WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR THREE

	Published
OVERVIEW
OBOF & TYMHM PART 14	Dec 18, 2012
OBOF & TYMHM PART 15	Jan. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16	Jan. 08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16 EXTRA	Jan. 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 17	Jan. 15, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 18	Jan. 22, 2013
Gbtre OBOF & TYMHM PART 19	Jan. 29, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 20	Feb. 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 21	Feb. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 22	Feb. 20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23	Feb. 27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23 0SPECIAL	Mar. 06, 2013
saOBOF & TYMHM PART 24	`
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25	Mar. 12, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25-EXTRA	Mar. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 26	Mar. 19, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 27	Mar. 26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 28	Apr. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 29	Apr. 08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 30	Apr. 17, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 31	Apr. 23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 32	Apr. 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 33	May 07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 34	May 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 35	May 21, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 36	May 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 37	June 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 38	June 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 39	June 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 40	June 25, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 41	July 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 42	July 09, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 43	July 16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 44	July 23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 45	July 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 46	Aug. 06, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 47	Aug. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 48	Aug. 20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 49	Aug. 27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 50	Sept. 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 51	Sept. 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 52	Sept. 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 53	Sept. 26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 54	Oct. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 55	Oct. 09. 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 56	Oct. 16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 57	Oct. 23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 58	Oct. 31, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 59	Nov. 07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 60	Nov. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 61	Nov. 20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 62	Nov. 27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 62 EXTRA	Dec. 01, 2013

In this issue

1. Misc. by Floyd.

2. What you need to know about Fukushima.

3. The people can defeat TPP.

4. Interesting stats.

5. Update on Medicare for all.

MISC. COMMENTS

FLOYD

Well, as usual, I'm one day late again. However, the material in this posting really needs to have your attention. The first one boarders on the scary side for the future. The others are very informative loaded with facts.

FILIBUSTER.

You probably have heard that the Senate Democrats finally found their back bone cancelled out part of the FILIBUSTER. It only relates to Presidential Judge appointments except for the Supreme Court.

A point that is quite interesting regarding these kind of appointments, is that for all judge appointments by all Presidents prior to Obama there were only 86 that were blocked. Think about it, that's for all previous Presidents. However, the Senate has blocked 82 appointments by President Obama. You can't say that it is just because he is a Democrat. Racism is alive and well in the Republican part of the Senate. I am glad that the Democrats, finally, got at least this much done.

FARMERS & THE RETAIL FOOD DOLLAR.

In 1950 , farmers received 50%of the retail food dollar. Today, they get less than20%. This is why it's misleading to paint the entire food business, from field to fast food joint, with the same broad brush.

~~~

What You Need to Know About Fukushima

John Light and Karin Kamp

Bill Moyers / Op-Ed

Published: Saturday 16 November 2013

All eyes are on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as major cleanup efforts are set to begin later this month, in the most significant test of the operator’s ability to manage the threats resulting from one of the biggest nuclear disasters ever. For two years now, the plant’s operator and the Japanese government have struggled to contain an ongoing series of crises at the devastated facility. But the situation has the potential to get worse. Here’s what you need to know.

The Problems

The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant has come under severe criticism from nuclear energy experts for its handling of the cleanup at the crippled facility, decimated after the March 2011 tsunami.

Many say Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the Japanese utility company that operates the plant, has been grossly incompetent, deceptive and guilty of downplaying the health impacts resulting from the meltdown.

Naomi Hirose, president of Tepco, didn’t renew faith in the firm’s handling of the crisis when he first denied and later admitted that the radioactive water used to cool the plant’s nuclear cores had leaked into the ocean. Tepco had suspected the water might be leaking since mid-June 2013, but waited until July 22 to reveal the problem. The leaks continued throughout the summer — at one point, a tank leaked 300 tons of radioactive water. It was nearly a month until the leak was discovered on August 19.

‘‘From what we’ve seen, it’s more of what I’d call incompetence instead of any cover-up,” said Dale Klein, a former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission who Tepco hired as an adviser. The Associated Press and Japan Today reported this week that tanks containing radioactive water were leaking or otherwise failing because they were hurriedly erected by inexperienced workers — including one auto mechanic who expressed his concern about the quality of his own work.

Researchers are concerned about the effects of the radioactive water on sea life and those who eat it. Last year, scientists reported that Pacific bluefin tuna migrating from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima plant.

And then there are fears that Fukushima is extremely vulnerable to a second earthquake as the plant lies near 14 active fault lines. Last month, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki expressed his fears that further damage to the Fukushima facility could prove catastrophic. “Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there’s another earthquake of a seven or above, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.”

The Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo said earlier this year that there’s a 70 percent chance a 7.0-magnitude or higher quake will strike Tokyo, near Fukushima, by 2016. Should the fourth reactor collapse, Suzuki said, it would be “bye, bye Japan,” and “everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that isn’t terrifying, I don’t know what is.”

The Clean Up

Later this month, Tepco is expected to begin the delicate task of removing over 1,500 spent fuel rodsstored in a building heavily damaged by the March 2011 explosion. The rods are capable of producing radiation at levels 14,000 times greater than what was released when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It’s a highly dangerous operation that has never been attempted on such a scale before, and a key part of decommissioning the facility, which could cost $50 billion and take 40 years.

The fuel rod removal effort is expected to take 13 months to complete, but experts warn that putting the radioactive rods into safe storage won’t be easy. If any of the 15-foot, 660-pound rods break or are exposed to air, huge amounts of radioactive gasses could be released. Should there be another natural disaster like the earthquake Suzuki warned of, those rods could set off a catastrophic reaction that would be more dangerous than the meltdowns the plant has already experienced.

Tepco said they are sure the operation will go off without a hitch, though the company’s struggle to contain radioactive water, a power failure at the plant caused by a rat chewing through a cable and a second power failure accidentally caused by workers who were attempting to rat-proof the power cables, have some experts worried that the company’s not up to the task.

Former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander says Tepco may be playing down the dangers of the operation. “The thing that keeps me up late at night is that they’re getting ready to unload the spent fuel in unit four,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating US nuclear plants. “It has the potential if it doesn’t go well to create a very, very serious accident,” he told Bloomberg News.

The Politics

Both Tepco and the Japanese government have come under criticism for how they handled the disaster. “You have a government that is in total collusion with Tepco, the energy company. They’re lying through their teeth,” said Suzuki.

Of the attempts to stop the water from leaking, Suzuki said, “They don’t know what to do. And the thing we need is to get an international group of experts to go in with complete freedom to do what they suggest. And right now the Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.”

Fact checking Suzuki for Vice, David P. Ball contacted University of British Columbia physicist Marcello Pavan. Asked whether Tepco was indeed “lying through their teeth,” Pavan said, “That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. Tepco has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business — is that news?”

After this summer’s leaks, the Japanese government announced it would take a more direct role in the cleanup. Since the disaster, all 50 of Japan’s nuclear reactors have been shut down for inspection. Earlier this week, former Japanese Liberal Democratic Party Premier Junichiro Koizumi spoke out against plans to restart plants that had been declared safe. “I think we should go to zero now,” Koizumi said. “If we restart the reactors, all that will result is more nuclear waste.”

The People

The catastrophe at Fukushima — first caused by natural disaster, then exacerbated by human mistakes — has had a devastating effect on hundreds of thousands of Japanese and may also have negative implications for North Americans.

The Guardian recently reported that the 160,000 evacuees who lived in the area may never be able to go home. And the radioactive water leaking from the plant into the ocean has led the local fishing industry in the Fukushima region to completely shut down.

A study conducted by Australia’s University of New South Wales says radiactive waters will reach the US sometime in early 2014 — and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier this month that radioactive waters from Fukushima had already arrived to Alaska.

Meanwhile, many of the 50,000 workers employed by subcontractors in the cleanup effort are being exposed to dangerous radiation levels while facing low wages and wage theft, reports Reuters. For some, the cost of speaking up was getting fired.

ABOUT Karin Kamp

Karin Kamp is a multimedia journalist and producer. Before joining billmoyers.com she helped launch The Story Exchange, a site dedicated to women's entrepreneurship. She previously produced for NOW on PBS and WNYC public radio and worked as a reporter for Swiss Radio International. Karin graduated from Rutgers University with an advanced degree in business and received a master's in journalism from City University in London.

~~~

The People Can Defeat The

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

It's Our Economy /

Published: Saturday 16 November 2013

Momentum is growing in the campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yesterday, the TPP was dealt two blows. Each could be lethal but the TPP, and its Atlantic counterpart, called TAFTA, are not dead yet. It is time for the movement of movements that formed to oppose the TPP to stand in solidarity, defeat these agreements and end the era of rigged corporate trade.

Yesterday’s first blow came from Wikileaks, showing once again that when government works in secret with big corporations, exposure by whistle blowers is critical to changing the corrupt direction of government and the economy. Wikileaks published the full text of the intellectual property chapter; the leaked document included the positions of all the parties. It will take time for all the corporate rigging in this lengthy document to be understood, but already it is evident that Internet freedom will be curtailed, access to healthcare will become more expensive and access to information will be undermined.

This is not the first leak of TPP text. Previous leaks are consistent with the Wikileaks leak – enhanced corporate power that puts profits before the needs of the people and the protection of the planet. The Wikileaks release shows that the United States is by far the most aggressive advocate for trans-national corporate interests, often isolated in pushing for harmful policies.

The second blow came from members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In recent days, several letters were sent to President Obama opposing Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority. Fast Track undermines Congress’ responsibility under the Commerce Clause to regulate trade between nations by allowing the president to sign the agreement before Congress even sees it. The letters made public on November 13th demonstrate broad bi-partisan opposition to Fast Track with 179 Members signing at least one of the three letters.

A letter spearheaded by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) garnered the support of three-quarters of House Democrats with 151 Members telling President Obama they oppose Fast Track, writing:

“we will oppose ‘Fast Track’ Trade Promotion Authority or any other mechanism delegating Congress’ constitutional authority over trade policy that continues to exclude us from having a meaningful role in the formative stages of trade agreements and throughout negotiating and approval processes.”

Important leaders of the Democratic Party signed the letter including 18 out of 21 Ranking Members who would chair committees if the Democrats were in the majority. This means that to pursue Fast Track authority, President Obama will need to challenge three-quarters of his own party.

But, that is not all. In another letter, organized by Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and signed by 12 of the 16 Democratic Party members of the Ways and Means Committee, which is primarily responsible for Fast Track legislation, members expressed opposition to Fast Track unless it was radically different from previous grants of authority. The letter says it “cannot just be an extension of earlier trade promotion authorities. Any new proposed TPA must . . . ensure Congress plays a more meaningful role in the negotiating process.”

And, the opposition is bi-partisan. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) drafted a letter signed by 23 Republicans. The Republican letter emphasized that Congress has the “exclusive authority to set the terms of trade.” Further, “The Founders established this clear check and balance to prevent the president from unilaterally negotiating with foreign nations and imposing trade policies that Congress would deem to be against the national interest.” They write that they refuse to “cede our constitutional authority to the executive” through

Fast Track.

These are just the latest problems in the quest for Fast Track, indeed a bill has yet to be introduced. The previous US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, said in 2012 “We’ve got to have it.” He wanted the authority by the end of 2012. In April, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) promised Obama Fast Track by June of 2013. The broad bi-partisan opposition announced this week shows that winning Fast Track has very little support in Congress. In fact, the letters may be the death knell for such legislation.

The Wikileaks documents show there is a lot of division among the negotiating nations with important disagreements on key aspects of the text. Without Fast Track to guarantee passage of the TPP, these nations will be even less likely to agree to demands by the U.S. Further, Asian countries are negotiating their own competing agreement, which does not include the United States but, unlike the TPP, does include China.

Latin American countries are also speaking out against the TPP. Earlier this year, Rodrigo Contreras, Chile's lead TPP negotiator quit to warn people of the dangers of the TPP - highlighting how big financial institutions will dominate their governments and how the TPP “will become a threat for our countries: It will restrict our development options in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, and in the design of public policies and the transformation of our economies. It will also generate pressures from increasingly active social movements, who are not willing to grant a pass to governments that accept an outcome of the TPP negotiations that limits possibilities to increase the prosperity and well-being of our countries.” And, recently the Parliament of Peru passed a resolution “requesting that the government open a 'public, political, and technical debate' on the binding rules being negotiated in the TPP.”

In the United States, cities and counties are beginning to pass TPP Free Zones, saying they will not obey the TPP if it becomes law. These local governments are concerned with provisions that would not allow them to give preference to buying local, buying U.S. made goods or other provisions that undermine their sovereignty.

In addition to opposition in the U.S. government and foreign governments, a mass citizen uprising is developing against the TPP. There have been large protests in many of the countries involved in the negotiations as well as in the United States. The night before the Wikileaks documents were released, 13 cities did visibility protests opposing the TPP in light shows. In September we joined with activists in Washington, DC in a series of protests, including covering the office building of the US Trade Representative in banners to expose their secret trade agreement. Protests are scheduled for Salt Lake City, UT on November 19th where lead negotiators from 12 countries will hold meetings. A global day of protest is planned for December 3 against not only the TPP but also the WTO and all toxic trade agreements.

The TPP is running into resistance in Congress, local governments and among Pacific nations in Asia and Latin America; and by people who oppose the agreement all over the world. This is part of a growing movement of movements – all of the movements impacted by corporate trade, e.g. labor, environmental, Internet freedom, healthcare, food sovereignty, immigrant’s rights, banking regulation – are joining together to defeat it.

The people are winning. Fourteen trade agreements have been stopped in the last 14 years and as Tom Donohue of the US Chamber of Commerce wrote this week “the WTO has not concluded a single new multilateral trade agreement since it was created in 1995.” Mass protest against rigged corporate trade agreements can end the experiment in trade that puts profits ahead of the people and planet.

We are on the verge of defeating Fast Track. It is important that we keep the pressure on Congress. Neither the TPP nor TAFTA will become law if people learn what is in them and Congress fulfills its constitutional responsibility to review their impact. Denying the President Fast Track is the essential step to defeat both of these agreements.

Once we defeat Fast Track and prevent TPP and TAFTA from becoming law, we need to remain in solidarity and work to transform trade so it becomes “fair” trade that puts the necessities of the people and the protection of the planet first. The people will have firmly established that they will not tolerate rigged corporate trade deals. If corporations want to see trade between nations, they need a new approach – transparent, participatory and fair – with new goals of serving the people and planet.

To get involved in the campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership visit http://www.FlushTheTPP.org.

Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD are participants in "PopularResistance.org;" they co-direct "It’s Our Economy" and co-host "Clearing the FOG" shown on UStream TV and heard on radio. Their twitters are @KBZeese and MFlowers8.

~~~

REAL INTERESTING

STATS.

Friends of Senator Bernie Sanders.

Independent - - Vermont.

Dear Floyd,

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders asked a simple question: is wealth and income inequality the moral issue of our time?

Here is Bernie’s recent statement:

In America today, the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of our country’s financial wealth. The bottom 60 percent owns 2.3 percent. The increasing wealth inequality in the United States has become the great moral issue of our time.

In America today, one family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent, and the top 400 individuals have more wealth than the bottom half of our country -- over 150 million people.

In terms of income, the top 1 percent earns more than the bottom 50 percent, while the wealthiest 16,000 Americans, who make more than $10 million a year (the top 0.01 percent), saw their income increase by nearly a third between 2011 and 2012.

According to a recent study, from 2009 to 2012, 95 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, since 1999, median family income declined by more than $5,000 after adjusting for inflation.

Today, a record-breaking 46.5 million people live in poverty in the United States. At 21.8 percent, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. One out of four of our kids now live in a family that receives food stamps.

Poverty among seniors is growing. Over 9 percent of seniors lived in poverty in 2012, higher than in 2009. More American seniors were living in poverty last year than in 1972.

In recent years, while median family income has declined and poverty has increased, the number of millionaires and billionaires has grown at an extraordinary rate. In 1996, there were 121 billionaires in America. Today, there are 442.

Thank you for your continued support and for all that you do.

Ben

Ben Eisenberg
Friends of Bernie Sanders

~~~
PUBLIC CITIZEN UPDATA

ON MEDICARE FOR ALL

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2913

Floyd,

The problem with our nation’s health care system — the preoccupations of pundits and politicians nothwithstanding — is not a broken website.

This is the problem:

We spend more on health care per person, by far, than any other developed country.

Yet millions and millions of our citizens are left without insurance, leading to 45,000 preventable deaths every year.

And those who can afford the outrageous cost extracted by the private, for-profit insurance industry often receive inadequate care or are denied care altogether.

I’ll say that again:

A fellow American dies every 12 minutes because this country — practically alone among industrialized nations — still permits the for-profit health insurance industry to decide who can or cannot see a doctor and to commodify a fundamental human right.

Our citizens need — and morality demands — a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system.

Please make a donation today so that Public Citizen can keep fighting for a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system.

The current controversies over the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) will be resolved.

But this elemental truth will remain:

Helping people when they are sick or injured should not be an industry, like manufacturing lint rollers or windshields.

It is a disgrace that a country as strong as ours lags so far behind the rest of the world on such a basic need for its people.

Of all the systems that have been tried or proposed, only one will cover everyone and provide the world-class care we all deserve: single-payer Medicare-for-All.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a tough campaign.

But nobody has as much experience winning difficult battles as Public Citizen.

Here’s how we’re going to win this one:

1. We will derail attempts to cut Medicare.

We’ll explain to members of Congress the truth about Medicare’s cost-effectiveness — and aggressively demonstrate the overwhelming demand from the public to “Leave Medicare alone!”

2. We will show how single-payer systems work at the state level.

A recent Public Citizen report — A Road Map to “Single-Payer”: How States Can Escape the Clutches of the Private Health Insurance System — shows how states can implement single-payer within the framework of the Affordable Care Act to obtain universal coverage, administrative efficiency and cost control.

We distributed our report to state lawmakers throughout the country and are working with local activists in a number of states.

3. We will build support in Congress.

Individual states can take the lead, but our ultimate goal is a national Medicare-for-All system.

Public Citizen is working with allies in the House and Senate — respected leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative John Conyers (sponsor of H.R. 676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act) — to boost legislative momentum for single-payer reform.

I hope you will contribute whatever you can to help move this campaign forward.

Medicare-for-All will not only ensure every American’s basic right to health care, saving 45,000 lives every year.

It will also save our country $350 billion or more — annually.

That’s how much of the money we spend each year is lost to the health insurance industry’s bloated bureaucracy and obscene profits.

Think about it.

45,000 lives saved every year.

$350 billion saved every year.

Medicare-for-All is a no-brainer.

That’s why the majority of Americans, and a majority of doctors, already support Medicare-for-All.

But in Washington, D.C., it’s not a no-brainer — because the private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to preserve their hundreds of billions in profits.

So, when our politicians should be figuring out how to improve and expand Medicare, instead we see corporate puppets like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor trying to undermine the program’s existing commitment to seniors.

And they might succeed, if we don’t mobilize.

Can you chip in $5 or more right now to help Public Citizen defend Medicare and make it available to all Americans?

There is nothing the for-profit health insurance regime fears more than single-payer Medicare-for-All.

And they’re counting on two things to kill it: those hundreds of millions they spend on lobbying and campaign contributions; and their hope that even people like us who understand the benefits of Medicare-for-All will give up on it as “unrealistic.”

Well, Public Citizen knows something about fighting for, and winning, what’s right — even when progress seems improbable. It’s what we’ve been doing since we started up in 1971.

Single-payer Medicare-for-All is not going to happen tomorrow.

But it is going to happen.

Because it’s the only way our society can progress out of this dark chapter in our national story where we allow 120 of our fellow citizens to die every day so that the for-profit insurance industry can perpetuate its profiteering.

Help make it happen sooner rather than later. Contribute today.

Thank you.

~~~

If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't (doesn't) rise, I'll talk with you again next Tuesday or Wednesday December 3 or 4, 2013.

God Bless You All

God Bless the United States of America

Floyd

Opinions Based on Facts

Sunday, December 1, 2013

OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 62 EXTRA

Published: Saturday 16 November 2013

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