EPA OK's BP Pollution at Whiting, Indiana Refinery

EPA Okays BP Pollution at Whiting, IN Refinery

(click ^^^^^^^ for the full story cross-posted in the INDIANA DU forum.)

MUST READ

imbillorightsmanandiapprovethismessage_in_CLE_OH

www.billorightsman.com

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Some of you may have remembered my post about putting RFID chips in US Passports (Got RFID Passport?) . Now we have the US Border Patrol requiring a US Passport from US citizens to LEAVE, not just enter, the U.S. via air travel. The UMW Post (Passports needed to re-enter U.S. by air from Mexico, Canada) explains,

WE COUNT 2006

I'm the Technical Liason/Coordinator for this event.
If you plan to attend and want to video/audio the event,
email billorightsman AT sbcglobal DOT NET

WHAT: We Count 2006
WHEN: Friday Sept. 29 & Saturday Sept 30, 2006
WHERE: Tri-C Downtown Campus - CLE OH

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September 29th-30th, 2006
Friday - 6pm to 10pm; Saturday - 9am to 9pm
Cuyahoga County Community College
Metropolitan Campus
2900 Community College Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44115

Speakers
Mark Crispin Miller * Bev Harris * Bob Fitrakis

I was listening to Marketplace on my NPR station the other day and they had an item called Congressional hearings on data brokers by John Dimsdale. It started out with announcer KAI RYSSDAL:

I saw this in the paper today. The Department of Veterans Affairs will pay for a year's worth of credit monitoring for vets whose personal data was stolen. A disc with social security numbers and the like was taken from a department employee's home last month.

Outright theft is just one way information can be lost. It is often bought and sold, too. A House subcommittee started hearings today on that very subject. Companies that collect your phone records and sell them on the open market. Our Washington bureau chief John Dimsdale has more.

Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001
(yeah the same one Michael Moore read over a loudspeaker while driving around in an ice creme truck in Fahrenheit 9/11)

Among other major concerns, the compromise version of the bill fails to substantively reform Section 215 which allows federal agents to demand records from libraries, bookstores, hospitals and other businesses after meeting an unacceptably low standard of evidence. According to the text of the legislation, the government can continue to conduct such a search without presenting any evidence that the target is suspected of wrongdoing.

Gore to Address "Constitutional Crisis"
...at The Nation

It sounds as if Al Gore is about to deliver what could be not just one of the more significant speeches of his political career but an essential challenge to the embattled presidency of George W. Bush.

In a major address slated for delivery Monday in Washington, the former Vice President is expected to argue that the Bush administration has created a "Constitutional crisis" by acting without the authorization of the Congress and the courts to spy on Americans and otherwise abuse basic liberties.

Action Alert: Say No To Prohibited Software In Voting Machines!
by Joan Krawitz, Executive Director, VoteTrustUSA, December 29, 2005

VoteTrustUSA has launched a campaign to hold the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) accountable for ensuring that all Diebold software is re-inspected and decertified until it can be shown that all prohibited code has been removed. We also urge the EAC to initiate the re-inspection of the election software of other vendors, which may also include software that is expressly forbidden in the FEC Voting System Standards.

This is the third or fourth version of this idea. I've sent this idea, in one form or another to:

1. John Conyers
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Stephanie Tubbs Jones
4. Every member of the Ohio Rules Committee
5. Randi Rhodes
6. SoS candidates Debra Bowen (CA) and Jennifer Brunner (OH)
7. ...and many more!

I've also posted this at DU, Conyers Blog, BradBlog, Mike Malloy's blog and many more places.

Please add, refine, dissect, discuss and most importantly
DISSEMINATE everywhere, especially to your Secretaries of State and county BoE officials!

Passports to get RFID chip implants
By Declan McCullagh, and Anne Broache, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: October 25, 2005, 12:12 PM PT

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."

As Congress returns from recess, look for the Regressive Republicans to pick up where they left off on their mission to make the rich richer at the expense of the middle class and poor.

Here are three items that deserve our attention and our push-back.

~~~ESTATE TAX REPEAL~~~

Don't think for one minute the rethugs in Congress will do what's right in the aftermath of Katrina. They will keep pushing their regressive agenda on us. To wit (from People For The American Way):

Four days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the country remains in crisis. The situation of Americans trapped by flooding grows increasingly desperate, and government resources and planning have proven woefully inadequate. There is nothing more important to the American people right now than saving lives, sheltering American citizens, and rebuilding homes.