Emmy-award investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have ignored or are STILL ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting

CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have or still are ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring instead to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting

POLITICO

Attkisson: 'Outraged' by computer hacking

By Mackenzie Weinger

June 17, 2013  12:47 PM EDT

CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Monday said she is “outraged” her computer was hacked and called it “a very serious and disturbing matter.”

Attkisson told “CBS This Morning” she reported her concern that her work and personal computers were being compromised to CBS News management in January, and they hired a cyber security firm to conduct an investigation. CBS News on Friday said Attkisson’s computer had been compromised and accessed “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions” in late 2012.

Read the rest of the column at: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/06/attkisson-outraged-by-computer-hacking-166414.html

The very troubling situating with Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer has been completely ignored at Forbes.com and their Forbes Network Activity blogs which I subscribe to, a group that writes about everything under the sun, as well as by ProPublica and the supposedly media-savvy New York magazine, as the screen grab below from around 4:35 pm today shows.
Not even one.

Compare that to all the blog posts they have run the past year on alleged phone hacking by NewsCorp execs that actually happened in -yes- another country.
Yes, as far as they are concerned, it's very much a case of picking-and-choosing whose ox is to be gored.
But why would they ignore the story completely?
That's who they are.

Locally, the multi-month story which was first given attention by POLITICO's media columnist  Dylan Byers on May 21st 
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html
was completely ignored until last Friday by the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, with genius editors at the Sun-Sentinel choosing to weigh-in with a weighty four-sentence report from Reuters.

Typical for the Sun-Sentinel the past few years under editor Dana Banker, they were both completely oblivious of the story and then after everyone else who has been ignoring the story finally went with it, they actually ran the worst-possible thing.
Four sentences.
That's why it's the Sun-Sentinel!

Nobody seriously expects real feats of journalism from them anymore.

More noteworthy is that the local CBS affiliate here in Miami, WFOR-TV, which has seen its news rating falter, is also completely ignoring the story thus far:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/search/?q=%22Sharyl+Attkisson%22

ProPublica's Justin Elliott reveals how Congress evades 2007 lobbying reforms - Law Shrouds Details of Congressional Trips Abroad

Law Shrouds Details of Congressional Trips Abroad
by Justin Elliott, ProPublica
April 11, 2012, 10:24 a.m.

When members of Congress or their staffers travel on a private group's dime, they are subject to a long list of requirements and restrictions, thanks to the Jack Abramoff scandal and that infamous picture of the grinning super-lobbyist with a congressman at a famous Scottish golf course.

Reforms in 2007 include preapproval of trips by the House or Senate ethics committee, rules barring lobbyists' involvement, limits on the length of a trip, and mandatory, prompt public disclosure of the cost, itinerary, purpose and so on.

But under a little-known exception, if a trip abroad that originates in the U.S. is paid for by a foreign government, virtually none of those restrictions and disclosure requirements applies.

Last week, we wrote about the Democratic House member from American Samoa, Eni Faleomavaega; his unusual interest in defending Bahrain during the crackdown on protests there last year; and his friend's lobbying firm that promotes the Gulf nation. Faleomavaega was in Bahrain last week, his second such trip in the last year that Bahrain paid for. On the first trip, he was accompanied by the president of the Bahrain American Council, which operates out of the lobbying firm's Washington, D.C., offices.

The South Pacific island territory that Faleomavaega represents is nearly 10,000 miles from the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, but Faleomavaega justifies his interest because Bahrain is a "key ally" to the U.S. in the Middle East.

His trips there are allowed under a half-century-old law called the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961. The post-Abramoff 2007 law that tightened congressional travel rules did not cover these MECEA trips.

The foreign emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution bars public officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments unless explicitly authorized by Congress. The 1961 MECEA law sought to promote "cultural exchange" by allowing the secretary of state to approve programs that pay for "visits and interchanges between the United States and other countries of leaders, experts in fields of specialized knowledge or skill, and other influential or distinguished persons."

There are currently 86 approved MECEA trip programs involving more than 50 foreign governments, according to the State Department. The full list of participating governments 2014 from Canada to Yemen 2014 is here. The House and Senate ethics committees maintain a master list of approved programs, but spokespeople for the committees declined to release the list.

The State Department also declined to release it. "The details on them are proprietary for each of the foreign governments," said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the department does not maintain a list of trips taken every year under MECEA programs because members of Congress and staffers aren't required to report them. The ethics committees also don't keep lists. So it appears that no one is tracking how much money foreign governments spend on the trips, who goes and whether the trips actually meet the goals of the program.

The recent trips to Bahrain were taken under a new memorandum of understanding between the kingdom and the State Department to allow congressional travel there. The agreement was created amid a public-relations effort to protect the country's image in the United States as Bahrain cracked down on protests.

Typically, when a member of Congress takes a trip paid by a private group, he or she must get preapproval from the ethics committee and file a detailed public disclosure form shortly after the trip. The trip must be related to the member's official duties. If the sponsor employs a lobbyist, the trip must be limited to a single night's lodging. Members of Congress can accept longer foreign travel from groups that do not employ lobbyists, but it can last no longer than seven days.

None of those conditions applies to MECEA trips. Where members go, who accompanies them, whom they meet and how much is spent 2014 all of this is unreported. The sole requirement is that members must note any MECEA trips on their annual personal financial disclosures, but the only detail disclosed is which foreign government paid for the trip.

There is also a significant delay because personal financial disclosures are not due until May of the following year. And while senior House and Senate staffers 2014 those making about $120,000 or more 2014 must file financial disclosures. Junior staffers do not, however, so they don't have to report the trips.

"Official travel and travel sponsored by foreign governments, while not as troubling as lobbyist-sponsored travel, certainly should be subject to full transparency," says Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen who helped draft the 2007 law tightening privately funded travel rules.

Here is an example of a travel disclosure form for a typical, privately funded trip. It details a trip to Israel in August by Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. The American Israel Education Fund, a charity group affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying organization AIPAC, paid for the trip. On the form, which must be filed with the clerk of the House within 15 days of the end of the trip, Broun had to disclose that his wife also went, and had to provide the reason for the trip; the costs broken down by travel, lodging, meals and itemized other expenses; a seven-page itinerary; and a preapproval form that he had to file with the ethics committee before embarking. The preapproval form requires the member to certify that a group that employs lobbyists is not paying for the trip.

Here, in contrast, is an example of the disclosure of a MECEA trip that Rep. Health Shuler, D-N.C., took to Sri Lanka in 2009:

That trip later prompted a protest. Ethnic Tamils argued it was a propaganda trip after Shuler defended conditions in refugee camps run by Sri Lanka, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported in June 2009.

We know about Faleomavaega's trips to Bahrain only because the Humpty Dumpty Institute, a New York City group that worked with the Bahraini government to organize the travel, voluntarily posted a synopsis about last year's trip on the institute's website.

"It's a normal Bahraini MECEA trip that is intended obviously to give the Bahraini point of view," Humpty Dumpty Institute Executive Director Joseph Merante said last week. Faleomavaega attended along with Reps. Jim Himes, D-Conn.; Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio; and Dan Burton, R-Ind. Merante added that the institute seeks balance on its trips and went out of its way to add meetings with opposition groups to the itinerary.

A few other MECEA trips that have surfaced in news reports:

• In March 2010, The Washington Post reported on an upcoming trip to Switzerland advertised to congressional staffers as featuring "culinary delights and Swiss hospitality" in a country that's "all about thriving cutting-edge technology in beautiful landscapes."
• In October, three Republican congressmen, including two members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, toured the Alberta oil sands on a MECEA trip paid by the Canadian government. The energy committee last year was involved in pushing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands oil to the U.S. The trip was first reported in the Canadian media.
• Also last October, as part of a push to convince the Obama administration to sell an advanced model of the F-16 fighter jet to Taiwan, senator-turned-Taiwan-lobbyist Al D'Amato of New York wrote a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., pitching her on travel to Taiwan. "Please know that no U.S. taxpayer funds would be used to pay for your trip, as Taiwan would cover your trip via the State Department's Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act," D'Amato wrote.
 

The Taiwan example shows how lobbyists can be involved in organizing MECEA trips 2014 participation that would not be allowed for other types of trips.

These few trips are known only because they happened to attract media attention. Because of the loophole in travel disclosure rules, it's difficult to immediately conclude much else about MECEA trips 2014 for instance, to identify trends or evaluate whether they live up to their stated purpose.


http://www.propublica.org/article/details-of-congressional-trips-abroad-a-secret

ProPublica's Lois Beckett on how politicians are presenting themselves to different audiences and whether they have a responsibility to tell people about the personal information they collect about them on Facebook, Google and other social media

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-win-facebook-friends-and-influence-people
ProPublica

How to Win Facebook Friends and Influence People

by Lois Beckett, ProPublica,  
March 13, 2012, 1:31 p.m.

Instead of picketing outside company headquarters, an advocacy group is using Facebook ads to try to influence people whose profiles identify them as employees of Freddie Mac or JPMorgan Chase.

The anti-foreclosure ad campaign, which launches today, asks Freddie and Chase employees to talk to their CEOs about a veteran -- a former Marine -- who's facing eviction in California.

"This is not any sort of attack on the employees there," said Jim Pugh of Rebuild the Dream, which is running the ad campaign. "We're trying to let them know what's happening."

The ad that targets Freddie Mac employees features a small picture of CEO Charles Haldeman's face, and the message, "Freddie Mac did what???? Freddie Mac is evicting a former Marine who's been trying to pay his mortgage. Tell CEO Haldeman to work out a fair deal with him!" according to a copy of the ad provided by Pugh.

The JPMorgan Chase ad is similar, but with a Chase logo instead of an executive's face.  

We've contacted Freddie Mac and JP Morgan Chase spokespeople for comment, and also reached out to Freddie Mac and JPMorgan Chase employees on Facebook. If you've seen one of these ads, please let us know.

 Targeted online advertising is nothing new. (As anyone who has changed their Facebook status to "engaged" can tell you, a simple update can bring a deluge of new ads.) But political campaigns and advocacy groups are increasingly adopting the same microtargeting tactics that companies use.  

Rick Perry's campaign, for instance, targeted faith-focused ads to people in Iowa who listed themselves as Christians on Facebook, and ads featuring his wife to the state's female conservatives, Politico reported.  

According to FEC data, Endorse Liberty, a super PAC that supports Ron Paul, has led the way on Facebook expenditures, spending a total of $241,508 through January 2012.

And it's not just Facebook and Google where campaigns and activists are doing microtargeting. The music site Pandora announced last year that it would be selling political ad space targeted to the zip codes of particular listeners, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There's nothing inherently problematic about targeted ads. Campaigns have been using direct mail to target particular voters for decades. Digital targeting can be a cost-effective way of spending advertising dollars, especially for smaller groups, like Rebuild the Dream, which sees the ads as a great way to get more bang for their buck in terms of reaching their intended audience. (The group also launched a special donation drive specifically for the Facebook ad buy.) ProPublica even used Facebook ads to try to find sources for our 2009 series, When Caregivers Harm.

But as the ability to use data to reach particular people grows more sophisticated, targeting risks crossing privacy lines, as demonstrated by a recent New York Times article on how Target knew a teenage customer was pregnant before her father did.

What's clear is that if all this microtargeting translates into electoral gains, the scale and sophistication of these efforts will continue to grow, and the data science that gained traction in 2008 will become a regular part of campaigning. In the meantime, the Obama campaign's already substantial data team continues to hire statistical modeling analysts and analytics engineers.

The increasing ease and flexibility of online targeting also raises new questions about how politicians are presenting themselves to different audiences, how much campaigns need to tell their supporters about the personal information they collect -- and what will happen to the massive databases of voter information collected during the 2012 presidential campaign. Will they be sold? Passed on to other politicians?

Rebuild the Dream, which focuses on economic issues, was launched by MoveOn.org in 2011, but has been independent since January, Pugh said. The group's president is former Obama green jobs adviser Van Jones.

Pugh worked on the Obama campaign's digital analytics team in 2008 while also trying to finish a Ph.D. dissertation in robotics, and later did similar work for the Democratic National Committee. He said he was not sure what kind of reaction the ads would receive.

"I would imagine that people are fairly used to targeted ads at this point," he said. But while people who work in politics and advocacy may be used to receiving Facebook ads targeting specific causes, "It's hard to know in advance how unusual it will seem to the employees of Freddie Mac and JP Morgan Chase."
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Reader comments at: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-win-facebook-friends-and-influence-people/single#comments

Like cat-nip for Palin-haters: Washington Post & New York Times ask for readers' help in analyzing Palin emails as Alaska governor, but here in Hallandale Beach, Mayor Joy Cooper's email about city issues are off-limits to residents, taxpayers and small business owners

http://bcove.me/jt9yvxp0

A version of this blog post below was sent out as an email on Thursday to the Usual Trusted Sources in the Sunshine State and from Coast-to-Coast.

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Up in the Northeast corridor, the Washington Post and the New York Times among other MSM -along with ProPublica- are sounding the dinner bell for Sarah Palin-haters by asking their readers for help in analyzing Palin's emails as governor of Alaska, a place that 99.99% of them have never been, which you'd think would naturally make a difference in analyzing information and giving others some proper context.

(One of my maternal uncles, now living back in Texas, was a teacher in Nome in the '70's.)

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New York Times

Caucus blog

Help Us Investigate the Sarah Palin E-Mail Records

By Derek WillisJune 9, 2011, 1:36 PM-

On Friday, the State of Alaska will release more than 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s e-mails covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska. Times reporters will be in Juneau, the state capital, to begin the process of reviewing the e-mails, which we will be posting on nytimes.com starting on Friday afternoon E.D.T.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/help-us-investigate-the-sarah-palin-e-mail-records/

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Washington Post

Fast Fix blog

Posted at 10:56 AM ET, 06/09/2011

Help analyze the Palin e-mails

By Ryan Kellett

Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday. That's a lot of e-mail for us to review so we're looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/help-analyze-the-palin-emails/2011/06/08/AGZAaHNH_blog.html

Archive of Sarah Palin emails: http://documents.latimes.com/sarah-palin-emails/

On the chance that you haven't been following things this weekend, above, the Palin email fishing expedition has largely backfired and The Politico is even saying so publicly.

Meanwhile, closer to home, in case you forgot, thanks to Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) head Nicki Grossman's sister, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Henning, Hallandale Beach residents STILL can't see the govt.-related emails to and from Mayor Joy Cooper's AOL email account that she has intentionally used for YEARS to shield them from public view, despite the fact that it was known years ago that all government-related emails are supposed to go thru the city's email system.

As South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo accurately noted two years ago, when he was the only journalist in all of South Florida asking reasonable questions about what on the face of it seemed like an open-and-shut case involving the clear provisions of the Florida Constitution and the Sunshine Laws, HB taxpayers even got the privilege of paying for the mayor's mendacious lawsuit, to boot, which makes a mockery of the spirit and letter of the law.

That Oct. 29, 2009 story titled, Why are taxpayers footing Mayor Joy Cooper's lawsuit bill?, included these two gems of clarity:

If the Feb. 17 e-mail sent from Mayor Joy Cooper's personal America Online account was private and not subject to the state's public records law, as Cooper and the city maintain, then why did the city hire an outside law firm at $185 an hour to initiate a lawsuit?
If you accept the premise that her e-mail, which had the subject line "Mayor Cooper's Update," was not connected with city business, shouldn't Cooper have hired her own
attorney to go to court to clarify the issue?

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/10/mayo_why_are_taxpayers_footing.html

Mayor Cooper didn't (and still doesn't) care about appearances, which is why, then-as-now, she does what she does and dares someone to stop her, which has been her standard M.O. the entire seven-plus years I've lived here, all of which has been with her as mayor.

My friend Michael Butler, creator of the fact and financial-based website Change Hallandale, http://www.changehallandale.com/, stood-up to challenge her efforts and all he got for his concern for the larger community was hassled -and a legal bill that HE had to pay for.

Here's a partial list of who foolishly ignored what Michael did to hold public officials accountable and force them to do the right thing: The Miami Herald, Channel 4 News, Channel 6 News, Channel 7 News and Channel 10 News, The Daily Business Review, et al... You know, the thing they always say everyone needs to do?

(Cooper's now doing the same thing with the Golden Isles overlay proposal that will clearly violate homeowners rights as spelled out in their deeds. She just doesn't care. She wants everyone to do what SHE wants. Period.)

Now that she is the elected head of the Florida League of Cities, if you want me to believe that all the email she receives from her out-of-town colleagues or special interest groups in Tallahassee urging her to pass resolutions of support for one thing or another at HB City Hall, supporting League (or parochial pet projects) as a template for others to emulate, is the official one that ends @hallandalebeachfl.gov, you are going to have a very, very difficult time convincing me, because I'm sure she's still using that AOL account for such purposes so we will never know.

Why would Joy Cooper change her spots NOW?

My favorite response about this biased effort regarding Sarah Palin came from someone who wanted to know why the MSM didn't ask their readers to do this for the minutiae of Obamacare when it would've mattered, since it was clear that many congressmen were going to vote for it without ever reading it, which I'm sure includes Kendrick Meek, whom nobody misses and who has largely disappeared from the scene.

I'll bet he still hasn't read it.

Not that South Florida's lapdog news media ever asked him, on-camera.
That's the sort of journalism usually practiced in South Florida now -strangely incurious and content to let questions go unasked.

Six Ways Fukushima is Not Chernobyl by Lois Beckett, Special to ProPublica





Six Ways Fukushima is Not Chernobyl

by Lois Beckett, Special to ProPublica March 18, 2011, 1:22 p.m.

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi has already been dubbed the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, and the situation there continues to worsen.

But along with references to the "ch-word," as one nonproliferation expert put it [1], experts have been quick to provide reasons why the Daiichi crisis will not be "the next Chernobyl."

Experts have noted several key differences in the design of the reactors in question, as well as in the government's reaction to the crisis:

1. Chernobyl's reactor had no containment structure.

The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl "was regarded as the workhorse of Soviet atomic energy, thrifty and reliable -- and safe enough to be built without an expensive containment building that would prevent the release of radiation in the event of a serious accident," The Guardian's Adam Higginbotham noted [2].

As a result, when a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, the radioactive material inside went straight into the atmosphere [3].

Fukushima's reactors [4] are surrounded by steel-and-concrete containment structures [5]. However, as the New York Times reported Tuesday, the General Electric Mark 1 reactors at Fukushima have "a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure [6]" that has drawn criticism from American regulators. In a 1972 memo [7], a safety official suggested that the design presented serious risks and should be discontinued. One primary concern, the Times reported, was that in an incident of cooling failure -- the kind Fukushima's reactors are now undergoing -- the containment structures might burst, releasing the radioactive material they are supposed to keep in check.

At least one of Fukushima's reactors [4] -- No. 2 -- seems to have cracked, and has been releasing radioactive stream. The seriousness of this breach is still unclear [8], with a Japanese government official maintaining on Wednesday that the damage to the containment structure may not be severe.

2. Chernobyl's reactors had several design flaws that made the crisis harder to control. Most crucially, their cooling system had a "positive void coefficient," which means that as coolant water is lost or turns into steam, the reaction speeds up and becomes more intense [9], creating a vicious feedback loop.

Shan Nair [10], a nuclear safety expert who spent 20 years analyzing the consequences of Loss of Coolant Accidents like the one at Fukushima, discussed this factor on TIME's Econcentric blog [11]. Nair was a member of a panel that advised the European Commission on how to respond to Chernobyl. As he explained:

[Fukushima] can't be Chernobyl because the Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) at Fukushima are designed differently than the High Power Channel-type Reactor (RBMK) reactor at Chernobyl. The RBMK was designed so that the hotter the core gets the greater the reactivity -- so you have a situation where you are in a vicious cycle and a race to an explosion. [Fukushima's] BWRs are designed in such a way that the hotter it gets the less radioactive the core gets so there is a self-shutdown type of mechanism. But the problem is that before you can get to a safe level you might have a complete meltdown. I believe that's what they are battling against now in Japan.

3. The carbon in Chernobyl's reactor fueled a fire that spewed radioactive material further into the atmosphere. Fukushima's reactors do not contain carbon, which means that the contamination from an explosion would remain more localized.

Dr. Colin Brown, director of engineering for the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers [12], described another of the Chernobyl reaction's design flaws in a post on the Institution's website [13] explaining why it was "unlikely" that Fukushima "will turn into the next great Chernobyl with radiation spread over a big area." He wrote:

The reason why radiation was disseminated so widely from Chernobyl with such devastating effects was a carbon [graphite] fire. Some 1,200 tonnes of carbon were in the reactor at Chernobyl and this caused the fire which projected radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere causing it to be carried across most of Europe. There is no carbon in the reactors at Fukushima, and this means that even if a large amount of radioactive material were to leak from the plant, it would only affect the local area.

Britain's Chief Scientific Officer, Sir John Beddington [14], made a similar point about the localized nature of an explosion in a speech about Fukushima on Tuesday [15]:

In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that's really serious, but it's serious again for the local area. It's not serious for elsewhere even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres...And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet [about 9144 metres]. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30 kilometres. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation.

One of the most pressing worries about Fukushima is that radiation might be spewed into the atmosphere not from reactors themselves, but from spent fuel rods exposed to the air [16] once the pool of water protecting them boils away. According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. officials believe one of the spent fuel pools has been breached [17], potentially exposing 130 tons of uranium.

4. Unlike Chernobyl, however, a meltdown at Daiichi could end up contaminating the water table.

One troubling possibility that has received little attention is that a reactor meltdown could send radioactive material downwards until it reaches the water table, which could contaminate both water supply and crops. Discussing Daiichi on TIME's Ecocentric blog [18], Nair, the nuclear safety expert, noted:

If the entire fuel has melted the odds are it will go straight through the pressure vessel and therefore through the ground until it gets to the water table. Then it will cool down, but the problem is that the water table will start leaching actinides and fission products from the melted glob of fuel into the environment. So you will end up with some radioactive contamination of water supplies and ultimately crops and other products. That's a major problem because radioactive particles are much more dangerous when digested -- they cause internal irradiation of organs with resulting increased cancer risks...The severity of the water table risk depends on the local topography -- it depends on the depth of the water table, which itself moves up and down. I would imagine the water table is quite close to the surface right now because of all the flooding, which is not good.

At Chernobyl, fears that the radioactive material from the exploded reactor would reach the water table prompted a massive two-part project: first, to use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ground beneath the exploded reactor, and secondly, to build a shielding structure beneath the reactor. Although the effort exposed many miners to intense radiation [2], it was ultimately unnecessary.

5. Much of the public health impact of Chernobyl was the result of the Soviet government's attempt to cover up the crisis, rather than moving quickly to inform and protect the public.

In Japan, the government evacuated the 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, surrounding the Fukushima plant fairly quickly, and have continued to upgrade the warnings to citizens in the vicinity (although, according to the United States government, not quickly enough [19]).

That didn't happen at Chernobyl. In the sunny April morning after the explosion, the residents of the nearby town of Pripyat were left to go about their business. As the Guardian has noted, children went to school [2], an outdoor wedding was celebrated, and sunbathers went out to enjoy the good weather, as the plume from the exploded reactor continued to fill the air with radioactive particles.

One of the plant's employees, who had been away on business, returned home to find his wife outside in the garden, where she was paying no attention to the small pieces of graphite that had landed "on the petals of her wild strawberry plants." Before long, the sunbathers began to experience strange cases of nausea and vomiting. The town would not be evacuated until the next day. And it was only after heightened levels of radioactivity set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden [19] that the Soviet government finally admitted publicly that something had gone wrong.

The delay and denial had serious implications, including an epidemic of thyroid cancer among about 6,000 people [20] exposed to radiation as children.

As the New York Times noted, this epidemic "would probably not have happened if people had been told to stop drinking locally produced milk, which was by far the most important source of radiation [20]."

(Russia distributed iodine tablets, as has Japan. But as we reported on Monday, these offer little protection [21] against ingesting contaminating food or milk.)

6. Emergency workers at Chernobyl took few precautions, and may not have been fully informed about the risks they were taking.

The "Fukushima 50 [22]" who stayed at the plant on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep containment efforts underway have been facing serious risks. But they have been taking precautions, the Times reported [23], including breathing through respirators, wearing full-body jumpsuits, and limiting their exposure time.

At Chernobyl, the Guardian wrote [2]:

[The firefighters] had had no protective clothing, or dosimetric equipment to measure radiation levels; the blazing radioactive debris fused with the molten bitumen, and when they had put the fires out with water from their hoses, they picked up chunks of it in their hands and kicked it away with their feet.... This heroic but utterly futile action took them closer to a lethal source of radiation than even the victims of Hiroshima...When they died two weeks later in Hospital No 6, Zakharov heard that the radiation had been so intense the colour of Vladimir Pravik's eyes had turned from brown to blue; Nikolai Titenok sustained such severe internal radiation burns there were blisters on his heart. Their bodies were so radioactive they were buried in coffins made of lead, the lids welded shut.

The Times noted that 28 of Chernobyl's emergency workers died [24] from radiation exposure within three months, and more than 100 developed radiation sickness.

Chernobyl's final toll [25] of deaths and injuries [26] is still a subject of fierce debate [3]. A 2005 Chernobyl Forum report [27], jointly produced by eight UN agencies and the governments of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Berlarus, concluded that up to "4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure" from Chernobyl, including 50 emergency workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, 15 children (as of 2005) who had died of thyroid cancer, and a projected total of "3940 deaths from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia" among emergency workers, evacuees, and residents of the most contaminated areas around Chernobyl. (The report noted that it's impossible to tell which cancer deaths in the region were specifically caused by Chernobyl radiation, only that there is an expected 3 percent increase.)

Lois Beckett writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab, the SF Weekly, and the East Bay Express.

http://www.propublica.org/article/six-ways-fukushima-is-not-chernobyl

For more information:

http://www.propublica.org/topic/nuclear-crisis
http://www.propublica.org/

Darrell Issa, GOP’s New House Oversight Chair, Asks Businesses Which Regulations Burden Them; where's the replication in Hallandale Beach, Broward?

My comments follow this interesting ProPublica story from last Tuesday that I had originally meant to post and comment on before the end of the week, some of which were shared via an email last Wednesday to the Usual Suspects on my email list.
This is an expanded version of that.

GOP's New Oversight Chair Asks Businesses Which Regulations Burden Them
by Marian Wang
A letter from Rep. Darrell Issa asks businesses and trade groups to help identify regulations his Oversight committee should target.

Because of my delay in posting it, it has since been updated, which is the version below.

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ProPublica http://www.propublica.org/

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=B8tYkNV9BxbjLsyaILpmm1BNoB8NYXjY

GOP’s New Oversight Chair Asks Businesses Which Regulations Burden Them

by Marian Wang ProPublica, Jan. 4, 2011, 12:31 p.m.

1/6: This post has been updated.

We’ve noted that many of the incoming Republican chairs of powerful House committees have criticized the Obama administration’s “job-killing [1]” regulation of the financial and energy sectors, among others.

One of these, Rep. Darrell Issa, has sent letters to more than 150 businesses, trade groups and think tanks calling for their input on which regulations are burdening them and hurting jobs [2], Politico reports. From the text of the letter [3], which NBC has posted:

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is examining existing and proposed regulations that negatively impact the economy and jobs.

In fiscal year 2010, federal agencies promulgated 43 major new regulations. These regulations ranged from new limits on “effluent” discharges to new rules for Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations. The new limits on “effluent” discharges from construction sites will cost $810.8 million annually resulting in the closure of 147 construction firms and the loss of 7,257 jobs. In total, the administration estimated the cost, often referred to as the hidden tax, of the 43 new regulations to be approximately $28 billion, the highest single year increase in estimated burden on record, resulting in thousands of lost jobs. This new burden is on top of the $1.75 trillion estimated burden of existing regulations.

As a trade organization comprised of members that must comply with the regulatory state, I ask for your assistance in identifying existing and proposed regulations that have negatively impacted job growth in your members’ industry. Additionally, suggestions on reforming identified regulations and the rulemaking process would be appreciated. Please submit your response as soon as possible, preferably before January 10, 2010. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact my office at ...

The National Association of Manufacturers and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, two groups that received letters, told Politico that in their responses to Issa they pointed to new EPA greenhouse gas rules as an example of burdensome regulation.

As we’ve written, since being named as the incoming chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Issa has sought to allay fears that he will use his new position—which includes subpoena authority—to initiate partisan investigations [4]. He’s already requested information from many administration officials as well.

“Asking a question shouldn’t be labeled as partisan or political,” his spokesman told Politico. He also said that with their letters soliciting feedback on regulation, “[it] was a broad net that we cast.”

Update: The Hill has posted the full list [5]of recipients of businesses and groups that received Issa's letters.

-----

Far from the sand and surf and perpetual automobile gridlock of Hallandale Beach, a very sharp congressman from SoCal named Darrell Issa, someone who's familiar with all three in his northern San Diego district, and who became a multi-millionaire thru marrying a quality product, marketing savvy and high-technology -Viper car alarms- is asking some very reasonable questions in his role as the new head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

But first, the obligatory back-story: When I first moved to D.C., in those pre-Internet days, one of my best and closest friends was a staffer for that particular Comm. when John Conyers was the voluble Chairman, a man with a knack for getting in the national spotlight.

Sometimes, if I had the time, I'd agree to go with her into her office on Saturdays to help her catch-up on work and make sense of things, since that particular high-profile Comm. was constantly being deluged with requests for materials, like testimony from a hearing, that reporters and columnists and TV networks from all over the country wanted.
But mostly reporters, editors and produccers within the Beltway.

Those Saturday mornings of coffee and bagels and CNN in the background, with she and I walking round and round a large conference table with dozens of envelopes laid out on it with the individual reporter's info request on a Post It, and plopping-down whatever they needed, seem rather quaint now, since it could all be done in seconds digitally.

Obviously, much of our banter centered on our own lives and what was going on in town politically, but as you'd guess, it also included her giving me the low-down on which reporters we were helping out were friendly and professional, and who was not.
Over the years, her diagnosis was close to 100%, as I met many of those very same people in work-related or social situations.

(Sometimes, during the summer, after our mail distribution project and whatever else on Capitol Hill was history, we'd head over to the large apt. complex of a mutual friend in N.W. Washington that hosted one of the greatest summer pool scenes in the area.
Sometimes, even epic to be honest.

The only problem -if you can call it that- was that my Congressional staffer 'friend' was very
good-looking, esp. in a bikini. Normally, you wouldn't think that would be a problem, and it never had been before, but.. I came to realize over time that because she and I spent so much time together in and around the pool, I was never going to ever meet any interesting women there, even though they were, quite literally, everywhere.
All because of appearances, i.e. her knock-out good-looks and the first impression appearance that she and I were more than just friends.

I know this because more than once, when I'd get up to grab a Coke from the vending machjne nearby, or while by myself at the deep-end of the pool, hanging on the side, just relaxing, whether to actually find out some intel or merely just a harmless meaningless remark, an attractive woman would say to me, "So, is your girlfriend here today?"

When I'd reply, "Oh, you mean X, she's not my girlfriend, she's just a close friend," I guess I wasn't too convincing, because they seemed disinclined to believe the truth.
Apparently all those hours of us talking and being like book-ends in the pool had led to, well, misconceptions. Ladies and gentlemen, let's just say that that chapter of the book ought to be called "When your friend's beauty kills the best laid summer plans!)

When X took off on vacation in the summer, she was kind enough to let me drive her very sporty car. You know, to keep it in good condition!

I was only too happy to oblige her by driving up to Camden Yards on weekends for Oriole games -instead of taking the MARC baseball train from Union Station- or drive over to Annapolis with a date on the Chesapeake.
Those were the days!
End of back-story

To me, one of the great things about Issa, compared to many other congressmen, and GOP congressmen in particular, is that he's never forgotten his roots, when nobody wanted to help him, or the red-tape he dealt with when first starting his company.

He hates red-tape but he also hates business people who talk in generalities -and has little regard for execs born with a silver spoon- so the idea that he is in a key position to tell many well-known American businesses who have complained for years about red-tape of one sort or another, to finally be specific or shut the hell up, is great news for taxpayers and small business owners who aren't cronies of pols or officials in their city, as is the case here in
Hallandale Beach.

Speaking of HB, Issa was the person who personally bankrolled the beginning of the successful recall effort in 2003 against Calif. Gov. Gray Davis.
Hmm-m-m... speaking of recalls, I'll soon have some news about the possibility of one here in the coming months.

He is being very clear -identify what specific rules or regs are problematic to them.
Now if their business is poorly run and not delivering a good quality product or service to consumers at a price they can afford, I think we'd all agree that the regulations are the least of the problems.
But if they're doing what they need to do to remain competitive, well, then, it'll get very, very interesting, and we all benefit from hearing the unvarnished truth.

The recent meeting I attended on the discontent on Fashion Row in HB revealed to me the the true level of the city's myopia with burdening businesses with the most ridiculous rules -practically inviting them to leave the city .

Hallandale Beach City Hall's chronic inability to accept their fair share of the blame for how things are going in this city, much less, show some common sense, was demonstrated over-and-over again.

I wish we could see something like Issa's effort replicated here in Hallandale Beach and Broward County in general, where a public forum could be held to find out what are the most consistently contentious items of disagreement, and why are certain businesses/entities seemingly allowed to violate code compliance -and common sense- for years.

And why the city itself is one of the very worst offenders, something that is self-evident to anyone paying close attention.
Like yours truly.


South Florida Sun-Sentinel
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-12-31/news/fl-cn-fashion-0102-20101231_1_business-owners-paint-fashion-row-district

Hallandale Beach working to boost Fashion Row District
By Sergy Odiduro
December 31, 2010

After years of wrangling with Hallandale Beach, Michele Lazarow is finally going to paint her building purple.

"For years I have been trying to paint my building. I gave up and then I thought I would paint a mural," said Lazarow, owner of a clothing and accessories boutique in the Fashion Row District, which is situated along Northeast First and Second avenues, north of Hallandale Beach Boulevard.

She told officials at a recent meeting that she struggles to boost her store's visibility while adhering to city codes, and that she often received conflicting information.

"I felt like my head was going to explode," she said.

City officials are now reaching out to business owners like her.

"We have met with the Fashion Row District to get some of their concerns," said Liza Torres, manager of the city's Community Redevelopment Agency. "We want to create a district committee to present their priorities and goals so that we can bring it back to the commission."

At the meeting, a range of planned improvements for the area was discussed, including creating a two-way street and increased police patrols. Also discussed were expedited permitting and commercial loans and grants offered by the CRA.

Participants were urged to fill out a survey ranking goals for the district, including landscaping, increased public parking and signage improvements.

Mayor Joy Cooper said the outreach is part of an overall strategy to jumpstart the area.

"We want to make it a fun and funky district where there is entertainment and shopping, creativity and artists, and bring it back to what it used to be during its heyday, but with a little bit of edge," she said.

The district, formed in the 1960s, was a haven for tourists and bargain hunters who sought out trendy and unique clothing and accessories. But the rise of nearby shopping malls and large retail stores have hurt the area.

Some merchants said that dealing with a labyrinth of city codes and regulations has hurt their competitiveness.

"They talk a lot about beautifying the area, but there aren't enough business owners on the board to push the businesses' agenda," Josh Glansberg said. "There are so many rules and regulations, and they are so unclear that the people that are enforcing them don't even know what they are."

Sue Gordon, who has operated a business in the area for more than 30 years, was cautiously optimistic after the meeting.

Why is this unfavorable story on Kendrick Meek missing from the Herald, Sun-Sentinel and local Miami TV newscasts?

So you remember my post here of last Monday,
titled, The nexus of South Florida taxpayer
dollars, sports teams and stadiums:
Dolphins owner Stephen Ross' checkbook,
with the ProPublica story I posted on pols using
sporting event tickets for fundraising purposes
-something I heard and saw for myself all the time
while living in the D.C. area for 15 years when the
Redskins won two Super Bowl titles in Joe Gibbs'
first term- and specifically, Congressmen and
Super Bowl tickets?

Well, there's news, and it's exactly what you
thought it'd be, not that any Miami-area
reporters were doing much actual reporting
or investigating during their Super Swoon
mode, when they were swallowing whole all
the PR nonsense they were being spoon-fed.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/nexus-of-taxpayer-dollars-sports-teams.html

Monday ProPublica had a follow-up story
to that article last week I posted and it touched
close to home, though you'd never know it judging
from the reaction of the somnambulant Miami
news media to this news about Kendrick Meek
But Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times
noticed.

------

Pro Publica
http://www.propublica.org/ion/reporting-network/item/congressional-fundraising-at-super-bowl-stays-out-of-the-limelight-208

Congressional Fundraising Stays Out of the Limelight at Super Bowl

by Marcus Stern and Sebastian Jones,
ProPublica - February 8, 2010 4:27 pm EST

XLIV on Feb. 7, 2010 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. (Doug Benc/Getty Images)" width="475">
The Indianapolis Colts take on the New Orleans Saints during Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7, 2010 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. (Doug Benc/Getty Images)

Was it the two feet of snow that blanketed Washington during the days leading up to the Super Bowl? Or was it the unintended consequence of our Super Bowl Blitz [1], a two-week telephone survey that ProPublica conducted with the help of its readers, trying to find out which members of Congress would be attending this year’s big game?

In any case, at least two Super Bowl fundraising events scheduled by members of Congress were scrubbed at the last minute or moved to undisclosed locations. Invitations to those parties, which had been circulated two or more weeks before the game, promised Super Bowl tickets to contributors who gave either of the lawmakers $5,000.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., had coupled his offer with an invitation [2] to join him over Super Bowl weekend at the posh Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami. Among the activities planned for the weekend was a poolside luncheon. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., had promised contributors lunch at Joe’s Stone Crab, a popular South Beach eatery.

Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., did show up at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Fla., for his fundraiser [3] on Saturday afternoon. ABC News, which partnered with ProPublica in an effort to find out where the members of Congress got their Super Bowl tickets, also showed up at the hotel. But surprised Meek staffers quickly shut the door and asked the crew to leave.

The result was one of those delicate media moments that occur when politicians expecting privacy are confronted by a network news team hoping to film them. As the camera continued rolling in the hallway outside the event, Meek’s staffers peeled name tags off the lapels of the congressman’s departing guests. When Meek headed for his car, ABC’s news crew peppered him with questions about how he got the Super Bowl tickets he offered to partygoers who contributed $4,800. He didn’t have answers.

What we learned from this exercise is that even when the venue is America’s most public sports spectacle, politicians largely succeed in remaining invisible, especially when their activities include fundraising. It quickly became apparent that they feel they’re entitled to privacy when they’re accepting campaign money from contributors.

The Super Bowl is one of thousands of events each year where lobbyists and others with business before the federal government provide campaign contributions to lawmakers in an attempt to ingratiate themselves and gain access. Candidates for Congress raise $1 billion every two years, primarily through these types of private get-togethers.

The Super Bowl presents a special opportunity, because tickets to the game aren’t sold to the general public. A small number—1,000 this year—are sold to people who enter and win a lottery the league conducts. The rest are distributed at face value (either $800 or $1,000 this year) by the NFL and its 32 member teams as they see fit, under a shroud of secrecy.

Most fans are forced to get their tickets on Web sites like StubHub, where a ticket for the nosebleed seats sold for about $1,800. Yet lawmakers like Conyers, Meeks and Meek have no trouble getting tickets, not only for their personal use but also to exchange for contributions that are four or five times the face value of the tickets.

On Sunday, a Meek staffer said the campaign had bought about 10 tickets from the NFL at face value for the congressman and his contributors. However, it remains unclear where Conyers and Meeks got their tickets, how much they paid for them and how much they netted by using them in their fundraising activities.

“Any time politicians are getting something that’s not available to the average fan, I think the public has right to question that,” said Jordan Kobritz, an expert in sports marketing and ethics at Eastern New Mexico University. “I think it’s favoritism. I think it’s a way to raise money. I think it’s one reason why it’s so hard to displace an incumbent politician. They have access to these tickets. They can raise the funds that a challenger cannot raise.”

Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Steve Scalise, R-La., attended the Super Bowl, but it was unclear whether they held fundraisers. Their staffs did not reply to inquiries. Scalise told the New Orleans Times-Picayune he got his tickets from DirectTV, which carries NFL games. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., attended the game, reportedly with his two sons, but his staff could not say how he got his tickets.

The political festivities surrounding the Super Bowl have been more circumspect since 1995, when Congress imposed a $50 limit on the value of gifts that lawmakers could accept, lobbying experts say. The parties became even tamer in 2007, when Congress outlawed gifts of any value after the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

But while the restrictions tamped down the activities, they didn’t eliminate them. Access is one of the most powerful tools available to lobbyists, and campaign contributions remain one of the most reliable ways to get that access.

Three of the lawmakers who came to Miami had home state teams in the Super Bowl—Pence and Bayh of Indiana and Scalise of Louisiana. But they also all hold positions on committees that could make them potentially helpful to a range of industries, whether on regulatory, tax or spending matters.

Scalise is on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is vital to several major industries. Pence is the third-highest-ranking member of the House GOP leadership. Bayh sits on committees that oversee the banking, housing and energy industries.

New York Congressman Meeks sits on the Financial Services Committee, which is playing a crucial role in the nation’s rebound from the 2008 credit crisis.

Florida’s Meek, now in his fourth term, is important because he’s a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. And he has his eye on the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican George LeMieux.

Meek’s spokesman, Adam Sharon, said there is nothing wrong with a lawmaker’s buying tickets at face value from the NFL. “This is simply an opportunity for us to say thank you to our top supporters,” Sharon said. “There is no conflict of interest.”

But with the NFL’s activities increasingly monitored by agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and various congressional committees, some object to the league making tickets available to elected officials.

“This is something that I would see as being unethical” because the tickets aren’t available to average fans, said Kobritz, the sports ethics expert.

For years, the NFL has lobbied Congress for an exemption from the nation’s antitrust laws. That could boost the NFL’s revenue by giving it greater leverage in negotiations with broadcasters. It could also give the league an advantage in its dealings with vendors and players.

The NFL is already an $8 billion-a-year business thanks to revenue from selling broadcasting rights to the networks and DirectTV, ticket sales, stadium concessions and the sale of league apparel.

Frustrated in its efforts to get Congress to act on its antitrust agenda, the NFL is urging the Supreme Court to use a case now before it, American Needle Inc. vs. the NFL, to exempt the league from antitrust laws.

The NFL’s political action committee, Gridiron-PAC, raised more than $310,500 last year, much of it from team owners. It gave $244,500 to candidates, including $5,000 to Conyers, who as chairman of the Judiciary Committee is a point man for antitrust issues in the House.

Jonathan Godfrey, the Judiciary Committee’s communications director, twice told ProPublica that he would try to find out where Conyers’ leadership PAC got its Super Bowl tickets, how many it had and how much it paid for them. He said he would get back to us. He never did. When we spoke with Godfrey today, he still didn’t know if Conyers went to the Super Bowl or if he held a fundraiser.

The NFL also has been tight-lipped about ticket distribution.

“We make a very limited number of tickets available for purchase by request to a variety of people, including elected officials,” said Jeff Miller, the league’s in-house lobbyist in Washington. “Rep. Conyers did not request tickets from our office. If he obtained tickets, it would have been from another source.”

The NFL offered Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, R-La., tickets to the Super Bowl, but he turned them down in favor of an invitation to the watch the game with President Obama at the White House, according the Times-Picayune. The paper also reported that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, would attend the Super Bowl with tickets provided by the New Orleans Saints.

In Indianapolis, the Colts offered tickets to a broad array of public officials, including 32 legislators, four members of Congress and 26 city-county councilors, according to The Indianapolis Star.

At some point, depending on whether they file monthly, quarterly or semi-annually, anyone in Congress who used campaign or leadership PAC money to pay for their tickets will have to file a campaign finance report listing the expenditure. But it might be impossible to find. The line giving the reason for the expense is unlikely to say “to pay for Super Bowl tickets.” More likely, it will say something vague like “fundraising expense.”

******

The Super Bowl Blitz is part of a continuing effort here at ProPublica to try to reveal the circumstances surrounding campaign contributions and the very private exchanges that take place between lobbyists and members of Congress. If you missed out on the Blitz but want to get involved in similar events, sign up here [4] and we’ll notify you of our next project.

This story was a ProPublica/ABC News collaboration.
ABC News: Producers Vic Walter, Megan Chuchmach and Asa Eslocker
ProPublica: Marcus Stern, Sebastian Jones, Amanda Michel, Lisa Schwartz, Kitty Bennett, Scott Klein and Krista Kjellman Schmidt.

The following news organizations jumped aboard: American Public Media, California Watch, Crain’s New York Business, Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Investigate West, MinnPost, New England Center for Investigative Reporting, Orange County Register, Raleigh Public Record, Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, WHYY, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show.

We were assisted by individual reporters and editors at the following publications: Juliana Keeping, AnnArbor.com; Brent Gardner Smith, Aspen Daily News; Jake Torry, Columbus Dispatch; Laura Bischoff, Dayton Daily News; Malia Zimmerman, Hawaii Reporter; Warren Cooper, Hunterdon County Democrat; Kathleen McLaughlin, Indianapolis Business Journal; Lara Cooper, Noozhawk.com; Erin Siegal, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism; Michael Collins, Scripps Howard News Service; Thomas Blinkhorn, Valley News; Edward Marshall, WBBM TV, Chicago; WHRV radio, Nofolk, Va.; Brent Wistrom, Wichita Eagle; Charlie Foster, Youth Radio; Wendy Norris, WesternCitizen.

The following individuals made many calls: Michael Alcantar, Rahul Bali, Amy Biegelsen, Jim Brice, Al Cannistraro, M. Coyle, Casey Cunniff, Robert Davey, Debbie DiMaio, Tim Duda, Sandy Gonzalez, Sherrie Jossen, Neelima June, David Kagan, Hee Jin Kang, Memrie King, Trent Larson, Lionel Logan, Laura Marsan, Cathy McMullen, Robert Melder Sr., Jeff Mende, Ted Michel, Matt Muma, Krishna Murphy, Charles Normann, Michael Olsen, Arash Payan, Diana Perparos, Nicole Pilar, EJ Rotert, Nancy Sheldon, CoConnie Snyder, Jacquelin Sufak, Claire Taylor, Jane Leatherman Van Praag, Sharon Whatley, Paul Wilczynski, Jane Wylen, John Zavesky.

Write to Marcus Stern at Marcus.Stern@propublica.org [5].


St. Petersburg Times
The Buzz politics blog
Where did Meek get Super Bowl tickets?

Posted by Alex Leary at 04:57:37 PM
February 8, 2010

ABC news was in Miami to investigate political fundraisers built around the Super Bowl. Here is part of the report:

Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., did show up at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for his fundraiser on Saturday afternoon. ABC News, which partnered with ProPublica in an effort to find out where the members of Congress got their Super Bowl tickets, also showed up at the hotel. But surprised Meek staffers quickly shut the door and asked the crew to leave.

Read the rest of the story and the reader comments at: http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/02/where-did-meek-get-super-bowl-tickets.html

--------------

Here's the Herald search I did on Kendrick Meek
and what the results were as of 12 Midnight Tuesday
morning.
Nothing about the fundraiser.

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When I first moved to D.C., before he was named
HUD Secretary, the Washington Post annually
wrote about Jack Kemp's fabulous GOP
Super Bowl parties, when he was still a Buffalo area
congressman. One of my female housemates in
Arlington was from his district and was from a
family that had worked campaigns for him from
the beginning of his political career. She was both
a Bills and ballet fanatic.
Kemp was a great guy, too, with a very friendly
and professional staff, which came in handy since
people from all over the country visiting D.C.
were ALWAYS walking into his office!

Kemp was someone that everyone on The Hill
liked, regardless of their position, because he
treated everyone with respect and didn't put
on airs, like many far-less well-known people
on the Hill did -and still do.
Even Dems I thought I really liked -until I
actually got the chance to see them up-close!

This nuanced and insightful David Broder
article on Kemp from last year, following his
death, is spot-on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/06/AR2009050603318.html
Washington Post
The Life of His Party
By David S. Broder
May 7, 2009

On the very day last week that Jack Kemp, the former quarterback, congressman and 1996 vice presidential candidate, succumbed to cancer, other Republicans were honoring the example of his life by launching a search for new ideas and broader constituencies.

Eric Cantor, the young Virginian who may come closest to Kemp's level of intellectual ambition and political energy in the current Congress, played host at the first of a promised series of policy sessions, along with former governors Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Welcome as their enterprise is in a landscape notably barren of GOP ideas, they were a pale carbon copy of what Kemp provided an earlier generation of Republicans.

In the understandable nostalgia for Ronald Reagan, who restored Republicans to the White House and led the final, successful stages of the Cold War, it's been too easy to forget that for much of the 1970s and into the 1980s, it was the young Jack Kemp who fired up the grass roots on his weekend speaking forays and who gave a thoroughly beaten minority party the ammunition for its comeback -- even as he built cherished friendships across the aisle.

Kemp was, in my judgment and in the eyes of many other reporters, one of the most consequential and likable politicians of that era.

His signal contribution was proselytizing for supply-side economics, the belief that lowering marginal tax rates would spur economic growth, replenish revenue, overcome deficits and fuel a widely shared prosperity.

He made that the centerpiece of the Reagan economic program and -- as the ringleader of a talented group of backbenchers, including Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, Dave Stockman and Vin Weber -- challenged the Old Guard congressional leadership and set the stage for more than a decade of Republican ascendancy.

Those are the things for which the Republican Party owes Jack Kemp. As one who was never persuaded that Kemp was right in his economic theories, I came to value him for something more basic in human terms and far rarer among Republicans. As much as any public figure I have ever known, Kemp burned with a passion to make the American dream real for everyone -- without regard to race, religion or national origin.

A product of a middle-class California upbringing, a success as an athlete and therefore well-to-do, Kemp often said that he learned in the locker rooms of the San Diego Chargers and the Buffalo Bills that teamwork was colorblind.

He carried that belief into politics and was outspoken in denouncing those "country-club" Republicans who opposed affirmative action and supported restrictive immigration laws. That's why he was campaigning for John McCain in South Carolina the last time I saw him.

Kemp was nothing if not conservative, but he believed that if those principles were valid, they must be tested and applied, not only in gated suburbia but in the inner cities. In Congress, he co-sponsored "enterprise zones" legislation with African American and Hispanic Democrats. And as secretary of housing and urban development under the first President Bush, he drove the White House crazy, lobbying for programs to revive blighted areas that were no part of Bush's constituency.

In an early profile of Kemp, I compared him to Hubert Humphrey -- "long-winded, gregarious, super-energetic, overscheduled, optimistic, in love with ideas and people, ranging unconfined from issue to issue, an outsider who became part of the political establishment almost despite himself, a partisan battler who hates to hurt anyone's feelings." He sent me a note thanking me for finding similarities to the Democrats' happy warrior.

President Obama commends empathy, and Kemp had it in abundance. He and Bob Dole had quarreled bitterly about economic policy; Dole was never a supply-sider. But when Dole invited Kemp onto his ticket and made him his traveling companion, Kemp was moved by the simple courage Dole showed every day in coping with his grievous war wounds.

When I saw him in his hotel room at the San Diego convention, Kemp asked me, "What's the first thing I do when I make a speech?"

"You take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves," I said, having seen the ritual a hundred times.

"You know," he said, "Dole's wounds -- he can't even do that for himself." And Jack Kemp wept.