#river warren

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FISA Reauthorization Vote

by Brian Wojtalewicz Published 01-09-13 in The Appleton Press

Appleton, MN – Thank you very much Senator Al Franken for standing up for our Constitutional rights against unwarranted surveillance and searches by government agents under the flawed and dangerous FISA law. Senator Al stood with real backbone, with other Senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, John Tester of Montana, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and even a very few Republicans like Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Proponents of extending FISA, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, say it is needed to conduct surveillance on terrorists, but Franken and other senators correctly objected that it goes too far, allowing secret surveillance of U.S. citizens.  Senator Klobuchar and others who voted for the FISA extension essentially took George Bush’s program of warrantless wiretapping, a radical threat to our Fourth Amendment rights, and institutionalized it for another five years. Senator Klobuchar continues her support of the FISA law, which first passed in 2008 giving retroactive immunity to Bush and Cheney, who have admitted conducting secret, illegal wiretapping, contrary to federal criminal law. With this new renewal by the votes of Senator Klobuchar and more Republicans than Democrats, the law will continue to allow the government agents to get secret court orders, that do not require probable cause like regular search warrants, for any e-mails or phone calls going to and from overseas.  These communications are only supposed to deal with “foreign intelligence information,” which of course can be argued by government agents, who are never held accountable and remain secret, to mean anything. And how do these secret agents even find out about whether your phone call involves “foreign intelligence information” without first listening in?

Mr. Obama, who ran against such secret surveillance during his first presidential campaign, now embraces and demands it. Senator Amy Klobuchar swore to uphold the constitution at least twice, as a new lawyer and as a senator.  Yet she shamefully voted for the first overreaching FISA law and this extension, along with a majority of Republican Senators, in contrast to Senator Franken. 

[riverwarren]

Keystone Pipeline Whistleblower

“Let’s Have At It”  Published 1-10-12 in the Appleton Press

by Brian Wojtalewicz 

Mike Klink used to be an inspector for the giant construction corporation Bechtel.  It was a major contractor on the original TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, finished in 2010.  Klink cited numerous problems of shoddy materials and poor work on that pipeline, which brings tar sands crude oil from Canada to our Midwest states.  Rather than fix the problems and do it right, Bechtel fired Klink.

Klink emphasizes that he is speaking as an engineer, and not as an environmentalist.  (What’s wrong with being both?)  He points out that since the construction, there have been over a dozen spills on that pipeline, and the main problems are at pump stations, where he cited the faulty construction.  He is warning against letting TransCanada build an even longer pipeline from Alberta all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas.

Klink wasn’t surprised to hear about a terrible spill in Ludden, N.D., where a 60-foot plume of crude oil spewed tens of thousands of gallons of toxic tar sand on farm fields.  TransCanada’s reaction?  It claims the pipeline has been okay, and 14 spills aren’t too bad.  As Klink points out, this TransCanada pipeline is leaking like a sieve and this is in the first year of operation!

The Texas oil men and the Republican Party all over the country are pressuring Obama to approve this pipeline.  They’ve pounded out a false claim that it will be bring 30,000 jobs to Americans, when the jobs will be more like about 3,000.  Most of the oil that reaches the gulf from this proposed new disastrous pipeline would actually leave the U.S.  Most worrisome about this boondoggle project that will fatten the profits of Texas oil men is that it encourages the ongoing tar sands mining in Alberta, which promises to be the worst global warming project in our planet’s history.

Will we Americans come to our senses in time?

[riverwarren]

Until it happened to me

“Let’s Have At It” Published 11-21-11 in the Appleton Press

by Brian Wojtalewicz

  I recently heard a “man on the street” radio interview.  The man had been looking for work for months, and his unemployment was about to run out.  He said that he was a Republican, and had always thought that the people on unemployment were just milking the system, and they really could get work if they wanted to.  Then it happened to him, and his world view really tilted.  He was angry at Congress.

The answer of Congressional Republicans to our economic crises, with 25 million people in need of full-time work, real wages declining over the last decade, and one in four mortgages under water, is to block any assistance to those Americans on their financial knees.  Obama and the Democrats have been trying to get serious investments in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, sewage plants and schools.  The Republicans are stopping it.  Why?  Because Obama and the Democrats want to pay for it with a surtax on people making more than a million dollars a year.  Never mind that this surtax would amount to less than 1%.  The Republicans give their same old bogus argument that a tax on the wealthiest will be a “job killer.”  Well, George Bush demanded and got a cut on the tax levels of especially the highest earners in our society.  It has been in place for close to 10 years.  It sure has stimulated job growth in this country, right?  Wrong. The stock answer that Republican leaders give in the face of financial problems is to borrow more money.  It’s what George Bush did to finance two major wars.  Tim Pawlenty did it in Minnesota against the school systems.  The current Republicans in charge of the Minnesota legislature did it against the school systems again and also against the tobacco fund.

I am convinced that the Republican leadership of this nation is actually content to continue the ballooning national debt and deficit, and let more than 25 million Americans suffer.  They aren’t willing to do anything about the hugest wastehole of federal spending - - the international military empire we maintain, and the bloated military contractors who feed on it.  They’ve also blocked the cutting of subsidies for the most profit-bloated industry the globe has ever seen - - the oil corporations.  They have also blocked the Democrat effort to end the off-shore tax dodging by major corporations.

Their primary answer now to the financial crisis we face is to dig the hole deeper:  slash medical care for our aged, disabled and poor children, along with tightening Social Security benefits and handing over our Social Security fund to the rapacious Wall Street brokers.  What great ideas for helping Americans and their communities climb out of the financial hole!