Unearthed: The News Without the Chaff

This recurring blog series features a collection of recent news stories about threats to public health, our democracy and the planet which are ignored or underreported by the handful of corporate mainstream media conglomerates, TV pundits, and radio shock jocks who've turned the "news" into little more than an entertainment and product placement opportunity and let down the American public.

Voters Disappearing from Rolls in Secret Purges Underway In At Least 19 States
At least 19 states are disregarding a federal law banning systematic voter purges within 90 days of a federal election. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, massive purges of registered voters have occurred recently in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington.

In a rare display of interest in this issue by the mainstream media, the CBS Evening News recently ran a two-minute segment about the illegal voter purges and also noted some of the findings from a new study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center study documents several secret purges conducted this year, including 10,000 voters knocked off the rolls in Mississippi and another 21,000 purged in Louisiana, including areas hit hard by recent hurricanes. The purges happen in secret with no public accountability, and voters are not informed of their removal from the rolls, often finding out when they show up at the polls and are denied an official ballot. CBS interviewed an elderly New Jersey voter whose name was suddenly removed from the registration rolls after 30 years. While that voter's status was reinstated successfully, CBS notes that "come Election Day, don't count on thousands of others being as fortunate."

Voters can check their registration status and confirm their polling place here and here.

C02 Emissions Growing Faster Than Predicted
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal and oil are growing much faster than predicted, setting the planet on course for climate disaster beyond any of the projected worst-case scenarios put forth previously by the world's leading scientists. New figures released by the Global Carbon Project show that C02 emissions rose 3% from 2006-2007 to a record high of 9.34 billion tons globally.

U.S. emissions rose 2% last year to 1.75 billion tons of CO2, despite an economic slowdown which many experts believed would curb energy usage. Rapidly-growing China emitted 2 billion tons of carbon last year, up 7.5% from 2006.

Making matters worse, the world's forests and oceans - traditional "carbon sinks" - are pulling carbon out of the atmosphere at lower rates than previously recorded. As a result, current emissions levels set a course for the planet to warm by more than 11 degrees by 2100, an amount which would lead to dangerous sea level rise, wipe out the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers around the world, and cause other drastic changes to life as we know it.

EPA Refuses To Rid Drinking Water of Rocket Fuel
The Environmental Protection Agency sees no need to remove a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has been found in drinking water at 395 sites in 35 states and counting. EPA announced in a draft assessment reviewed by the Associated Press that setting a mandatory cleanup level for perchlorate - a toxic rocket fuel ingredient which has contaminated water supplies across the country - would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

The draft assessment was heavily edited by the White House, and EPA decided to cut the public comment period on the assessment from 45 days to 30 days.

The Defense Department has long fought EPA to stop the agency from setting a national drinking water standard for perchlorate, because the Pentagon and defense contractors could face enormous liability for the cleanup costs of removing the contaminant from water supplies nationwide. The Pentagon recently argued that its rocket launch sites and other military facilities aren't the only source of perchlorate contamination, pointing the finger at fireworks, road flares and fertilizer as other sources.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found perchlorate in the urine of all 2,820 people it tested in a study released in 2006. Children in the study had significantly higher levels of perchlorate than adults. Perchlorate interferes with thyroid function and can interfere with childhood growth and brain development.

Denver Police Union Celebrates Beating Up DNC Protesters with T-Shirt
The Denver Police union is selling T-shirts celebrating the police brutality against protesters at last month's Democratic National Convention. The back of the shirt features a caricature of a grinning police officer holding an oversized baton looming over the Denver skyline, and text reading "WE GET UP EARLY, to BEAT the crowds. 2008 DNC."

Every Denver officer received a free shirt and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices.

Charges Dropped Against Journalists Arrested at RNC Convention
The Saint Paul City Attorney declined to prosecute three journalists from Democracy Now! who were forcefully arrested at the Republican National Convention last month, including host Amy Goodman whose harsh arrest was the most frequently watched video on YouTube during the convention. The other Democracy Now! Journalists, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, were violently thrown to the ground and had certain press credentials ripped off their necks by Secret Service agents during their arrests.

In all, St. Paul police arrested over 40 journalists, including two Associated Press photographers, who were covering the street protests outside the convention center. More than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis during the convention. Police employed pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and brute force against protesters and journalists caught up in mass arrests on the streets of St. Paul. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said that the decision not to press charges against the journalists "reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press."

Chlorinated Swimming Pools Boost Childhood Asthma Risk
A new study by Belgian researchers found that kids who swim regularly in outdoor chlorinated pools are up to five times more likely to develop asthma than those who have never been in a chlorinated pool.

The same researchers found a similar correlation to asthma among kids swimming regularly in indoor chlorinated pools several years ago. Their new study contradicts the assertion that outdoor pools would be less likely to cause respiratory problems since chemical vapors would dissipate more quickly than in enclosed indoor pools. In fact, chlorine vapors and related compounds linger near the water surface of both indoor and outdoor pools. The researchers concluded that "the risk of the outdoor pool is equal and even higher than indoor pools because children tend to spend longer in outdoor pools and they are more chlorinated."

Asthma affects more than 300 million people globally, and is the most common chronic illness among children.

Portugal Opens World's First Commercial Wave Power Plant
Portugal began capturing the enormous energy potential of ocean waves for electricity by opening the world's first commercial wave power plant three miles off the country's northern coast last week. The project is slated to expand nearly 10-fold in the coming years.

The snakelike wave converters, designed by Scottish firm Pelamis Wave Power, are moored to the seabed and connected to the national energy grid. Each can generate 2.25 megawatts, enough energy to provide 1,500 households with electricity.

The initial cost for the project was pricey at $12.55 million, but energy experts hope that wave power can reach the cost competitiveness of wind within the next 15 years.

Portugal hopes to meet up to 20 percent of its future energy needs with wave power. The country has already installed over 2,000 megawatts of wind energy capacity, and renewable energy - led by hydropower dams - accounts for 40 percent of Portugal's energy consumption.

Canada is working to be first in North America to bring another form of ocean power, tidal energy, online with an experimental set of tidal turbines expected to hit the water next year in the Bay of Fundy, which has the highest tides in the world.

Melting Arctic Permafrost Releasing Millions of Tons of Methane
Millions of tons of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2 - are reaching the atmosphere as a result of melting in the Arctic sea region. UK-based newspaper The Independent received details from researchers currently sailing along the northern coast of Russia whose preliminary scientific findings indicate that enormous quantities of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as Arctic sea ice retreats and the region grows warmer. The scientists described witnessing multiple "methane chimneys" bubbling up from the sea floor as the permafrost, which has held the gas deposits down since the last ice age, melts at accelerating rates due to global warming.

Many scientists posit that methane will accelerate global warming and lead to further permafrost melting, releasing more methane in a potentially catastrophic feedback loop. Scientists calculate that there is more methane stored under the Arctic ice than all of the carbon remaining in global coal deposits.

National Debt Grows $4 Trillion Under Bush Administration
The national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion under the Bush administration, more than under any other president in U.S. history. On the day George W. Bush took office, the U.S. had a national debt of just over $5.7 trillion with a projected surplus to come, but over the past eight years, the national debt has grown to nearly $10 trillion, a 72% increase under the Bush administration. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that next year, the national debt will hit $10.4 trillion, which it said would amount to 69.3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

President Bush declared shortly after taking office that his budget would pay down the national debt. Eight years later, the government has no cash to pay for Social Security, Medicare or other programs, a fact which Bush admitted during a 2005 speech at West Virginia University, noting that the Social Security Trust Fund was already in debt to future generations. "There is no 'trust fund,' just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay - will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs," Bush said.

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Comments

[heal57]

Please keep these stories coming. We need the truth. We should not have to 'register' to vote after one time. The last eight years have been illegal presidencies as far as I'm concerned.

[Errour]

When it comes to poisoning, this is indeed the No Child Left Behind administration. Is this why T. Boone Pickens suddenly got quiet about his water bidness? Does perchlorate make people paranoid? I hope so.

[saltysea]

Thanks so much. You don't see these stories on the news, at least not often enough to reach many peeps.

[HBeachbum]

With carbon emissions rising so fast, I guess they need to speed up the installation of the wind farm outside your family's compound, right Mr. Kennedy. Right? Hello?

[Soulsurfer]

Yo, step up Kennedys.

[Sportswoman]

I am grateful that I grew up in the sunshine of the Kennedy administration, that I firt became involved in the process when your father ran for President, and that, years later, I am able to continue being enlightened by your marvelous insight, clarity, and intrinsic topicality. Please keep up the good work and pass on to your Uncle Teddy our best wishes for his speedy recovery, as well as our continued thanks to Caroline for her work in the Obama campaign. You all so very well exemplify the famous quote, "be the light you wish to see in the world."

[osturk]

Mr. Kennedy, if you cannot stop China from burning coal, the co2 game is over. And as you know, and Biden should clean coal does not matter. It still pours co2 into the atmosphere.

[PierreLeClerke]

Leadership means to be out front, to chart the course, to take the first step, the initiative.

We must not, we cannot wait for others to act. We must LEAD the way by example!

[liberalgirl31]

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to bring us these stories! Keep it up.

[ManyColored]

I happen to know something about perchlorate, since I work in the Research and Development section of a company that specializes in enviromental consulting. Perchlorate is known to be a developmental toxin; meaning that it can affect the development of a fetus or a young child. It inhibits enzyme production by the thyroid by mimicking iodine in its chemical behavior. The problem is that no one really knows what levels of perchlorate are harmful to fetus or young child because you obviously can't experiment on them. A related problem is that development has different phases, and perchlorate may be more toxic in one phase than another. The estimated safe adult level of perchlorate in drinking water is guessed to be about 24 micrograms per liter. Some pediatricians have suggested that as little as 0.2 micrograms per liter could be harmful to fetuses or young children. No one knows, and we could have a big problem in the water.

[Florentine]

Nice one, Denver Police. Violating constitutional rights is such a knee slapper! At least now you've got something to wear besides your Big Johnson t-shirt.

What a bunch of XFL rejects...

[BonzaiBoy]

I am always so grateful to you two for bringing to light these news items each week. The two articles about climate change (the increase in CO2 and the melting permafrost) scare the hell out of me. As did the story on the voter purging. Hell, it pretty much all scared the hell out of me.

[ToonMoene]

Perhaps someone can explain to me - in words of no more than 10 characters - why the greatest democracy on earth requires its constituents to *register* to be able to vote.

What's wrong with sending everyone in the local governments database a invite-to-vote card ?

That's how it works over here - I never hear about voting fraud.

[MNinWI]

Where are you?
But you don't realize that if the Repugs relied on the voters to give them power, they would never have it. They don't reach enough people to get the majority without cheating as you read above.

[Wim1974]

Bravo to Portugal and Canada. I hope many nations will follow soon.

Regarding the secret purges. What nation wouldn't allow its citizens to vote? I would not be surprised if it where from a country under dictatorship, not from the land of the free. I'm speechless!

I want to point out that since I'm not an american citizen, more information on this would be appreciated.

[Aaror]

Define Free, for that matter, define dictatorship...
The US has had questionable elections for 8 years now, the only difference between our elections and certain other elections is that the folks who fix the problem votes don't have much experience yet, and so sometimes underestimate the number of "incorrect," votes that need to be removed or compensated for.
We have a list of one million names who get extra hassles at the airport-if they are allowed to fly at all. The government can tap our phones without a warrant. Did you notice the article above about police bragging about beating up protestors (the t-shirt item)?
Don't worry too much though, we had one tea party, we will have another one if McCain "wins," the election. The folks in charge now don't realize that there is a limit to what they can pull.

[MNinWI]

President Bush ws preparing - in violation of federal law - to use the U.S. military to maintain order within our borders.
For more than 200 years, federal laws have protected the American people against the use of military forces on our own soil. Strengthened in 1878 by the Posse Comitatus Act, these laws have guaranteed that the federal government could not use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Without such protection, the federal government could use the might of our army to violate state and individual rights. Moreover, minor incursions by the military into domestic law enforcement activity could lay the foundation for the imposition of martial law at a moment's notice.
Bush has assigned the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team to be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom). According to an article in Army Times, the soldiers could be called upon for a variety of tasks, including quelling "civil unrest." They are apparently engaged in training with shields and batons, beanbag bullets, and Tasers.
Reported on Democracy Now! and American Freedom Campaign.

[MNinWI]

America is shifting away from Democracy, thanks to the Cheney, Rove, Bush cabal. I have never been a conspiracy theory fan but the facts are the facts and when you put together all the things they have done to take away our freedoms, it adds up to something very dark. Unfortunately the majority of Americans are not paying attention and so do not see it and I am afraid that when they do, it will be too late. Bush has had the temerity to actually say on camera in a public forum that he wanted to be the dictator, being so confident that it would happen. Many of his remarks, which at the time seem just lazy or plain disgusting now make sense. Read some alternative news because our main news sources will not talk about the truth of things.