Homelessness Surges as Funding Falters

Providers to the poor try to stretch meager resources to meet growing need
by Kari Huus.

Published on Friday, January 30, 2009 by MSNBC

In Photo on the left:

Ken Mildfelt, left, known as Pork Chop, and his brother Ernie, known as Lamb Chop, prepare dinner at their camp site along the Kansas River in Topeka, Kan., Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009. In the first major census of the homeless since the recession, thousands of volunteers across the country fan out in the thick of night this week to count the most desperate members of their communities. Both were counted at the community center where they eat lunch. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

Excerpt from article:

The CityTeam closure is a piece in the expanding problem of homelessness across the nation: Shelters and related services for the homeless are facing funding shortfalls as the downturn takes its toll on state budgets and corporate donations. And while individual donors in many cases are keeping up gifts - or even digging a little deeper for charities that help with urgent needs like food and shelter - the service providers say they are faced with a rapidly growing demand from people losing jobs and homes in the economic crisis.
"A downturn in (overall) funding in this case is accompanied by a surge in demand, so a homeless shelter, food pantry, or job-training program is going to feel it first," says Chuck Bean, executive director of Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, in the District of Columbia. "Even if they have 100 percent of their budget compared to last year, they now see a 50 percent surge in demand. Then (they) get into the tough decisions: Do you thin the soup, or shorten the line?"

Click here for entire story

It never ceases to amaze me how so many people talk trash about our homeless in this country. Many of us are just a paycheck or medical problem away from joining the ranks of the houseless. Remember that many homeless people are veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and they could use our help. Another emerging homeless population demographic are those that have jobs but don't make enough money to pay rent and utilities. This demographic is growing by leaps and bounds.

A great web site for the houseless and those in Humboldt County that would like to offer a space to sleep or other help or services http://peopleproject.wordpress.com/

Peter B. Collins Eureka Visit?

We are currently working on bringing Peter B. Collins back to Humboldt County. March is the target month.

Peter B. Collins is a nationally (self) syndicated live talk radio show that airs on KGOE 1480 in Eureka from 3 to 6pm.

I am toying with the idea of having him up on a Saturday. That would mean no live broadcast but we have other plans. Peter B. is trying to get permission to run the movie Loose Change ( about 9/11) and there is a peace march/event planned for March 21st. It would be cool to get him up here on that day.
Stay tuned to kgoe or this blog for more info. as we get it.

Recruiting stand-down ordered

Probe of Houston suicides prompts wide-ranging action
By Michelle Tan - Staff writerPosted : Wednesday Jan 28, 2009 11:44:38 EST

Army Secretary Pete Geren has ordered a stand-down of the Army’s entire recruiting force and a review of almost every aspect of the job is underway in the wake of a wide-ranging investigation of four suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion.
Poor command climate, failing personal relationships and long, stressful work days were factors in the suicides, the investigation found. The investigating officer noted a “threatening” environment in the battalion and that leaders may have tried to influence statements from witnesses.

The four recruiters who killed themselves were all combat veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army did not identify them.
The Army Inspector General’s office has been asked to conduct a command-wide assessment of Recruiting Command to determine if conditions uncovered in Houston exist elsewhere.
The one-day stand-down of all 7,000 active Army and 1,400 Army Reserve recruiters will be Feb. 13.

See entire story from Army Times

January 31st. Last Day of Public Comment on Marina Center Draft Environmental Impact Report

The property on the Old Town Eureka water front, known as the Balloon Tract, once ruled by trains, is set to become a glass and steel monument to local millionaire, Rob Arkley.

The Draft Environmental Impact Report is up for review and was the topic of a forum at the Warfinger Building here in Eureka last night. According to the Humboldt Herald, Ralph Foust spoke as a consultant to the Northcoast Environmental Center and said the project doesn't include enough housing. He questioned why the project proponents called the project "smart growth" when it lacks the live/work "integrated whole" aspects that characterize such development.

The public has until January 31st. to comment on the DEIR.

Arkley reportedly wants the anchor store to be a Home Depot. See Serving Suggestions for details.

Photo courtesy of balloontractwatch.org

PBS: NSA could have prevented 9/11 hijackings

The super-secretive National Security Agency has been quietly monitoring, decrypting, and interpreting foreign communications for decades, starting long before it came under criticism as a result of recent revelations about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Now a forthcoming PBS documentary asks whether the NSA could have prevented 9/11 if it had been more willing to share its data with other agencies.Author James Bamford looked into the performance of the NSA in his 2008 book, The Shadow Factory, and found that it had been closely monitoring the 9/11 hijackers as they moved freely around the United States and communicated with Osama bin Laden's operations center in Yemen. The NSA had even tapped bin Laden's satellite phone, starting in 1996.

Click for entire story.

Climate Change Killing America's Trees at Ever Faster Rates

By Michael Wall at Wired.com

Trees in western North America are dying at faster and faster rates, and climate change is likely to blame.
The mounting deaths could fundamentally transform Western forests because tree reproduction hasn’t increased to offset losses, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. And new seedlings aren’t rising quickly enough to fill the gaps.
“If current trends continue, forests will become sparser over time,” co-author Philip van Mantgem, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a press conference call. This would be a setback in the fight against global warming because thinner forests with small, young trees store less carbon, so more heat-trapping carbon dioxide would cycle into the atmosphere.
A large-scale transition to such threadbare woods would have other negative effects as well, van Mantgem said. Species that depend on big stands of old growth, such as marbled murrelets and spotted owls, would have much less room to roam. And the risk of catastrophic fires would go up with more dead, dry wood lying around to fuel it.
The evidence is mounting that warming and drought are changing ecosystems across western North America. Other studies have documented major tree die-offs and surging wildfires. Plant species have climbed uphill, and bark beetles are laying waste to ever-increasing tracts of woodland.
The new study “adds to the list,” said Michael Goulden, an ecologist at the University of California, Irvine who was not involved in the research. “Something large and important is happening to Western ecosystems, in correlation with climatic shifts.”
The research revealed that tree mortality rates in old-growth forests from southern British Columbia to Arizona have doubled every few decades over the past 50 years.

See entire story.

Free Speech T.V. Needs Your Help

See Story at The Humboldt Herald

Leonard Peltier Beaten In Prison

by Michael Borkson from Boston Indymedia 22 Jan 2009.

Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier was badly beaten and injured by other inmates after being moved to a different prison in Pennsylvania. Here is an urgent call for action by Leonard's sister and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

Forwarded on behalf of the Leonard Peltier Defense CommitteeURGENT! Leonard Peltier's Safety in Jeopardy!Dear LP Supporters,I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten uponhis arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he wentinto population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows tohis head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possiblya concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingersis swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest andribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBIorchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned abouthis safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did noteven know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out thisheinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could bea conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitaryconfinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when youwon't name your attackers; incidentally being only given one mealseriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prisonofficials refuse to release any info to the family, but they needto hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does PresidentObama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

See entire letter including contact phone number for the prison.

See biography on Leonard Peltier

Prison will tell you to start here:

Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator 1-202-307-3126 or http://www.bop.gov/

You will need first and last name and age of prisoner.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944)

NSA Monitored All Communications

Were you spied on?
Kurt NimmoPrison Planet.comThursday, January 22, 2009
On January 21, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice appeared Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, told Olbermann government programs designed to spy on the American people are more extensive and far reaching than previously admitted. “The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice said. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”
During the Bush administration, it was claimed the intercepts involved foreign communications and the intelligence gathered was integral to the conduct of the so-called global war on terrorism. In order to get around the warrant requirements of FISA, a bill authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those supposedly responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001, was passed (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists). The authorization granted Bush the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11th attacks, or those who harbored said persons or groups. AUMF allowed the Bush administration to avoid FISA and Wiretap Act restrictions.
But according to Tice, the NSA program was not limited to alleged al-Qaeda members, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed at the time, but included “news organizations and reporters and journalists” in the United States. The data “was digitized and put on databases somewhere.” It was not simply journalists, however, the NSA spied on and likely continues to spy now.
See entire story including video from MSNBC.

This could explain why for months, every time I went to the RawStory web site, I would have computer problems. As anyone that listens to KGOE 1480 here in Eureka Ca. knows, that didn't stop me. Sometimes I had to use multiple computers to get one story.

Ca. Attorney General Seeks to Block Bush Administration attack on Contraception and Abortion Rights

SACRAMENTO—California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today joined a lawsuit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to halt the implementation of a Bush Administration “midnight regulation” that could potentially “endanger a woman’s right to contraception,” including emergency contraception given to rape victims. “California has carefully and thoughtfully struck a balance between the right to use contraceptives and the right of healthcare providers to abstain from administering them,” Attorney General Brown said. “This illegal and stealth regulation threatens to erode women’s hard fought privacy rights.” Poised to take effect on the day of President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, the regulation undercuts state contraception laws and jeopardizes billions of dollars in federal public health money.

See Whole Story

Martin Luther King Jr. Unity March in Eureka Ca.

On Monday January 19th., people interested in the march should meet at the Eureka High School Cafeteria at 9am. The march will take participants to the Adorni Center on the Eureka water front. Performances and presentations will take place at 12-noon at the Adorni Center, sponsored by the NAACP.

Everyone is welcome to attend the unity march.

Dress for rain of shine.

Single-Payer Health Care Would Stimulate Economy

Published on Thursday, January 15, 2009 by The Nation by John Nichols.

There is an unhealthy tendency on the part of politicians and journalists to see discussions about economic recovery and health care reform as separate debates.
In fact, one of the most important steps on the road to economic recovery - or, more precisely, toward a new, responsible and sustainable prosperity - involves the fundamental reform this country's broken health care system.
But it must be the right reform: the establishment of a national single-payer style healthcare reform system by expanding the existing Medicare system to cover all Americans. According to a new "Single Payer/Medicare for All: An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation" study released today by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, such a reform would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy. This reform would, according to the study, add $100 billion in wages to the currently sputtering U.S. economy.
Indeed, notes the NNOC/CAN, the number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008. "These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery," says NNOC/CAN c o-president Geri Jenkins, RN.
Specifically, notes Jenkins, expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and those on Medicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for those with limited Medicare, would:
1. Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008) -- and jobs that are not easily shipped overseas
2. Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
3. Add $100 billion in employee compensation
4. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues

See Whole Story Here

Veterans Say CIA Tested Drugs, Mind Control on Them

Published on Monday, January 12, 2009 by The News & Observer (North Carolina) by Jay Price. Photo by A.P.

It was 1968, and Frank Rochelle was 20 years old and fresh out of Army boot camp when he saw notices posted around his base in Virginia asking for volunteers to test uniforms and equipment.
harsh weeks of boot camp, he thought, and signed up.
Instead of equipment testing, though, the Onslow County native found himself in a bizarre, CIA-funded drug testing and mind-control program, according to a lawsuit that he and five other veterans and Vietnam Veterans of America filed last week. The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the Department of Defense and the CIA.
The plaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the experiments and give them proper health care.
The experiments have been the subject of congressional hearings, and in 2003 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs released a pamphlet said nearly 7,000 soldiers had been involved and more than 250 chemicals used on them, including hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP as well as biological and chemical agents. Lasting from 1950 to 1975, the experiments took place at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. According to the lawsuit, some of the volunteers were even implanted with electrical devices in an effort to control their behavior.

Read More

Sense of Conspiracy 9/11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD-pQfnE_Bo&eurl=http://www.prisonplanet.com/sense-of-conspiracy.html Click link to see video.
Manny BadilloWeAreChange.orgTuesday, January 13, 2009
BROOKLYN, NY – The mainstream media continues to refuse to comment on, or cover the factual events of, Sept. 11th, 2001, this time specifically the fact World Trade Center Building seven was planned to come down.
When MSNBC asked FDNY Lieutenant David Rastuccio during a live broadcast after the last demolition on the afternoon of Sept. 11th, 2001, “You guys knew this was coming all day?”. Rastuccio then replied, “We had heard reports that the building was unstable, and that it eventually would either come down on its own, or it would be taken down.”
The FDNY Lieutenant’s comments directly corroborate what the leaseholder Larry Silverstein described in a PBS report as a decision to literally pull the building. Why is it our mainstream media decline to further investigate their own reports?
See entire story

Sea Absorbing Less CO2, Scientists Discover

Published on Monday, January 12, 2009 by The Guardian/UK by David Adam.

Scientists have issued a new warning about climate change after discovering a sudden and dramatic collapse in the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by the Sea of Japan.
The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming.
The world's oceans soak up about 11bn tonnes of human carbon dioxide pollution each year, about a quarter of all produced, and even a slight weakening of this natural process would leave significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere. That would require countries to adopt much stricter emissions targets to prevent dangerous rises in temperature.
Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, who led the research, says the discovery is the "very first observation that directly relates ocean CO2 uptake change to ocean warming".

Read More Here

Bronchitis Season

It seems that almost every year around this time, I get bronchitis. That's what the doctors say anyway.
This time, it knocked me on my back. The main problem is that I am a smoker. That however is not the reason one gets bronchitis, my assistant doesn't smoke and she got it, our news director doesn't smoke and he got it, my dad doesn't smoke and he got it.
I went away on a 9 day vacation followed by 3 days of work and more holidays. I came back on Monday the 5th of January and couldn't make it through the day without falling asleep. I slept for up to 16 hours a day to get over this and I still am not over it.

I just wanted to do a blog to explain where I have been and to see how many other people have experienced this so called bronchitis this season.