ProgressNow Nevada Executive Director Erin Neff talks with Jon Ralston on Face to Face about Nevada’s state budget crisis on the eve of the special session.

Dann Weeks wrote an informative article last week in the Pahrump Mirror about radioactive groundwater making its way from the Nevada Test Site toward Beatty. Tests showed the groundwater contains radioactive contamination.

Next time you fill your glass with water from your tap you may want to carry it into a dark closet to see if it glows. The radioactive ingredient is Tritium. What is Tritium? Well it is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. [Read more →]

Remember all the controversy a few months back about building a fence along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents. The entire length of the Mexico-United States border is 1952 miles long. [Border Fence Project]

Last September the [Christian Science Monitor] reported that “$6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.”

The Anderson Cooper video demonstrates that the border fence does not or will not work. The cost of building and maintaining the fence is exorbitant. Those billions of dollars can be put to better use. Health care reform certainly comes to mind. If you add in the billions of dollars spent, and still being spent in the war on Iraq, was a waste of money and lives. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is questionable as well. The United States has, during my lifetime alone, spent trillions of dollars in war. My lifetime experience includes World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The United States, as a nation, seems enamored with war. Only in World War II were we attacked by another country—Japan. We were not attacked by the countries of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

That tunnel under the border fence with Anderson Cooper was located at Otay Mesa which is at Tijuana. The tunnel would have permitted a flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics into the United States from Mexico.

Last spring President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint canceled plans to extend the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned, symbolically breaking with a much-heralded approach to border security advocated by President George W. Bush. [Dallas Morning News] That should end the waste of money for the ineffective border fence project.

The US-Mexico border will re-emerge again as soon as Congress can get back to it from their arguing over health care reform. The question about security of the border will center around illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel’s entry into the United States. [Politico]

It may well be that the security of the United States is in more danger from the drug cartels than either illegal immigration, terrorists or Al Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You might want to add citizens of the United States who are addicted to drugs and buy them from the drug cartels as threats to national security.

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I have been using Ancestry.com for about a decade to search for members of my family’s tree. It has become my primary resource for searching and finding information. I supplement it with information on GenWeb and RootsWeb and Google and Bing.

I have been able to assemble over 4,000 members in my tree back into the 1700’s. Fascinating.

I got started and interested in my family’s tree as I grew older and wondered why did my father, who during my childhood worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma, always had a cow, some pigs and chickens at every oil lease we lived on. He rarely talked about his past and I, regretfully, never asked him. Now, I have children and grand children and not too far in the future will have great grand children. Someday they will encounter the same questions I had. What was their grand mother and grand father like? How did they live? What did they do and why?

Compiling our family’s tree will provide them a great starting point in answering those questions. I hope each one of them join together to continue the quest for answers. After all when Lillie and I are gone the story of the Wood family will continue, just as my father’s story continues through me, our kids, our grand kids and their grand kids.

I have learned a great deal about my family’s recorded beginnings in Virginia, the move of one branch to Kentucky, then into Missouri at the time of the Civil War, then on into Kansas and finally Oklahoma, on to California and currently in Nevada. Each move has been by twigs of branches of the family tree’s body, each twig in turn giving to other branches of the tree’s limbs.

It is a fascinating journey from Virginia to Nevada. And continues.

Washington launched its biggest offensive yet against runaway Wall Street pay practices Thursday, taking aim at everyone from senior executives to high-flying traders of complex securities.

“The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that compensation packages appropriately tie rewards to longer-term performance and do not create undue risk for the firm or the financial system,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a statement.

Separately, the Obama administration’s “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg, is expected to unveil sweeping pay cuts for 175 top executives at the seven biggest bailed-out companies.

Citigroup, AIG, Bank of America, Chrysler, General Motors, GMAC, and Chrysler Financial.

Cuts of compensation packages for its top 25 most highly-compensated employees 50%, on average, a senior administration official told CNN.

These guys are paid obscene amounts. Good move I think.

[CNN]

The following story appeared in the St. Petersburg Times:

Monique Zimmerman-Stein and her husband, Gary Stein, have Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance through Stein’s job at the Hillsborough County Health Department. They pay $90 a week for coverage. But the insurance isn’t nearly enough.

Monique tries to picture what her girls must look like now that they’re 10 and 13. She hasn’t been able to see their faces in two years. Her days are long and dark and quiet

“I know I won’t ever see again. I’m not even asking for that,” Zimmerman-Stein said. “I just don’t think we should have to deal with constantly being harassed.”

Monique is 48. She and her two youngest daughters have Stickler’s syndrome [Wikipedia], a rare genetic disorder that causes joints to dissolve and retinas to detach. Monique lost her right eye at 16 and now sees only enough light through her left eye to tell night from day. She and her children are constantly in and out of doctors’ offices.

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As is commonly known, the Republican Leadership has consistently said “No” to any governmental change in Washington, rebelled against virtually anything being proposed by Democrats, and refused to engage in any meaningful bipartisanship activity. Republicans = No, no-way, no-how. Steadfastly sticking to the status quo.

The Democratic Leadership has whiningly pleaded with the Republican Leadership to engage themselves.

Progressive grassroots people, you know—the ones that worked their tails off to get President Obama elected—want progress. If the Republican Leadership doesn’t want progress then ignore them and get on with instituting the changes.

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Rachel Maddow broke some amazing news last night on MSNBC:

“Two major powerbrokers on the left…are encouraging a Senate strategy in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform.”

Click here to sign a petition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in support of this idea.

We’ll deliver the petition signatures to Harry Reid next week after a big news conference in front of the Senate.

What does this proposal mean? In general, it means Democrats need to be Democrats!

Republicans are planning to use the Senate “filibuster” procedure to block a vote on health care reform. But if all Senate Democrats stick together, a clean up-or-down vote will take place.

This means 51 votes — not “60 votes” — would be needed to pass reform. And winning a public health insurance option would be very likely.

It’s critical that Harry Reid sees immediate support for this idea — please sign the petition tonight and tell your friends.

Which senators would feel pressure from this proposal? All the senators who are siding with the insurance companies and opposing the public option: Max Baucus (D-MT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) are some examples.

Let’s send a clear message: It’s not OK for Democratic senators to join with Republicans to block a vote on health care. Period.

Please click here sign the petition today — and then tell your friends.

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

–Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Aaron Swartz, Evan Miller, Michael Snook, and the PCCC team

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on October 7, 2009: Part 1 of 4:

Part 2 of 4:

Part 3 of 4:

Part 4 of 4:

Whip it!

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