——–

UPDATE:

According to NYT reporter Hiroko Tabuchi some workers remains at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and reports otherwise were a translation error.

——-

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference just under an hour ago that all personnel have been evacuated from Fukushima Daiichi 1 – 4 nuclear plants due to excessive radiation levels.

The fire in reactor 4 was confirmed as being in the spent fuel pool, and though the fire was suppressed earlier, it resumed later in the day. A proposed plan to air-drop water/cooling materials on it had to be scrapped due to the likely deadly risk to the helicopter crew.

The Secretary also mentioned that reactor cores 1 and 3 have been breached, and there appears to be steam coming from the breach in reactor core 3.

We already know the high regard in which Wisconsin Republicans hold the sacred forms and traditions of democracy, right?  If you recall that they railroaded Walker's union-busting bill through the Assembly and Senate, likely nothing will surprise you.  

But here are some new rules from the Republicans:  

1. If you're a Democrat, you don't get a vote in committee.  

2. If you're a Republican, you don't have to live in the district you are elected to represent.  

Let's go over that once more.  

The majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate has ruled that the Democrats who boycotted the proceedings to avoid giving the R's a quorum are in contempt of the Senate, and that consequently their votes in committee don't count.  

.  Nice, huh?  

Now, Number 2: Like every other state, Wisconsin's legislature has a system of districts. The voters in those districts turn out and vote for their representatives, who live in and represent those districts.  Except that that's not how it works for one of the Republicans in the Senate. Last year Randy Hopper, R, Fond du Lac, left his wife and took to living with a 25-year old aide.

As you can see from the picture, Randy is not 25 years old. If it matters to you that his new paramour is twenty years younger than he is, that is.  

And if it matters to you that she now works for the lobbying firm that represents some very nasty right-wing groups.  It's certainly not unheard of for an elected official to set up housekeeping outside of his district, or even to have an extramarital affair.  

What seems to cross the line for me is that not only did he move out on his wife and out of his district, but he ran for re-election. That means he undoubtedly had to sign papers with the Wisconsin Secretary of State, probably under oath, verifying his place of residence. (He conveniently includes a map of his district–I mean the one he used to live in–on his legislative web page.)  And whatever he swore to on those papers was a lie.  

So it's not the sex, and it's not just the hypocrisy (nothing like those bible-believing, family values Republicans, huh?), it's the whole package of sleeping with a scummy lobbyist, leaving your wife for her, and lying about where you live when you run for reelection.  

In case you're wondering, his wife says she'll sign the recall petition. His maid already has.

At least a couple hundred early childhood education and care professionals are descending on the Statehouse today in support of H.97, which would empower them to form a non-traditional union to negotiate directly with the state on early care and education policy (such as subsidies, regulations, etc). Despite the fact that it seems like the bill should be a fairly straightforward act of fairness, there is some opposition to it.

So the message is positive, but there’s also some pushing back on the phony opposition claims in circulation about this bill, the biggest whopper of which is this idea that the bill would make early educators into public employees (as if the thousands of small business owners promoting this legislation would get behind that, good lord – if you’re gonna make something up about the bill, at least make something up that’s plausible). This legislation does one thing and one thing only; creates a structure that would allow early educators to organize if they choose to. It’s all about options, and about trusting professional people to have a say in their own destiny.

Here are some snippets from the greeting in Room 11 from Governor Shumlin and Speaker Smith, both of whom have been outspoken in their support of this effort (Once again, full disclosure: I’m doing some professional consulting on this effort).

UPDATE: Okay, so I was too busy to do much blogging, but I got tons of video which I’ll get out over the next couple days… after the flip is Senator Diane Snelling (R-Chittenden) speaking at the press conference in favor of the bill.

There is no way to say this easily.

“We cannot just go back to business as usual,” [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel said, adding that events in Japan “teach us that risks that were thought to be completely impossible cannot in fact be completely ruled out“.

Just when I thought it could not get any worse, it got worse.  

As you all know, one nuclear plant had the top blow off and began to leak radioactivity into the air (Unit 1, built in 1970).  Then a 2nd one it exploded yesterday (Sunday) (Unit 3 built in 1974)  Tonight we received word at 8 pm that Unit 2 exploded (built in 1972 – the same year as Vermont Yankee).  Each explosion has gotten worse, and the third explosion has severely damaged the containment building.  

By the way, the 2nd reactor to blow – Unit 3 is burning MOX fuel – mixed oxide fuel, which has plutonium added.  Did you know that plutonium is named after Pluto the god of hell?

Now Unit 4 has a fire in spent fuel pool caused by exposed fuel and burning hydrogen.  A burning fuel pool fire is worse than a meltdown because the uranium and plutonium vaporize.  

By the way, all 4 Japanese nuke plants in trouble are the same vintage, design, & model as Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek (NJ)(Exelon owned), and Pilgrim (MA – just south of Boston) (another Entergy plant)

It is very, very late Monday night, no early Tuesday morning.  I am exhausted.  Yesterday (Sunday) we researched and prepped for several radio shows and NY Times, Washington Post, and WSJ.  This morning began with Chicago radio, where Illinois has 11 working nukes – 4 of its oldest units are like Fukushima. All the Illinois nukes are owned by Exelon, the corporation that was President Obama’s biggest campaign donor.

Next Arnie interviewed w/ a Miami station. It always bothers us to do press in Florida, where we already did a nuclear case with a cancer cluster of 42 families exposed to illegal radioactivity from a nuclear power plant that was covered-up by the NRC.  

After those two radio shows Arnie was on Democracy Now & will be again on Tuesday morning @ 8:10 a.m.

After Democracy Now, Arnie did an interview with Mark Johnson, VPR – John Dillion, Dave Gram at AP, and numerous other radio, TV, and print media.

[I’d love it if anyone posts those links in the comment section].

Arnie’s interview here in the Global Postwas spot on regarding a reactor core melt and containment failure.

GlobalPost: The ultimate risk in any nuclear accident is that the heat can grow so intense that the steel containment vessel is ruptured, releasing a large amount of radiation. You say there’s a 50-50 chance of this happening. What kind of health effects can we expect?

Gundersen: First, it’s important to know that this steel containment is about an inch thick. It’s not some massive battleship of steel. The reactor is already open, because the pressure relief valves have to stay open.

On top of that, these containments have already breached. We saw iodine and cesium in the environment before the first unit exploded. When you see that, that’s clearly an indication that the containment has breached.

Now, is it leaking 1 percent a day? Probably. Is it leaking 100 percent a day? No. I think for the neighboring towns out to 2 miles, they won’t have anybody back in them for five years. Out to 15 miles, I doubt you’re going to see anyone back for six months. And that’s in the best case, without a meltdown.

If we have a meltdown, I don’t think anyone will be back within 20 miles for 10 or 15 years.

Throughout the the New York Times Arnie details some unique aspects of plant exposures.

Mr. Gundersen  …  had one maintenance task where the “stay time,” in which workers would be exposed to their yearly limit, was three minutes. He hired local farmers, trained them on a mock-up for two weeks, and then sent them in for their brief stint. “Then I’d send them home for a year,” he said.

In Japan, the plant operators do not have the luxury of time for training. “You need somebody who is familiar with the plant, because you need somebody to do it now,” Mr. Gundersen said.

Complete about face in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel had overridden Germany’s own study showing the health hazards of nuclear power due to daily radiation exposure to residents living around the plants.

In Germany, where tens of thousands of anti-nuclear activists protested in a human chain this weekend, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a three-month moratorium on plans to extend the operation of its nuclear power plants.

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“We cannot just go back to business as usual,” Merkel said, adding that events in Japan “teach us that risks that were thought to be completely impossible cannot in fact be completely ruled out”.

Switzerland suspended plans to replace five aging nuclear power plants, while Italy and Poland decided to rethink prior decisions to invest in nuclear energy.

As an long time admirer of Bev Smith, I’d like to give my special thanks to her for discussing this topic live for two hours.

I will post again, but I don’t know when.  Please help by posting from our interviews.  The nuclear industry is trying desperately to say that this could never happen in the US.  These are the same plants of the same vintage of old nukes here.  The management at TEPCO was indicted for fraud in 2002, and have been caught not doing what needs to be done – again and again!  Old nukes need need lots of money invested to keep them running safely, and that is simply not happening anywhere in the world.  Nor are regulators like the NRC enforcing what must be enforced.

Most of all, please pray for the people of Japan.  This is the worst tragedy the world has ever seen.

Tom Graves is one of the new tea-bagger congresspeople, elected to Georgia’s 9th district.  I borrowed this from Jim Garrison’s column at the AJC:

U.S. Rep. Tom Graves recently made the defunding of National Public Radio a topic of a fund-raising letter. He wrote:

   “I never listen to NPR. As I travel across Georgia, I tune in to hear Glenn Beck or Rush, Hannity or catch the news or just relax to good ole country music. NPR is too snooty for my taste.

   “The politically correct drivel that passes for entertainment on NPR doesn’t appeal to me. Plus I’m probably like you and I believe that NPR is rightfully under fire from conservatives for firing Juan Williams for having the audacity to be conservative and appear on NPR’s most hated rival, Fox News.

   “Whether NPR is on the air or not wouldn’t matter to me except for this cold hard truth: They’re funded with your tax dollars and mine….

   “The NPR types like to project the image of being all lovey-dovey, but when it comes to negative campaigning, they’re cruel, relentless, personal and fueled by a self-righteous disdain for anything and anybody conservative.”

I call it hatin’ on stoopid.

Bernie Sanders, who sits on the Senate Budget Committee, held a press conference today to lay out in stark terms how some of the proposed budget cuts would impact Vermonters. He also used the opportunity to promote his bill that would close tax loopholes and create a 5.4 percent surtax on income over $1 million to provide for an “Emergency Deficit Reduction Fund.” It’s hard to imagine such legislation getting through, but it’s critical that such an approach continues to be part of any conversation on taxes and spending.

Here’s some information from the press release out of Bernie’s office:

The House-passed budget bill would throw 336 Vermont children off of Head Start and cut or eliminate Pell grants for 13,000 Vermont college students. The average Vermont college student would see their tuition assistance fall by $700.

In addition, some 37,000 Vermonters would lose access to primary health care because of a $1.3 billion cut to community health centers.

In cold weather states like Vermont, where temperatures sometimes fall to 20 below zero, home heating assistance is critically important.  Republicans would cut $400 million from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. They also would chop nutrition funding through the Women, Infants and Children program.

Joing Sanders at the presser were Hal Cohen, executive director of Central Vermont Community Action; Paul Behrman, Head Start director for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity; Karen Madden, director, of academic support services at Johnson State College; Rebecca Ryan, director of health promotion at the Vermont Lung Association; and Dr. Stephen Reville, chief medical officer of Springfield Medical Systems.  

Shouldn’t people know better by now?

The scandal of the week was that James O’Keefe, the guy whose lies and distortions brought down ACORN and Shirley Sherrod (temporarily), had struck again. This time his target was another of the favorite punching bags of the extreme Right: National Public Radio.

I’ll give you NPR’s initial story on this, since this became the canonical version of the tale:

The top fundraiser for NPR has resigned after a videotape became public showing him openly disparaging conservative groups during what he thought was a fundraising meeting. The video was recorded secretly during a lunch Ron Schiller had with two people who claimed to be eager to contribute to public radio.

The top fundraiser for NPR, who had already announced that he was leaving NPR for another job, officially resigned last night. A videotape became public showing him disparaging conservative groups during what he thought was a fundraising meeting. The video was secretly recorded during a lunch with two people who claimed to be eager to contribute to public radio.

Eventually the fundraiser and the president of NPR were fired because of this, providing two more trophies for O’Keefe’s wall.

The rest of the story came out Sunday, and it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with O’Keefe’s modus operandi.

Wait for it . . .

That’s right: O’Keefe lied.

And he did it the exact same way he has lied to create these other stories: by creative editing to create a fictional account of what happened.

Keep in mind what Schiller said, as reported by NPR:

ABRAMSON: Schiller says the Tea Party, in particular, is, quote, “not just Islamaphobic, but I mean xenophobic. I mean, basically they believe in sort of white, middle America, gun toting – I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people,” unquote.

This wasn’t a big deal to some of us, except that we were pissed that NPR was firing people for telling the truth.

People at NPR lose their jobs for telling the truth? I guess that’s why people at Fox have job security. #teaparty

It turns out that it was even worse than that.  

The Blaze reports what really happened.

4. The “seriously racist” Tea Party

But the clip in the edited video implies Schiller is giving simply his own analysis of the Tea Party. He does do that in part, but the raw video reveals that he is largely recounting the views expressed to him by two top Republicans, one a former ambassador, who admitted to him that they voted for Obama.

This is the key point right here: Schiller and his boss, Vivian Schiller, were fired largely for the claim that he was expressing his own views of the Republican Right, which confirms the right-wing view of NPR. What we now know is that he was quoting some large Republican donors, not expressing his own views (although it does appear that he was endorsing those views).

Still, if the headline had been, “According to NPR executive, top Republicans accuse Tea Party of xenophobia” it would have been no big deal.

What made it a big deal was the way O’Keefe used editing to lie about what Schiller said.

So this raises a big question in my mind: why haven’t people learned yet? We know now that the very fact that James O’Keefe says something, that is prima facie evidence that it’s a lie?

And why do serious people and organizations get their panties in a twist, and immediately take precipitous and irrational action, when we hear one more of these lying stories from O’Keefe?

It’s not just a dream for individuals. We grow up in the United States with the idea, hope, or plan to own our own home. Not everyone expects to do it, but it’s definitely part of the American idea,, what used to be called without irony the American dream. Even if your vision of the dream isn’t a house in the suburbs with a lawn, a swing hanging from the tree in your front yard, and you grilling burgers out on the deck, it’s still a big thing for Americans. Why else would we have shows on cable around the clock showing people looking for that perfect house to buy?

Public policy for years has supported homeownership. In fact, our biggest subsidized housing program is the mortgage interest deduction. We spend $117 billion a year on it. The idea is that homeownership leads to stable communities, which may have some legitimacy to it.

But when you buy a house, or try to buy a house, you’re not thinking about building a stable community, or public policy. You’re thinking that you’ll have a place to call your own, or that you won’t have to move every year when your lease is up, or you won’t have a landlord to deal with and tell you whether you can paint, or hang pictures, or have parties.

The dream’s taken a beating the last couple of years. We’ve had the subprime mortgage crash, people losing their jobs, and millions of foreclosures.

Oh yes, we’ve had one other thing: fraud.

First off, we know now that the entire subprime industry, and the crash of the subprime bond market was built on fraud.

We also know that a lot of the foreclosures have been the product of fraud, and it’s worth going into a little detail about that.

A mortgage is really two different transactions: the loan, a contract between the borrower and the lender, and the mortgage, whereby a property owner gives the secured party (remember: mortgagee rhymes with Simon Legree) the right to take the property away by foreclosure if the borrower doesn’t pay. These mortgages get traded around, sold, so that the bank who gave you your loan might not be the bank you send your payment to every month; and if you fall behind the bank or mortgage company who owns the right to foreclose might be someone you’ve never heard of.

One thing we’ve learned lately is that the foreclosure system has been rife with fraud. If the bank forecloses on your mortgage it’s like any other court case: the bank has to prove that it owns the right to foreclose, that it is the owner of your mortgage. This can be tricky if your mortgage has been bought and sold a few times between the day you signed the mortgage and the day the bank takes you to court. What has become obvious is that there are many, many foreclosures based purely on fraudulent affidavits. Banks have employed people, now referred to as robo-signers, whose job has just been to sign affidavits that establish the chain of title for these mortgages. These are essential to these foreclosures, because if the foreclosing bank can’t establish that each one of the transactions in the chain of title happened the way they claim, the bank isn’t entitled to foreclose.

As it happens, a lot of these affidavits are just lies. The banks and other financial institutions doing these foreclosures, including big institutions like Wells Fargo (it’s not just stagecoaches any more!) J.P, Morgan, and GMAC, have been routinely going into court lying about their ownership of the mortgages. It’s even happening here in Vermont.

It was so bad that even the Federal Reserve woke up and took notice. This week a special panel of the Federal Reserve released its report on mortgage foreclosures. They actually looked in detail at 500 foreclosures, and guess what: they found that 100% of the foreclosures were justified. Not a single wrongful foreclosure was wrongful!

But what about the robo-signers, you ask? It turns out that the standards of this study were so lax that no matter what improprieties, fraud, and lies were committed by the foreclosing lender, if the homeowner was behind in their mortgage payments the foreclosure was considered to have been justified.

I guess nobody needs to concern themselves too much with billions of dollars’ worth of fraud in millions of foreclosures.

In related news, the Republicans in Congress also took action on foreclosures last week. Never let it be said they are blind to the suffering of their fellow Americans.

So what did they do? The Republicans in Congress voted to defund the federal program set up to provide relief to homeowners in foreclosure so they could keep their homes.

Should I repeat that?

According to Congressman Chaka Fattah, who is continuing to fight for the homeowners, “House Republicans today took another pound-foolish step by voting to de-fund the Emergency Mortgage Relief Program. This bridge-loan program provides a lifeline for middle-class homeowners who face foreclosure through no fault of their own because of the predatory and economy-wrecking policies of Wall Street”.

And the Republicans never tire of accusing us of using “class warfare” when we point out who’s winning the class war, and whose side the Republicans are on.

Congressman Fattah is obviously too polite to say this, but the most appropriate response to the Republicans in the face of this latest outrage is very clear.

In the words of the late Ashley Morris: Fuck you, you fucking fucks.

  Wisconsin Gov. Walker, despite falling poll numbers and threatened recalls, sounds for all the world like a man who believes he won. He is even declaring his anti-collective bargaining legislation “progressive, innovative” and “reform that leads the country.” Ohio, Michigan and Indiana are all promoting variations on this anti-labor theme.

Is this a new template for other state Republican legislators? New RNC Chairman and Wisconsinite Reince Priebus, backer of the Walker way, said:

“I’m proud of what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin,” […] “I think that he is leading not only the state of Wisconsin, but he is leading this country.“

Priebus is scheduled to speak with Vermont Republicans touting Walker’s tactics.  The Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) and the Vermont AFL-CIO have called on the Vermont Republican Party to rescind his invitation due to “his anti-worker, anti-middle-class message.”  

Smoothly paving the way for Priebus’ anti-worker proselytizing is top Vermont Republican Jim Douglas who weighed in favorably on Gov. Walker. Significantly, and as if to say to Vermonters, ‘resistance is futile’ he made a point of attacking Wisconsin Dems actions. Douglas said of the democratic legislators’ action against budget cuts and for labor rights

That's irresponsible […] I was pleased to hear leaders of the Vermont Senate from both parties declare that they would never resort to such a childish move.

An estimated 100,000 people turned out in Madison Wisc. this past Saturday to support the 14 democratic state senators. Its unlikely any of the 14 Wisconsin Democratic state senators rallying this weekend ever dreamed their legislative process would break down to the point where leaving the session in protest would be a desirable option. It did prove an option they needed and used to their advantage.

It  seems far fetched a similar situation could ever happen here. Few if any Vermont legislators would dream Vermont’s legislative process could suffer such a breakdown and it is an unlikely event.

But they may have already disarmed and Jim Douglas and Reince Priebus are sure glad.

Would Vermont legislators ever consider flight?  “No,” Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell, D-Windsor, said Monday. “I hate to see any legislator walk off the job like that,” he said. “The legislative process is about discourse and about coming up with solutions.”

Of course, Jim = No Jobs, that approach works only when you actually have someone willing to openly and sincerely engage in discourse; someone willing to accept three-quarters of a loaf; someone clearly unlike Scott Walker, or John Boehner or Reince Priebus.

I’m not sure how to post pictures here, but I’m hoping to direct you to a screen shot from the Tokyo power company responsible for the now melting-down mess in Japan.  This obviously pre-quake page reminds me of the spin we’re getting from VY these days.  Enjoy.

This, http://waspot.tumblr.com/ , will certainly get you there.  This, http://waspot.tumblr.com/post/… , might get you there more quickly.