April 3, 2013

Government Waste: DHS Documents Reveal Widespread Surveillance of Occupy Movement

http://www.alternet.org/occupy-wall-street/government-waste-dhs-documents-reveal-widespread-surveillance-occupy-movement

Government Waste: DHS Documents Reveal Widespread Surveillance of Occupy Movement

The department tasked with preventing terrorism spent a lot of time and money monitoring peaceful activist demonstrations.

April 3, 2013 |

Federal documents reveal the Department of Homeland Security conducted daily monitoring of peaceful Occupy protests and encampments in 2011.

The memos, obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) through FOIA, show that the DHS routinely observed “Occupy-type” protests, including those deemed “peaceful” by federal agents. In 252 pages of department exchanges, agents overwhelmingly report “uneventful,” “peaceful” and “orderly” demonstrations.

The Federal Protective Service, a division of DHS tasked with protecting federal buildings, handled a good portion of the Occupy beat. DHS ordered FPS agents to write “Daily Intelligence Briefings” noting several types of events, including “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations.” One FPS memo on a protest sponsored by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, proposed “To recognize the African slaves used to build Wall Street,” raised no indications that it would “be violent or that protestors will attempt to damage federal property.”

An email exchange shows DHS quickly jumped to see whether its agents were involved in clashes between police and protesters at Occupy Oakland. “Youtube has a lot of videos of the incident last night. Some of those videos show the exterior of the federal buildings but none which I found showed any of our personal,” reads one report.

PCJF says at least one document reveals that DHS conducted “off the books” intelligence gathering on the movement. “This meeting should be finishing up soon and I'll have access to a non-DHS computer that will allow me to do more looking,” writes a DHS agent regarding the Occupy movement in New England.

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April 3, 2013

Obama Cutting Own Pay in Solidarity with Federal Workers

Source: Reuters

Obama cutting own pay in solidarity with federal workers

Wed Apr 3, 2013 4:16pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to give back 5 percent of his pay in a gesture of solidarity with government workers who must take unpaid leave as a result of deep spending cuts that went into effect last month.

The president's self-imposed pay cut would be effective from March 1, when the spending cuts began, and would last through the end of December, an administration official said on Wednesday.

Obama earns $400,000 a year. The official said the president decided on the 5-percent reduction, which would total $20,000, because it would be similar to the level of cuts to non-defense government agencies.

Defense and non-defense discretionary spending has shrunk across the board as a result of reductions under a process known as sequestration. To maintain critical functions, many agencies are making workers take unpaid leave, or furloughs.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE93213G20130403

April 3, 2013

MFR: Carnival Truimph Has Broken Loose; People May Be in Water

Source: ABCTV-15 (Local)

@BreakingNews: Carnival Triumph has broken loose from a dock in Mobile, Alabama; crew members reported in the water - @LOCAL15NEWS http://t.co/9XUdpNwmhT

CNN Breaking News - Man missing after winds blow guard shack into water, knock Carnival Triumph cruise ship away from dock in Mobile, Ala. Reply STOP 2 unsub

MFR: Carnival Truimph Has Broken Loose; People May be in Water

Published: 2:12 pm Share Updated: 2:14 pm

MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) Mobile Fire-Rescue has confirmed that the Carnival Triumph has broken loose and crew members may be in the water.

The ship was docked at BAE Shipyard after it lost power and floated in the Gulf for days.

Local 15 News has crews on the scene. We will bring you more information as soon as it becomes available.

Read more: http://www.local15tv.com/news/local/story/MFR-Carnival-Truimph-Has-Broken-Loose-People-May/xXzxMZtl2kKn3NH9kZUOGg.cspx

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@BreakingNews: Carnival Triumph is drifting across the river; ship has hole on the right side of the stern - @WKRG http://t.co/50nUoc6My2

April 3, 2013

Graphic Depicting Adam Lanza's Home Arsenal

http://www.upworthy.com/this-graphic-of-adam-lanzas-home-arsenal-is-devastating?c=upw1

This Graphic Of Adam Lanza's Home Arsenal Is Devastating

Victoria Fine

The Sandy Hook shooter had this shocking amount of weapons and bullets tucked away into the house he shared with his mother. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to have this much ammo.

The warrant released represents everything found in Adam Lanza's house that he shared with his mother as well as his car. However, the paperwork had a lot of errors. We tried to re-create the list of items seized to the best of our ability.

SEE LINK

April 1, 2013

Joan Walsh: Mr. President, You Won the Election, Not Them! (Chained CPI, Medicare Deductibles)

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/01/bad_ideas_that_just_won’t_die

MONDAY, APR 1, 2013 07:45 AM EDT

Mr. President, you won the election, not them!

Obama’s new budget will reportedly include GOP's beloved entitlement cuts. Why he's overlooking the real solution

BY JOAN WALSH

- snip -

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the budget will likely include the chained CPI for Social Security. “We and all of the groups engaged on this are starting to feel it may well be in the budget,” AARP vice president Nancy LeaMond told the WSJ. The same day the New York Times revealed that Obama and House Republicans are getting close to agreement on a package of Medicare cuts that would restructure Medicare parts A and B – one covers hospitalization, the other doctors’ visits — to raise deductibles for the 80 percent of seniors who see doctors but don’t require hospitalization in any given year. The Times reports that some version of the proposal might also find its way into the 2014 budget.

- snip -

OK, I’d rather not see Obama make that deal, because I think it’s bad policy. As a New York Times editorial argued Sunday, less than half of 55- to 64-year-olds have any retirement savings, and of those who’ve managed to save, half have less than $120,000. It’s also bad politics: Watch for Republicans to hang those cuts around the neck of Democrats for years to come. But in the context of a big deal that raises revenue, they’re at least debatable.

But putting them in a budget document with the president’s name on it, without getting anything in exchange? No one in the Senate wants his or her name on chained CPI: 10 days ago by voice vote they backed a measure by Sen. Bernie Sanders specifically opposing a switch to the chained CPI. No voice was raised on the other side.

The president’s political folks know that his futile crusade for compromise with Republicans at any cost hurt him politically. Jim Messina called the debt-ceiling debacle a “white knuckle moment” for the 2012 reelection campaign. So what would be different now (for Democrats, anyway; the president doesn’t have to face reelection)?

Obama is likely to defend such proposed cuts as necessary to afford investment in programs for young people, including a new and necessary push for preschool. As Paul Krugman explained so eloquently – and as I’ve argued here and here – deficit-cutting is now being defended as “for the children.”

- snip -

We are of course cheating our children, but it’s not with entitlement spending; it’s with 30 years of tax cutting and disinvestment in education. Today, we cheat them by ignoring the joblessness and poverty of their parents, while acting like education is a reliable ticket out of poverty, when for too many kids, it won’t be.

REST AT LINK[p]

April 1, 2013

Historian Robert Caro: Today's Conservative Media "Quite Horrible" And Venomous

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/01/historian-robert-caro-todays-conservative-media/193382

Historian Robert Caro: Today's Conservative Media "Quite Horrible" And Venomous

- snip -

Caro, who won Pulitzer Prizes for his third Johnson book, Master of the Senate, and his 1975 book about Robert Moses, has long used newspaper and media coverage in his research about U.S. political history.

Asked by Media Matters what he thought of today's conservative media coverage given his experience with historic news accounts, Caro said there had been strong conservative news coverage of past political figures, but stressed today's approach is worse.

"I think today is something (different), the venom, the absolute venom, whatever we think is really underneath it all, it is something quite horrible," he said, later adding, "Here in New York you live in a different world. I was just giving some lectures and you know when you get out in the rest of the country you realize the depth of the anti-Obama feeling."

Caro's comments follow years of conservative media figures smearing President Obama and his family with outlandish conspiracies, regular falsehoods, trumped-up pseudoscandals, and outright attacks.

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