byte&chew

An Ode to the King

I had a smile on my face when reading The Berlin Daily Sun today (10/28/11) after I saw the political photograph paid for by mayor Grenier. The reason I smile is that most people believe that the ad is all about getting residents to vote for The Grenier Sponsored Followers in the photo, but in reality this photo has much more significance than that. First, the real audience for the photo are the individuals in the photo rather than those of us reading the paper. Second, it’s a slap in the face of Councilor McCue for being an independent thinker and not always agreeing with his majesty. (Back to the first reason for the ad/photo) You have to keep in mind that the ego is a complex emotion and it loves being flattered by whatever means. Just being asked to pose for a public photo is flattering and in the company of the mayor and fellow counselors  for all of Berlin to see…..well, it feeds the ego which in turn will make it hard to say no to the “image maker”. Keep in mind that Paul Grenier is not a King Maker, he’s a Pawn Maker, for there shall be only one king and his name shall be “Paul”. You can say what you want about Mr. Grenier, but I happen to believe that he’s one of the most clever politician in Coos County. Now being clever doesn’t make him a nice guy or the best person for any position, it just recognizes the fact that he knows which buttons to push and what strings to pull to make things go his way. Somehow Paul Grenier instinctively knows what moves to make or what words to say that resonate with some people, it’s a combination of telling them what they want to hear and giving the appearance of being in control. As a politician he also manages his failures quite well, making them disappear as if those bad/false predictions, promises and events never took place. He has that broad smile that wins you over, a welcoming handshake and a good memory. On the flip side, he’s a pit bull, using whatever authority and influence he has, or believes he has, to overtly or covertly get his way or destroy those who don’t agree with him. Paul Grenier is a smart calculating individual who is relentless and ruthless. (To the second reason for the ad/photo) Notice that the photo in the newspaper does not include Councilor McCue. To most folks that can be explained by Mr. McCue’s lack of support for Laidlaw, but Mr. Grenier has a more serious and personal issue than Laidlaw to deal with in Mr. McCue. You see, Mr. Grenier is not only a control freak, he often plays pretty loose with facts and with matters of law, making “assertions of fact” is part of his “style”, after all, he is a professional car salesman. Mr. Grenier’s “style” is always under scrutiny by the presence of Mr. McCue (an attorney), who in his quiet way, keeps the King from telling too many tall tales. It’s my opinion that our mayor would breathe a sigh of relief if Mr. McCue would…..just go away. It’s unfortunate that Mr. McCue isn’t challenging Mr. Grenier for the position of Mayor; it would have been interesting to see how far Mr. Grenier was prepared to go in a “deal” with Laidlaw and Mr. Bartoszek and their history of illegal activity. It would have been interesting to know if Mr. Grenier knew about (If not why not) as to why he condoned the actions of Laidlaw and its managers when in Ellicottville NY, suing the town for $10M. It would also have been interesting to see Mr. McCue ask our mayor in a public debate about Mr. Grenier’s relationship with PSNH and how he got to be in their back pocket. It sure looks like the King dodged the bullet of full disclosure, but hopefully the voters will recognize the positive contributions Mr. McCue has made to the City by his service as a Counselor and as a volunteer on many Boards and Committees. I hope the citizens of Berlin re-elect Councilor McCue so that Mr. Grenier’s ego will continue to be kept in check, forcing him in that uncomfortable and unfamiliar position of not being able to control or influence everybody and all aspects of his public life.

Agree?

 

      Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a
      minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of
      those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States
      of  America  will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

      *Congressional Reform Act of 2011*

      1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in
      office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

      2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
      All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social
      Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social
      Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
      It may not be used for any other purpose.

      3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all 
      Americans do.

      4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional
      pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

      5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in
      the same health care system as the American people.

      6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the 
      American people.

      7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective
      1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with
      Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.
      Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers
      envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s),
      then go home and back to work.

      If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only
      take three days for most people (in the  U.S. ) to receive the message.
      Maybe it is time.

      THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it
      on.

Another Tomgram worth reading

Although I realize that this is the third article in a row by Tom, I found the information so important that I just had to share it with the byte&chew audience.  Rocky

October 25, 2011
Tomgram: Glenn Greenwald, How the Rich Subverted the Legal System

What if, last Friday, President Obama had stepped to the podium at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and begun his remarks this way: “Good afternoon, everybody.  As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end -- for the sake of our national security and to strengthen American leadership around the world.  After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011.  Today, I’m here to tell you that I’m breaking that pledge.  It will not happen.  Instead, I’m leaving 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in that country indefinitely.”

Of course, the president made no such claim (nor, if things had turned out differently in Iraq, would he have done so).  Nonetheless, according to news reports, such an outcome -- thousands of American troops in Iraq, possibly for years -- was the administration’s first choice, while military commanders were evidently eager to leave tens of thousands of troops behind.  It was the outcome that Washington had been negotiating for and lobbying Iraqi politicians about all year.  Because the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to give U.S. troops legal immunity, full withdrawal (with the possibility of reinsertion later) became the administration's default position, and President Obama was left to take unreserved credit for fulfilling an election campaign pledge to bring all U.S. troops home by the end of 2011, the outcome he hadn’t wanted.  (“Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year...”)  Keep this in mind as well: given the State Department’s militarization there -- it plans to run a mercenary “army” of perhaps 5,000 hired guns from its monster Baghdad embassy in 2012 -- and a recent, little-noted statement by Iraqi cleric and American opponent Muqtada al-Sadr, the American war will not necessarily end next year either.

Mainstream papers reported all this, including the preferred plans for staying in Iraq, even while hailing the president’s decision to leave and keep his pledge, with no hint of the striking hypocrisy involved.  (The New York Times front-page headline read: “Last U.S. Soldiers to Exit From Iraq in 2011, Obama Says, Fulfilling Vow to End Eight-Year War -- Dispute With Baghdad Is Cited.”)  Whether anyone outside the mainstream media is impressed with this sort of presidential maneuver anymore is an open question. Certainly, Glenn Greenwald wasn’t and that shouldn't surprise anyone.  With his scathingly on-target regular columns at Salon.com, it would be no exaggeration to say that Greenwald has had a hand in making many of us immune to American political and financial hypocrisy of every sort.

Now, he’s written a new book, just out today, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, that -- again, who could be surprised? -- is surely the book for the Occupy Wall Street moment in this country.  Riveting to read, it’s a must for understanding how immunity and impunity became, economically and legally, a way of life for the Washington and Wall Street elite. Tom

By Tom Dispatch

Is the National Security Complex Too Big to Fail?
TARPing War
By Tom Engelhardt

Think of Iraq as the AIG of wars -- the only difference being that the bailout there didn’t involve just three payouts.  More than eight years after the Bush administration invaded that country, the bailout is, unbelievably enough, still going.  Even as the U.S. military withdraws, the State Department is planning to spend billions more in taxpayer dollars to field an army of hired-gun contractors to replace it.  Afghanistan?  It could have been the Lehman Brothers of conflicts, but when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office he chose the Citigroup model instead, and surged troops in twice in 2009.  In other words, he double- TARPed that war, and ever since, the bailout money has been flooding in.

Until now -- as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations make clear -- “too big to fail” has meant only one set of institutions: the plundering financial outfits that played such a role in driving the U.S. economy off a cliff in 2008, looked like they might themselves collapse in a heap of bad deals and indebtedness, and were bailed out by Washington.  Isn’t it finally time to expand the too-big-to-fail category to include the Pentagon, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and more generally the National Security Complex?

There is, of course, one major difference between those bailed-out financial institutions and the Complex: however powerful the banks may be, however much money financial outfits and Wall Street sink into K-Street lobbyists and the election campaigns of politicians, however much influence the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may wield, when too-big-to-fail financial institutions totter, they have to come to the federal government hat (and future bonuses) in hand.

For the Pentagon and the National Security Complex, it’s quite another matter.  These days it’s only a slight exaggeration to claim that they are Washington and that their very size, influence, and power protects them from the consequences of failure.

In the last decade, as “the troops” became sacrosanct, the secular equivalent of religious icons, they also helped ensure that no Congress could afford not to pour money into the Pentagon.  (Pay no attention to the much-touted $450 billion that institution is expected to trim over the next ten years.  That sum will largely come from “cuts” in future projected growth and anything more will be strongly resisted.)  In that same decade -- thanks largely to two hijacked planes that damaged New York beyond al-Qaeda’s wildest dreams -- “American safety” (narrowly defined as “from terrorists”) became the mantra of the moment.  Soon enough, it was the explanation of choice for any expenditure: the latest drones, surveillance equipment, high-tech motion sensors, or peeping-Tom technology at airports.

“The troops” translated into a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Pentagon, and it worked like a charm.  In the three years since the economy melted down, when so much that mattered to most Americans was being cut back or deep-sixed, that budget was still merrily expanding.  In the meantime, there were those constant infusions of fear for “American safety,” helped along by terror plots generally too inept to do the slightest damage.  All this ensured that an already massive crew of intelligence outfits would morph into a labyrinthine bureaucracy of stupefying proportions. 

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

From: TomDispatch.com

Last weekend, in Washington Square Park in downtown Manhattan at a giant mill-in, teach-in, whatever-in-extension of Occupy Wall Street’s camp-out in Zuccotti Park, there was a moment to remember.  Under what can only be called a summer sun, a contingent from the Egyptian Association for Change, USA, came marching in, their “Support Occupy Wall Street” banners held high (in Arabic and English), chanting about Cairo’s Tahrir Square (where some of them had previously camped out).  The energy level of the crowd rose to buzz-level and cheers broke out.

And little wonder.  After all, it was a moment for the history books.  An American protest movement had taken its most essential strategic act directly from an Egyptian movement for democracy: camp out and don’t go home.  It had then added (as one of the Egyptians pointed out to me) a key tactic of that movement, the widespread and brilliant use of social media to jumpstart events.  And keep in mind that some of the Egyptian organizers at Tahrir Square had been trained in social networking by organizations like the International Republican Institute and the Democratic National Institute (created and indirectly funded by the U.S. Congress).  Now, the American version of the same is being re-exported to the world.  Try to unravel that one if you will -- and while you’re at it, toss out the great myth of American non-protest of these last years: that going online, Facebooking, and tweeting were pacifiers that suppressed in the young the possibility of actually heading into the streets and doing something.

By the way, the Egyptians weren’t the only ones there.  As reporter Andy Kroll points out , from the beginning there were Greeks, Spaniards, Japanese, and others involved in Occupy Wall Street, all representing a new era of global activism.  And better yet, the growing American movement isn’t denying these foreign influences; it’s hailing them, it’s cheered by them!

If that isn’t myth-busting, what is? Think of it as blowback as neither the CIA, nor even Chalmers Johnson, ever imagined it.  Or maybe it’s some kind of modern export-import-export business.  In any case, standing in Washington Square Park watching what could only be called the festivities (if you ignored a police lock-down in the vicinity more appropriate for Kabul, Afghanistan), it wasn’t hard to believe that the very idea of American exceptionalism was expiring right in front of our eyes.  It had, of course, already worn desperately thin, or all those Republican presidential candidates and our president wouldn’t be insisting on its reality every five seconds.  All I can say is that when the neoliberal globalizers of the 1990s first proclaimed the world to be one, this was surely not what they had in mind!

And yet, consider something else as well (and for those of you who don’t feel comfortable holding two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your head at one time, stop here): Foreign influences or no, Occupy Wall Street couldn’t be a more homegrown or traditionally American movement.  As our preeminent historian of Wall Street, TomDispatch regular Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, points out, the young occupiers of Zuccotti Park caught the zeitgeist of the moment by mainlining directly into the central vein of American oppositional movements for more than a century before the Great Depression ended.  No wonder their movement is spreading fast.  They may not have known their history, but they sensed it and so went right for that essential strand of American protest DNA: the “street of torments” at the bottom of Manhattan Island. Tom

With permission from: The National Memo

http://www.nationalmemo.com

Financial Crisis Pits Workers Against Republicans In Postal Showdown

Matt Taylor

Saving the Post Office from financial ruin might seem nearly as hopeless as running for president on the Green Party ticket -- but this time Ralph Nader, lifelong consumer advocate and perennial presidential candidate, has the numbers on his side.

While Congress considers closing post offices and drastic cutbacks in mail service because the United States Postal Service appears to be going bankrupt, Nader insists that the real cause of the agency's distress is fiscal discrimination embodied in a 2006 law requiring the USPS to "prepay" 75 years of health benefits for its workers by 2016. "People were never informed about these huge prepays," he told The National Memo. "No corporation is ever prepaid like that. No government agency ever prepays like that. The federal government owes the USPS $80 billion. And now we’re on the brink."

Misconceptions about the Postal Service abound, according to Nader, who notes that the agency been fiscally independent since the old Post Office was reorganized as the U.S. Postal Service more than 40 years ago -- and forced to rely solely on stamps and postage for revenues. "It hasn’t taken a dollar in tax money since 1970," notes Nader. "What private corporation can say that? What Wall Street corporation can say that? What oil company can say that?"

The Postal Service confronts an immediate shortfall of $5.5 billion, which must be contributed to its healthcare fund by September 30 -- money that Nader says the USPS would have readily available, were it not for those burdensome prepayment requirements.

What Nader does not mention is that the Postal Service has seen a decline in mail volume over the last two decades, owing mainly to email and other technologies that allow bills to be paid online and messages to be received digitally. And that decline seems likely to accelerate in years to come.

"I believe the postal service has passed a tipping point in terms of falling revenues," said R. Richard Geddes, associate professor of policy and management at Cornell University and an expert on postal issues. "That’s because of the increasing use of and comfort with electronic document delivery over the Internet. The Postal Service's mail volume has dropped almost 25 percent since its peak in 2006. That’s an enormous decline in mail volume we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. I believe we’re in a period of fundamental structural change, where its mail volume and revenues are going to continue to decline."

In fact, the 2006 law was meant to shore up financing by relieving the USPS of some pension liabilities while providing for a smaller annual contribution toward eventual retirees' health benefits. But the recession that quickly followed led to a massive drop in postal revenue.

So the Postal Service has structural problems -- a declining revenue stream as fewer use regular mail and especially first-class postage -- and competitors springing up left and right that face fewer restrictions on their ability to innovate as private corporations. But the immediate crisis is indeed a result of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act and its unprecedented financial requirements, which postal union leaders believe were designed to conceal massive federal deficits of the Bush years.

"The federal government has used the USPS as a means of hiding its deficit by implementing the 2006 law to prefund," said Sally Davidow, spokeswoman for the American Postal Workers Union. "The whole purpose is to make the federal deficit look smaller," she said, by transferring revenue into federal coffers from an independent agency.

By removing the burdensome prepayment requirement, Congress could lift the USPS out of its immediate fiscal hole, and prevent the regressive pain that might be inflicted as a consequence. Some Americans depend on the USPS far more than others, as Nader also points out. Ending Saturday delivery and closing regional offices, for instance,"hurts rural people, hurts the poor, hurts the elderly who aren’t Internet-connected," he said.

As the second largest civilian employer in the country, moreover, the Postal Service is "the main source of decent middle class wages with security for minorities," said Nader.

Yet to critics, the Postal Service appears to be an antiquated institution operating in a radically new media landscape -- and one that hasn't always changed with the times, for worse and in some ways for better. "The USPS has a universal service obligation, has to serve everybody. That’s part of the deal," said the APWU's Davidow. "They have to deliver to rural areas, poor areas where people don’t have other communication. UPS and FedEx aren’t required to go to sparsely populated areas."

The Obama administration reportedly will seek additional time beyond Sept. 30 for the USPS to make its $5.5 billion annual payment for future beneficiaries. But Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican Chairman of the Oversight Committee in the House, wants legislation to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements in order to remove worker protections and make way for some 200,000 layoffs and additional office closures -- which Postmaster General Patrick Donahue has said will be necessary for the USPS to remain viable.

"I firmly believe a big part of what’s going on here is that this is part of the assault on public workers," Davidow said, referring to collective bargaining restrictions legislated in several states since the Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm election. "And there are people who would like to privatize the Postal Service. The potential for profits is in certain specific areas where there’s a high population concentration and high volume."

To resist the proposed layoffs, postal workers rallied nationwide at regional Congressional offices on Tuesday. But this may only be the beginning of a long and bitter battle between Congressional Republicans and one of the largest forces of unionized workers in the United States.

Coming together

Now that the Burgess BioPower project is upon us, those of us who had a different vision for Berlin need to change focus and possibly, attitude. I’m not sure I’m prepared to believe every lofty prediction spoken by those who participated at the groundbreaking ceremony, but now that we have to live with this contraption, it’s up to us to derive as many benefits as possible from this project while minimizing the negative impacts that come with such a large facility. This plant will be quite different than the pulp mill and an important distinction will be that it will not produce the offensive odors of the pulp mill. On the negative side, there will be the noise that this type of boiler emits due to the tremendous amount of air/draft this boiler requires. Hopefully the owners of the plant will not cut corners in making the boiler enclosure as sound proof as possible and take aggressive steps in mitigating the “jet engine” type noises associated with fluidized bed boilers. A more subtle but deadly impact will be air quality. While we all enjoy the smell of wood smoke which reminds us of cozy campfires, wood smoke is as lethal as asbestos and tobacco smoke. The minute particles (Ultra Fine Particulates UFP) found within the smoke become lodged in the tissue of our lungs with the same cancerous results as with asbestos. I have no idea who will be monitoring the impacts from the Burgess Biopower plant, but the residents of Berlin need to be prepared to insist that air monitoring take place especially in the residential neighborhoods and by the Community Field playground. Because of its topography, Berlin is prone to air inversions which trap pollutants in ever increasing amounts, at times for 24 to 36 hours. Some may think that it’s too early to start the conversation about the health risks associated with the Burgess BioPower plant, but I would suggest otherwise and for several reasons. The operators of the plant need to incorporate some of the pollution monitoring and control systems during construction. Addressing these issues after the fact is usually more costly and less effective. Determining who will be responsible to monitor environmental issues needs to be established and it’s not good enough to say “the EPA or the State will monitor” the air quality. We need to know who will have jurisdiction, who will do the day to day monitoring and what methodology and technology will be used. It’s not too early to speak to your  City Councilor about the issue because more than likely they have no clue about the process or the points I’m making in this post. I would strongly suggest that a citizen environmental advisory group be formed as soon as possible in order to become familiar with the issues, what the remedies may be and the legal ramifications the City may be facing. The health of Berlin residents should be top priority for City officials; this is another challenge that our elected officials have as they have little or no past experience in such matters. Remember, the stock answer that “The State will take care of the issue” is bogus; the State will only enforce minimum standards at best.

And the winner is.............

Medals & Badges

As I read the front page story (With photo!) in The Berlin Daily Sun announcing that mayor Grenier will be running for a second term as mayor of Berlin, I was struck by the audacity of his contention that he makes about “delivering on his promise” to bring the Laidlaw biomass plant to downtown Berlin. (As if this was great for Berlin anyway)  Mayor Grenier did run on a promise to deliver Laidlaw but a funny thing happened on the way to the Burgess Mill site, Laidlaw/LLEG fell apart, but he lucked out, Cate Street Capital showed up and picked up the pieces. The “promised” outcome  Mr. Grenier’s is touting was not a result of his influence, talent or vision, but by the acquisition of the Laidlaw project by Cate Street Capital who I’m quite sure, was urged-on by PSNH to pick up the troubled project. On several occasions I’ve posted that mayor Grenier has an impressive record of hitching his political ambitions to dubious projects and their clever and slippery promoters. Mayor Grenier (Self proclaimed fiscal watchdog on the Council) would like for all of us to forget about the “Granite King” who a few years ago, was going to quarry our ledges and create “jobs” for Berlin. That particular project cost Berlin taxpayers several thousand dollars for a variety of expenses including the housing and feeding (For some time at the T&C) of the promoter of that scam. Two years ago Mr. Grenier hitched his political ambitions to Michael Bartoszek and the Laidlaw Energy project. He spoke in glowing terms about his new found friend and associate. (His buddy “Mike”) Laidlaw was his ticket to becoming mayor of Berlin (It worked) and he dismissed all advice and warnings that didn’t parallel his views of Michael Bartoszek and Laidlaw. To this day Mr. Grenier believes in the “Laidlaw illusion” and, beware to those who may have a different view, as Councilor Tom McCue just found out during Mr. Grenier’s reelection announcement. Of course this announcement was a collaboration, written and edited by his media promoter Barbara Tetreault of The Berlin Daily Sun. While all this political hoopla (bs) by Mr. Grenier is going on in Berlin, the shareholders of Laidlaw/LLEG stock are counting their lo$ses and wishing the authorities would put Mr. Bartoszek CEO of Laidlaw behind bars, calling him a fraud and a scam artist. The taxpayers of Berlin are lucky to have dodged the Laidlaw bullet. (Thanks to Mayor Bertrand’s administration) We were luckier than the small town of Ellicottville NY which spent thousands of dollars fighting their Laidlaw project and then being sued by Laidlaw for $10M dollars. (A frivolous suit) Over the past four years I’ve written about some of the unsavory Wall Street characters associated with Mr. Bartoszek and his Laidlaw illusion. Also interesting are the following facts; Charlie Bass became a Director of Laidlaw and greased the political skids at the State level for PSNH and the Laidlaw project. Locally, Tony Urban a long time Republican operative and friend of Charlie Bass became a spokesperson for Laidlaw, Steve Griffin and Barry Kelley also became promoters of Laidlaw. Interesting that Mr. Grenier, Bass, Griffin, Urban and Kelley all ignored the warning signs which included Laidlaw’s history of defaulting on its business agreements and malicious suits and thus putting the City at risk. In my opinion, Laidlaw was and is “Toxic” and it didn’t take very long for the professionals at Cate Street Capital to purge the Berlin project of Laidlaw and Michael Bartoszek. I hate to think about the mess the City could be in today if Mr. Grenier would have been mayor at the time Laidlaw first came to Berlin. I’m sure Mr. Bartoszek would have been given the key to the City and office space in City Hall. Who knows, maybe the mayor could have convinced enough of his “yes people” on the Council to have the City go into partnership with Laidlaw in order to access money.  Mr. Grenier is always “ON” when it comes to politics, and he’s good at it. His pat on the heads of all the Councilors but for Tom McCue, is just that, “pats on the head”. Don’t forget, Mr. Grenier will come back to collect the benefits from that patronizing gesture if he’s reelected, just watch how the clones vote.  I believe that Mr. McCue, needs to wear Mr. Grenier’s wrath as a badge of honor, at least we’ll know that, one Councilman won’t be in the Mayor’s back pocket and will be thinking independently.