Whoosh a, whoosh a, whoosh a.
This is me, out on a limb with my trusty little saw, hacking away and
thinking out loud.
We Humans are born with a survival instinct. In our "enlightened"
culture, we are trained not to think about our own mortality, and to
believe that we are each the center of our universe. So on we go,
coasting along and acting as if we'll live forever. Then someone
shouts,
"Run, Run, as fast as you can. Don't get touched by the Ebola Man."
And we suddenly come face to face with our own mortality. And that
scares the pants right off us.
Like Chicken Little, we dash wildly about, screaming, "Do something!
The sky is falling in!"
Responding to our survival instinct, our first thought is to isolate
the threat, and let it burn itself out. Next, we demand that anyone
foolish enough to have been involved with this dangerous threat, be
quarantined. We must do everything to assure that we survive.
And yet, in other cultures there are thoughts of compassion. To these
misguided Souls, attacking the Threat head on and providing care and
treatment will lead to survival for all of us.
Then we discover that this alien, socialistic thinking exists among
some of our own people. Even among some of our so-called leaders.
Some of us begin to listen and learn just how this Threat is spread,
and how it is not spread. And we begin to breathe more calmly.
But stop and think for just a moment about how we first reacted to the
frightening news of an Ebola outbreak way off in Africa. At first it
was none of our concern. A few Africans dying? That was their
problem. But as the threat grew and appeared to be so deadly that a
majority of victims died, that struck home, right in the Survival
Spot. What if our next action had been to declare this Ebola Bug to
be an act of Terrorism? We could include this evil little Devil under
our War on Terror, and begin bombing the Hell out of it.
"Kill it wheere it started", we would shout. And bomb it we would.
"No boots on the ground", our fearless Prince of Peace would declare.
"We'll not risk bringing the Bug home".
And anyone who had even set foot in that Evil Land would be placed in
isolation...for the good of the People.
Do we honestly believe this approach would solve the problem and end
the Threat to our People? If you say, "Yes", then you are putting
your trust in the hands of the Weapons Czars, betting on them over an
invisible bug.
And yet, these ever growing fat cat killers, despite building bigger,
better and more expensive bombs, have not been able to stop larger
objects, like Human Beings.
Could it be that our whole approach to "protecting our People" through
killing, is actually threatening our own survival? Have we learned
nothing from thousands of years of trying to solve problems through
violence? Isn't it time we began to sit together and talk about new
ways of solving our differences?
Carl Jarvis
On 10/29/14, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> I guess we should also include the Black Plague of the 1300 's.
> On 10/29/2014 9:30 AM, Alice Dampman Humel wrote:
>> The world of 1918 differs from the world of 2014 in more ways than any
>> one of us can name. Of course, the fear and hate mongering, the
>> bigotry of some toward anyone perceived as "other," and such things
>> remain, tragically the same.
>> On Oct 29, 2014, at 12:37 AM, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net
>> <mailto:ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm familiar with the 1918 flu epidemic and I found it
>>> fascinating to read about and yes while some of the disconnect is
>>> because it hasn't been happening here which is normal I stillthink
>>> that if the Ebola epidemic happened here or in a more western "white"
>>> country there would have been more involvement. The 1918 flu epidemic
>>> decimated many of the immigrant neighborhoods in large cities.
>>> Chuck
>>> *From:* R. E. Driscoll Sr <mailto:llocsirdsr@att.net>
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 28, 2014 6:52 AM
>>> *To:* blind-democracy@octothorp.org
>>> <mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
>>> *Subject:* Re: Breaking News: Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy
>>> for Ebola Quarantines
>>> Chuck:
>>> May I suggest that you investigate the Flu Epidemic which broke out
>>> in this country in 1918 and continued for approximately two years. I
>>> believe the 'disconnect' implied is because it is not happening here
>>> and has nothing to do with racial skin color.
>>> R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
>>> On 10/28/2014 6:25 AM, Charles Krugman wrote:
>>>> I have to wonder what the public reaction if the equivalent of the
>>>> Ebola outbreak would have occurred in a western predominantly White
>>>> region of countries or states. I wonder if there is a disconnect
>>>> because this is happening in African predominantly non-White countries.
>>>> Chuck
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message----- From: ted chittenden
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 7:41 AM
>>>> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
>>>> Subject: RE: Breaking News: Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for
>>>> Ebola Quarantines
>>>>
>>>> Yes. It is fear that is ruling these decisions, specifically the
>>>> fear of death. U.S. citizens, particularly our business leaders,
>>>> believe we are exceptional and can escape death if only we live
>>>> proper lives and stay away from sick people. And staying away from
>>>> sick people means not us not going anywhere; rather it means that
>>>> they, the sick, will be quarantined and harassed. And, as is the
>>>> case with the nurse, even if you are not sick, if you have come from
>>>> a country of sick people, you will be treated as a pariah.
>>>> --
>>>> Ted Chittenden
>>>>
>>>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>>> ---- Miriam Vieni mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net wrote:
>>>> I immediately remembered all that Aids hysteria. There was a whole
>>>> debate
>>>> here about whether a child who tested positive for Aids should be
>>>> allowed
>>>> into our schools. I had a friend who was the mother of four children
>>>> and
>>>> also, a nurse. She was reasonable about most things, but she was
>>>> adamant
>>>> that such children should be kept out of the schools. If I tried to
>>>> point
>>>> out to her the ways in which Aids could be passed from person to
>>>> person and
>>>> that the chances of her children contracting the disease in school were
>>>> close to non existent, she would respond that if the child who tested
>>>> positive, fell in the playground and bled, somehow, her child was in
>>>> danger.
>>>>
>>>> Miriam
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>>
>>>> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
>>>> Behalf Of Charles Krugman
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 1:24 AM
>>>> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
>>>> Subject: Re: Breaking News: Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for
>>>> Ebola
>>>> Quarantines
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> he needed to loosen restrictions. The hysteria on the part of some
>>>> leaders
>>>> and politicians brings back memories of what was experienced by the
>>>> LGBT
>>>> community in the eighties when AIDS first came on the scene.
>>>> Interestingly
>>>> here in California Carl Demayo a gay Republican candidate for
>>>> Congress in
>>>> northern San Diego county jumped on the Ebola hysteria bandwagon. He
>>>> has not
>>>> been getting much support from the large LGBT community in San Diego
>>>> and
>>>> there have been numerous irregularities in how he has campaigned..
>>>> Chuck
>>>>
>>>> From: Miriam Vieni mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net
>>>> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:21 PM
>>>> To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
>>>> mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org
>>>>
>>>> Subject: FW: Breaking News: Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for
>>>> Ebola
>>>> Quarantines
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>>
>>>> From: NYTimes.com <http://NYTimes.com> News Alert
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>>>> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 8:33 PM
>>>> To: miriamvieni@optonline.net
>>>> Subject: Breaking News: Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for Ebola
>>>> Quarantines
>>>>
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>>>> BREAKING NEWS Sunday, October 26, 2014 8:32 PM EDT
>>>> Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for Ebola Quarantines
>>>> <http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYt
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> jiMYLnf4Lb9aHObYUkY1OyVNbeTh6vb3Q6werWOXF/rzkk014o8sBXeAjlK2G/ft8gXI4cq5eCxq
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>>>>
>>>> 6959ed0c8c932767509c6d57®i_id=26485907>
>>>> Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday night outlined New York State's
>>>> mandatory
>>>> quarantine policy for health care workers returning from West African
>>>> nations with Ebola outbreaks, bringing the state closer into line with
>>>> federal protocols and marking a significant break with the way the
>>>> policy
>>>> has been carried out in New Jersey.
>>>> The announcement comes after the Obama administration pressed New
>>>> York to
>>>> rescind its order, issued only two days ago in a joint press
>>>> conference with
>>>> New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie. New Jersey officials, who
>>>> stood by
>>>> their decision on Sunday, have yet to explain many details of their
>>>> quarantine policy. The state has come under scathing criticism for the
>>>> treatment of a nurse returning from Sierra Leone, who was forced into
>>>> quarantine in a hastily erected tent at a New Jersey hospital even
>>>> though
>>>> she had not displayed any signs of illness and tested negative for
>>>> Ebola.
>>>>
>>>> Earlier in the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the treatment of the
>>>> nurse, Kaci Hickox, had been shameful and vowed that New York City
>>>> would do
>>>> all it could to honor the work of the health care workers here and
>>>> those who
>>>> go to help fight the epidemic in West Africa.
>>>>
>>>> READ MORE >
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/nyregion/ebola-quarantine.html?emc=edit_na
>>>>
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Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Re: Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
Securing a new low income apartment for Cathy's mom was as painful an
experience as we've had in some years. We talked her into leaving her
long time apartment in Renton, the town she had lived in for over 86
years, and move into our home until we found a new apartment closer to
our home. Bedbugs had infested her building, and the management was
doing a very inadequate job of controlling them. Twice they sprayed
her apartment, and twice the bedbugs returned. They were simply
chasing them from one apartment to the next...and back again. Once we
had Dorothy settled in with us, we began the difficult task of
locating apartments that accepted Section 8 vouchers. We quickly
discovered that such housing is as scarce as those proverbial hen's
teeth. And what was available did not qualify as "living quarters" in
any stretch of the imagination. We visited places that were so dirty
that I was certain they had been housing chickens prior to being
advertised as "apartments". Old buildings with rotting steps and
garbage strewn around the trampled yard. Larger apartment buildings
in the rundown part of town, with halls that smelled of old cabbage
and urine. Fire traps housing elderly poor folks and drug addicts.
Of course we were informed that the drug addicts were all clean an in
rehab programs. But I have not lost my ability to identify a user
from someone working a program.
So we finally found an apartment in Silverdale. Silverdale is about
forty minutes drive from our home, which is far better than the 2.5
hours from here to Renton. In earlier posts I've described this very
lovely apartment complex. There should be many more buildings of this
quality for elderly poor people. But instead, much of the low income
housing is being torn down and replaced by "mixed housing" complexes.
A few low income units along with some mostly priced rentals as well
as some upscale housing. I think the concept of mixing the levels of
incomes, rather than isolating the poorer folks to housing projects,
is a good one. But if communities don't at least replace the number
of low income units being removed, then people will be moving into
packing crates. Our older population is growing each year. The
number of older people falling below the poverty line is growing.
Organizations such as the ACB and the NFB need to keep the pressure on
Congress to increase support for low income housing, rather than
cutting funding. I sincerely hope no one on this list is waiting for
our Noble Leader, President Obama to take up our cause.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Carl,
>
> I thought about your mother-in-law when I read that article. I was
> wondering
> if it is in that particular federal program and I thought what a miracle it
> was that you were able to help her get it.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
> Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 1:14 PM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>
> After four months of battling with indifferent housing authorities in
> Renton
> and to some degree, in Bremerton, we finally kissed my mother-in-law good
> bye last night, and left her in her new apartment, heading home to our
> empty
> house. The Vintage Apartments in Silverdale are far above the majority of
> low income housing that we toured. But even worse than the condition of
> some of these buildings, was the fact that they all have waiting lists.
> There is far too little decent housing for elderly people on low income.
> And from the article below, it looks as if this is another sacrifice
> Americans must make in order to enjoy a free land. That last line was
> sarcasm.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> On 10/27/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>
>> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>> ________________________________________
>> New America Media [1] / By Andre Shashaty [2]
>>
>> Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>>
>>
>> October 27, 2014 |
>> When construction started in mid-October on Heritage Park Senior
>> Village in Taylor, Michigan, it marked the end of 55 years of effort
>> by the federal government to make sure low-income elders can live out
>> their years in decent housing.
>>
>> The development getting underway 18 miles southwest of downtown
>> Detroit is one of the very last to be constructed under a federal
>> housing program that dates back to 1959.
>>
>> The Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program produced
>> 20,000 housing units per year at its peak in the 1970s. It provided
>> public housing agencies and nonprofit groups with grants that covered
>> the cost to build decent rental housing, as well as subsidies for
>> people who were too poor to pay market-rate rents for comparable housing.
>> Obama's Rush to Cut Funds
>>
>> But three years ago, at the height of the new congressional obsession
>> with budget cutting, the Obama Administration stopped requesting money
>> for new construction under the program. Funding continues at a reduced
>> level to renew existing rental subsidies on existing properties, as
>> well as for repairs and improvements to those properties.
>>
>> But federal support for new Sec. 202 construction has ended, with
>> little prospect it will ever be revived.
>>
>> It was not for lack of need, which is very great and growing
> substantially.
>> It was not because there was something wrong with the program. There
>> was not. In fact, federal officials and many of the nonprofits that
>> sponsored Sec. 202 projects have said it was the most successful
>> federal housing production program in history.
>>
>> "There were no issues with the program," said Alayna Waldrum, who
>> works on legislation for Leading Age, an association working on
>> housing and other issues affecting the elderly. "The primary reason
>> was the rush to cut as much funding as they possibly could," she added.
>>
>> If you thought elders were a powerful political force because they
>> vote, think again. Advocates say there was not a single member of
>> Congress prepared to stick his or her neck out to rally support for
>> new construction of Sec. 202 housing.
>>
>> Like other Sec. 202 projects before it, Heritage Park Senior Village
>> will serve households in which at least one member is age 62 or older.
>> Residents will pay no more than 30 percent of their adjusted income on
>> rent. The 77-unit building is being developed by Volunteers of
>> America, which operates
>> 149 Sec. 202 projects with 7,718 units.
>>
>> Sec. 202 housing is open to households that earn no more than 50
>> percent of their area's median income, and most of the tenants are
>> dependent on Social Security for most or all of their income.
>> The private market no longer produces any new housing affordable to
>> people at that income level, and much of the older housing stock that
>> was affordable has been demolished and replaced with upscale
>> developments.
>>
>> Secure Housing Transformed Lives
>>
>> The buildings the program has produced for over 50 years offer modest
>> apartments with basic architecture. But those properties have
>> transformed the lives of many older Americans.
>>
>> Tenants of Sec. 202 have a ready community of peers so they're rarely
>> lonely and disconnected, a common problem for elders living alone. The
>> tenants have well-maintained homes with security and social
>> activities. They receive help connecting with social and health
>> services. Most importantly, they have economic security. They no
>> longer have to worry that their savings will run out and they'll have
>> nowhere to live.
>>
>> No one disputes that cutting the program's funding is completely
>> contrary to common sense. In 2002, the congressional Commission on
>> Affordable Housing and Health Facility Needs for Seniors in the 21st
>> Century [3]called the shortfall of such housing a "quiet crisis." It
>> called for building 40,000 units per year to house the growing numbers
>> of low-income elders. But instead of ramping up, Congress tamped
>> down--all the way to nothing.
>>
>> "The bottom line is that, with the end of new construction under Sec.
>> 202, we are very close to the point where we will begin losing
>> affordable seniors housing faster than it is being developed," said
>> Thomas Slemmer, president and CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based National
>> Church Residences, one of the nation's largest nonprofit providers of
>> affordable seniors housing.
>>
>> Existing Sec. 202 buildings are getting old, considering that the
>> program began in 1959. So an increasing number of properties will be
>> lost to obsolescence each year.
>>
>> For every person who gets into a government-subsidized apartment,
>> there are 10 households waiting for one. Demand is highest in urban
>> areas. In places with large proportions of low-income elders,
>> often-ethnic seniors, it's off the charts.
>>
>> "It is very hard to tell seniors in desperate need of housing that the
>> wait in most cases is two to three years," said Steve Protulis,
>> executive director of the nonprofitElderly Housing Development and
>> Operations Corporation [4], based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
>>
>> Demand Will Skyrocket
>>
>> In the coming years, demand for affordable housing among low-income
>> elders will skyrocket, said Robin Keller, vice president of real
>> estate development for Volunteers of America. The number of older
>> Americans is quickly increasing, and their financial resources have
>> declined overall, she said.
>>
>> The 65-plus population in the United States will leap to 55 million by
>> 2020, up from 40 million in 2010. The number of those 85 and older
>> will increase even more sharply by then, almost tripling from 3
>> million to 8.75 million.
>>
>> Households headed by people 65 or more reported a median income in
>> 2010 of $45,763. But older women living alone had a median income of
>> only about $15,000. They are the primary users of Sec. 202 housing,
>> and their numbers are growing.
>>
>> Among Social Security beneficiaries, the average monthly benefit is
>> $1,269, or about $14,000 per year. In almost any U.S. metropolitan
>> area, those who rely heavily on Social Security cannot afford any
>> housing available on the private market.
>> In 2011, one in three renter households with a member over 65 paid
>> more than half of their income for rent and utilities, according to
>> the U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.
>>
>> Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
>>
>> Sec. 202 properties are designed as independent-living facilities
>> where residents can cook their own meals and take care of themselves.
>> But the properties also help people live active, socially rich lives,
>> which helps them stay healthier longer, reducing or postponing their
>> need for medical care.
>>
>> Every Sec. 202 property has a system in place for connecting residents
>> with outside services, such as health care, transportation, education
>> and social activities.
>>
>> The federal government is converting some of the rental apartments in
>> Sec.
>> 202 properties to much needed assisted living, where frail elders get
>> help with their essential daily activities. But funding for this sort
>> of transformation is very limited.
>> By 2020 an estimated 1.3 million low-income elders will require
>> assistance with such daily activities as eating or using a toilet, and
>> Sec. 202 properties are generally well suited to be adapted for this
>> care.
>>
>> "Sec. 202 housing is a bargain," said Slemmer. "Stable living
>> environments can lower health care costs on their own, but when you
>> factor in the work our managers do to link tenants with services, it
>> is an even greater savings."
>>
>> He and other Sec. 202 sponsors note that people living in their
>> properties do not need nursing care until very late in life compared
>> with people in other living situations.
>>
>> "If we keep people in affordable housing with social service
>> coordinators connecting them to low-cost or free services, it keeps
>> them out of nursing homes, where the daily cost is much higher," one
> project sponsor said.
>>
>> Without enough Sec. 202 units to meet the needs of a growing
>> population of low -income elders, more and more older adults will make
>> their way into nursing homes, whether they really need to or not, with
>> depressing personal results and the cost shifted to tax-supported
> Medicaid.
>> [5]
>>
>> See more stories tagged with:
>> affordable housing [6],
>> elderly housing [7],
>> retirement security crisis [8]
>> ________________________________________
>> Source URL:
>> http://www.alternet.org/economy/feds-kill-funds-most-successful-senior
>> -housi
>> ng-project
>> Links:
>> [1] http://www.newamericamedia.org
>> [2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/andre-shashaty
>> [3] http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/seniorscommission/
>> [4] http://www.ehdoc.org/
>> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project [6]
>> http://www.alternet.org/tags/affordable-housing
>> [7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/elderly-housing
>> [8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/retirement-security-crisis
>> [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>>
>> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>>
>> New America Media [1] / By Andre Shashaty [2]
>>
>> Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project October 27,
>> 2014 | When construction started in mid-October on Heritage Park
>> Senior Village in Taylor, Michigan, it marked the end of 55 years of
>> effort by the federal government to make sure low-income elders can
>> live out their years in decent housing.
>>
>> The development getting underway 18 miles southwest of downtown
>> Detroit is one of the very last to be constructed under a federal
>> housing program that dates back to 1959.
>>
>> The Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program produced
>> 20,000 housing units per year at its peak in the 1970s. It provided
>> public housing agencies and nonprofit groups with grants that covered
>> the cost to build decent rental housing, as well as subsidies for
>> people who were too poor to pay market-rate rents for comparable housing.
>> Obama's Rush to Cut Funds
>>
>> But three years ago, at the height of the new congressional obsession
>> with budget cutting, the Obama Administration stopped requesting money
>> for new construction under the program. Funding continues at a reduced
>> level to renew existing rental subsidies on existing properties, as
>> well as for repairs and improvements to those properties.
>>
>> But federal support for new Sec. 202 construction has ended, with
>> little prospect it will ever be revived.
>>
>> It was not for lack of need, which is very great and growing
> substantially.
>> It was not because there was something wrong with the program. There
>> was not. In fact, federal officials and many of the nonprofits that
>> sponsored Sec. 202 projects have said it was the most successful
>> federal housing production program in history.
>>
>> "There were no issues with the program," said Alayna Waldrum, who
>> works on legislation for Leading Age, an association working on
>> housing and other issues affecting the elderly. "The primary reason
>> was the rush to cut as much funding as they possibly could," she added.
>>
>> If you thought elders were a powerful political force because they
>> vote, think again. Advocates say there was not a single member of
>> Congress prepared to stick his or her neck out to rally support for
>> new construction of Sec. 202 housing.
>>
>> Like other Sec. 202 projects before it, Heritage Park Senior Village
>> will serve households in which at least one member is age 62 or older.
>> Residents will pay no more than 30 percent of their adjusted income on
>> rent. The 77-unit building is being developed by Volunteers of
>> America, which operates
>> 149 Sec. 202 projects with 7,718 units.
>>
>> Sec. 202 housing is open to households that earn no more than 50
>> percent of their area's median income, and most of the tenants are
>> dependent on Social Security for most or all of their income.
>> The private market no longer produces any new housing affordable to
>> people at that income level, and much of the older housing stock that
>> was affordable has been demolished and replaced with upscale
>> developments.
>>
>> Secure Housing Transformed Lives
>>
>> The buildings the program has produced for over 50 years offer modest
>> apartments with basic architecture. But those properties have
>> transformed the lives of many older Americans.
>>
>> Tenants of Sec. 202 have a ready community of peers so they're rarely
>> lonely and disconnected, a common problem for elders living alone. The
>> tenants have well-maintained homes with security and social
>> activities. They receive help connecting with social and health
>> services. Most importantly, they have economic security. They no
>> longer have to worry that their savings will run out and they'll have
>> nowhere to live.
>>
>> No one disputes that cutting the program's funding is completely
>> contrary to common sense. In 2002, the congressional Commission on
>> Affordable Housing and Health Facility Needs for Seniors in the 21st
>> Century [3]called the shortfall of such housing a "quiet crisis." It
>> called for building 40,000 units per year to house the growing numbers
>> of low-income elders. But instead of ramping up, Congress tamped
>> down--all the way to nothing.
>>
>> "The bottom line is that, with the end of new construction under Sec.
>> 202, we are very close to the point where we will begin losing
>> affordable seniors housing faster than it is being developed," said
>> Thomas Slemmer, president and CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based National
>> Church Residences, one of the nation's largest nonprofit providers of
>> affordable seniors housing.
>>
>> Existing Sec. 202 buildings are getting old, considering that the
>> program began in 1959. So an increasing number of properties will be
>> lost to obsolescence each year.
>>
>> For every person who gets into a government-subsidized apartment,
>> there are 10 households waiting for one. Demand is highest in urban
>> areas. In places with large proportions of low-income elders,
>> often-ethnic seniors, it's off the charts.
>>
>> "It is very hard to tell seniors in desperate need of housing that the
>> wait in most cases is two to three years," said Steve Protulis,
>> executive director of the nonprofitElderly Housing Development and
>> Operations Corporation [4], based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
>>
>> Demand Will Skyrocket
>>
>> In the coming years, demand for affordable housing among low-income
>> elders will skyrocket, said Robin Keller, vice president of real
>> estate development for Volunteers of America. The number of older
>> Americans is quickly increasing, and their financial resources have
>> declined overall, she said.
>>
>> The 65-plus population in the United States will leap to 55 million by
>> 2020, up from 40 million in 2010. The number of those 85 and older
>> will increase even more sharply by then, almost tripling from 3
>> million to 8.75 million.
>>
>> Households headed by people 65 or more reported a median income in
>> 2010 of $45,763. But older women living alone had a median income of
>> only about $15,000. They are the primary users of Sec. 202 housing,
>> and their numbers are growing.
>>
>> Among Social Security beneficiaries, the average monthly benefit is
>> $1,269, or about $14,000 per year. In almost any U.S. metropolitan
>> area, those who rely heavily on Social Security cannot afford any
>> housing available on the private market.
>> In 2011, one in three renter households with a member over 65 paid
>> more than half of their income for rent and utilities, according to
>> the U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.
>>
>> Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
>>
>> Sec. 202 properties are designed as independent-living facilities
>> where residents can cook their own meals and take care of themselves.
>> But the properties also help people live active, socially rich lives,
>> which helps them stay healthier longer, reducing or postponing their
>> need for medical care.
>>
>> Every Sec. 202 property has a system in place for connecting residents
>> with outside services, such as health care, transportation, education
>> and social activities.
>>
>> The federal government is converting some of the rental apartments in
>> Sec.
>> 202 properties to much needed assisted living, where frail elders get
>> help with their essential daily activities. But funding for this sort
>> of transformation is very limited.
>> By 2020 an estimated 1.3 million low-income elders will require
>> assistance with such daily activities as eating or using a toilet, and
>> Sec. 202 properties are generally well suited to be adapted for this
>> care.
>>
>> "Sec. 202 housing is a bargain," said Slemmer. "Stable living
>> environments can lower health care costs on their own, but when you
>> factor in the work our managers do to link tenants with services, it
>> is an even greater savings."
>>
>> He and other Sec. 202 sponsors note that people living in their
>> properties do not need nursing care until very late in life compared
>> with people in other living situations.
>>
>> "If we keep people in affordable housing with social service
>> coordinators connecting them to low-cost or free services, it keeps
>> them out of nursing homes, where the daily cost is much higher," one
> project sponsor said.
>>
>> Without enough Sec. 202 units to meet the needs of a growing
>> population of low -income elders, more and more older adults will make
>> their way into nursing homes, whether they really need to or not, with
>> depressing personal results and the cost shifted to tax-supported
> Medicaid.
>> mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>> mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project[5] See more stories tagged
>> with:
>> affordable housing [6],
>> elderly housing [7],
>> retirement security crisis [8]
>>
>> Source URL:
>> http://www.alternet.org/economy/feds-kill-funds-most-successful-senior
>> -housi
>> ng-project
>> Links:
>> [1] http://www.newamericamedia.org
>> [2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/andre-shashaty
>> [3] http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/seniorscommission/
>> [4] http://www.ehdoc.org/
>> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project [6]
>> http://www.alternet.org/tags/affordable-housing
>> [7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/elderly-housing
>> [8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/retirement-security-crisis
>> [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
experience as we've had in some years. We talked her into leaving her
long time apartment in Renton, the town she had lived in for over 86
years, and move into our home until we found a new apartment closer to
our home. Bedbugs had infested her building, and the management was
doing a very inadequate job of controlling them. Twice they sprayed
her apartment, and twice the bedbugs returned. They were simply
chasing them from one apartment to the next...and back again. Once we
had Dorothy settled in with us, we began the difficult task of
locating apartments that accepted Section 8 vouchers. We quickly
discovered that such housing is as scarce as those proverbial hen's
teeth. And what was available did not qualify as "living quarters" in
any stretch of the imagination. We visited places that were so dirty
that I was certain they had been housing chickens prior to being
advertised as "apartments". Old buildings with rotting steps and
garbage strewn around the trampled yard. Larger apartment buildings
in the rundown part of town, with halls that smelled of old cabbage
and urine. Fire traps housing elderly poor folks and drug addicts.
Of course we were informed that the drug addicts were all clean an in
rehab programs. But I have not lost my ability to identify a user
from someone working a program.
So we finally found an apartment in Silverdale. Silverdale is about
forty minutes drive from our home, which is far better than the 2.5
hours from here to Renton. In earlier posts I've described this very
lovely apartment complex. There should be many more buildings of this
quality for elderly poor people. But instead, much of the low income
housing is being torn down and replaced by "mixed housing" complexes.
A few low income units along with some mostly priced rentals as well
as some upscale housing. I think the concept of mixing the levels of
incomes, rather than isolating the poorer folks to housing projects,
is a good one. But if communities don't at least replace the number
of low income units being removed, then people will be moving into
packing crates. Our older population is growing each year. The
number of older people falling below the poverty line is growing.
Organizations such as the ACB and the NFB need to keep the pressure on
Congress to increase support for low income housing, rather than
cutting funding. I sincerely hope no one on this list is waiting for
our Noble Leader, President Obama to take up our cause.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Carl,
>
> I thought about your mother-in-law when I read that article. I was
> wondering
> if it is in that particular federal program and I thought what a miracle it
> was that you were able to help her get it.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
> Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 1:14 PM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>
> After four months of battling with indifferent housing authorities in
> Renton
> and to some degree, in Bremerton, we finally kissed my mother-in-law good
> bye last night, and left her in her new apartment, heading home to our
> empty
> house. The Vintage Apartments in Silverdale are far above the majority of
> low income housing that we toured. But even worse than the condition of
> some of these buildings, was the fact that they all have waiting lists.
> There is far too little decent housing for elderly people on low income.
> And from the article below, it looks as if this is another sacrifice
> Americans must make in order to enjoy a free land. That last line was
> sarcasm.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> On 10/27/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>
>> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>> ________________________________________
>> New America Media [1] / By Andre Shashaty [2]
>>
>> Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>>
>>
>> October 27, 2014 |
>> When construction started in mid-October on Heritage Park Senior
>> Village in Taylor, Michigan, it marked the end of 55 years of effort
>> by the federal government to make sure low-income elders can live out
>> their years in decent housing.
>>
>> The development getting underway 18 miles southwest of downtown
>> Detroit is one of the very last to be constructed under a federal
>> housing program that dates back to 1959.
>>
>> The Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program produced
>> 20,000 housing units per year at its peak in the 1970s. It provided
>> public housing agencies and nonprofit groups with grants that covered
>> the cost to build decent rental housing, as well as subsidies for
>> people who were too poor to pay market-rate rents for comparable housing.
>> Obama's Rush to Cut Funds
>>
>> But three years ago, at the height of the new congressional obsession
>> with budget cutting, the Obama Administration stopped requesting money
>> for new construction under the program. Funding continues at a reduced
>> level to renew existing rental subsidies on existing properties, as
>> well as for repairs and improvements to those properties.
>>
>> But federal support for new Sec. 202 construction has ended, with
>> little prospect it will ever be revived.
>>
>> It was not for lack of need, which is very great and growing
> substantially.
>> It was not because there was something wrong with the program. There
>> was not. In fact, federal officials and many of the nonprofits that
>> sponsored Sec. 202 projects have said it was the most successful
>> federal housing production program in history.
>>
>> "There were no issues with the program," said Alayna Waldrum, who
>> works on legislation for Leading Age, an association working on
>> housing and other issues affecting the elderly. "The primary reason
>> was the rush to cut as much funding as they possibly could," she added.
>>
>> If you thought elders were a powerful political force because they
>> vote, think again. Advocates say there was not a single member of
>> Congress prepared to stick his or her neck out to rally support for
>> new construction of Sec. 202 housing.
>>
>> Like other Sec. 202 projects before it, Heritage Park Senior Village
>> will serve households in which at least one member is age 62 or older.
>> Residents will pay no more than 30 percent of their adjusted income on
>> rent. The 77-unit building is being developed by Volunteers of
>> America, which operates
>> 149 Sec. 202 projects with 7,718 units.
>>
>> Sec. 202 housing is open to households that earn no more than 50
>> percent of their area's median income, and most of the tenants are
>> dependent on Social Security for most or all of their income.
>> The private market no longer produces any new housing affordable to
>> people at that income level, and much of the older housing stock that
>> was affordable has been demolished and replaced with upscale
>> developments.
>>
>> Secure Housing Transformed Lives
>>
>> The buildings the program has produced for over 50 years offer modest
>> apartments with basic architecture. But those properties have
>> transformed the lives of many older Americans.
>>
>> Tenants of Sec. 202 have a ready community of peers so they're rarely
>> lonely and disconnected, a common problem for elders living alone. The
>> tenants have well-maintained homes with security and social
>> activities. They receive help connecting with social and health
>> services. Most importantly, they have economic security. They no
>> longer have to worry that their savings will run out and they'll have
>> nowhere to live.
>>
>> No one disputes that cutting the program's funding is completely
>> contrary to common sense. In 2002, the congressional Commission on
>> Affordable Housing and Health Facility Needs for Seniors in the 21st
>> Century [3]called the shortfall of such housing a "quiet crisis." It
>> called for building 40,000 units per year to house the growing numbers
>> of low-income elders. But instead of ramping up, Congress tamped
>> down--all the way to nothing.
>>
>> "The bottom line is that, with the end of new construction under Sec.
>> 202, we are very close to the point where we will begin losing
>> affordable seniors housing faster than it is being developed," said
>> Thomas Slemmer, president and CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based National
>> Church Residences, one of the nation's largest nonprofit providers of
>> affordable seniors housing.
>>
>> Existing Sec. 202 buildings are getting old, considering that the
>> program began in 1959. So an increasing number of properties will be
>> lost to obsolescence each year.
>>
>> For every person who gets into a government-subsidized apartment,
>> there are 10 households waiting for one. Demand is highest in urban
>> areas. In places with large proportions of low-income elders,
>> often-ethnic seniors, it's off the charts.
>>
>> "It is very hard to tell seniors in desperate need of housing that the
>> wait in most cases is two to three years," said Steve Protulis,
>> executive director of the nonprofitElderly Housing Development and
>> Operations Corporation [4], based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
>>
>> Demand Will Skyrocket
>>
>> In the coming years, demand for affordable housing among low-income
>> elders will skyrocket, said Robin Keller, vice president of real
>> estate development for Volunteers of America. The number of older
>> Americans is quickly increasing, and their financial resources have
>> declined overall, she said.
>>
>> The 65-plus population in the United States will leap to 55 million by
>> 2020, up from 40 million in 2010. The number of those 85 and older
>> will increase even more sharply by then, almost tripling from 3
>> million to 8.75 million.
>>
>> Households headed by people 65 or more reported a median income in
>> 2010 of $45,763. But older women living alone had a median income of
>> only about $15,000. They are the primary users of Sec. 202 housing,
>> and their numbers are growing.
>>
>> Among Social Security beneficiaries, the average monthly benefit is
>> $1,269, or about $14,000 per year. In almost any U.S. metropolitan
>> area, those who rely heavily on Social Security cannot afford any
>> housing available on the private market.
>> In 2011, one in three renter households with a member over 65 paid
>> more than half of their income for rent and utilities, according to
>> the U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.
>>
>> Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
>>
>> Sec. 202 properties are designed as independent-living facilities
>> where residents can cook their own meals and take care of themselves.
>> But the properties also help people live active, socially rich lives,
>> which helps them stay healthier longer, reducing or postponing their
>> need for medical care.
>>
>> Every Sec. 202 property has a system in place for connecting residents
>> with outside services, such as health care, transportation, education
>> and social activities.
>>
>> The federal government is converting some of the rental apartments in
>> Sec.
>> 202 properties to much needed assisted living, where frail elders get
>> help with their essential daily activities. But funding for this sort
>> of transformation is very limited.
>> By 2020 an estimated 1.3 million low-income elders will require
>> assistance with such daily activities as eating or using a toilet, and
>> Sec. 202 properties are generally well suited to be adapted for this
>> care.
>>
>> "Sec. 202 housing is a bargain," said Slemmer. "Stable living
>> environments can lower health care costs on their own, but when you
>> factor in the work our managers do to link tenants with services, it
>> is an even greater savings."
>>
>> He and other Sec. 202 sponsors note that people living in their
>> properties do not need nursing care until very late in life compared
>> with people in other living situations.
>>
>> "If we keep people in affordable housing with social service
>> coordinators connecting them to low-cost or free services, it keeps
>> them out of nursing homes, where the daily cost is much higher," one
> project sponsor said.
>>
>> Without enough Sec. 202 units to meet the needs of a growing
>> population of low -income elders, more and more older adults will make
>> their way into nursing homes, whether they really need to or not, with
>> depressing personal results and the cost shifted to tax-supported
> Medicaid.
>> [5]
>>
>> See more stories tagged with:
>> affordable housing [6],
>> elderly housing [7],
>> retirement security crisis [8]
>> ________________________________________
>> Source URL:
>> http://www.alternet.org/economy/feds-kill-funds-most-successful-senior
>> -housi
>> ng-project
>> Links:
>> [1] http://www.newamericamedia.org
>> [2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/andre-shashaty
>> [3] http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/seniorscommission/
>> [4] http://www.ehdoc.org/
>> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project [6]
>> http://www.alternet.org/tags/affordable-housing
>> [7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/elderly-housing
>> [8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/retirement-security-crisis
>> [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>>
>> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>>
>> New America Media [1] / By Andre Shashaty [2]
>>
>> Feds Kill Funds for Most Successful Senior Housing Project October 27,
>> 2014 | When construction started in mid-October on Heritage Park
>> Senior Village in Taylor, Michigan, it marked the end of 55 years of
>> effort by the federal government to make sure low-income elders can
>> live out their years in decent housing.
>>
>> The development getting underway 18 miles southwest of downtown
>> Detroit is one of the very last to be constructed under a federal
>> housing program that dates back to 1959.
>>
>> The Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program produced
>> 20,000 housing units per year at its peak in the 1970s. It provided
>> public housing agencies and nonprofit groups with grants that covered
>> the cost to build decent rental housing, as well as subsidies for
>> people who were too poor to pay market-rate rents for comparable housing.
>> Obama's Rush to Cut Funds
>>
>> But three years ago, at the height of the new congressional obsession
>> with budget cutting, the Obama Administration stopped requesting money
>> for new construction under the program. Funding continues at a reduced
>> level to renew existing rental subsidies on existing properties, as
>> well as for repairs and improvements to those properties.
>>
>> But federal support for new Sec. 202 construction has ended, with
>> little prospect it will ever be revived.
>>
>> It was not for lack of need, which is very great and growing
> substantially.
>> It was not because there was something wrong with the program. There
>> was not. In fact, federal officials and many of the nonprofits that
>> sponsored Sec. 202 projects have said it was the most successful
>> federal housing production program in history.
>>
>> "There were no issues with the program," said Alayna Waldrum, who
>> works on legislation for Leading Age, an association working on
>> housing and other issues affecting the elderly. "The primary reason
>> was the rush to cut as much funding as they possibly could," she added.
>>
>> If you thought elders were a powerful political force because they
>> vote, think again. Advocates say there was not a single member of
>> Congress prepared to stick his or her neck out to rally support for
>> new construction of Sec. 202 housing.
>>
>> Like other Sec. 202 projects before it, Heritage Park Senior Village
>> will serve households in which at least one member is age 62 or older.
>> Residents will pay no more than 30 percent of their adjusted income on
>> rent. The 77-unit building is being developed by Volunteers of
>> America, which operates
>> 149 Sec. 202 projects with 7,718 units.
>>
>> Sec. 202 housing is open to households that earn no more than 50
>> percent of their area's median income, and most of the tenants are
>> dependent on Social Security for most or all of their income.
>> The private market no longer produces any new housing affordable to
>> people at that income level, and much of the older housing stock that
>> was affordable has been demolished and replaced with upscale
>> developments.
>>
>> Secure Housing Transformed Lives
>>
>> The buildings the program has produced for over 50 years offer modest
>> apartments with basic architecture. But those properties have
>> transformed the lives of many older Americans.
>>
>> Tenants of Sec. 202 have a ready community of peers so they're rarely
>> lonely and disconnected, a common problem for elders living alone. The
>> tenants have well-maintained homes with security and social
>> activities. They receive help connecting with social and health
>> services. Most importantly, they have economic security. They no
>> longer have to worry that their savings will run out and they'll have
>> nowhere to live.
>>
>> No one disputes that cutting the program's funding is completely
>> contrary to common sense. In 2002, the congressional Commission on
>> Affordable Housing and Health Facility Needs for Seniors in the 21st
>> Century [3]called the shortfall of such housing a "quiet crisis." It
>> called for building 40,000 units per year to house the growing numbers
>> of low-income elders. But instead of ramping up, Congress tamped
>> down--all the way to nothing.
>>
>> "The bottom line is that, with the end of new construction under Sec.
>> 202, we are very close to the point where we will begin losing
>> affordable seniors housing faster than it is being developed," said
>> Thomas Slemmer, president and CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based National
>> Church Residences, one of the nation's largest nonprofit providers of
>> affordable seniors housing.
>>
>> Existing Sec. 202 buildings are getting old, considering that the
>> program began in 1959. So an increasing number of properties will be
>> lost to obsolescence each year.
>>
>> For every person who gets into a government-subsidized apartment,
>> there are 10 households waiting for one. Demand is highest in urban
>> areas. In places with large proportions of low-income elders,
>> often-ethnic seniors, it's off the charts.
>>
>> "It is very hard to tell seniors in desperate need of housing that the
>> wait in most cases is two to three years," said Steve Protulis,
>> executive director of the nonprofitElderly Housing Development and
>> Operations Corporation [4], based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
>>
>> Demand Will Skyrocket
>>
>> In the coming years, demand for affordable housing among low-income
>> elders will skyrocket, said Robin Keller, vice president of real
>> estate development for Volunteers of America. The number of older
>> Americans is quickly increasing, and their financial resources have
>> declined overall, she said.
>>
>> The 65-plus population in the United States will leap to 55 million by
>> 2020, up from 40 million in 2010. The number of those 85 and older
>> will increase even more sharply by then, almost tripling from 3
>> million to 8.75 million.
>>
>> Households headed by people 65 or more reported a median income in
>> 2010 of $45,763. But older women living alone had a median income of
>> only about $15,000. They are the primary users of Sec. 202 housing,
>> and their numbers are growing.
>>
>> Among Social Security beneficiaries, the average monthly benefit is
>> $1,269, or about $14,000 per year. In almost any U.S. metropolitan
>> area, those who rely heavily on Social Security cannot afford any
>> housing available on the private market.
>> In 2011, one in three renter households with a member over 65 paid
>> more than half of their income for rent and utilities, according to
>> the U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.
>>
>> Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
>>
>> Sec. 202 properties are designed as independent-living facilities
>> where residents can cook their own meals and take care of themselves.
>> But the properties also help people live active, socially rich lives,
>> which helps them stay healthier longer, reducing or postponing their
>> need for medical care.
>>
>> Every Sec. 202 property has a system in place for connecting residents
>> with outside services, such as health care, transportation, education
>> and social activities.
>>
>> The federal government is converting some of the rental apartments in
>> Sec.
>> 202 properties to much needed assisted living, where frail elders get
>> help with their essential daily activities. But funding for this sort
>> of transformation is very limited.
>> By 2020 an estimated 1.3 million low-income elders will require
>> assistance with such daily activities as eating or using a toilet, and
>> Sec. 202 properties are generally well suited to be adapted for this
>> care.
>>
>> "Sec. 202 housing is a bargain," said Slemmer. "Stable living
>> environments can lower health care costs on their own, but when you
>> factor in the work our managers do to link tenants with services, it
>> is an even greater savings."
>>
>> He and other Sec. 202 sponsors note that people living in their
>> properties do not need nursing care until very late in life compared
>> with people in other living situations.
>>
>> "If we keep people in affordable housing with social service
>> coordinators connecting them to low-cost or free services, it keeps
>> them out of nursing homes, where the daily cost is much higher," one
> project sponsor said.
>>
>> Without enough Sec. 202 units to meet the needs of a growing
>> population of low -income elders, more and more older adults will make
>> their way into nursing homes, whether they really need to or not, with
>> depressing personal results and the cost shifted to tax-supported
> Medicaid.
>> mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project
>> mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds for
>> Most Successful Senior Housing Project[5] See more stories tagged
>> with:
>> affordable housing [6],
>> elderly housing [7],
>> retirement security crisis [8]
>>
>> Source URL:
>> http://www.alternet.org/economy/feds-kill-funds-most-successful-senior
>> -housi
>> ng-project
>> Links:
>> [1] http://www.newamericamedia.org
>> [2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/andre-shashaty
>> [3] http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/seniorscommission/
>> [4] http://www.ehdoc.org/
>> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Feds Kill Funds
>> for Most Successful Senior Housing Project [6]
>> http://www.alternet.org/tags/affordable-housing
>> [7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/elderly-housing
>> [8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/retirement-security-crisis
>> [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Another Scandal
Here's an interesting example of how the Empire uses an official part
of its government to spy on citizens, while at the same time working
overtime to break the Postal Workers Union and privatize the majority
of the services.
Remember when our postal carriers delivered the mail twice each day.
And we mostly received First Class Mail.
Today my mail box looks very much like my TV., full of advertisements
and junk mail
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/14, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> Link:
> http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYtjiMYLneuutUieghEwBOyB3iyuNUP6zXeRL5t9Cna7T4Nq0AyIlFKae8DuKQiLk0KLWNc35T99joAfWtSRvNA98Q2aA/VGEG/s/+Gd1aRpmNpYgj6ynHo3pEv2V4ANgtmqgC09Ao=&campaign_id=129&instance_id=48407&segment_id=64665&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
>
>
> Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
>
> By RON NIXON
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html>OCT.
>
> 27, 2014
>
> WASHINGTON -- In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance
> program, the United States Postal Service
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/postal_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
>
> reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law
> enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly
> monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security
> investigations.
>
> The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit
> <https://www.uspsoig.gov/story/audit-report/protecting-mail-covers-law-enforcement-investigations>
>
> of the surveillance program by the Postal Service's inspector general,
> shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously
> disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses
> is lax.
>
> The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York
> Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first
> detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an
> important role in the nation's vast surveillance effort since the
> terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests
> to monitor an individual's mail without adequately describing the reason
> or having proper written authorization.
>
> Photo Mail handlers in Virginia. The Postal Service approved nearly
> 50,000 requests last year to track the mail of Americans. Credit Luke
> Sharrett for The New York Times
>
> In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the
> efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests.
> Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer
> errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different
> surveillance requests.
>
> "Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's
> ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns
> over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," the audit
> concluded.
>
> The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website
> of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
>
> The surveillance program, officially called mail covers
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html>, is
> more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful
> investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement
> agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names,
> return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters
> and packages before they are delivered to a person's home.
>
> Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of
> collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses
> and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property
> records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
>
> Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was
> used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political
> opponent in Arizona -- the county attorney was later disbarred in part
> because of the investigation -- and to monitor privileged communications
> between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal
> regulations.
>
> Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal
> Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for
> the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> "It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few
> protections that were supposed to be in place," Mr. Simon said.
>
> In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom
> of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012,
> local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000
> requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an
> average of some 8,000 requests a year -- far fewer than the nearly 50,000
> requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
>
> The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to
> The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security
> investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law
> enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the
> inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement
> agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations
> into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
>
> The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its
> computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in
> the United States. The program's primary purpose is to process the mail,
> but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows
> law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and
> received by people they are investigating.
>
> Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was
> created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal
> workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or
> letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
>
> The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an
> investigation into ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-laced
>
> letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New
> York City's mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/texas-actress-gets-18-year-sentence-in-ricin-case.html>.
>
> Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both
> less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency's vast
> collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect
> the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
>
> "You can't just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition," said
> Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. "There has
> to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can't be
> the sole tool."
>
> The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government
> -- from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army
> Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from
> 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia
> Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same
> period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State
> Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The
> information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information
> request.
>
> Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in
> charge of national security -- including the F.B.I., the Department of
> Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection -- because release of
> the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for
> the Postal Inspection Service, "would reveal techniques and procedures
> for law enforcement or prosecutions."
>
> Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it
> hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware
> they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the
> program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
>
> In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor,
> discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff,
> Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio,
> objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his
> immigration sweeps.
>
> The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and
> Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox's
> personal and business mail.
>
> Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox
> and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking
> and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The
> sheriff's office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide
> concessions at the local airport.
>
> "We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the
> investigation into our business scared people away from our
> restaurants," Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. "I don't blame the Postal
> Service, but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go
> on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
>
> She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in
> 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of
> Appeals upheld the ruling
> <http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/06/02/wilcox-arpaio-payout-lawsuit-abrk/9884143/>.
>
> Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/us/arizona-ethics-board-disbars-ex-maricopa-county-prosecutor.html>
>
> for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox
> and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa
> County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio's use of mail
> covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
>
> In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio,
> recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s,
> federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her
> team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion
> charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the
> tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
>
> "The troubling part is that they don't have to report the use of this
> tool to anyone," Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service
> declined to comment on the case.
>
> Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights
> Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
> successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency
> monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was
> concerned about the oversight of the current program.
>
> "Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the
> meaning of the First Amendment," Mr. Askin said.
>
> A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on page
> A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Reveals Wider
> Tracking of Mail in U.S.. Order Reprints
> <https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?contentID=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F10%2F28%2Fus%2Fus-secretly-monitoring-mail-of-thousands.html&publisherName=The+New+York+Times&publication=nytimes.com&token=&orderBeanReset=true&postType=&wordCount=1471&title=Report+Reveals+Wider+Tracking+of+Mail+in+U.S.&publicationDate=October+27%2C+2014&author=By%20Ron%20Nixon>|Today's
>
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>
>
>
>
> Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-us.html>
>
>
>
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of its government to spy on citizens, while at the same time working
overtime to break the Postal Workers Union and privatize the majority
of the services.
Remember when our postal carriers delivered the mail twice each day.
And we mostly received First Class Mail.
Today my mail box looks very much like my TV., full of advertisements
and junk mail
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/14, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> Link:
> http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYtjiMYLneuutUieghEwBOyB3iyuNUP6zXeRL5t9Cna7T4Nq0AyIlFKae8DuKQiLk0KLWNc35T99joAfWtSRvNA98Q2aA/VGEG/s/+Gd1aRpmNpYgj6ynHo3pEv2V4ANgtmqgC09Ao=&campaign_id=129&instance_id=48407&segment_id=64665&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
>
>
> Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
>
> By RON NIXON
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html>OCT.
>
> 27, 2014
>
> WASHINGTON -- In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance
> program, the United States Postal Service
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/postal_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
>
> reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law
> enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly
> monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security
> investigations.
>
> The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit
> <https://www.uspsoig.gov/story/audit-report/protecting-mail-covers-law-enforcement-investigations>
>
> of the surveillance program by the Postal Service's inspector general,
> shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously
> disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses
> is lax.
>
> The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York
> Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first
> detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an
> important role in the nation's vast surveillance effort since the
> terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests
> to monitor an individual's mail without adequately describing the reason
> or having proper written authorization.
>
> Photo Mail handlers in Virginia. The Postal Service approved nearly
> 50,000 requests last year to track the mail of Americans. Credit Luke
> Sharrett for The New York Times
>
> In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the
> efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests.
> Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer
> errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different
> surveillance requests.
>
> "Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's
> ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns
> over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," the audit
> concluded.
>
> The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website
> of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
>
> The surveillance program, officially called mail covers
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html>, is
> more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful
> investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement
> agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names,
> return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters
> and packages before they are delivered to a person's home.
>
> Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of
> collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses
> and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property
> records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
>
> Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was
> used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political
> opponent in Arizona -- the county attorney was later disbarred in part
> because of the investigation -- and to monitor privileged communications
> between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal
> regulations.
>
> Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal
> Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for
> the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> "It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few
> protections that were supposed to be in place," Mr. Simon said.
>
> In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom
> of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012,
> local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000
> requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an
> average of some 8,000 requests a year -- far fewer than the nearly 50,000
> requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
>
> The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to
> The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security
> investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law
> enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the
> inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement
> agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations
> into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
>
> The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its
> computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in
> the United States. The program's primary purpose is to process the mail,
> but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows
> law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and
> received by people they are investigating.
>
> Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was
> created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal
> workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or
> letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
>
> The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an
> investigation into ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-laced
>
> letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New
> York City's mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/texas-actress-gets-18-year-sentence-in-ricin-case.html>.
>
> Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both
> less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency's vast
> collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect
> the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
>
> "You can't just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition," said
> Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. "There has
> to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can't be
> the sole tool."
>
> The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government
> -- from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army
> Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from
> 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia
> Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same
> period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State
> Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The
> information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information
> request.
>
> Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in
> charge of national security -- including the F.B.I., the Department of
> Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection -- because release of
> the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for
> the Postal Inspection Service, "would reveal techniques and procedures
> for law enforcement or prosecutions."
>
> Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it
> hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware
> they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the
> program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
>
> In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor,
> discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff,
> Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio,
> objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his
> immigration sweeps.
>
> The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and
> Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox's
> personal and business mail.
>
> Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox
> and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking
> and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The
> sheriff's office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide
> concessions at the local airport.
>
> "We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the
> investigation into our business scared people away from our
> restaurants," Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. "I don't blame the Postal
> Service, but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go
> on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
>
> She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in
> 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of
> Appeals upheld the ruling
> <http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/06/02/wilcox-arpaio-payout-lawsuit-abrk/9884143/>.
>
> Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/us/arizona-ethics-board-disbars-ex-maricopa-county-prosecutor.html>
>
> for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox
> and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa
> County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio's use of mail
> covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
>
> In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio,
> recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s,
> federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her
> team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion
> charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the
> tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
>
> "The troubling part is that they don't have to report the use of this
> tool to anyone," Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service
> declined to comment on the case.
>
> Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights
> Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
> successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency
> monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was
> concerned about the oversight of the current program.
>
> "Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the
> meaning of the First Amendment," Mr. Askin said.
>
> A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on page
> A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Reveals Wider
> Tracking of Mail in U.S.. Order Reprints
> <https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?contentID=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F10%2F28%2Fus%2Fus-secretly-monitoring-mail-of-thousands.html&publisherName=The+New+York+Times&publication=nytimes.com&token=&orderBeanReset=true&postType=&wordCount=1471&title=Report+Reveals+Wider+Tracking+of+Mail+in+U.S.&publicationDate=October+27%2C+2014&author=By%20Ron%20Nixon>|Today's
>
> Paper <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html>|Subscribe
> <http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY>
>
>
>
>
> Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-us.html>
>
>
>
> ---
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Another Scandal? Or "business as usual"
On 10/28/14, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> Link:
> http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYtjiMYLneuutUieghEwBOyB3iyuNUP6zXeRL5t9Cna7T4Nq0AyIlFKae8DuKQiLk0KLWNc35T99joAfWtSRvNA98Q2aA/VGEG/s/+Gd1aRpmNpYgj6ynHo3pEv2V4ANgtmqgC09Ao=&campaign_id=129&instance_id=48407&segment_id=64665&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
>
>
> Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
>
> By RON NIXON
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html>OCT.
>
> 27, 2014
>
> WASHINGTON -- In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance
> program, the United States Postal Service
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/postal_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
>
> reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law
> enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly
> monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security
> investigations.
>
> The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit
> <https://www.uspsoig.gov/story/audit-report/protecting-mail-covers-law-enforcement-investigations>
>
> of the surveillance program by the Postal Service's inspector general,
> shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously
> disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses
> is lax.
>
> The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York
> Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first
> detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an
> important role in the nation's vast surveillance effort since the
> terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests
> to monitor an individual's mail without adequately describing the reason
> or having proper written authorization.
>
> Photo Mail handlers in Virginia. The Postal Service approved nearly
> 50,000 requests last year to track the mail of Americans. Credit Luke
> Sharrett for The New York Times
>
> In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the
> efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests.
> Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer
> errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different
> surveillance requests.
>
> "Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's
> ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns
> over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," the audit
> concluded.
>
> The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website
> of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
>
> The surveillance program, officially called mail covers
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html>, is
> more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful
> investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement
> agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names,
> return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters
> and packages before they are delivered to a person's home.
>
> Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of
> collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses
> and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property
> records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
>
> Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was
> used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political
> opponent in Arizona -- the county attorney was later disbarred in part
> because of the investigation -- and to monitor privileged communications
> between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal
> regulations.
>
> Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal
> Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for
> the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> "It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few
> protections that were supposed to be in place," Mr. Simon said.
>
> In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom
> of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012,
> local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000
> requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an
> average of some 8,000 requests a year -- far fewer than the nearly 50,000
> requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
>
> The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to
> The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security
> investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law
> enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the
> inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement
> agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations
> into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
>
> The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its
> computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in
> the United States. The program's primary purpose is to process the mail,
> but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows
> law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and
> received by people they are investigating.
>
> Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was
> created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal
> workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or
> letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
>
> The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an
> investigation into ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-laced
>
> letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New
> York City's mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/texas-actress-gets-18-year-sentence-in-ricin-case.html>.
>
> Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both
> less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency's vast
> collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect
> the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
>
> "You can't just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition," said
> Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. "There has
> to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can't be
> the sole tool."
>
> The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government
> -- from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army
> Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from
> 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia
> Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same
> period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State
> Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The
> information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information
> request.
>
> Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in
> charge of national security -- including the F.B.I., the Department of
> Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection -- because release of
> the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for
> the Postal Inspection Service, "would reveal techniques and procedures
> for law enforcement or prosecutions."
>
> Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it
> hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware
> they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the
> program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
>
> In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor,
> discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff,
> Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio,
> objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his
> immigration sweeps.
>
> The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and
> Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox's
> personal and business mail.
>
> Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox
> and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking
> and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The
> sheriff's office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide
> concessions at the local airport.
>
> "We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the
> investigation into our business scared people away from our
> restaurants," Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. "I don't blame the Postal
> Service, but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go
> on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
>
> She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in
> 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of
> Appeals upheld the ruling
> <http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/06/02/wilcox-arpaio-payout-lawsuit-abrk/9884143/>.
>
> Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/us/arizona-ethics-board-disbars-ex-maricopa-county-prosecutor.html>
>
> for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox
> and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa
> County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio's use of mail
> covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
>
> In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio,
> recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s,
> federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her
> team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion
> charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the
> tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
>
> "The troubling part is that they don't have to report the use of this
> tool to anyone," Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service
> declined to comment on the case.
>
> Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights
> Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
> successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency
> monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was
> concerned about the oversight of the current program.
>
> "Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the
> meaning of the First Amendment," Mr. Askin said.
>
> A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on page
> A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Reveals Wider
> Tracking of Mail in U.S.. Order Reprints
> <https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?contentID=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F10%2F28%2Fus%2Fus-secretly-monitoring-mail-of-thousands.html&publisherName=The+New+York+Times&publication=nytimes.com&token=&orderBeanReset=true&postType=&wordCount=1471&title=Report+Reveals+Wider+Tracking+of+Mail+in+U.S.&publicationDate=October+27%2C+2014&author=By%20Ron%20Nixon>|Today's
>
> Paper <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html>|Subscribe
> <http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY>
>
>
>
>
> Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-us.html>
>
>
>
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> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus
> protection is active.
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> Link:
> http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYtjiMYLneuutUieghEwBOyB3iyuNUP6zXeRL5t9Cna7T4Nq0AyIlFKae8DuKQiLk0KLWNc35T99joAfWtSRvNA98Q2aA/VGEG/s/+Gd1aRpmNpYgj6ynHo3pEv2V4ANgtmqgC09Ao=&campaign_id=129&instance_id=48407&segment_id=64665&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
>
>
> Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
>
> By RON NIXON
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html>OCT.
>
> 27, 2014
>
> WASHINGTON -- In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance
> program, the United States Postal Service
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/postal_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
>
> reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law
> enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly
> monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security
> investigations.
>
> The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit
> <https://www.uspsoig.gov/story/audit-report/protecting-mail-covers-law-enforcement-investigations>
>
> of the surveillance program by the Postal Service's inspector general,
> shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously
> disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses
> is lax.
>
> The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York
> Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first
> detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an
> important role in the nation's vast surveillance effort since the
> terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests
> to monitor an individual's mail without adequately describing the reason
> or having proper written authorization.
>
> Photo Mail handlers in Virginia. The Postal Service approved nearly
> 50,000 requests last year to track the mail of Americans. Credit Luke
> Sharrett for The New York Times
>
> In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the
> efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests.
> Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer
> errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different
> surveillance requests.
>
> "Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's
> ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns
> over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," the audit
> concluded.
>
> The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website
> of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
>
> The surveillance program, officially called mail covers
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html>, is
> more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful
> investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement
> agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names,
> return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters
> and packages before they are delivered to a person's home.
>
> Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of
> collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses
> and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property
> records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
>
> Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was
> used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political
> opponent in Arizona -- the county attorney was later disbarred in part
> because of the investigation -- and to monitor privileged communications
> between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal
> regulations.
>
> Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal
> Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for
> the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> "It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few
> protections that were supposed to be in place," Mr. Simon said.
>
> In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom
> of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012,
> local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000
> requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an
> average of some 8,000 requests a year -- far fewer than the nearly 50,000
> requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
>
> The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to
> The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security
> investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law
> enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the
> inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement
> agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations
> into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
>
> The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its
> computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in
> the United States. The program's primary purpose is to process the mail,
> but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows
> law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and
> received by people they are investigating.
>
> Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was
> created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal
> workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or
> letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
>
> The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an
> investigation into ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-laced
>
> letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New
> York City's mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/texas-actress-gets-18-year-sentence-in-ricin-case.html>.
>
> Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both
> less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency's vast
> collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect
> the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
>
> "You can't just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition," said
> Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. "There has
> to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can't be
> the sole tool."
>
> The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government
> -- from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army
> Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from
> 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia
> Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same
> period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State
> Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The
> information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information
> request.
>
> Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in
> charge of national security -- including the F.B.I., the Department of
> Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection -- because release of
> the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for
> the Postal Inspection Service, "would reveal techniques and procedures
> for law enforcement or prosecutions."
>
> Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it
> hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware
> they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the
> program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
>
> In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor,
> discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff,
> Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio,
> objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his
> immigration sweeps.
>
> The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and
> Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox's
> personal and business mail.
>
> Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox
> and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking
> and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The
> sheriff's office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide
> concessions at the local airport.
>
> "We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the
> investigation into our business scared people away from our
> restaurants," Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. "I don't blame the Postal
> Service, but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go
> on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
>
> She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in
> 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of
> Appeals upheld the ruling
> <http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/06/02/wilcox-arpaio-payout-lawsuit-abrk/9884143/>.
>
> Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/us/arizona-ethics-board-disbars-ex-maricopa-county-prosecutor.html>
>
> for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox
> and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa
> County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio's use of mail
> covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
>
> In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio,
> recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s,
> federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her
> team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion
> charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the
> tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
>
> "The troubling part is that they don't have to report the use of this
> tool to anyone," Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service
> declined to comment on the case.
>
> Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights
> Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
> successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency
> monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was
> concerned about the oversight of the current program.
>
> "Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the
> meaning of the First Amendment," Mr. Askin said.
>
> A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on page
> A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Reveals Wider
> Tracking of Mail in U.S.. Order Reprints
> <https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?contentID=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F10%2F28%2Fus%2Fus-secretly-monitoring-mail-of-thousands.html&publisherName=The+New+York+Times&publication=nytimes.com&token=&orderBeanReset=true&postType=&wordCount=1471&title=Report+Reveals+Wider+Tracking+of+Mail+in+U.S.&publicationDate=October+27%2C+2014&author=By%20Ron%20Nixon>|Today's
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>
>
>
>
> Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-us.html>
>
>
>
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>
Government exploits attacks on military to push security agenda, Greenwald says
Fear is a wonderful tool for keeping people off balance and divided.
And of course we can all repeat the old line, "United we stand,
divided we fall."
The Ruling Class has used this device over our nation's history, to
keep us quarreling among ourselves, or just plain afraid of each
other.
From the time I was knee high to my grandma's Mini Skirt, I was afraid
of those sneaky Injuns. And how many parents warned their little
daughters of what those big Black Boys would do to them?
During the Second World War, we learned to fear Japs, even though they
were citizens, we rounded them up "for their own protection". After
the War, we turned our attention to fearing Commies and Pinkos.
Even though the Empire created fear of the Soviet Union and Communist
China, and even little old Communist Cuba, most of our fears were
focused on our wonderful American Dream being pulled down from within.
And of course it is being torn asunder by internal forces. Led by
such patriotic Americans as Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush II
and now by Obama, the Ruling Class is raping and plundering its own
Land. But of course that's due to the fact that the American Empire
has become too big to be confined within one nation. It is fast
becoming an International Empire. By the way, speaking of "divide and
conquer", has anyone noticed how many nations and territories are
being torn into new little nations?
I wonder just how long it is going to take before the Working Class in
America wakes up to the fact that we are being played. Played for
Fools.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/27/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> 3.
> Government exploits attacks on military to push security agenda, Greenwald
> says
> Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen 10.25.2014
>
> Journalist Glenn Greenwald poses for a photograph in Montreal, Thursday,
> October 23, 2014.
> Graham Hughes / Ottawa Citizen
> SHAREADJUSTCOMMENTPRINT
> The federal government is "shamelessly" exploiting last week's extremist
> attacks to dismantle liberties and core principles of justice, says
> journalist Glenn Greenwald.
> The Pulitzer-Prize winning U.S. reporter warned that the Conservative
> government, aided by docile news media, is purposely fuelling alarmist
> speculation about the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism to ram through
> legislation giving the state extraordinary new powers over citizens.
> It remained unclear whether last Monday's and Wednesday's assaults were
> individual deranged acts of religious-inspired violence, or somehow the
> work
> of Islamic terror groups.
> Yet, "we've allowed this word terrorism to take on such profound meaning
> that right before our eyes governments dismantle the protections and
> defining attributes of western justice in order to keep us safer,"
> Greenwald
> told an audience of more than 1,000 people in downtown Ottawa on Saturday
> night.
> "It is critically important not to reflexively act (like) that every time
> there's an attack."
> Greenwald, who last year broke international stories on whistleblower
> Edward
> Snowden's stunning revelations about mass electronic surveillance of
> citizens by western governments, directed his criticism at Prime Minister
> Stephen Harper.
> On Thursday, the day after gunman Micheal Zehaf-Bibeau killed National War
> Memorial sentry Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and then stormed Centre Block, Harper
> told the Commons new laws giving police more powers to surveil, detain and
> arrest suspected extremists are, "already underway and will be expedited."
> The legislation would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service more
> power to track terror suspects abroad and provide blanket identity
> protection for the agency's human sources. Conservatives now are hinting
> that even more powers are required to make pre-emptive arrests.
> Greenwald lambasted Harper over what he characterized as a naked power
> grab.
> "The speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the shamelessness with
> which the prime minister moved to manipulate and exploit the emotions
> around
> these events to demand more power for himself was almost impressive," he
> said.
> "These attacks are instantly seized upon as a way to further dismantle
> civil
> liberties and core principles of western justice."
> The accusations flow from Greenwald's chief observation from the Snowden
> affair: Democracy is being gravely subverted by largely unaccountable and
> ultrasecret national security agencies under the guise of combating the
> bogeyman of global terrorism.
> Led by the U.S. National Security Agency, where Snowden once worked, five
> western electronic intelligence-gathering agencies, including Canada's
> Communications Security Establishment (along with counterparts in Britain,
> Australia and New Zealand) are allegedly monitoring people's electronic
> communications and Internet lives - and behaviours - on a colossal scale,
> according the Snowden leaks.
> "It is stunning that these five governments have instituted a system of
> mass
> surveillance as consequential, with such profound, far-reaching
> implications, without a whiff of disclosure or debate among the citizenry
> that are supposed to hold them democratically accountable," said Greenwald.
> "It's not just about surveillance, but all sorts of other policies
> implemented in the name of terrorism that have existed beyond this wall of
> secrecy. It's almost like a state within a state and one completely removed
> from transparency of any kind.
> "The implications for democracy are incredibly profound and our ability as
> citizen to understand what our government is doing."
> Unless citizens rebel and demand transparency and accountability, Greenwald
> believes one ultimate consequence could be an endless war between the West,
> Muslim nations, and extremist movements.
> "Future generations will look back and say that in the wake of 9/11, the
> U.S. and its allies put themselves in a mindset and a policy approach that
> guaranteed not only a long war but a war that had no end.
> "The pattern is clear. We do something (militarily) in that part of the
> world that generates all sorts of rage and fury, rightly or wrongly. That
> rage and fury causes a tiny percentage of the people in that world to want
> to bring violence back to us.
> "When the violence is brought back to us, we immediately demand that our
> government further erode civil liberties and we need even more militarism,
> which in turn inflames that part of the world more and causes more violence
> to be brought back to us in a never-ending spiral."
> imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
>
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> 1. Home
> 2. News
> . Government exploits attacks on military to push security agenda,
> Greenwald says
> . Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen 10.25.2014
> . Journalist Glenn Greenwald poses for a photograph in Montreal,
> Thursday, October 23, 2014.
> . Graham Hughes / Ottawa Citizen
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Print
> . The federal government is "shamelessly" exploiting last week's
> extremist attacks to dismantle liberties and core principles of justice,
> says journalist Glenn Greenwald.
> . The Pulitzer-Prize winning U.S. reporter warned that the
> Conservative government, aided by docile news media, is purposely fuelling
> alarmist speculation about the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism to ram
> through legislation giving the state extraordinary new powers over
> citizens.
> . It remained unclear whether last Monday's and Wednesday's assaults
> were individual deranged acts of religious-inspired violence, or somehow
> the
> work of Islamic terror groups.
> . Yet, "we've allowed this word terrorism to take on such profound
> meaning that right before our eyes governments dismantle the protections
> and
> defining attributes of western justice in order to keep us safer,"
> Greenwald
> told an audience of more than 1,000 people in downtown Ottawa on Saturday
> night.
> . "It is critically important not to reflexively act (like) that every
> time there's an attack."
> . Greenwald, who last year broke international stories on
> whistleblower Edward Snowden's stunning revelations about mass electronic
> surveillance of citizens by western governments, directed his criticism at
> Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
> . On Thursday, the day after gunman Micheal Zehaf-Bibeau killed
> National War Memorial sentry Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and then stormed Centre
> Block, Harper told the Commons new laws giving police more powers to
> surveil, detain and arrest suspected extremists are, "already underway and
> will be expedited."
> . The legislation would give the Canadian Security Intelligence
> Service more power to track terror suspects abroad and provide blanket
> identity protection for the agency's human sources. Conservatives now are
> hinting that even more powers are required to make pre-emptive arrests.
> . Greenwald lambasted Harper over what he characterized as a naked
> power grab.
> . "The speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the
> shamelessness with which the prime minister moved to manipulate and exploit
> the emotions around these events to demand more power for himself was
> almost
> impressive," he said.
> . "These attacks are instantly seized upon as a way to further
> dismantle civil liberties and core principles of western justice."
> . The accusations flow from Greenwald's chief observation from the
> Snowden affair: Democracy is being gravely subverted by largely
> unaccountable and ultrasecret national security agencies under the guise of
> combating the bogeyman of global terrorism.
> . Led by the U.S. National Security Agency, where Snowden once worked,
> five western electronic intelligence-gathering agencies, including Canada's
> Communications Security Establishment (along with counterparts in Britain,
> Australia and New Zealand) are allegedly monitoring people's electronic
> communications and Internet lives - and behaviours - on a colossal scale,
> according the Snowden leaks.
> . "It is stunning that these five governments have instituted a system
> of mass surveillance as consequential, with such profound, far-reaching
> implications, without a whiff of disclosure or debate among the citizenry
> that are supposed to hold them democratically accountable," said Greenwald.
> . "It's not just about surveillance, but all sorts of other policies
> implemented in the name of terrorism that have existed beyond this wall of
> secrecy. It's almost like a state within a state and one completely removed
> from transparency of any kind.
> . "The implications for democracy are incredibly profound and our
> ability as citizen to understand what our government is doing."
> . Unless citizens rebel and demand transparency and accountability,
> Greenwald believes one ultimate consequence could be an endless war between
> the West, Muslim nations, and extremist movements.
> . "Future generations will look back and say that in the wake of 9/11,
> the U.S. and its allies put themselves in a mindset and a policy approach
> that guaranteed not only a long war but a war that had no end.
> . "The pattern is clear. We do something (militarily) in that part of
> the world that generates all sorts of rage and fury, rightly or wrongly.
> That rage and fury causes a tiny percentage of the people in that world to
> want to bring violence back to us.
> . "When the violence is brought back to us, we immediately demand that
> our government further erode civil liberties and we need even more
> militarism, which in turn inflames that part of the world more and causes
> more violence to be brought back to us in a never-ending spiral."
> . imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
And of course we can all repeat the old line, "United we stand,
divided we fall."
The Ruling Class has used this device over our nation's history, to
keep us quarreling among ourselves, or just plain afraid of each
other.
From the time I was knee high to my grandma's Mini Skirt, I was afraid
of those sneaky Injuns. And how many parents warned their little
daughters of what those big Black Boys would do to them?
During the Second World War, we learned to fear Japs, even though they
were citizens, we rounded them up "for their own protection". After
the War, we turned our attention to fearing Commies and Pinkos.
Even though the Empire created fear of the Soviet Union and Communist
China, and even little old Communist Cuba, most of our fears were
focused on our wonderful American Dream being pulled down from within.
And of course it is being torn asunder by internal forces. Led by
such patriotic Americans as Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush II
and now by Obama, the Ruling Class is raping and plundering its own
Land. But of course that's due to the fact that the American Empire
has become too big to be confined within one nation. It is fast
becoming an International Empire. By the way, speaking of "divide and
conquer", has anyone noticed how many nations and territories are
being torn into new little nations?
I wonder just how long it is going to take before the Working Class in
America wakes up to the fact that we are being played. Played for
Fools.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/27/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> 3.
> Government exploits attacks on military to push security agenda, Greenwald
> says
> Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen 10.25.2014
>
> Journalist Glenn Greenwald poses for a photograph in Montreal, Thursday,
> October 23, 2014.
> Graham Hughes / Ottawa Citizen
> SHAREADJUSTCOMMENTPRINT
> The federal government is "shamelessly" exploiting last week's extremist
> attacks to dismantle liberties and core principles of justice, says
> journalist Glenn Greenwald.
> The Pulitzer-Prize winning U.S. reporter warned that the Conservative
> government, aided by docile news media, is purposely fuelling alarmist
> speculation about the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism to ram through
> legislation giving the state extraordinary new powers over citizens.
> It remained unclear whether last Monday's and Wednesday's assaults were
> individual deranged acts of religious-inspired violence, or somehow the
> work
> of Islamic terror groups.
> Yet, "we've allowed this word terrorism to take on such profound meaning
> that right before our eyes governments dismantle the protections and
> defining attributes of western justice in order to keep us safer,"
> Greenwald
> told an audience of more than 1,000 people in downtown Ottawa on Saturday
> night.
> "It is critically important not to reflexively act (like) that every time
> there's an attack."
> Greenwald, who last year broke international stories on whistleblower
> Edward
> Snowden's stunning revelations about mass electronic surveillance of
> citizens by western governments, directed his criticism at Prime Minister
> Stephen Harper.
> On Thursday, the day after gunman Micheal Zehaf-Bibeau killed National War
> Memorial sentry Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and then stormed Centre Block, Harper
> told the Commons new laws giving police more powers to surveil, detain and
> arrest suspected extremists are, "already underway and will be expedited."
> The legislation would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service more
> power to track terror suspects abroad and provide blanket identity
> protection for the agency's human sources. Conservatives now are hinting
> that even more powers are required to make pre-emptive arrests.
> Greenwald lambasted Harper over what he characterized as a naked power
> grab.
> "The speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the shamelessness with
> which the prime minister moved to manipulate and exploit the emotions
> around
> these events to demand more power for himself was almost impressive," he
> said.
> "These attacks are instantly seized upon as a way to further dismantle
> civil
> liberties and core principles of western justice."
> The accusations flow from Greenwald's chief observation from the Snowden
> affair: Democracy is being gravely subverted by largely unaccountable and
> ultrasecret national security agencies under the guise of combating the
> bogeyman of global terrorism.
> Led by the U.S. National Security Agency, where Snowden once worked, five
> western electronic intelligence-gathering agencies, including Canada's
> Communications Security Establishment (along with counterparts in Britain,
> Australia and New Zealand) are allegedly monitoring people's electronic
> communications and Internet lives - and behaviours - on a colossal scale,
> according the Snowden leaks.
> "It is stunning that these five governments have instituted a system of
> mass
> surveillance as consequential, with such profound, far-reaching
> implications, without a whiff of disclosure or debate among the citizenry
> that are supposed to hold them democratically accountable," said Greenwald.
> "It's not just about surveillance, but all sorts of other policies
> implemented in the name of terrorism that have existed beyond this wall of
> secrecy. It's almost like a state within a state and one completely removed
> from transparency of any kind.
> "The implications for democracy are incredibly profound and our ability as
> citizen to understand what our government is doing."
> Unless citizens rebel and demand transparency and accountability, Greenwald
> believes one ultimate consequence could be an endless war between the West,
> Muslim nations, and extremist movements.
> "Future generations will look back and say that in the wake of 9/11, the
> U.S. and its allies put themselves in a mindset and a policy approach that
> guaranteed not only a long war but a war that had no end.
> "The pattern is clear. We do something (militarily) in that part of the
> world that generates all sorts of rage and fury, rightly or wrongly. That
> rage and fury causes a tiny percentage of the people in that world to want
> to bring violence back to us.
> "When the violence is brought back to us, we immediately demand that our
> government further erode civil liberties and we need even more militarism,
> which in turn inflames that part of the world more and causes more violence
> to be brought back to us in a never-ending spiral."
> imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
>
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> . "" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"
> style="border: 0px currentColor; vertical-align: bottom;"
> 1. Home
> 2. News
> . Government exploits attacks on military to push security agenda,
> Greenwald says
> . Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen 10.25.2014
> . Journalist Glenn Greenwald poses for a photograph in Montreal,
> Thursday, October 23, 2014.
> . Graham Hughes / Ottawa Citizen
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Print
> . The federal government is "shamelessly" exploiting last week's
> extremist attacks to dismantle liberties and core principles of justice,
> says journalist Glenn Greenwald.
> . The Pulitzer-Prize winning U.S. reporter warned that the
> Conservative government, aided by docile news media, is purposely fuelling
> alarmist speculation about the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism to ram
> through legislation giving the state extraordinary new powers over
> citizens.
> . It remained unclear whether last Monday's and Wednesday's assaults
> were individual deranged acts of religious-inspired violence, or somehow
> the
> work of Islamic terror groups.
> . Yet, "we've allowed this word terrorism to take on such profound
> meaning that right before our eyes governments dismantle the protections
> and
> defining attributes of western justice in order to keep us safer,"
> Greenwald
> told an audience of more than 1,000 people in downtown Ottawa on Saturday
> night.
> . "It is critically important not to reflexively act (like) that every
> time there's an attack."
> . Greenwald, who last year broke international stories on
> whistleblower Edward Snowden's stunning revelations about mass electronic
> surveillance of citizens by western governments, directed his criticism at
> Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
> . On Thursday, the day after gunman Micheal Zehaf-Bibeau killed
> National War Memorial sentry Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and then stormed Centre
> Block, Harper told the Commons new laws giving police more powers to
> surveil, detain and arrest suspected extremists are, "already underway and
> will be expedited."
> . The legislation would give the Canadian Security Intelligence
> Service more power to track terror suspects abroad and provide blanket
> identity protection for the agency's human sources. Conservatives now are
> hinting that even more powers are required to make pre-emptive arrests.
> . Greenwald lambasted Harper over what he characterized as a naked
> power grab.
> . "The speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the
> shamelessness with which the prime minister moved to manipulate and exploit
> the emotions around these events to demand more power for himself was
> almost
> impressive," he said.
> . "These attacks are instantly seized upon as a way to further
> dismantle civil liberties and core principles of western justice."
> . The accusations flow from Greenwald's chief observation from the
> Snowden affair: Democracy is being gravely subverted by largely
> unaccountable and ultrasecret national security agencies under the guise of
> combating the bogeyman of global terrorism.
> . Led by the U.S. National Security Agency, where Snowden once worked,
> five western electronic intelligence-gathering agencies, including Canada's
> Communications Security Establishment (along with counterparts in Britain,
> Australia and New Zealand) are allegedly monitoring people's electronic
> communications and Internet lives - and behaviours - on a colossal scale,
> according the Snowden leaks.
> . "It is stunning that these five governments have instituted a system
> of mass surveillance as consequential, with such profound, far-reaching
> implications, without a whiff of disclosure or debate among the citizenry
> that are supposed to hold them democratically accountable," said Greenwald.
> . "It's not just about surveillance, but all sorts of other policies
> implemented in the name of terrorism that have existed beyond this wall of
> secrecy. It's almost like a state within a state and one completely removed
> from transparency of any kind.
> . "The implications for democracy are incredibly profound and our
> ability as citizen to understand what our government is doing."
> . Unless citizens rebel and demand transparency and accountability,
> Greenwald believes one ultimate consequence could be an endless war between
> the West, Muslim nations, and extremist movements.
> . "Future generations will look back and say that in the wake of 9/11,
> the U.S. and its allies put themselves in a mindset and a policy approach
> that guaranteed not only a long war but a war that had no end.
> . "The pattern is clear. We do something (militarily) in that part of
> the world that generates all sorts of rage and fury, rightly or wrongly.
> That rage and fury causes a tiny percentage of the people in that world to
> want to bring violence back to us.
> . "When the violence is brought back to us, we immediately demand that
> our government further erode civil liberties and we need even more
> militarism, which in turn inflames that part of the world more and causes
> more violence to be brought back to us in a never-ending spiral."
> . imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
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