons.

Mountain high valley low,global warming

Mount Everest will be the sight of a meeting of Nepalese lawmakers on December 4th. Nepal officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal,is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia and the world's youngest republic.
It’s at the opposite extreme from the Maldives which held an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight the dangers of global warming.Now to boost awareness and not to be outdone Nepal lawmakers are headed to the 17,192ft. high base camp on Mount Everest. The summit is 29,035 ft.above sea level.
This meeting ,to be held before the Copenhagen climate conference, aims to highlight Himalayan glacier melt. With ice in the region melting at a rapid rate, lakes have been formed which could flood nearby villages. Melted ice and snow also makes mountaineering routes more hazardous.
Doctors will make a final health assessment before a helicopter takes the cabinet to base camp, at the foot of Everest. Once there they will hold a brief outdoor meeting.