The Jo Daviess County courtroom had plenty of breathing room on Wednesday, Aug. 27, but Martin Hippie promised he could change that if the zoning board gave him a chance.
“If I had known about this earlier, I’m sure we could have packed this room with people opposed to Blackwater,” he said. “I think the public has a right to know, and zoning is really a way for us to protect our land.”
Representatives of Blackwater had what they believed to be a modest proposal. They said they would like to replace an existing live-fire shooting range with a new one of similar size. The structure will consist of a 60 by 60 foot pole barn-type structure on a concrete slab, and they assured the board that it will not be hooked up to any utilities or increase traffic on nearby roads.
“It will in no way be hazardous or detrimental to the surrounding properties,” promised Blackwater employee Eric Davis.
In fact, Davis argued, the new shooting range will reduce noise by using plywood to absorb sound from the firing, and will meet higher safety standards than the current facility.
But opponents argued that Blackwater was improving and expanding its facility little by little, in such small ways that it could escape (more…)
by: Robert in Monterey
Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 08:46:34 AM PDT
As my recent diaries have shown there is a shortage of firefighters to meet the unprecedented amount of fires burning across our state. As I began digging into this yesterday I came across the same report highlighted in today’s Monterey Herald - that US Forest Service firefighting efforts have been cut to the bone and left the nation vulnerable to massive fires. Deliberate staffing shortages have left the USFS unable to do vital off-season brush clearance, and left them without the staffing to get a quick jump on fires in their crucial initial stages.
The federal firefighting system is “imploding” in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates, as the region struggles to keep pace with what looks to be a historic fire season, a firefighters’ advocacy group charges.
As a result, the firefighters say, small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations because the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to contain them during the early “initial attack” stage…
As the “sheer number” of California wildfires pushed the nation to its worst measurable level of wildland-fire preparedness last week - Level 5 - a national multiagency coordinating group announced in a memo Monday that firefighter staffing levels in Northern California “cannot be maintained.”
The report, by the FWFSA, has been around for a few months now. Wildland firefighters have been screaming about the issue to anyone who would listen, including Dianne Feinstein:
After facing pressure from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers last spring, the Forest Service promised it would immediately fill its vacancies and launched a “Fire Hire” campaign to attract firefighters in Sacramento that concluded two weeks ago.
“I believe the agency should have been able to muster a stronger force,” Feinstein said. “All signs indicate that things will only get worse.”
Feinstein said that despite promises of full staffing from [USFS Administrator Mark] Rey, only 186 of the agency’s 276 engines were manned at the start of the 2008 fire season.
Ron Thatcher, president of the union that represents 20,000 Forest Service employees, has estimated that attrition has left the service at 70 percent to 80 percent of its authorized staffing levels, and that up to 39 percent of fire crew leader positions were vacant as the 2008 fire season kicked off.
Rey, Bush’s USFS administrator, has a long background in the timber industry. He blames environmentalists for the problems, but firefighters and those who know the issue are having none of it.
The problem, as the report and the article make clear, is that the USFS is not making an aggressive effort to recruit new hires during the offseason, and particularly their pay is low. The average USFS firefighter makes $56,000 a year whereas Cal Fire averages $64,000 a year. Further, Cal Fire offers better benefits than the USFS, which has resorted to absurd penny pinching to oversee its budget:
Another issue that firefighters say may come back to bite the region is a brand-new budgetary program - called “accountable cost management”- that was just introduced throughout the Forest Service. Judd said it should have been initiated well before the 2008 fire season started….
“The Indians Fire commander had no clue about this program, and they’re looking at (cutting) the least expensive resources. The bean counters are looking at these folks and basically timing them as to how long they spend on dinner. Accountable cost management is you’re looking at minutiae and ignoring the real costs,” Judd said.
<strong>The Herald article does not explain what the underlying reason is, but the FWFSA and its members aren’t shy about calling it out - privatization:</strong>
I recently had the opportunity to sit and chat with an old friend of mine who is an SFR2 with CALFIRE. He is no stranger to interagency response and the inherent problems that sometimes arise. We got on the subject of the USFS retention issue and he shed some light that I thought was interesting. In his dealings with the R-5 admin’s, the common thread, vocally expressed behind office doors, is that upper level USFS is purposefully (more…)
Jane Corbin investigates claims that as much as $23bn may have been lost, stolen or not properly accounted for in Iraq. Now more than 70 whistleblower cases threaten to reveal the scandals behind billions of dollars worth of waste, theft and corruption during the war. The US justice department has imposed gagging orders which prevent the real scale of the problem emerging.
This is an hour and a half conversation between inarguably two of the most influential figures in the global truth movement. Each segment is educational, insightful and provocative, and overall the conversation (believe it or not) is very encouraging…
The people of our land were facing barbarous times under the rule of the King of England and the Bank of England. After many futile attempts to negotiate a fair and humane existence, they presented themselves with The Declaration of Independence.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
By AUGUST COLE July 2, 2008; Page A3
Blackwater Worldwide’s bid to expand its military-training business in the San Diego area has already sparked controversy in California and is now posing problems in Washington.
Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb is holding up the approval of four civilian defense officials until he gets more information from Defense Secretary Robert Gates about a Blackwater training facility in Otay Mesa, Calif. One of the nominees is set to be undersecretary of the Army.
Although the Defense Department has attempted to answer Sen. Webb’s questions, the senator said he isn’t satisfied. “We really don’t have any other alternative,” Sen. Webb said in an interview. “In this case, I asked very specific questions, which in my experience are easily answerable, so I think as a matter of courtesy they should be answered properly.”
Sen. Webb, a former Navy secretary, is potentially a formidable foe for companies like Blackwater. He has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Sen. Barack Obama, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, and has helped establish a commission that will be investigating wartime contracting.
The holdup also creates a potential friction point between Democratic lawmakers and Mr. Gates, who has sought to smooth relations with Congress. A Defense Department spokesman said the secretary’s office plans to provide more information in the near future. “As far as we’re concerned, we have
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hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.![[Jim Webb]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/HC-GI986_Webb_20061107211249.gif)
Although the Defense Department has attempted to answer Sen. Webb’s questions, the senator said he isn’t satisfied. “We really don’t have any other alternative,” Sen. Webb said in an interview. “In this case, I asked very specific questions, which in my experience are easily answerable, so I think as a matter of courtesy they should be answered properly.”