Sunday, April 21, 2013
Regulation 101:
Arturo Garcia (Raw Story) Lawmaker: Texas fertilizer plant ‘was willfully off the grid’
"The fertilizer plant in West, Texas that exploded on Wednesday ignored federal regulations in failing to report that it was storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate required to prompt oversight by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Reuters reported on Saturday, prompting the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security to accuse it of shirking its obligation. 'It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid,' said Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS) in a statement. 'This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up.' Records from the Texas Department of State Health Services showed the facility stored 270 tons of ammonium nitrate as recently as last year. Homeland Security regulations require fertlizer [sic] plants to notify federal officials if they hold more than 400 pounds. But according to Reuters, neither state authorities nor officials at West Fertilizer shared their findings with DHS. 'The West Fertilizer Co. facility in West, Texas is not currently regulated under the CFATS program,' said DHS spokesperson Peter Boogaard..."
Tax Dodgers:
The Guardian (UK) - Leak of Identities & Emails of Rich Hiding $32 Trillion Offshore
"Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife. The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens. In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it. In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation. But the two can now be named for the first time because of their use of companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret. The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week. The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours. BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife. Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100m. Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750m in property loans from reckless British and Irish banks. As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states..."
Arturo Garcia (Raw Story) Lawmaker: Texas fertilizer plant ‘was willfully off the grid’
"The fertilizer plant in West, Texas that exploded on Wednesday ignored federal regulations in failing to report that it was storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate required to prompt oversight by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Reuters reported on Saturday, prompting the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security to accuse it of shirking its obligation. 'It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid,' said Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS) in a statement. 'This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up.' Records from the Texas Department of State Health Services showed the facility stored 270 tons of ammonium nitrate as recently as last year. Homeland Security regulations require fertlizer [sic] plants to notify federal officials if they hold more than 400 pounds. But according to Reuters, neither state authorities nor officials at West Fertilizer shared their findings with DHS. 'The West Fertilizer Co. facility in West, Texas is not currently regulated under the CFATS program,' said DHS spokesperson Peter Boogaard..."
Tax Dodgers:
The Guardian (UK) - Leak of Identities & Emails of Rich Hiding $32 Trillion Offshore
"Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife. The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens. In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it. In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation. But the two can now be named for the first time because of their use of companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret. The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week. The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours. BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife. Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100m. Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750m in property loans from reckless British and Irish banks. As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states..."
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
NSA Wastes Taxpayer Money & Punishes Whistleblowers:
Tim Shorrock: Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers
"In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War I–era Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. The latest example is John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer serving a thirty-month term in federal prison for publicly identifying an intelligence operative involved in torture. It’s a pattern: the whistleblowers are punished, sometimes severely, while the perpetrators of the crimes they expose remain free. The hypocrisy is best illustrated in the case of four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. Falsely accused of leaking in 2007, they have endured years of legal harassment for exposing the waste and fraud behind a multibillion-dollar contract for a system called Trailblazer, which was supposed to 'revolutionize' the way the NSA produced signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the digital age. Instead, it was canceled in 2006 and remains one of the worst failures in US intelligence history. But the money spent on this privatization scheme, like so much at the NSA, remains a state secret..."
Budgetary Priorities:
Dean Baker: Fix the Debt's Fuzzy Math
"...There is no plausible story whereby private demand would increase if the deficit were to shrink. Over a longer term, we can look to have net exports fill this hole in demand as the trade deficit moves closer to balance. But that will not happen tomorrow, and the process will not be hastened to any substantial degree by a lower budget deficit. This means the people who want to reduce current deficits want slower growth and higher unemployment. They may not know it, but that is the implication of their position taken to its logical conclusion. This makes it indefensible; if someone spreads gasoline all over a barn and tosses a lit match on it without understanding the implications, it hardly affects the outcome. There are more grounds for concern over projected budget deficits in the longer term, but these are the product of our broken healthcare system. We pay more than twice as much per person for healthcare as other wealthy countries, with little to show for it. If our healthcare costs were at all comparable, we would be looking at long-term projections of massive budget surpluses, not deficits. This is why truly serious people talk about fixing our healthcare system, not budget deficits and 'entitlements.' But the agenda of Fix the Debt is not really about the deficit and the economy. It’s about gutting Social Security, Medicare and other essential social programs. Pete Peterson and his fellow deficit hawks want to provoke irrational fears of large numbers. The good news is that the sky is not falling. The bad news is that, with the help of a massive PR budget and a compliant media, they could succeed in making people believe it is."
Tim Shorrock: Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers
"In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War I–era Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. The latest example is John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer serving a thirty-month term in federal prison for publicly identifying an intelligence operative involved in torture. It’s a pattern: the whistleblowers are punished, sometimes severely, while the perpetrators of the crimes they expose remain free. The hypocrisy is best illustrated in the case of four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. Falsely accused of leaking in 2007, they have endured years of legal harassment for exposing the waste and fraud behind a multibillion-dollar contract for a system called Trailblazer, which was supposed to 'revolutionize' the way the NSA produced signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the digital age. Instead, it was canceled in 2006 and remains one of the worst failures in US intelligence history. But the money spent on this privatization scheme, like so much at the NSA, remains a state secret..."
Budgetary Priorities:
Dean Baker: Fix the Debt's Fuzzy Math
"...There is no plausible story whereby private demand would increase if the deficit were to shrink. Over a longer term, we can look to have net exports fill this hole in demand as the trade deficit moves closer to balance. But that will not happen tomorrow, and the process will not be hastened to any substantial degree by a lower budget deficit. This means the people who want to reduce current deficits want slower growth and higher unemployment. They may not know it, but that is the implication of their position taken to its logical conclusion. This makes it indefensible; if someone spreads gasoline all over a barn and tosses a lit match on it without understanding the implications, it hardly affects the outcome. There are more grounds for concern over projected budget deficits in the longer term, but these are the product of our broken healthcare system. We pay more than twice as much per person for healthcare as other wealthy countries, with little to show for it. If our healthcare costs were at all comparable, we would be looking at long-term projections of massive budget surpluses, not deficits. This is why truly serious people talk about fixing our healthcare system, not budget deficits and 'entitlements.' But the agenda of Fix the Debt is not really about the deficit and the economy. It’s about gutting Social Security, Medicare and other essential social programs. Pete Peterson and his fellow deficit hawks want to provoke irrational fears of large numbers. The good news is that the sky is not falling. The bad news is that, with the help of a massive PR budget and a compliant media, they could succeed in making people believe it is."
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Profits over Food Safety:
Democracy Now! - The Monsanto Protection Act? A Debate on Controversial New Measure Over Genetically Modified Crops
"President Obama outraged food activists last week when he signed into law a spending bill with a controversial rider that critics have dubbed the 'Monsanto Protection Act.' The rider says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks. The measure has galvanized the U.S. food justice movement, which is now preparing for its next fight when the provision expires in six months. We host a discussion on the 'Monsanto Protection Act' and the safety of genetically modified foods with two guests: Gregory Jaffe, director of the Biotechnology Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that addresses food and nutrition issues; and Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the book, 'Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America.' On Wednesday, Hauter’s group is releasing a major new report called 'Monsanto: A Corporate Profile,'..."
Big Pharma:
I would expect a ruling like this to cause Novaris to proceed to squeeze its other markets even harder for profits. The U.S. market seems to be a complete free-for-all when it comes to producers demanding very high prices.
NY Times: Low-Cost Drugs in Poor Nations Get a Lift in Indian Court
"...Production of the generic drugs in India, the world’s biggest provider of cheap medicines, was ensured on Monday in a ruling by the Indian Supreme Court. The debate over global drug pricing is one of the most contentious issues between developed countries and the developing world. While poorer nations maintain they have a moral obligation to make cheaper, generic drugs available to their populations — by limiting patents in some cases — the brand name pharmaceutical companies contend the profits they reap are essential to their ability to develop and manufacture innovative medicines. Specifically, the decision allows Indian makers of generic drugs to continue making copycat versions of the drug Gleevec, which is made by Novartis. It is spelled Glivec in Europe and elsewhere. The drug provides such effective treatment for some forms of leukemia that the Food and Drug Administration approved the medicine in the United States in 2001 in record time. The ruling will also help India maintain its role as the world’s most important provider of inexpensive medicines, which is critical in the global fight against deadly diseases. Gleevec, for example, can cost as much as $70,000 a year, while Indian generic versions cost about $2,500 a year..."
Energy vs The Environment:
Raw Story: Tar sands oil flows through Arkansas neighborhood’s streets
"Video published to YouTube on Sunday evening purports to show tar sands oil flowing through the streets of an Arkansas neighborhood following an Exxon-Mobil pipeline rupture on Friday. 'So that is a pipeline that has busted and has flooded the neighborhood, and is going all the way to a drain at the end of the street,' the cameraman explains as he drives down a neighborhood street coated on one side with a thick stream of black liquid. 'The smell is unbelievable,' he says. 'Incredible. That is oil.' It’s not just any oil, either: it’s tar sands, a heavy, gritty and more toxic type of oil that is particularly difficult to transport and even more difficult to clean out of water sources. An Exxon-Mobil pipeline rupture that affected Montana in 2011 also happened along a line that ran tar sands, which experts say can corrode the inside of pipelines because of its heavy grit and harsh chemical additives that keeps the oil viscus enough to flow. The Obama administration is currently considering granting a permit to the Keystone XL project, which would run a tar sands pipeline from Canada all the way through to the Texas Gulf coast. A recent State Department report claimed the pipeline would have 'no significant effect' on the environment..."
Democracy Now! - The Monsanto Protection Act? A Debate on Controversial New Measure Over Genetically Modified Crops
"President Obama outraged food activists last week when he signed into law a spending bill with a controversial rider that critics have dubbed the 'Monsanto Protection Act.' The rider says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks. The measure has galvanized the U.S. food justice movement, which is now preparing for its next fight when the provision expires in six months. We host a discussion on the 'Monsanto Protection Act' and the safety of genetically modified foods with two guests: Gregory Jaffe, director of the Biotechnology Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that addresses food and nutrition issues; and Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the book, 'Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America.' On Wednesday, Hauter’s group is releasing a major new report called 'Monsanto: A Corporate Profile,'..."
Big Pharma:
I would expect a ruling like this to cause Novaris to proceed to squeeze its other markets even harder for profits. The U.S. market seems to be a complete free-for-all when it comes to producers demanding very high prices.
NY Times: Low-Cost Drugs in Poor Nations Get a Lift in Indian Court
"...Production of the generic drugs in India, the world’s biggest provider of cheap medicines, was ensured on Monday in a ruling by the Indian Supreme Court. The debate over global drug pricing is one of the most contentious issues between developed countries and the developing world. While poorer nations maintain they have a moral obligation to make cheaper, generic drugs available to their populations — by limiting patents in some cases — the brand name pharmaceutical companies contend the profits they reap are essential to their ability to develop and manufacture innovative medicines. Specifically, the decision allows Indian makers of generic drugs to continue making copycat versions of the drug Gleevec, which is made by Novartis. It is spelled Glivec in Europe and elsewhere. The drug provides such effective treatment for some forms of leukemia that the Food and Drug Administration approved the medicine in the United States in 2001 in record time. The ruling will also help India maintain its role as the world’s most important provider of inexpensive medicines, which is critical in the global fight against deadly diseases. Gleevec, for example, can cost as much as $70,000 a year, while Indian generic versions cost about $2,500 a year..."
Energy vs The Environment:
Raw Story: Tar sands oil flows through Arkansas neighborhood’s streets
"Video published to YouTube on Sunday evening purports to show tar sands oil flowing through the streets of an Arkansas neighborhood following an Exxon-Mobil pipeline rupture on Friday. 'So that is a pipeline that has busted and has flooded the neighborhood, and is going all the way to a drain at the end of the street,' the cameraman explains as he drives down a neighborhood street coated on one side with a thick stream of black liquid. 'The smell is unbelievable,' he says. 'Incredible. That is oil.' It’s not just any oil, either: it’s tar sands, a heavy, gritty and more toxic type of oil that is particularly difficult to transport and even more difficult to clean out of water sources. An Exxon-Mobil pipeline rupture that affected Montana in 2011 also happened along a line that ran tar sands, which experts say can corrode the inside of pipelines because of its heavy grit and harsh chemical additives that keeps the oil viscus enough to flow. The Obama administration is currently considering granting a permit to the Keystone XL project, which would run a tar sands pipeline from Canada all the way through to the Texas Gulf coast. A recent State Department report claimed the pipeline would have 'no significant effect' on the environment..."
