SWINE FLU CON JOB

By Richard Gale and Gary Null
Progressive Radio Network - 2009-10-07

One hard lesson we should have learned after Wall Street's collapse and the government's handling of the bailout is that there is no reason, whatsoever, for us to sacrifice our good faith and trust in former bankers who now run the Treasury and Federal Reserve.

And now as the flu season gets ready to kick off amidst much fanfare and predictions of doom due to a new H1N1 influenza virus, there is sufficient information to raise very serious doubts whether our nation's health authorities are truly serving the public health instead of commercial interests.

If the flu season goes according to schedule, the vaccine industrial complex will be poised to join Wall Street for record year rip-off profits. We will also likely witness huge Pharma executive bonuses and perhaps gold-plated toilets.

Even if the CDC statisticians' crystal ball used to forecast rampant swine flu infections turns into a complete bust -- which would only be one more added to many other failed flu predictions back to 1976 -- it will nevertheless be a very profitable failure as was the economic collapse for the banking cartel.

The Swine Flu Pandemic -- a Most Profitable Failure

The World Health Organization would like to vaccinate two thirds (4 billion) of the global community, and the US alone is spending $2 billion to stockpile the nation with upwards to 250 million doses.

In the US, such profits could never be accomplished without a dynamic, marketing initiative to convince Americans that vaccines will keep them protected and alive. And what better public relations machine for the vaccine complex, and all its supporters in health insurance and professional medical institutions, than our very own Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Even better, our tax dollars are there to pay for it all.

We pay for the comfort in knowing that the CDC's disinformation campaign will continue to frighten us over the major networks with full reports from 60 Minutes, and all the major news channels and the New York Times. We can also assure vaccine makers that once and for all they are protected from liability in the event of serious flu vaccine injuries.

Nevertheless, the government has a lot of vaccine vials to distribute, therefore, the CDC needs to sustain the fiction of numerous elderly dying in nursing homes, unvaccinated pregnant moms and children facing life threatening complications, and scores of sick and dead burnt into our national consciousness.

It is all part of the CDC's script to get citizens rushing to their doctors, Wal-Marts, and Walgreens to be vaccinated.

Just How Many People are Actually Dying from the Flu?

In a detailed analysis, Peter Doshi, while at Harvard in the mid-2000s, published a devastating study in the British Medical Journal that systematically unveils the flawed predictive science used to publicize our health agencies' influenza statistics and mortality rates.

His analysis shook up enough health authorities to warrant twelve scientists from the CDC and National Institutes of Health to unsuccessfully take him on. Now at MIT, Doshi continues his analysis of a century's worth of influenza mortality data and government manipulation of influenza data, such as the annual figure of 36,000 influenza deaths we hear and read repeatedly.[1]

Dr. Mercola wrote an article about this fallacy over five years ago. Interestingly the numbers still haven' t changed. Closer to the truth is that less than 1,000 people actually died from the regular flu.. The other 35,000 died from pneumonia. This is clearly listed on the CDC's own website.

Although this magical number was for all practical purposes alchemically conjured up via mathematical modeling back in 2003, it continues to be the most holy number in the CDC's PR vocabulary every flu season and is disseminated wide and far by the media and health experts as a justification to have everyone vaccinated..

Doshi draws the conclusion, published in the American Journal of Public Health, that commercial interests are playing the role of "science" in both industry and government.[2]

Public Relations Strategy Based on Fear Mongering

Deconstruction of the CDC's cherry-picked science and a growing skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines are just some of the obstacles health authorities face. Therefore, no public relations strategy can have a solid multimedia punch on American citizens without opinion leaders serving as the gnomes for the vaccine complex and our heavily invested government health agencies, which are about to be buried in millions of purchased vaccine vials eager for distribution.

This effort requires shock troopers, such as the pro-vaccine prophet Dr. Paul Offit, the creator of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch critic against any scientist or journalist who discovers or discusses an association between vaccines and severe neurological disorders.

Dr. Offit is on record for an audacious comment that children can tolerate 100,000 vaccinations (yes, you read that number correctly).[3]

However, during this particular flu season, government health officials' may have a more difficult time convincing Americans to be vaccinated for swine flu if recent polls are reliable indicators.

American Polls Show People are Wising Up

The latest Consumers Union poll released on September 30 shows almost two-thirds of parents will withhold vaccinating their children; fifty percent of respondents' rationale is that the vaccine has not been tested thoroughly for safety.[4]

A poll of pregnant mothers conducted by the internet parent support group Mumsnet.com indicates women are turning more suspicious about the flu vaccine's true efficacy and safety. The survey of 1500 respondents found only 6 percent of pregnant women "definitely" taking the shot, while 48 percent said they "definitely" wouldn't.

A parallel poll revealed only 5 percent would definitely vaccinate their children.[5] A more recent San Francisco Chronicle survey finds 54 percent saying the H1N1 flu is nothing to be worried about.[6]

A separate study conducted by Harvard's School of Public Health showed that among the 41 percent who would not get the shot, 44 percent of parents are uncertain they would allow their children to receive it.

Aside from many who expressed a fear of the vaccine's side effects, the poll found 31 percent expressing a distrust in our public health officials providing accurate information on vaccine safety.[7]

Therefore, expect an aggressive government public relations campaign during the coming weeks and even months, while our tax dollars are spent on 250 million shots that independent epidemiological evidence is showing may be ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst.

Europeans Even Less Fearful and More Suspicious of the Hype

European polls indicate that our neighbors on the other side of the great pond are less nervous about the H1N1 strain's severity and far more suspicious towards health officials' rationale for hyping dire warnings of swine flu's dangers.

In France, Le Figaro conducted a poll of 12,050 people showing 69 percent will refuse the vaccination. In a separate French survey, one third of 4,752 doctors, nurses and healthcare workers surveyed would not be inoculated.[8]

Twenty-nine percent of Germans surveyed said they would refuse it "under any circumstance" and an additional 33 percent would likely refuse it.

In the region of Bavaria and Baden Wurttemburg, only 10 percent of those polled said they would submit their arms to injection.

In the UK, a couple polls reported in the Daily Mail last August, showed half of family physicians and a third of UK nurses do not want the swine flu vaccination. Seventy-one percent do not believe the vaccine has been tested enough for safety and the swine flu is much milder than health authorities are saying.

Science and Caution has Gone Out the Window

During the course of the CDC's media war to push forward the vaccine industry's greed for profit, science and reflective caution are being sacrificed.

An important peer-reviewed study appearing in the June 2009 issue of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry shows a causal relationship between the amounts of ethylmercury (thimerosal) found in inoculations for infants, when administered to monkeys, and cellular toxicity resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative reduction activity and degeneration and death in neuronal and fetal cells.[9]

These are all indicative signs found in some with autistic spectrum disorders.

But health officials prefer to ignore such results.

For the future health of American children, the study's findings arrive at a bad time when a recent Harvard study now reports autistic spectrum disorders has risen to 1 in 91 people compared to the earlier 1 in 150 estimate.

But since the study was sponsored by the CDC, the press release makes no indication that just maybe the over-vaccination of children with dozens of injections by the age of 5 years might be a causal factor behind this national epidemic of ASD and other neurological disorders.

During the course of interviewing many parents of autistic children for our documentaries Vaccine Nation and Autism:
Made in the USA, the personal stories we filmed repeatedly were that of a once perfectly healthy and joyful child who, shortly after a vaccination or a series of injections, simply vanished from normality.

However, national health policy today seems to have almost legislated by divine decree that there is no relationship between vaccine ingredients and autism.

Besides, further independent research and first-hand personal stories would only interfere with the propaganda machine and the CDC's "Seven Step Recipe for Generating Interest In, and Demand for, Flu Vaccination."

The 7 Step Recipe -- the CDC's Influenza PR Strategy

Peter Doshi first brought public attention to the CDC's PR influenza strategy known as the Seven Step Recipe. Glen Nowak, now the Director of the CDC's Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template while serving as the communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program.

Speaking at the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, he presented the CDC's seven steps. After a careful review of Nowak's Powerpoint presentation we discover a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following (quotes are from CDC's materials):

• To encourage the belief that influenza infection can "occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors)." In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don't really need it.

• In order to "foster the demand for flu vaccinations" the CDC should target "medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) -- and urge influenza vaccination."

• By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don't really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of "framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as "very severe," "more severe than last or past years," "deadly").

• Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports "from health officials and media" to emphasize that "influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people -- helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza."

Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images.

Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use "visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce)."

The CDC's "key points" indicate we are now in that critical timeframe for the CDC to distribute materials to "a variety of partners." This includes aggressively disseminating all medical reports, studies and PR spins to the soporific media and corporate-funded medical associations to support the government's mass vaccination efforts.

Come November, we will begin to see reports on "pediatric deaths" due to influenza -- although Dr. Martin Meltzer, a CDC expert in health economics, has stated "almost nobody dies of the flu" and "deaths [are] associated with flu, but not necessarily caused by flu."[10]

Apparently, the folks over in the various CDC departments and our different federal health agencies don't communicate with each other very well.

Your Tax Dollars are Spent on Faux Science that Benefits Industry, Not Your Health

So why should our tax dollars go towards fabricating and/or ignoring science in order to vaccinate Americans?

Nowak publicly stated the CDC's reasons on National Public Radio, "… the manufacturers were telling us that they weren't receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December … It really did look like we [CDC] needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.[11]

At this moment, we are witnessing a steady flow press releases and articles in the media to convert Americans to the wisdom of national health vaccination policy. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has issued preliminary positive results from an uncompleted clinical trial testing the H1N1 vaccine on children and young people between 6 months and 17 years of age.

The fact that the entire study only enrolled 70 individuals covering this age range should alone raise red flags about any reliable conclusions after the study is completed.

Moreover, the study is specifically designed for measuring the necessary immune response to protect youth from the swine flu. It is not a safety study.

We usually expect that sound scientific ethics demand clinical trials to be reported after a final analysis of research data, however, the CDC's Seven Step Recipe is not concerned with scientific facts, or rigorous research protocol. It is simply part of the PR game plan to get people vaccinated and to do it fast.

CDC Propaganda

Donald McNeil, a shill for the vaccine complex writing for the New York Times has printed two recent articles aligned with CDC propaganda. He quotes Dr. Jay Butler, chief of the swine flu vaccine task force at the CDC in order to relieve fears about flu vaccine adverse effects, especially to pregnant women.

Dr. Butler said, "There are about 2,400 miscarriages a day in the US. You'll see things that would have happened anyway. But the vaccine doesn't cause miscarriages. It also doesn't cause auto accidents, but they happen."[12]

I hope that is reassuring to all those expectant mothers across the country, especially since none of the approved H1N1 vaccines have undergone rigorous clinical safety trials on pregnant women or the potential adverse effects of mercury-laced vaccines and other ingredients, such as spermacide, detergent and cosmetics, on the developing fetus.

Germany Understands Adjuvant Dangers

Germany on the other hand announced it is now taking preventative measures.

Agreeing that the verdict on ethylmercury and squalene safety for children is unsettled, Germany is requiring the vaccine industry to return to their plants and provide adjuvant- and mercury preservative-free vaccine lots.

McNeil's more recent article in October 7th's New York Times should be read alongside the Seven Step Recipe for a clear visual unfolding of the CDC's PR strategy in action.

McNeil downplays the growing medical realization that the swine flu is in all likelihood much milder than seasonal flu in order to convince us to roll up our sleeves. Following the CDC script, we see the picture of little 3 year old Clayton being vaccinated, while McNeill compares the swine flu death of an 18 year old Tibetan woman in China with a story of joyful young Brandon and his 9 year old sister gleefully surrendering their nostrils for a blast of live-attenuated H1N1 virus.[13]

While finalizing this article, Peter Doshi replied to an email and drew attention to an event in his Harper's article that should force us to pause before rolling up our sleeves.

Briefly, the 2004 flu season was a debacle for the vaccine complex and federal health officials after 50 million doses of flu vaccine promised by Chiron Corporation were made unavailable, therefore, putting the health industry into a panic. In order to lessen the frenzy previously stirred by its public fear tactics, the CDC downgraded the flu's urgency to "an annoying illness", and "stressed the protective benefits of regular hand washing."[14]

Now that is a national policy I can support. I would much prefer the CDC funding Americans' soap bills to ward off an uncertain swine flu pandemic rather than using taxes for unsubstantiated threats from the CDC's national vaccine marketing campaign.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation's longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation.

This is a segment of a larger report that Gary Null's team put together. His team invested more than 3000 hours and $40,000 to provide you with this highly referenced rebuttal to the media propaganda.

Footnotes

1. Doshi, Peter. "Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine." Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.

2. "MIT grad student's study challenges notions of pandemic flu" MIT Tech Talk. April 16, 2008.

3. Kalb, Claudia. "Stomping through a medical minefield" Newsweek. October 25, 2008.

4. "Majority of US parents wary of H1N1 vaccine: poll" Reuters Health. October 1, 2009.

5. http://www.mumsnet.com

6. Allday, Erin. "Swine flu draws a shrug, field poll shows." SF Gate. October 6, 2009.

7. "Just 40 percent of adults 'absolutely certain' they will get H1N1 vaccine, survey finds" Science Daily. October 2, 2009.

8. "Grippe A: des blouses blanches anti-vaccin" SFR, France. September 18, 2009 info.sfr.fr/france/grippe-a-des-blouses-blanches-anti-vaccin,115335

9. Geier D, King P, Geier M. "Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds." Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry. Volume 91, Issue 4, June 2009.

10. Manning, Anita. "Study: Annual flu death toll could be overstated." USA Today. December 11, 2005.

11. Doshi, Peter. "Are US flu death figures more PR than science?" BMJ 2005; 331:1412 (10 December)

12. McNeil, Donald. "Don't blame flu shots for all ills, officials say" New York Times. September 28, 2009.

13. McNeil, Donald. "Swine flu vaccinations start as officials attack myths." New York Times. October 7, 2009.

14. Doshi, Peter. "Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine." Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.

FRED MEYER HAS UNION REPS ARRESTED!

Dear JwJ Supporter:

Last week, three UFCW representatives, including the local president, were
arrested for speaking with workers--something guaranteed by law and the
union contract. (Story from UFCW 555 below)

See the photos here:
http://www.jwjpdx.org/jwjnews/2009/union-organizers-arrested-for-talking-to-workers

We need to make sure this kind of bullying is stopped. Stay tuned for an
announcement about the upcoming rally! In the meantime, folks can help
speak up for workers' rights by countering the anti-union spin in the
media, where the headline is "Union officials accused of disrupting Fred
Meyer in Hillsboro" by writing letters to the editor, or commenting on
line at
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/10/union_officials_accused_of_dis.html

Letters can be sent to Hillsboro Argus, People's Forum, P.O. Box 588,
Hillsboro, OR 97123; faxed to 503-648-9191; or E-mailed to
NewsClerk@HillsboroArgus.com. Letters for People's Forum must be signed
originals and preference is given to those no longer than 250 words. For
verification, letters must include address and daytime telephone number,
which will not be published.

From http://www.ufcw555.com/

FRED MEYER CALLS POLICE ON ITS OWN WORKERS' UNION REPRESENTATIVES

(HILLSBORO, OR) - Fred Meyer, one of the most profitable and popular
grocery stores in Oregon, seems intent on damaging its relationship with
the employees who make it so successful. According to charges filed by the
workers' union, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555, the
company has interfered with workers while they have been seeking a fair
contract at the bargaining table. And yesterday, the Hillsboro store
manager at Fred Meyer created a scene when he called police to arrest
three union representatives for talking with workers-a right guaranteed to
workers under federal law.

One representative was leaving the store when he was arrested, and
another, Local 555 President Dan Clay, was driving into the parking lot to
find out what was going on when police arrested him.

Union workers at other stores were baffled to hear of the company's
behavior. "We meet with our reps in the store all the time," said Anne
Lilley, a Hillsboro Safeway worker and UFCW Local 555 member. "If we're
not busy, it's easy to just step aside and take care of an issue quickly
with our reps-it's something that workers in grocery stores do every day,
all across the country. I can't believe that Fred Meyer management would
raise a fuss about something so routine."

Fred Meyer workers feel the company's behavior has been undeserved and
unacceptable. "I just don't understand Fred Meyer's actions right now,"
said Fred Meyer employee and UFCW Local 555 member Charlotte Hardin. "I
mean, we have a right to meet with our union at our workplace, and Fred
Meyer knows that. Why this hostile attitude towards our union? It's just
plain disrespectful to Fred Meyer's employees and customers."

Hillsboro resident Linda Sears was shopping at Fred Meyer when the
disruption occurred. She called the manager's behavior "unprofessional and
unnerving."

"Yelling at workers and their union reps," added Fred Meyer employee and
Local 555 member Karyl Feliciano, "and calling the police on our union?
Why would Fred Meyer behave like that? That kind of behavior is totally
disruptive to our customers, and to their shopping experience. It's just
bad for business."

10 BIGGEST STORIES IGNORED BY THE MEDIA-willamette week

Peter Phillips says he’s finished with reform.

Director of Project Censored for 13 years, Phillips says it’s impossible to get major news media outlets to deliver relevant news stories that serve to strengthen democracy.

“I really think we’re beyond reforming corporate media,” says Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. “We’re not going to break up these huge conglomerates. We’re just going to make them irrelevant.”

Every year since 1976, Project Censored has spotlighted the 25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is expanding its mission—to promote alternative news sources. But it continues to report the biggest national and international stories that the major media ignored.

The term “censored” doesn’t mean some government agent stood over newsrooms with a rubber stamp and forbade publication of the news—or even that the information was completely out of the public eye. The stories Project Censored highlights may have run in one or two news outlets—but didn’t get the type of attention they deserved.

Project Censored staff begins its work by sifting through hundreds of stories nominated by individuals at Sonoma State, where the project is based, as well as 30 affiliate universities nationwide. Articles are verified, fact-checked and selected by a team of students, faculty and evaluators from the wider community, then sent to a panel of national judges to be ranked. The end product is a book, co-edited this year by Phillips and associate director Mickey Huff, which summarizes the top stories, provides in-depth media analysis, and includes resources for readers hungry for more substantive reporting.

The top 25 Project Censored stories of 2008-2009 highlight the same theme that Phillips and Huff say has triggered the downslide of mainstream media: the overwhelming influence of powerful, profit-driven interests.

Here’s this year’s list:

1.

The total Wall Street bailout tab, including money spent and promised by the U.S. government, works out to an estimated $42,000 for every man, woman and child, according to American Casino, a documentary about subprime lending and the financial meltdown. The predatory lending free-for-all, the emergency pumping of taxpayer dollars to prop up mega-banks, and the lavish bonuses handed out to Wall Street executives are all issues that have dominated news headlines.

But another twist has received scant attention from the mainstream news media: the unsettling combination of lax oversight from national politicians with high-dollar campaign contributions from financial players.

“The worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état,” Matt Taibbi wrote in “The Big Takeover,” a March 2009 Rolling Stone article. “They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.”

In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, the financial sector spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions, and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates, and the Republican and Democratic parties.

Wall Street’s spending spree on political contributions coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations, which in turn created a recipe for the astronomical financial disaster that sent the global economy reeling.

Sources: “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It,” Greg Gordon, Truthout.org and McClatchy Newspapers, Oct. 2, 2008; “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns,” Lindsay Renick Mayer, Capitol Eye, Feb. 10, 2009; “The Big Takeover,” Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, March 2009

2.

Latinos and African-Americans attend more segregated public schools today than they have for four decades, Professor Gary Orfield notes in “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” a study conducted by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California Los Angeles. Orfield’s report used federal data to highlight deepening segregation in public education by race and poverty.

About 44 percent of public-school students are people of color, and this group will soon make up the majority of the U.S. population. Yet this racial diversity often isn’t reflected from school to school. Instead, two out of every five African-American and Latino youth attend schools Orfield characterizes as “intensely segregated,” composed of 90 to 100 percent people of color.

For Latinos, the trend reflects growing residential segregation. For African-Americans, the study attributes a significant part of the reversal to the ending of desegregation plans in public schools nationwide. Schools segregated by race and poverty tend to have much higher dropout rates, higher teacher turnover, and greater exposure to crime and gangs, placing students at a major disadvantage in society.

Fifty-five years after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling,Orfield wrote, “Segregation is fast spreading into large sectors of suburbia, and there is little or no assistance for communities wishing to resist the pressures of resegregation and ghetto creation in order to build successfully integrated schools and neighborhoods.”

Source: “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009

3.

Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa were like gold for mainstream news outlets reporting stories of surprise attacks on shipping vessels, daring rescues, and cadres of ragtag bandits extracting multimillion-dollar ransoms.

Even as the pirates’ exploits around the Gulf of Aden captured the world’s attention, however, very little reporting was devoted to factors that made the Somalis desperate enough to resort to piracy: the dumping of nuclear waste and rampant over-fishing in their coastal waters.

In the early 1990s, when the Somali government collapsed, foreign interests began swooping into unguarded coastal waters to trawl for food—and venturing into unprotected Somali territories to cheaply dispose of nuclear waste. Those activities continued with impunity for years. The ramifications of toxic dumping hit full force with the 2005 tsunami, when leaking barrels washed ashore, sickening hundreds and causing birth defects in newborn infants. The uncontrolled fishing harvests, meanwhile, damaged the economic livelihoods of Somali fishermen and eroded the country’s supply of a primary food source. That’s when the piracy started.

“Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?” asked journalist Johann Hari in a Huffington Post article. “We didn’t act on those crimes—but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about ‘evil.’”

Source: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy,” Najad Abdullahi, Al Jazeera English, Oct. 11, 2008; “You are being lied to about pirates,” Johann Hari, TheHuffington Post, Jan. 4, 2009; “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other,” Mohamed Abshir Waldo, WardheerNews, Jan. 8, 2009

4.

The Shearon Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina’s Wake County isn’t just a power-generating station. The Progress Energy plant, located in a backwoods area, houses the country’s largest radioactive-waste storage pools. Spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants are transported there by rail, then stored beneath circulating cold water to prevent the radioactive waste from heating.

The hidden danger, according to investigative reporter Jeffrey St. Clair, is the looming threat of a pool fire. Citing a study by Brookhaven National Laboratory, St. Clair highlighted in Counterpunch the catastrophe if a pool were to ignite. A possible 140,000 people could wind up with cancer. Contamination could stretch for thousands of square miles. And damages could reach an estimated $500 billion.

Shearon Harris’ track record is pocked with problems requiring temporary plant shutdowns and malfunctions of its emergency warning system.

When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission got a study highlighting the safety risks and recommending technological fixes, St. Clair noted, a pro-nuclear commissioner successfully persuaded the agency to dismiss the concerns.

Source: “Pools of Fire,” Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch, Aug. 9, 2008

5.

Two years ago, the European Union enacted a bold new environmental policy requiring close scrutiny and restriction of toxic chemicals used in everyday products. Invisible perils such as lead in lipstick, endocrine disruptors in baby toys, and mercury in electronics can threaten human health. And the European legislation aimed to gradually phase out these toxic materials and replace them with safer alternatives.

The story unreported by mainstream U.S. news media, however, is how this game-changing legislation might affect the United States, where chemical corporations use lobbying muscle to ensure comparatively lax oversight of toxic substances. As global markets shift to favor safer consumer products, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lags far behind in its own scrutiny of insidious chemicals.

As investigative journalist Mark Schapiro pointed out in “Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power,” the EPA’s tendency to behave as if it were beholden to big business could backfire, placing U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage because products made here will be regarded with increasing distrust.

Economics aside, the implications of loose restrictions on toxic products are chilling: Just one-third of the 267 chemicals on the EU’s watch list have ever been tested by the EPA, and only two are regulated under federal law. Meanwhile, researchers at University of California Berkeley estimate 42 billion pounds of chemicals enter U.S. commerce daily, and only a fraction of them have ever undergone risk assessments.

Sources: “European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic,” David Biello, Scientific American, Sept. 30, 2008; “How Europe’s New Chemical Rules Affect US,” Environmental Defense Fund, Sept. 30, 2008; “U.S. Lags Behind Europe in Regulating Toxicity of Everyday Products,” Mark Schapiro, Democracy Now!, Feb. 24, 2009

Story continues below

6.

In 2008, as the economy tumbled and unemployment soared, Washington lobbyists working for special interests were paid $3.2 billion—more than any other year on record. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, special interests spent a collective $32,523 per legislator, per day, for every day Congress was in session.

One event that triggered the lobbying boom, according to CRP director Sheila Krumholz, was the federal bailout. With the U.S. government shelling out billions in stimulus money, industries wanted to ensure they’d get a piece. Ironically, some of the first in line were the same players who helped precipitate the sharp economic downturn by engaging in high-risk, speculative lending practices.

“Even though some financial, insurance and real estate interests pulled back last year, they still managed to spend more than $450 million as a sector to lobby policy makers,” Krumholz noted. “That can buy a lot of influence, and it’s a fraction of what the financial sector is reaping in return through the government’s bailout program.”

The list of highest-ranking spenders on D.C. lobbying reads like a roster of some of the nation’s most powerful interests. Topping the list was the health sector, which spent $478.5 million lobbying Congress last year. A very close runner-up was the finance, insurance and real-estate sector, spending $453.5 million. Pharmaceutical companies plunked down $230 million, electric utilities spent $156.7 million, and oil and gas companies paid lobbyists $133.2 million.

Source: “Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy,” Center for Responsive Politics, opensecrets.org

7.

President Obama’s appointments to the Department of Defense have raised serious questions among critics who’ve studied the appointees’ track records. Although the media haven’t paid much attention, the appointees carry controversial histories and conflicts of interest due to close ties to defense contractors.

Obama’s decision to retain Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, marks the first time a president has opted to keep a defense secretary of an outgoing opposing party in power.

Gates, a former CIA director, has faced criticism for allegedly spinning intelligence reports for political means. In “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA,” author and former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman described Gates as “the chief action officer for the Reagan administration’s drive to tailor intelligence reporting to White House political desires.” Gates also came under scrutiny for questions surrounding whether he misled Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s. He also was accused of withholding information from intelligence committees when the United States provided military aid to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

Critics are also uneasy about the appointment of Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who served as a senior vice president at defense giant Raytheon and was a registered lobbyist for the company until July 2008. Lynn, who served as Pentagon comptroller under the Clinton administration, came under fire during his confirmation hearing due to “questionable accounting practices.” The Defense Department flunked multiple audits under Lynn’s leadership, because it could not properly account for $3.4 trillion in financial transactions made over the course of several years.

Sources: “The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates,” Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, Nov. 13, 2008; “Obama’s Defense Department Appointees—The 3.4 Trillion Dollar Question,” Andrew Hughes, Global Research, Feb. 13, 2009; “Obama Nominee Admiral Dennis Blair Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings in East Timor,” Allan Nairn, Democracy Now!, Jan. 7, 2009; “Ties to Chevron, Boeing Raise Concern on Possible NSA Pick,” Roxana Tiron, The Hill, Nov. 24, 2008

8.

The Cayman Islands and Bermuda are magnets for financial giants such as Bank of America, Citigroup, American International Group and 11 other beneficiaries of the federal government’s 2008 Wall Street bailout. That’s because the offshore oasis provides safe harbors to stash cash out of the government’s reach.

According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office—which was largely ignored by the news media—83 of the top publicly held U.S. companies, including some receiving substantial portions of federal bailout dollars, have operations in tax havens that let them avoid paying their fair share to the Internal Revenue Service. The report also spotlighted the activities of Union Bank of Switzerland, which has helped wealthy Americans to use tax schemes to cheat the IRS out of billions in recent years.

In December 2008, banking giant Goldman Sachs reported its first-ever quarterly loss, then followed up with a statement that its tax rate would drop from 34.1 percent to 1 percent, citing “changes in geographic earnings mix” as the reason. The difference: Instead of paying $6 billion in total worldwide taxes as it did in 2007, Goldman Sachs would pay a total of $14 million in 2008. In the same year, it received $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government.

Sources: “Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million,” Christine Harper, Bloomberg, Dec. 16, 2008; “Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration,” Thomas B. Edsall, The Huffington Post, Feb. 23, 2009

9.

In mid-January, as part of a military campaign, the Israeli Defense Forces fired several shells that hit the headquarters of a United Nations relief agency in Gaza City, destroying provisions for basic aid such as food and medicine.

The shells contained white phosphorus, a smoke-producing, spontaneously flammable agent designed to obscure battle territory but can also ignite buildings or cause grotesque burns if it touches the skin.

The attack on the relief-agency headquarters is but one example of a civilian structure that researchers discovered had been hit during the January air strikes. In the aftermath of the attacks, Human Rights Watch volunteers found spent white phosphorus shells on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a U.N. school in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch says IDF’s use of white phosphorus violated international law, which absolutely prohibits deliberate, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks that result in civilian casualties. After gathering evidence such as spent shells, the international organization issued a report condemning the repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza as a war crime. Amnesty International, another human-rights organization, followed suit by calling upon the United States to suspend military aid to Israel—but to no avail.

The United States was a primary source of funding and weaponry for Israel’s military campaign. Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus.

Sources: “White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes Report: Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,” Fred Abrahams, Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009; “Suspend Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama after Detailing U.S. Weapons Used in Gaza,” Rory McCarthy, Guardian (U.K.), Feb. 23, 2009; “U.S. Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza,” Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, Jan. 8, 2009; “U.S. Military Re-Supplying Israel With Ammunition Through Greece,” Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News, Jan. 8, 2009

10.

When President Rafael Correa announced Ecuador would default on its foreign debt last December, he didn’t say it was because his country couldn’t pay. Rather, he framed it as a moral stand: “As president, I couldn’t allow us to keep paying a debt that was obviously immoral and illegitimate,” Correa told an international news agency. The news was mainly reported in financial publications, and the stories tended to quote harsh critics who characterized Correa as an extreme leftist with ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But there’s much more to the story. The announcement came after an exhaustive audit of Ecuador’s debt, conducted under Correa’s direction by a newly created debt audit commission. The unprecedented audit documented hundreds of allegations of irregularity and illegality in the decades of debt collection from international lenders. Although Ecuador had made payments exceeding the value of the principal since the time it initially took out loans in the 1970s, its foreign debt had nonetheless swelled to levels three times as high due to extraordinarily high interest rates. With a huge percentage of the country’s financial resources devoted to paying the debt, little was left over to combat poverty in Ecuador.

Correa’s move to stand up against foreign lenders did not go unnoticed by other impoverished, debt-ridden nations, and the decision could set a precedent for developing countries struggling to get out from under massive debt obligation to First World lenders.

Ecuador eventually agreed to a debt restructuring at about 35 cents on the dollar, but the move nonetheless served to expose deficiencies in the World Bank system, which provides little recourse for countries to resolve disputes over potentially illegitimate debt.

Sources: “As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal,” Daniel Denvir, Alternet, Nov. 26, 2008; “Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who,” Committee for the Integral Audit of Public Credit, Utube, Fall 2008; “Ecuador’s Debt Default,” Neil Watkins and Sarah Anders, Foreign Policy in Focus, Dec. 15, 2008

Other stories in the Top 25

11. Private corporations profit from the occupation of Palestine

12. Mysterious death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s election thief

13. Katrina’s hidden race war

14. Congress invested in defense contracts

15. World Bank’s carbon trade fiasco

16. U.S. repression of Haiti continues

17. The ICC facilitates U.S. covert war in Sudan

18. Ecuador’s constitutional rights of nature

19. Bank bailout recipients spent to defeat labor

20. Secret control of the presidential debates

21. Recession causes states to cut welfare

22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission team

23. Activists slam World Water Forum as a corporate-driven fraud

24. Dollar glut finances U.S. military expansion

25. Fast track oil exploitation in western Amazon.

Read them all at projectcensored.org.

Phillips is stepping down this year as director of Project Censored and turning his attention toward a new endeavor called Media Freedom International, which will tap academic affiliates to verify the content put out by independent news outlets.

Benjamin Frymer, a sociology professor at Sonoma State, will replace Phillips as director of Project Censored.

SWINE FLU UPDATE

I, like many others, consider 60-Minutes an excellent source of journalism. Their executive producer, Don Hewitt died earlier this year after leading the program for 41 years to one of the most successful programs in the history of television. His guiding principle was to tell a story and is actually a strategy I am seeking to implement on this site.

Last Sunday, their lead story was no exception and followed the champion strategy of telling the story of a young high school football player who was infected with the H1N1 virus.
You can see the 60 minutes interview from 1977, over 30 years ago. This is in stark contrast to this segment. Admittedly it was done long after the damage was done but if you look at 4:15 you will see one of the CDS consultants clearly state he warned them of this danger and yet when the CDC head is confronted with this, he denies it.

Do you think much has changed in the last 30 years? If anything, conflict of interest has gotten much worse.

This past Sunday's 60 Minutes segment did ask some hard questions to the Assistant Surgeon General. However, what was missing is that they didn't ask why CDC officials persist in telling the public that this H1N1 strain of influenza is quite dangerous when the experience of those in the southern hemisphere, which just finished their flu season, is in direct conflict with what the CDC is telling the American people.

Overall 60 Minutes did a fairly good, objective piece of journalism that told the truth. They even pressured the Assistant Surgeon General about the vaccine's safety. On one hand, she's hitching her safety statements to the fact that the H1N1 vaccine is similar to seasonal influenza vaccine, and therefore "safe," even though she realistically CAN'T say that the new H1N1 swine flu vaccine is safe, or that it has been thoroughly tested because it only has been tested for a few weeks.

On the other hand CDC officials are screaming that H1N1 is so different from the seasonal influenza strains that have circulated in the past few decades that a national alarm must be sounded and everyone needs to be so afraid that we all should get vaccinated to prevent a deadly pandemic. This is completely inconsistent and irrational logic.

Come on CDC, you simply can't have it both ways.

Questions that Were Are Not Being Asked

The interviewer on the 60 Minutes segment did ask some hard questions, but he, like most of the mainstream media did not ask important questions that are absolutely essential to understand precisely what is going on with this "pandemic"

There have been 81 children from H1N1 in the US. These of course are tragic.

How many pediatric deaths occurred in children who:

• Were positively lab confirmed as H1N1;

• Had underlying chronic immune and brain dysfunction

• Were fully vaccinated according to CDC recommendations

• Had received influenza vaccine this year

• Had received seasonal influenza vaccine in previous years

• Received Tamiflu or another anti-viral prior to death

• Had a coinciding bacterial infection with H1N1

• Were never vaccinated - totally unvaccinated

Other Important Observations on the Segment

It is quite clear from the video that Luke did not get worse until after he visited the physician and was given an antipyretic and possibly Tamiflu. Certainly it could have been coincidence but it is an interesting observation.

No mention was made if Luke had been vaccinated for seasonal or H1N1?

Additionally there was no reference made to the last swine flu epidemic in the US when 50 million people got the swine flu vaccine and more people died from the vaccine than the swine flu itself -- and that's not counting all those that developed permanent neurological damage.

Why is no one reminding the public of this well documented and vitally important part of vaccine history?

Your Immune System is Perfectly Capable of Fighting H1N1

Additionally what the 60 minutes segment failed to mention is that it is relatively easy to improve your immune response to fight this infection.

If 99.9% of the people are not having any serious complications from the infection, it would seem perfectly rational to believe that minor lifestyle changes could have dramatic effects on fighting this infection, and none of these involve taking potentially dangerous and unproven vaccine interventions.

Simple Measures That Can Help You Fight Illness

• Vitamin D has been well documented to increase the production of over 200 anti microbial peptides that fight infection.

• Eliminate sugar from your diet as that will impair your immune response

• Get plenty of rest

• Exercise appropriately

• Take appropriate supplements like oil of oregano extract, propolis, olive leaf extract, elder flower extract, acerola, DMG.

However you will need to know the above BEFORE you purchase any supplements on that list. Any company that informs you of the above will be in violation of US Federal law and a newly created Swine Flu Task Force has been given the authority to shut the business down and even throw owners in jail.

Violations of these new rules are being prosecuted even more aggressively than alternative cancer treatments. Earlier this week, Dr. Andrew Weil actually received an FDA/FTC warning letter that threatens jail time for failure to comply with the rules.

3) The Canadian preliminary study is provocative in that it suggests those who have gotten seasonal influenza vaccine in the past may be at greater risk for getting H1N1 and having complications. This reinforces NVIC's call for a comparison of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals for all health outcomes.

Notice When Things Don't Add Up...

Interestingly, the 60 minutes segment acknowledges that many people born before 1950 have antibodies to the new H1N1 influenza and are naturally protected.

WAKE UP AMERICA, this is before ANY vaccine was available!

If influenza vaccines are so effective, then why don't they work to protect people that have been getting their flu shots all these years?

(There is a new Canadian study that suggests those who have gotten seasonal influenza vaccines in the past may be at greater risk for getting H1N1 swine flu. This information reinforces NVIC's call for a comparison of the long term health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children).

The answer is, of course, that vaccines do not offer long term immunity. Natural immunity is what you gain when you recover from influenza and natural immunity is what is protecting older Americans, who have recovered from exposure to H1N1 strains of influenza in the past.

What is unknown is whether the massive amount of vaccine exposure in the US population has critically weakened people's ability to mount an effective immune response to novel infections like H1N1.

It was discouraging to see 60 Minutes end their segment on H1N1 influenza vaccine with an encouragement to go to their website to find out where to get a swine flu vaccination...

Fighting Back in the Courts -- and Winning!

Last week the New York state Supreme Court judge issued a restraining order against the state from enforcing mandatory vaccination.

This came about as a result of a lawsuit by the Public Employees Federation, the New York State United Teachers, and an attorney representing four Albany, NY nurses, who sought to reverse the policy that required New York hospital workers to get the swine flu vaccine or face termination. The suit argued that NY state Health Commissioner Richard Daines had overstepped his authority.

The Supreme Court ruled that the vaccination for nurses, doctors, aides, and non-medical staff members who might be in contact with patients, remain voluntary.

This is an incredible victory, and a vital one. And it shows that there are still ways to oppose the complete disintegration of human rights, choice, and freedom.

In addition to that, on October 15, another group of health freedom advocates, including Dr. Gary Null and other New York health care workers, filed an emergency injunction in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the distribution of the swine flu vaccine, and to void the FDA swine flu vaccine approvals already granted on September 15.

The complaint alleges that the government failed to follow its own rules and applicable legislation in rushing the vaccine approvals in the absence of any of the requisite minimum scientifically sound and appropriate testing for both safety and effectiveness as required by law since 1964.

I will keep you posted on the progress of that injunction.

Criticism is Par for the Course When Advocating Non-Conventional Views

It's impossible to take a stance against such an ingrained medical paradigm as vaccines without taking some hits, and I've taken my fair share lately. Some bloggers and doctors are naturally unhappy with what I'm disseminating, so I'd like to take a moment to clarify my own views.

First of all, I'm glad that people from both sides of this debate are available to discuss it because that is what we desperately need -- discussion. Conventional medicine has routinely ignored and ridiculed the voices speaking up for a "safety first" approach. We need to have an open, public discussion about the realities and dangers of what we're doing, and whether or not vaccination is the safest approach to preventing chronic illness and maintaining health.

So I'm actually pleased that the opposition is taking the time to read my material, as are millions of others who already agree and have looked deeply enough into the matter to understand my position.

The fact of the matter is that vaccinations do not optimize immune function and there is way too little information about what else they do in the human body that may contribute to poor health. My main point is that there are ways to prevent illness and maintain health that are so much more natural, easier, less expensive and more effective than routine use of multiple vaccines in childhood and throughout life.

So in many ways I am grateful for the swine flu challenge that we are now going through, because it allows us the opportunity to expose flaws in vaccine system and the way mainstream medicine thinks about health and wellness.

Is the Swine Flu "Deadly," or Not?

There are far too many points of criticism to respond to them all, but let's review one point that has come up -- a point that is commonly heralded by mandatory vaccination advocates.

Many of them take serious issue with my claiming that the swine flu is not deadly, and use that to insinuate that I'm spitting on the graves of the children who have died.

Nearly all of them, just like the CDC and mainstream media, use the statistic that 36,000 people die from the influenza every year. I actually wrote an article about this fallacy more than five years ago.

Interestingly that number has remained static as if carved into stone all these years.

However, the truth is that less than 1,000 people actually died from type A or type B influenza. The other 35,000 died from pneumonia. This is actually clearly listed on the CDC's own website, yet virtually everyone ignores this fact.

Dr. David Rosenthal, Director of Harvard University's Health Services, brings further clarity to this confusion.

Most of these so-called influenza deaths are in fact bacterial pneumonias -- not even viral pneumonias -- and secondary infections. Furthermore, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Academy shows that many of these deaths are a result of pneumonias acquired by patients taking stomach acid suppressing drugs.

So, for example, if we are to take the combined figure of influenza and pneumonia deaths during the flu season of 2001, and add a bit of spin to the figures, we are left believing that 62,034 people died from influenza.

The actual figures are 61,777 died from pneumonia and only 257 from influenza.

Even more amazing, in those 257 cases, only 18 were lab confirmed as positive for the influenza virus!

In my opinion, there's a vast difference between 257 deaths and 36,000 deaths from influenza..

A separate study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics for seasonal influenza seasons between 1979 and 2002 reveals that the range of annual influenza deaths were between 257 and 3,006, for an average of 1,348 influenza deaths per year.¹

Again, nowhere near the 36,000 mortality mark that has been etched into stone by those who are advocating annual flu shots.

Although the loss of even a single life is tragic, I don't think anyone would look at these numbers and say that a mortality rate of less than 1,350 is cause to label influenza a "deadly disease" that requires mandatory influenza vaccination.

Listen to the CDC's Own Admissions!

So, how does the CDC respond to this discrepancy reported by the Harvard scientist?

Please read carefully the CDC's own statement:

"Typically, influenza causes death when the infection leads to severe medical complications... [and as most such cases] are never tested for virus infection...

...CDC considers these figures to be very substantial undercounting of the true number of deaths from influenza. Therefore, the CDC uses indirect modeling methods to estimate the number of deaths associated with influenza."

In an earlier 2003 article JAMA, William Thompson from the CDC's National Immunization Program attempted to explain "influenza-associated mortality." He wrote,

"Based on modeling, we think it's associated. I don't know that we would say that it's the underlying cause of death."²

In summary, the CDC is admitting:

• Deceased are not tested to determine the presence of the flu virus, and

• They do not directly perform any direct testing to determine the exact cause of death. "Indirect modeling methods" is a professional way of saying they use subjective mathematical equations to arrive at their figures.

The 36,000 mortality figure is nothing more than a mathematical model. The British Journal concluded that the only possible rationale for the CDC's complete disregard for scientific fact, even in face of independent research to discredit its statistics, is a public relations effort between the CDC and the vaccine manufacturer's campaigns to increase flu vaccination.

What IS a "Deadly Disease"?

As of October 11, 2009 the World Health Organization reported that, worldwide, there have been more than 399,232 laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1, and over 4,735 deaths.

Folks, that is 4,735 deaths in the ENTIRE world, not just the US!

Most all of these deaths occurred in immunocompromised individuals.

Now I do not want to diminish the value of any life, but what is needed here is a critical perspective.

Malaria kills ONE MILLION people EVERY YEAR, worldwide. Death is a direct result of the malaria infection.

So every DAY 2,740 people are dropping dead from malaria, whereas less than 13 people per day died from the swine flu in the past year, worldwide (if you disregard that most died not as a direct result of the swine flu virus, but from having poor immune function which led to serious secondary infections and complications).

Did you ever wonder why malaria doesn't get much press coverage? Doesn't it strike you as odd that more isn't done to clamp down on such a deadly disease if governments are talking about quarantine centers at airports and suspending personal choice and freedom over the swine flu?

Confusion and Misdirection IS at Work. But Why?

A thorough , comparative analysis of several flu pandemics has been published in the prestigious British Medical Journal, that gives evidence that the H1N1 swine flu is of "the same subtype as seasonal H1N1 that has been circulating since 1977."³ The author points out the substantial confusion between the high public attention the present H1N1 scare is receiving and the very low level of scientific certainty that H1N1 is more severe than other seasonal influenza.

With the facts at hand, it is easy to detect a pattern of misdirection and purposeful confusion.

Doesn't it make you wonder why?

You Can Make a Difference

Most polls show that we ARE making a difference because more people are becoming educated about influenza and flu vaccines, especially H1N1 swine flu. Recent national polls have revealed that 30 to 50% in many communities are not planning to get a swine flu shot. Those who haven't made up their minds yet have lots of questions. So we have created some posters that you can print and post ALL over your community, your local stores, office and schools.

Hopefully more people will wake up and recognize that it is not wise to blindly trust information that is one-sided and doesn't provide ALL the facts about seasonal and H1N1 swine flu and influenza vaccines. People now have access to information from a wide range of sources, which they can independently evaluate to make educated decisions and Take Control of Their Health!

One way we can make a BIG difference in protecting our right to make informed, voluntary vaccination choices is to support the three-decades of work by the National Vaccine Information Center to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths; protect exemptions in vaccine laws and promote scientific research into the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. I have made this non-profit organization -- America's Vaccine Safety Watchdog - one of my favorite charities and I urge you to become a donor member and help NVIC protect your informed consent rights and your children's health. Go to www.NVIC.org to learn more.

OBAMA TO BOYCOTT FOX TV

It's about time Democrats stood up to FOX! The White House communications director said FOX is a "wing of the Republican Party...let's not pretend they're a news network."

To draw attention to its biased coverage, President Obama will not appear on FOX for the rest of this year.

I signed a petition urging Democrats to support President Obama's stance by staying off FOX as long as he does. Can you join me at the link below?

http://civic.moveon.org/foxobama/?r_by=-11496133-HQtQBhx&rc=confemail

SOCIALISTS USE PORTLAND AND OREGON AS AN EXAMPLE OF FAILURE OF CAPATALISM-from the world socialist website

By Jon Spencer
20 October 2009

The downturn in the capitalist economy is not news to the people of Portland, Salem, Medford, and the rural areas of Oregon, which saw high unemployment and underemployment during both the dot.com boom and the alleged Bush “recovery.”

However, the current crisis is hitting Portland, and the rest of Oregon, particularly hard, with state-wide unemployment levels competing with hard-pressed California for fourth place nationally.

Just released September figures show a 0.5 percentage point drop in unemployment from Augusts’ adjusted figure of 12 percent. The decline is attributed to discouraged workers departing the job market. The economy’s continuing weakness was shown with the loss of 10,300 jobs. This crisis of unemployment is exacerbated by cuts in social services, as well as inflated housing prices, despite a glut of housing in the area.

The official Oregon unemployment rate now stands at 11.5 percent, not far below last May’s 12.2 percent, the highest level since statistics were kept in 1947. This statistic does not include either the underemployed (those who previously had full-time jobs last year and currently work part-time) or so-called “discouraged workers” (those workers who, it is claimed, have given up looking for employment).

Despite having the fifth highest rate of economic growth for the period of 2005-2006, a mere four years ago, Oregon is now one of many states with negative growth. Manufacturing employment is at its lowest since statistics have been kept, losing over 27,000 jobs, 14.1 percent, in the last year, while construction, despite a gain of 1,000 jobs last month, has still dropped 13,700 jobs, 14.8 percent, from a year ago.

The high point of manufacturing in Oregon was October of 1997 when nearly 230,000 workers were employed in that field. Currently, the number employed is 165,400, a decline of 28 percent.

While Portland has been hit hard, urban areas outside of Portland have been hit even harder, and their economic situation can be regarded as dismal. For the month of August 2009, the cities of Salem, Eugene, Medford and Bend had unemployment rates equal to or greater than that of Portland-Vancouver metro area. Bend, located in Central Oregon, had an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent.

According to an analysis by the New York Times published in July, a broader measure of unemployment reached 23.5 percent in the spring.

Further out, from where the busy interstates of I-5 and I-84 intersect in Portland, these communities have been torn apart earlier, faster, and more severely. Drives through Medford or Salem reveal empty storefronts and foreclosed houses that are difficult to ignore.

The drive to increase the exploitation of workers finds clear and sharp expression in agriculture and construction. At any time during the day in Portland, scores of workers can be seen lining up at day labor hire sites, or even just sitting around in large groups waiting for employers to come by with a truck. A representative of the Oregon Department of Agriculture commented that the recent downturn has “turned a lot of construction workers back into agricultural workers” and remarked sardonically that “there was no shortage of labor in agriculture” this year.

Statistics on day laborers, agricultural workers, and migrant workers is hard to collect due to both the ephemeral and transient nature of such employment, and because many workers in this field are undocumented and subject to constant harassment by the state. Official censuses are performed only once every five years and pressure exists on employers to not divulge their undocumented employees.

Oregon also suffers from a lack of affordable housing, despite massive overbuilding of condos during the recent real estate bubble. Thousands of units, intended for sale as condos, lay empty, particularly near the waterfront and Peal District sections of Portland, and are now, with the collapse of the housing market, being offered as rental properties. Working class neighborhoods in North Portland, St. John’s, and the Belmont/Hawthorne area are sure to be next in the sights of developers who seek to drive out workers and replace them with higher rent tenants.

Not even rudimentary cots are available for many of the city’s poor, who live in tent cities near the Burnside Bridge and other places along the waterfront and in the vacant-lot remnants of Portland’s Chinatown. A recent report shows that about 1,500 homeless are forced to sleep outdoors on any given night. The homeless population in Oregon has exploded in recent years, a shameful fact considering the high number of homeless workers in the years of alleged economic prosperity.

A Housing and Urban Development 2008 analysis released this past summer identifies Oregon as having the highest proportion of homeless in the nation. Homelessness was 0.54 percent in Oregon, followed by Nevada with 0.48 percent.

The official figures of homelessness paint a grim picture: 16,221 homeless individuals on a one-night head count of shelters. This figure is likely only half of the total picture, as according to state statistics, less than half of the state’s homeless are sheltered on any given night. While slightly more than half of the homeless are on their own, a significant minority consist of families with children, the overwhelming majority of whom are under age 11.

Further, the curtailment of vast portions of the city’s mass transportation system, TriMet, will make it harder for working people. TriMet, which serves not just Portland proper, but several surrounding communities of considerable size (such as Hillsboro which will largely be inaccessible from Portland on weekends), plans to slash service, cutting entire lines, re-routing buses, and reducing the number of buses on the road, making Portland’s famously quick and efficient public transportation set to become an overcrowded and unwieldy mess.

Twelve bus lines have been eliminated entirely, weekend or Sunday service was eliminated on an additional twelve, and hours or frequency were cut on no fewer than twenty-nine bus lines. Most telling is the elimination of free access for buses in Portland’s famous Fareless Square, a significant area of downtown and certain adjoining areas, where riders have never been required to pay fares. Bus stops along Burnside, one of the main roads that split the city in half between North and South, bear signs reading “Service Temporarily Discontinued,” and one wonders for how long.

The cutting of bus lines will heavily impact the poorest workers in the city who cannot afford loans for motorized transportation, nor the extortionist insurance payments which accompany this ownership. Many workers move to Portland precisely because of its mass transit system and rely upon it to get to work. They will be forced to either spend more unpaid time traveling to and from work, or search for new jobs where little are to be found.

In such a climate, demand for social services is rising while the ability of capitalism to cope is dwindling. Oregon, like so many other states, is seeing a decline in tax revenues and a related budget deficit. Oregon is looking at a deficit of between $850 million and $1 billion dollars for the current budget.

Democratic Governor Kulongoski went on record in a public statement calling this “sobering news for Oregon” and speaking of “difficult decisions” for the legislature which will “prioritize the core services performed by government” by “putting partisan politics aside.” He ended his thinly-veiled plan of attack on Oregon’s working class by saying “[t]oday is truly when the hard work begins.”

Kulongowski’s statement is filled with poorly concealed euphemisms referring to his impending plan to cut social services throughout the state. State Economist Tom Potiowsky indicated more attacks on social services than Kulongowski, telling the Salem Gazette-Times, “We’re falling, basically, into a pit.”

Kulongowski and the legislature responded by closing government agencies for ten days over the two-year budget period, with 26,500 workers forced to stay home. An estimated $2 to $2.5 million for each furlough day will be wrung from the pockets of workers who can ill-afford such a cut. The Service Employees International Union spokesman Ed Hershey signaled the union’s support for this attack on public workers, saying, “I think the state wisely negotiated over these. If there have to be furloughs, these seem to be days that would least impact services.”

These attacks on the living standards of working people include $65 million dollars cut from K-12 education, and $19 million in social services, including day care for the children of low-income workers. While the state has millions of dollars in a reserve fund, Kulongowski has made clear he will veto any attempt by the legislature to tap into that fund.

Food stamp enrollment is up 25 percent (and is 25 percent greater than the national average). Housing foreclosures are the 14th highest in the state, but this statistic is highly misleading, as masses of working people in Oregon choose to rent, due to the relatively lower cost of rentals in the state.

Using the combined metrics of housing foreclosure, unemployment, and food stamp participation, the non-profit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation ranked Oregon third on its state economic distress scale, underscoring how deeply Oregon is affected by the sum total of high unemployment, foreclosure rates, and underfunded social services.

However, while the real income of Oregon’s lowest 20 percent of population has declined by 17 percent since 1979, that of the wealthiest 1 percent has skyrocketed by 210 percent.

Oregon is one clear example of the inability of capitalism to solve the problems of working people. Condos, built by speculators in hopes of reselling in a Ponzi-like scheme to other speculators, lay empty throughout Portland, while homeless workers huddle in tent cities. The unemployment rate has skyrocketed, even though any attentive person could find dozens of things—in infrastructure repair, social services, and health services to name only the most glaringly obvious—that need doing, and that the workers of Oregon would no doubt be happy to do.

The large urban centers are known to lean heavily Democratic. Salem, the state capital, is dominated by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party holds all major statewide executive offices (Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Commissioner of Labor and Industries, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the State Land Board). As well, both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly are firmly in the hands of the Democrats. This is the party that leads the current attacks on workers.

Van Jones and the Boycott of Glenn Beck

By Amy Goodman

Glenn Beck was mad. He’s the right-wing talk radio host who has a television program on the Fox News Channel. Advertisers were fleeing his Fox program en masse after the civil rights group Color of Change mounted a campaign urging advertisers to boycott Beck, who labeled President Barack Obama a “racist.” As the campaign progressed, Beck began his attacks against Van Jones. Jones was appointed by Obama in March to be special adviser for green jobs. He co-founded Color of Change four years ago. After weeks of attacks from Beck, Jones resigned his position at the White House last Sunday.

Beck said on “Fox & Friends,” the network’s morning show, July 28: “This president I think has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people. ... This guy is, I believe, a racist.” This inspired colorofchange.org to launch its campaign urging advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Beck’s Fox program. The campaign had a powerful impact, with companies like Progressive Insurance, Geico and Procter & Gamble immediately pulling their advertising. Since then, more than 50 companies have joined, including Best Buy, Capital One, CVS, Discover, GMAC Financial Services, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Travelocity and Wal-Mart.

Van Jones was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2009. His book, “The Green Collar Economy,” was a national best-seller. A Yale Law School graduate, Jones didn’t go after the lucrative jobs that were available to him, but moved to San Francisco, where he founded Bay Area PoliceWatch, a hot line for victims of alleged police brutality. He then founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, based in Oakland, Calif., “a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America.” The center thrived, growing to a staff of more than 20 and building a solid record of fighting police violence and youth incarceration, along with spearheading green-job initiatives. The fusion of racial justice and economic and environmental sustainability is at the core of Jones’ work.

Jones told me last October: “The clean energy revolution ... would put literally millions of people to work, putting up solar panels all across the United States, weatherizing buildings so they don’t leak so much energy ... you could put Detroit back to work not making SUVs to destroy the world, but making wind turbines. We think that you can fight pollution and poverty at the same time.”

Beck alleged Jones was a former black nationalist and communist, that he signed a petition calling for a congressional investigation into the events of 9/11, and that Jones referred to Republicans as “assholes” in a February 2009 talk. (Beck failed to note that Jones referred to himself in the talk with the same term.) Jones apologized for the remark, which is more than George W. Bush did when recorded referring to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer with the same term in 2000.

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Jones said Beck’s attacks were a “vicious smear campaign ... using lies and distortions to distract and divide.” Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said, “The only thing more outrageous than Mr. Beck’s attack on Van Jones is the fact that there are sponsors that continue to pay him to provide this type of offensive commentary.” He recalled Beck’s 2006 radio attack on a 7-year-old African-American girl, when Beck, responding to her poem about her heritage, said: “You want to go to Africa? I will personally purchase your airfare. I’ll do it. It’s one-way.”

Glenn Beck may claim a notch in his belt, but he’s also helped push Van Jones back into an arena where he can be much more effective, as a grass-roots organizer working for progressive change from outside the administration. And with groups like the NAACP paying more attention to Beck, the advertiser boycott of his show is unlikely to just go away.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

It Could Be the End of Our Democracy as We Know It

By E.J. Dionne

President Barack Obama’s health care speech on Wednesday will be only the second most consequential political moment of the week.

Judged by the standard of an event’s potential long-term impact on our public life, the most important will be the argument before the Supreme Court (on the same day, as it happens) about a case that, if decided wrongly, could surrender control of our democracy to corporate interests.

This sounds melodramatic. It’s not. The court is considering eviscerating laws that have been on the books since 1907 in one case and 1947 in the other, banning direct contributions and spending by corporations in federal election campaigns. Doing so would obliterate precedents that go back two and three decades.

The full impact of what the court could do in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has only begun to receive the attention it deserves. Even the word radical does not capture the extent to which the justices could turn our political system upside down. Will the high court use a case originally brought on a narrow issue to bring our politics back to the corruption of the Gilded Age?

Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose who financed the film.

Instead of deciding the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable act of overreach. On June 29, it postponed a decision and called for new briefs and a highly unusual new hearing, which is Wednesday’s big event. The court chose to consider an issue only tangentially raised by the case. It threatens to overrule a 1990 decision that upheld the long-standing ban on corporate money in campaigns.

I don’t have the space to cite all the precedents the court would have to set aside, going back to the Buckley campaign finance ruling of 1976, if it threw out the prohibition on corporate money. Suffice it to say that there is one member of the court who has spoken eloquently about the dangers of ignoring precedents.

“I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent,” he said. “Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness. It is not enough—and the court has emphasized this on several occasions—it is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn’t answer the question, it just poses the question.”

This careful jurist continued: “And you do look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments.”

He learnedly cited Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist 78: “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, the likely swing vote in this case, was exactly right when he said these things during his 2005 confirmation hearings. If he uses his own standards, it is impossible to see how he can justify the use of “arbitrary discretion” to discard a well-established system whose construction began with the Tillman Act of 1907.

Were the courts that set the earlier precedents “legitimate”? This ban was upheld over many years by justices of a variety of philosophical leanings. We are not talking about overturning a single decision by a bunch of activists in robes seizing a temporary court majority.

Are the precedents “workable”? The answer is clearly yes, which is why there is absolutely no popular demand to let corporate cash loose into our politics. Our system would be less “workable” if the court abruptly changed the law.

Has the precedent been “eroded”? Absolutely not. In case after case, no matter where particular court majorities stood on particular campaign finance provisions, the ban on corporate contributions was taken for granted. As the court stated just six years ago, Congress’ power to prohibit direct corporate and union contributions “has been firmly embedded in our law.” That’s what you call “settled expectations.”

This case is the clearest test Justice Roberts has faced so far as to whether he meant what he said to Congress in 2005. I truly hope he passes it. If he doesn’t, he will unleash havoc in our political system and greatly undermine the legitimacy of the court he leads.

E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

Our Wallets Get Emptier

By Marie Cocco

It isn’t all in our heads. Americans did not balk at buying back-to-school clothes, or forgo a Labor Day weekend trip, or refuse to invest in a new television for football season just because they are, to use the overworked shorthand, “feeling cautious.”

They are feeling the real effect of shrinking paychecks.

Wage growth—perhaps the most important number in the torrent of economic numbers that seems to assault us daily—all but ceased in the past six months. Pay for private-sector workers grew at the rate of only 1.3 percent, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s slower than the rate of growth late last year, when credit markets froze and it seemed as though we were about to plunge into another Great Depression.

With inflation running at more than 2 percent, no sophisticated computer is needed to do the math. Workers are, in effect, taking a net loss. “People are losing ground to inflation, big-time,” says Lawrence Mishel, president of the institute and an author of its new study, “The Recession’s Hidden Costs.”

That is, among the lucky who have managed to hold on to their jobs. They still have them, in part, because employers have cut costs by cutting pay, hours and benefits. That is what a “furlough” is—involuntary unpaid leave time. Though no official government data tracks this new trend, the EPI study estimates, based on the number of hours worked, that every week of a furlough amounts to a 2 percent cut in annual pay.

Then there is pay to be expected in retirement, or what used to be called a pension. Now, if you have a pension (and only about half the private-sector work force does) it is most likely to be in the form of a 401(k) savings account, which, as water-cooler jokers know, was knocked down to a 201(k) due to stock market losses. Or make that a 101(k) because hundreds of employers—upward of 300, according to the Pension Rights Center—have stopped or temporarily suspended employer contributions into the savings accounts.

This is only an unofficial count, based on corporate press releases and media stories. Private benefits companies that have tried to measure this trend have generally concluded that about 20 percent of employers have suspended their matching contributions, or intend to reduce them.

In mid-August, the Gallup Poll found that the fear of losing a job was at its highest level since the firm first started asking the question in 1997. About a third of those surveyed worried about a layoff, a similar proportion said they believed their pay would be cut, and 46 percent were concerned about benefit cuts.

This isn’t paranoia. For the last three decades, the economy has been on an almost uninterrupted course of lower wages and lost benefits for most workers. The current recession may well have hit bottom this summer, as government and private economists believe. But for American workers, there is no bottom.

Basic labor protections are ignored with impunity. Minimum wage laws are violated, overtime routinely goes unpaid, and workers are forced to toil off-the-clock, according to a survey of 4,387 low-wage workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago by the National Employment Law Project. The findings are consistent with a recent Government Accountability Office report that showed federal officials were failing to enforce basic wage and hour laws. “We have a lawless labor market, in my view,” Mishel says.

The wage crisis isn’t just the product of the current downturn. Stagnation in average Americans’ pay has been a fixture for the past decade, with real median household income—that is, income after inflation is factored in—essentially unchanged since 1999, according to the Census Bureau.

Long before this recession, workers were dodging downsizing, outsourcing, pension freezes and other benefit cuts. Years ago, the announcement that a company was moving operations offshore for cheaper labor was met with outrage. Today it is applauded on Wall Street and barely lamented in Washington. The tactics of the past are the new normal.

That is what’s worrying about the new techniques companies are using to trim costs in this slowdown. Emergency practices perfected now—suspension of the employer share of 401(k) contributions, for instance—could easily become tomorrow’s standard.

Then what? Without pay that keeps up with inflation, without pensions, without the certainty of health insurance coverage, there’s a diminishing chance that those in the much-vaunted American middle class will stay there.

Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.

States Ignoring Stimulus Welfare Fund

By Michael Grabell, Christopher Flavelle and Emily Witt, ProPublica

This article was previously published on ProPublica.

Word of the money spread quickly.

New York state had put hundreds of dollars in federal stimulus money into food stamp accounts, and if it wasn’t withdrawn by 4 p.m., 9 p.m., midnight—depending on the version of the rumor—it would disappear. So on a sultry August day, lines stretched at ATMs all over the state, a literal run on the bank.

The surprise cash—which was real, even though the deadlines weren’t—came from a little-known stimulus fund that economists say would directly help people hurt by the recession and be extremely effective at stimulating the economy.

The $5-billion emergency fund for needy families can be used to immediately create jobs for the unemployed, pay rent for families facing eviction, even repair someone’s car so they can get to work.

But many states aren’t taking advantage of the windfall because state officials say they can’t afford the requirement that they put up 20 percent of the costs. Six months into the stimulus, only 27 states have applied for the money.

In New York, Gov. David Paterson came up with a creative solution that has been praised by economists and advocates for the poor. Unable to make the 20 percent match on its own, the state teamed up with philanthropist George Soros, whose Open Society Institute contributed $35 million so the state could access $140 million in stimulus money.

The money went straight to low-income families, who received $200 per child for back-to-school supplies and clothes. About 800,000 children were eligible.

But the chaos and allegations of abuse that followed illustrate how, in the heated debate over the stimulus, even the most lauded program can turn into the most lampooned overnight.

Critics say the state bungled it when it put no restrictions on how the money could be used. It also deposited it into the debit accounts of food stamp and welfare recipients without telling them it was there or what it was for until days later.

Rumors percolated that the money had to be taken out and spent right away. And store clerks began complaining that people were using the money for beer, lottery tickets, iPods and flat-screen TVs.

“They said, ‘Well, we have to get our money out of the ATM to buy school supplies,’” said Diane Goly, who owns a Sunoco gas station in Syracuse. “But as we were watching, people were taking the money to buy beer and cigarettes.”

Noah Lebowitz, spokesman for Monroe County in Rochester, said social-services investigators found that some people in its drug treatment programs received large amounts of cash.

“They have a very difficult time not spending it on drugs,” he said. “We were seeing people with drug abuse problems getting $1,000 in their bank account.”

Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the possible abuse of taxpayer dollars. Republican politicians railed against the lack of accountability and called it a rollback of welfare reform efforts of the mid-1990s. But the program’s defenders said isolated cases have been overblown to stoke anger and play into the stereotype of welfare Cadillacs.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program was created in 1997 to overhaul welfare and push recipients to find work rather than “living off the system.” As a result, welfare rolls dropped from 12 million in 1996 to less than 4 million in 2008, even though there had been little change in the national poverty and jobless rates before the current recession.

When the economic stimulus bill was passed in February, it created a new $5-billion emergency fund under TANF to help states whose welfare caseloads have grown during the recession. But it also encouraged the expansion of rarely-used efforts that any state can take advantage of—such as one-time cash payments to low-income families and temporary government-paid jobs programs similar to the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression.

In Perry County, Tenn., where roughly one of every four workers had been unemployed since January, the state used $5 million to create jobs for those laid off from an auto parts plant—clearing brush for the state highway department, painting murals, even baking turnovers at a pie factory. The county’s jobless rate dropped from a high of 27 percent in January to 19 percent in July.

Los Angeles County used $160 million to put together a jobs program intent on employing 10,000 people. The stimulus is picking up 100 percent of the workers’ salaries, because the state argued that additional costs to administer the program and supervise workers counts as the 20 percent.

Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said the agency expects more states to apply for the money. But Jack Tweedie, who’s been studying the TANF program for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said most states will take only enough to ensure that they won’t have to turn away new families who qualify for welfare. As much as $1 billion could be left on the table when the program ends in September 2010, he said.

“Virtually all the states are in really tough fiscal positions—they’ve been cutting, not expanding,” said Tweedie, director of the children and families program for the National Conference. “It’s hard to get policymakers to focus on new things when primarily what they have to do is cut things.”

Louisiana doesn’t plan to use any of the funds, despite the fact that one in five residents lives in poverty—the second highest in the nation. Sammy Guillory, deputy assistant secretary of Louisiana’s Office of Family Support, said even with the stimulus picking up 80 percent, the state can’t afford it.

“We’re in an almost crisis level budget situation in Louisiana,” he said. “We’re facing budget cuts and staff reductions every day. So even to start a program is not an option right now.”

Tweedie and other public policy experts have been traveling around the country educating states on the program’s flexibility. The 20 percent portion doesn’t have to come from state budgets, he said. It can be paid by cities, counties, private donors or nonprofits like homeless shelters or food banks.

“If they want to do back-to-school payments, go talk to Wal-Mart or Target and have them put up the 20 percent,” Tweedie said.

Economist Lawrence Mishel said giving money to low-income people is one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy, because they’re more likely to spend it than average consumers.

“Whether you call it back-to-school money or just go-out-and-spend-it money, I don’t think it really matters much,” said Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “Why would somebody get upset about money going to people on TANF? As opposed to rich people buying flat-screen TVs” with tax cuts?

Like New York, Texas is using stimulus money to help poor families buy back-to-school supplies, albeit on a much smaller scale, just $6 million for the entire program. Welfare recipients got just $105 per child and they could use the money only at specific stores, not at ATMs.

Texas also announced its program weeks in advance, avoiding the confusion New Yorkers experienced when the money came their way.

Niurka Ventura, a mother of five in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, said she heard about the money from a friend, who told her she had to withdraw the money by midnight. She noticed a crowd waiting at the ATM next to her apartment and sent her daughter to stand in line, which she said took three hours.

Ventura said she spent the money on phone and electricity bills, took her kids to the zoo and treated them to pizza. She said she didn’t get the letter telling her that the money was for school supplies until a week later.

Kristin Proud, the state’s deputy director for operations, said there was no other way to get the money out in time for back-to-school sales.

The state couldn’t limit it to a certain number of stores, because rural residents might be an hour’s drive from a major chain. It would have taken years to create a card system that could limit purchases to a list of items, as food-stamp cards are designed to do, she said.

“It would be very difficult to determine what kind of clothing, for example, is a back-to-school item,” Proud said. “Like is a woman’s size 12—is that OK for a purchase for back-to-school for children? Some would argue no. I would argue that I have friends who have large children who are 15 and wear clothing bigger than I do.”

Proud said the federal government signed off on New York’s plans. When asked about allegations that the money was being misspent, Wolfe, the Health and Human Services spokesman, referred ProPublica to remarks that an agency official made when the New York program was announced, praising the idea. Wolfe did not respond to the criticisms of how the program was implemented.

Don White, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services inspector general, said his office is aware of the New York allegations but wouldn’t confirm or deny whether investigators were looking into them.

Mimi Corcoran, who works with George Soros’ foundation, said Soros was happy with the outcome. He was inspired to donate the money by his own experience after World War II, she said, when Quakers gave him school money with no strings attached.

“We respect and honor that even if individuals are poor, they will spend the money appropriately for their children,” she said

Outside the Washington Heights food stamps office two weeks ago, Tokina Julius, a single mother, said she didn’t know how she would have afforded new clothes for her 7-year old daughter Jacqueline without the money. She said she bought four pairs of jeans and three shirts at Old Navy, as well as jumpers, stockings and a pair of Hush Puppies sneakers. She said she has $50 left, which she said she’s saving for notebooks.

“I was happy it came,” Julius said. “It really helped me out in a big way.”