Harvey Wasserman : The Demand for a Global Takeover at Fukushima

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's reactor building number 4 seen in aerial view on July 5, 2012. Photo by Kyodo / Reuters.

The demand for a global takeover
at Fukushima has hit critical mass

Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / October 2, 2013

More than 48,000 global citizens have now signed a petition at NukeFree.org asking the United Nations and the world community to take charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Another 35,000 have signed at RootsAction. An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in formation.

The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.

The corporate media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global health and safety in decades.

The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.

This lessens the radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial reactors still licensed to operate worldwide.

All of which pales before the crisis at Fukushima. Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

For decades the atomic industry claimed vehemently that a commercial reactor could not explode. When Chernobyl blew, it blamed “inferior” Soviet technology.

But Fukushima’s designs are from General Electric (some two dozen similar reactors are licensed in the U.S.). At least four explosions have rocked the site. One might have involved nuclear fission. Three cores have melted into the ground. Massive quantities of water have been poured where the owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), and the Japanese government think they might be, but nobody knows for sure.

As The Free Press has reported, steam emissions indicate one or more may still be hot. Contaminated water is leaking from hastily-constructed tanks. Room for more is running out. The inevitable next earthquake could rupture them all and send untold quantities of poisons pouring into the ocean.

The worst immediate threat at Fukushima lies in the spent fuel pool at Unit Four. That reactor had been shut for routine maintenance when the earthquake and tsunami hit. The 400-ton core, with more than 1,300 fuel rods, sat in its pool 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel rods are the most lethal items our species has ever created. A human standing within a few feet of one would die in a matter of minutes. With more than 11,000 scattered around the Daichi site, radiation levels could rise high enough to force the evacuation of all workers and immobilize much vital electronic equipment.

Spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn, and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible. By some estimates there’s enough radioactivity embodied in the rods to create a fallout cloud 15,000 times greater than the one from the Hiroshima bombing.

The rods perched in the Unit 4 pool are in an extremely dangerous position. The building is tipping and sinking into the sodden ground. The fuel pool itself may have deteriorated. The rods are embrittled and prone to crumbling. Just 50 meters from the base is a common spent fuel pool containing some 6,000 fuel rods that could be seriously compromised should it lose coolant. Overall there are some 11,000 spent rods scattered around the Fukushima Daichi site.

As dangerous as the process might be, the rods in the Unit Four fuel pool must come down in an orderly fashion. Another earthquake could easily cause the building to crumble and collapse. Should those rods crash to the ground and be left uncooled, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Tepco has said it will begin trying to remove the rods from that pool in November. The petitions circulating through NukeFree.org and MoveOn.org, as well as at Roots Action and Avaaz.org, ask that the United Nations take over. They ask the world scientific and engineering communities to step in. The Roots Action petition also asks that $8.3 billion slated in loan guarantees for a new U.S. nuke be shifted instead to dealing with the Fukushima site.

It’s a call with mixed blessings. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is notoriously pro-nuclear, charged with promoting atomic power as well as regulating it. Critics have found the IAEA to be secretive and unresponsive.

But Tepco is a private utility with limited resources. The Japanese government has an obvious stake in downplaying Fukushima’s dangers. These were the two entities that approved and built these reactors.

While the IAEA is imperfect, its resources are more substantial and its stake at Fukushima somewhat less direct. An ad hoc global network of scientists and engineers would be intellectually ideal, but would lack the resources for direct intervention.

Ultimately the petitions call for a combination of the two.

It’s also hoped the petitions will arouse the global media. The moving of the fuel rods from Unit Four must be televised. We need to see what’s happening as it happens. Only this kind of coverage can allow global experts to analyze and advise as needed.

Let’s all hope that this operation proves successful, that the site is neutralized and the massive leaks of radioactive water and gasses be somehow stopped.

As former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata has put it: full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

[Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of the Columbus Free Press and The Free Press. He edits NukeFree.org, where all factual material in this article can be linked. He hosts the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness radio show at the Progressive Radio Network, and is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Fukushima Continues to Spew its Darkness

House in Fukushima. Image from ABC News.

Still on the brink:
Fukushima continues to spew its darkness

A pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air... Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2013

Radiation leaks, steam releases, disease and death continue to spew from Fukushima and a disaster which is far from over. Its most profound threat to the global ecology -- a spent fuel fire -- is still very much with us.

The latest steam leak has raised fears around the planet. A worst-case scenario of an on-going out-of-control fission reaction was dismissed by the owners, Tokyo Electric, because they didn’t find xenon in the plume. The company says the steam likely came from rain water being vaporized by residual heat in one of  the plant’s stricken reactors.

But independent experts tend to disbelieve anything Tepco says, for good reason. Reactor Units One, Two and Three have exploded at Fukushima despite decades of official assurances that commercial atomic power plants could not explode at all. The company has been unable to clear out enough radioactive debris to allow it to put a cover over the site that might contain further airborne emissions.

Tepco has also been forced to admit that it has been leaking radioactive water into the ocean ever since the disaster began on March 11, 2011. In one instance it admitted to a 90-fold increase of Cesium in a nearby test well over a period of just three days.

Earlier this year a rat ate through electrical cables, shorting out a critical cooling system. When Tepco workers were dispatched to install metal guards to protect the cabling, they managed to short out the system yet again.

Early this month Fukushima’s former chief operator, Masao Yoshida, died of esophogeal cancer at the age of 58. Masao became a hero during the worst of the disaster by standing firm at his on-site command post as multiple explosions rocked the reactor complex. Tepco claimed his ensuing cancer and death were “unlikely” to have been caused by Fukushima’s radiation.

The impact of work in and near the reactors has become a rising concern. Critics have warned that there are not enough skilled technicians willing to sacrifice themselves at the plant. Tepco has worsened the situation by applying to open a number of its shut reactors elsewhere in Japan, straining its already depleted skilled workforce even further.

Meanwhile, a staggering 40 percent rise in thyroid irregularities among young children in the area has caused a deepening concern about widespread health impacts from Fukushima’s fallout within the general public. Because these numbers have come in just two years after the disaster, the percentage of affected children is expected to continue to rise.

And the worst fear of all remains unabated. At Unit Four, which apparently did not actually explode, the building’s structural integrity has been seriously undermined. Debate continues to rage over exactly how this happened.

But there’s no doubt that a pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air, with little left to support the structure. Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.

In such an event, the radioactive emissions could be catastrophic. Intensely lethal emissions could spew for a very long time, eventually circling the globe many times, wrecking untold havoc.

The Japanese have removed two apparently unused rods from the fuel pool so far. But intense international pressure to clear out the rest of them has thus far been unsuccessful.

So while a depleted, discredited, and disorganized nuclear utility moves to restart its other reactors, its stricken units at Fukushima continue to hold the rest of us at the brink of apocalyptic terror.

This article, first published at www.progressivemagazine.com, was cross-posted to The Rag Blog.

[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org, along with Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States. His Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show is at www.prn.fm. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Our Atomic Dominoes Are Falling

Falling dominoes. Image from ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Two reactors down, others teetering:
Our atomic dominoes are falling

This latest stretch of shutdowns does not mean the death of the industry. Both Georgia and Florida are being assaulted with legislation that would allow utilities to build new reactors while ratepayers foot the bill.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / February 19, 2013

Two more atomic dominoes have hit the deck.

At least a half-dozen more teeter on the brink, which would take the U.S. reactor count under 100.

But can we bury them before the next Fukushima erupts? And will we still laugh when Fox “News” says there’s more sun in Germany than California?

Wisconsin’s fully licensed Kewaunee reactor will now shut because it can’t compete in the marketplace. Florida’s Crystal River will die because its owners poked holes in the containment during a botched repair job.

UBS and other financial experts say Entergy is bleeding cash at Vermont Yankee. After blacking out the Super Bowl, Entergy has no problem stiffing a state that has sued to shut its only reactor. But in the face of being crushed by renewables and gas, the money men may finally pull the plug.

The same could happen to New York’s Fitzpatrick and Ginna reactors, as well as the two at Indian Point, which need water permits and more from an increasingly hostile state. New Jersey’s Oyster Creek, slammed by Hurricane Sandy, and Nebraska’s Ft. Calhoun, recently flooded, are also on the brink.

The list of crippled, non-competitive and near-dead reactors lengthens daily. Few are more critical than San Onofre Units Two and Three, perched on an ocean cliff in the earthquake-tsunami zone between Los Angeles and San Diego.

More than 8 million people live within a 50-mile radius of where San Onofre’s owners botched a $600 million steam generator replacement. As radiation leaked, they may have lied to federal regulators, prompting U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) to demand an investigation.

After being down more than a year, Unit Three will almost certainly never reopen. Unit Two may well stay shut at least through the summer. If a rising grassroots movement can bury them both, it will mark a huge turning point in a state where renewables are booming with new revenue and jobs.

Which gets us to the Murdochian weather report. A recent “Fox & Friends” was mystified by Germany’s popular (and very profitable) decision to phase out nukes while turning to solar, wind, increased efficiency, and other Solartopian technologies.

Finally, Shibani Joshi figured it out: “They’re a small country, and they’ve got lots of sun. Right? They’ve got a lot more sun than we do.”

The staggering laugh line that cold, dark Germany has more sunlight than a nation stretching from Hawaii to California to Florida could come only from an industry at dangerous odds with the planet on which it malfunctions.

This latest stretch of shutdowns does not mean the death of the industry. Both Georgia and Florida are being assaulted with legislation that would allow utilities to build new reactors while ratepayers foot the bill.

And some activists concerned about global warming still dream of carbon-free reactors they hope might some day alleviate the situation. But they miss the reality that such plants will likely never exist. Every promise this industry has made -- from “too cheap to meter” to “reactors don’t explode” to “radiation is good for you” -- has turned toxic.

They also forget that a fragile pool laden with enough fuel rods to poison countless millions still sways 100 feet in the air at Fukushima. It remains horrifically vulnerable to seismic activity that could send it crashing down to a permanently contaminated earth.

Overall the industry’s back is dangerously to the wall. We know it will squeeze every last cent from these dying reactors with less and less care for safety, especially since the federal government still insures them against the financial consequences of a major catastrophe. Every day they operate heightens the odds on something truly apocalyptic to follow in the wake of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Meanwhile they continue to spew out huge quantities of heat and waste. They divert precious capital from the proven green technologies that are now revolutionizing our energy economy in the only ways that can possibly save us from climate chaos.

This may yet become the first year in decades that the U.S. has fewer than 100 operating commercial reactors. It will also be the biggest year worldwide for the booming Solartopian industries that are transforming how we get our energy, create our jobs and grow our economy.

Lets just make sure we win that transition before the next reactor disaster does its worst.

[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org, along with Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States. His Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show is at www.prn.fm. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Gerry Bello, Bob Fitrakis, and Harvey Wasserman : Do the Romneys Own Your E-Vote?

Photo by Brian Snyder / Reuters / Salon.
Does the Romney family
now own your e-vote?

A candidate for the presidency of the United States -- and his brother, wife, and son -- have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election.

By Gerry Bello, Bob Fitrakis, and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / October 23, 2012

See Thorne Dreyer's interview with journalist Harvey Wasserman and author Tova Andrea Wang about voter suppression and election theft, and listen to the podcast of the October 5 Rag Radio show with Wasserman and Wang.

Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that's partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House?

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son, and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States -- and his brother, wife, and son -- have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House.

They are especially crucial in Ohio, without which no Republican candidate has ever won the White House. In 2004, in the dead of election night, an electronic swing of more than 300,000 votes switched Ohio from the John Kerry column to George W. Bush, giving him a second term.

A virtual statistical impossibility, the 6-plus percent shift occurred between 12:20 and 2 a.m. election night as votes were being tallied by a GOP-controlled information technology firm on servers in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In defiance of a federal injunction, 56 of Ohio's 88 counties destroyed all election records, making a recount impossible. Ohio's governor and secretary of state in 2004 were both Republicans, as are the governors and secretaries of state in nine key swing states this year.

As we have previously reported, H.I.G. Capital has on its board of directors at least three close associates of the Romney family. H.I.G. Capital directors John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers. So is former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve. H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney's campaign. Fully a third of H.I.G.'s leadership previously worked at Romney's old Bain firm.

But new research now shows that the association doesn't stop with mere friendship and business associations. Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney.

The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes.

Unlike other private equity firms, Solamere does not invest in companies directly. Instead, Solamere invests in other private equity funds, like H.I.G. Capital. Solamere calls them partners. These partners, like H.I.G., then invest in various enterprises, like Hart Intercivic, the nation's third-largest voting machine manufacturer.

As reported by Lee Fang of The Nation, Solamere was founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Papa Romney's campaign finance chair. Ann Romney and Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney are also invested. Mitt himself threw in $10 million "seed money" to get the fund going, and spoke personally to its first full investors conference.

Solamere's public web presence has been reduced to a front page only, so a complete list of it's partners can not be found. But reportage by The New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire, and The Nation have slowly given us a partial picture of which funds are being funded by Solamere. Some $232 million has been raised so far, according to SEC filings and industry publications.

In addition to Romney's finance chair Spencer Zwick, Solamere has also provided the campaign with its finance director, Richard Morley, and a western regional finance coordinator, Kaitlin O'Reilly. O'Reilly is listed as an executive assistant at Solamere, and also at SJZ LLC, which was founded by her boss Spencer Zwick.

The SJZ LLC campaign finance consulting firm has billed Mitt's campaign over $2 million this election cycle as well as doing another $9,687,582 in billing to various Congressional Campaigns. The host of the private fundraiser at which Romney made his infamous "47%" speech was Marc J. Leder, co-CEO of Sun Capital, another "partner" of the Solamere fund.

As in virtually every close presidential race, Ohio may well hold the key to the Electoral College decision as to who will become the nation's next chief executive. The presence of Hart Intercivic machines in Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, means there is a high likelihood the votes that will decide the presidency will be cast on them. Major media like CBS have begun reporting that Cincinnati could be "ground zero" in this year's election.

But these Hart machines are deeply flawed and widely know to be open to a troubling variety of attacks and breakdowns. There is no legal or other means to definitively monitor and re-check a tally compiled on Hart or other electronic voting machines. Ohio's current governor and secretary of state are both Republicans.

Does this mean the Romney investment in Hart Intercivic through H.I.G. Capital and Solamere will yield it not only financial profits but the White House itself?

Tune in during the deep night of November 7, when the electronic votes in swing state Ohio are once again opaquely reported to the nation and the world, without meaningful public scrutiny or legal recourse.

[Gerry Bello is chief researcher for Free Press. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of five books on election protection, including Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?, an e-book at freepress.org. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

Also see:

• "Romney Family Investment Ties To Voting Machine Company That Could Decide The Election Causing Concern" by Rick Ungar at Forbes
• "About that Voting Machine Company Tied to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital..." by Brad Friedman at The Brad Blog.
• More Rag Blog articles by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman on election theft and the dangers of electronic voting.
• More reporting on this issue at Free Press.

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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman : Will E-Voting Machines in Ohio Give Romney the Election?

Political cartoon by Dan Wasserman / Boston Globe
Will Ohio’s H.I.G.-owned e-voting machines
give Romney the White House?

The widespread use of electronic voting machines from ES&S, and of Diebold software maintained by Triad, allowed Blackwell to electronically flip a 4% Kerry lead to a 2% Bush victory in the dead of election night.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / October 16, 2012

See Thorne Dreyer's interview with journalist Harvey Wasserman and author Tova Andrea Wang about voter suppression and voter theft -- including issues discussed in this article -- at The Rag Blog, and listen to the Rag Radio podcast.

Electronic voting machines owned by Mitt Romney’s business buddies and set to count the votes in Cincinnati could decide the 2012 election.

The narrative is already being hyped by the corporate media. As Kelly O’Donnell reported for NBC’s Today Show on Monday, October 8, Ohio’s Hamilton County is “ground zero” for deciding who holds the White House come January 2013.

O’Donnell pointed out that no candidate has won the White House without carrying Ohio since John Kennedy did it in 1960. No Republican has EVER won the White House without Ohio’s electoral votes.

As we document in the e-book Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?, George W. Bush got a second term in 2004 thanks to the manipulation of the electronic vote count by Ohio’s then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell served as the co-chair of the state’s committee to re-elect Bush/Cheney while simultaneously administering the election.

The widespread use of electronic voting machines from ES&S, and of Diebold software maintained by Triad, allowed Blackwell to electronically flip a 4% Kerry lead to a 2% Bush victory in the dead of election night. ES&S, Diebold and Triad were all owned or operated by Republican partisans. The shift of more than 300,000 votes after 12:20 am election night was a virtual statistical impossibility.

It was engineered by Michael Connell, an IT specialist long affiliated with the Bush Family. Blackwell gave Connell’s Ohio-based GovTech the contract to count Ohio’s votes, which was done on servers housed in the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Thus the Ohio vote tally was done on servers that also carried the e-mail for Karl Rove and the national Republican Party. Connell died in a mysterious plane crash in December, 2008, after being subpoenaed in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit focused on how the 2004 election was decided (disclosure: we were attorney and plaintiff in that suit).

Diebold’s founder, Walden O’Dell, had vowed to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes -- and thus the presidency -- to his friend George W. Bush. That it was done in part on electronic voting machines and software O’Dell happened to own (Diebold has since changed hands twice) remains a cautionary red flag for those who believe merely winning the popular vote will give Barack Obama a second term.

This November, much of the Ohio electorate will cast its ballots on machines again owned by close cronies of the Republican presidential candidate. In Cincinnati and elsewhere around the state, the e-voting apparati are owned by Hart Intercivic. Hart’s machines are infamous for mechanical failures, “glitches,” counting errors and other timely problems now thoroughly identified with the way Republicans steal elections.

As in 2004, Ohio’s governor is now a Republican. This time it’s the very right-wing John Kasich, himself a multi-millionaire courtesy of a stint at Lehman Brothers selling state bonds, and the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, on whose Fox Network Kasich served as a late night bloviator. Murdoch wrote Kasich a game-changing $1 million check just prior to his winning the statehouse, an electoral victory shrouded in electronic intrigue. The exit polls in that election indicated that his opponent, incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland, had actually won the popular vote.

Ohio’s very Republican Secretary of State is John Husted, currently suing in the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the public from voting on the weekend prior to election day. As did Blackwell and Governor Robert Taft in 2004, Husted and Kasich will control Ohio’s electronic vote count on election night free of meaningful public checks or balances

Hart Intercivic, on whose machines the key votes will be cast in Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, was taken over last year by H.I.G. Capital. Prominent partners and directors on the H.I.G. board hail from Bain Company or Bain Capital, both connected to Mitt Romney. H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney’s campaign. H.I.G. Directors John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers, as is former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.

U.S. courts have consistently ruled that the software in electronic voting machines is proprietary to the manufacturer, even though individual election boards may own the actual machines. Thus there will be no vote count transparency on election night in Ohio.

The tally will be conducted by Hart Intercivic and controlled by Husted and Kasich, with no public recourse or accountability. As federal testimony from the deceased Michael Connell made clear in 2008, electronically flipping an election is relatively cheap and easy to do, especially if you or your compatriots programmed the machines.

So as the corporate media swarm through Ohio, reporting breathlessly from “ground zero” in Cincinnati, don’t hold your own breath waiting for them to also clarify that the voting machines in what may once again be America's decisive swing state are owned, programmed, and tabulated by some of the Romney campaign’s closest associates.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are authors of Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?, their fifth book on election protection. It is available as an e-book at harveywasserman.com and freepress.org. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Webb Dreyer : Tova Andrea Wang & Harvey Wasserman on Voter Suppression in America

Author Tova Andrea Wang and journalist Harvey Wasserman were Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, produced in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, on Friday, Oct. 5, 2012.
Rag Radio podcast:
Tova Andrea Wang and Harvey Wasserman
on voter suppression in America

By Thorne Webb Dreyer / The Rag Blog / October 11, 2012

Author Tova Andrea Wang and journalist Harvey Wasserman discussed voter suppression and voter theft in America on Rag Radio, Friday, October 5. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio show produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, a cooperatively-run, all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Wang and Wasserman talked about the racially-charged issue of "voter fraud" and the controversy over Voter IDs and the related court cases; the dangers posed by electronic voting machines and the history of alleged election theft in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere; and the use of voter suppression in partisan politics, almost exclusively (in recent history) by the Republican Party.

Listen to Thorne Dreyer's Rag Radio interview with Tova Andrea Wang and Harvey Wasserman here.


Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. It is broadcast live on KOOP Fridays at 2 p.m. (CDT) and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Sunday mornings at 10 (EDT).

Tova Andrea Wang, a nationally-known expert on election reform and political participation, is Senior Democracy Fellow at Demos. She was Executive Director of the Century Foundation's Post-2004 Election Reform Group, and was staff person to the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. She is the author of The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans’ Right to Vote, a Century Foundation Book published this year by Cornell University Press.

Wang told the Rag Radio audience that "voter fraud at the polling places is virtually nonexistent, as has been proven time and time again," but that efforts at voter suppression, especially on the part of Republican-led state legislatures,  "has been extraordinary. An assault on voting rights that we haven’t seen in many years. Probably not since the civil rights movement in the Sixties."

She also pointed to right-wing groups like the Houston-based True the Vote ("a bunch of white people going primarily to African-American precincts and challenging people") that is "vowing to recruit a million people to go to the polls" and harass potential voters.

"Of course, historically, race has been a factor," in voter disenfranchisement, she said. "But it has always been to some degree coupled with partisanship. It’s no secret to anyone that African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. And so, from the Republican perspective, if you’re willing to go to any lengths to win an election, then excluding blacks from the voting process is part of your campaign strategy."

And now, with polls showing that Latinos are going "probably more than two-to-one" for the Democrats, they "have a big target on them, as people that the Republicans will want to keep from voting," Wang said. "And it all gets tied up in anti-immigrant rhetoric... to make people fearful, even people who are lawful citizens."

Tova Andrea Wang's commentary on election reform has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous other print outlets, and she has frequently appeared on national radio and television programs, including NBC's Today Show and ABC's Nightly News and Good Morning America, and on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR.

Joining Wang on Rag Radio was longtime alternative journalist Harvey Wasserman, who is the author or co-author of a dozen books. With Bob Fitrakis, he broke a number of stories about the alleged theft of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. Their investigative reporting at www.freepress.org prompted Rev. Jesse Jackson to call them "the Woodward and Bernstein of the 2004 election." Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election? is their fifth book on election protection.

Wasserman believes that, "unless Barack Obama is way, way ahead on election day... it is a virtual guarantee that Mitt Romney is going to become president -- because of the voter suppression that could eliminate 10 million or more likely Democratic voters," as has been estimated by the Brennan Center at New York University, and because of "the relative ease by which the electronic voting machines can be flipped" in nine key states with Republican governors.

"We saw it happen in 2004 in Columbus, Ohio. John Kerry was ahead by four points on election night," he said, "and then there was a so-called glitch in the vote count, and the tallies stopped coming. And then suddenly at two in the morning George W. Bush was ahead by two points. That was a flip of six points which is a virtual statistical impossibility."

Wasserman says that electronic voting machines are a special danger because "legitimate monitoring" of them "is not physically possible," and that most "are owned and operated by Republican companies." He thinks that there should at least "be paper ballots as a backup at every polling station."

Another related issue, according to Wasserman, is the Electoral College ("the only college in which George Bush actually excelled"). "We still have in place this anachronism that allows the guy who comes in second to become president," he said. "The electoral college narrows down the number of states you have to steal or buy in order to put someone in the White House," and it discourages political involvement in parts of the country that aren't in play in the presidential election.

"No one else has an electoral college like this. It’s a holdover from slavery."

Harvey Wasserman is also a political activist who, with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and others, helped found www.nukefree.org. His writing is published at The Huffington Post, BuzzFlash, and CounterPunch, and his reports on election theft and nuclear power issues appear regularly on The Rag Blog.

The news isn't all bad, according to Tova Wang. "A coalition of civil rights groups has been able to have a great impact over the last year, and were able to get a number of governors to veto voter ID laws," she said. "And in some places, like Virginia for example, we were able to soften the type of ID law."

"But there is tremendous confusion" about the laws, and, "between now and election day, we need to educate, educate, educate."

"We have had some success in the courts" against repressive ID laws, Wang says, but "it’s kind of sad that we’re back to relying on the courts for voting rights."

Harvey Wasserman adds, "It's part of our American heritage that people have the right to vote, and we need to get people to come out to be poll workers," and to make sure that potential voters aren't intimidated.

And Tova Wang points out that "we were all excited with a 61 percent turnout in 2008. That’s terrible."

"The problem in this country is that not enough people vote. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do about that, which is the real crisis in our democracy."

Rag Radio, which has aired since September 2009, is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

The host and producer of Rag Radio is Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

All Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts and can be found at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, October 12, 2012: Peace and Justice activist Tom Hayden speaks on "The Peace Movement, the Drug War, and the Legacy of Port Huron."
October 19, 2012: Singer-Songwriter, Satirist, Mystery Writer, and Politician Kinky Friedman.
October 26, 2012: Historian Martin Duberman, author of Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left.

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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman : Could Nine GOP Governors Flip the Vote?

Boss Tweed: "As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?” Cartoon by Thomas Nast / Harper’s Weekly, October 7, 1871. Image from Scoop Independent News.
Will nine GOP governors electronically
flip Romney into the White House?

In tandem with the GOP's massive nationwide disenfranchisement campaign, they could -- in the dead of election night -- give Romney a victory in the Electoral College.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2012

Journalist Harvey Wasserman and author Tova Andrea Wang will discuss Voter Suppression in America with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, October 5, 2012, 2-3 p.m.(CDT), on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the Internet. Rag Radio is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Scranton and Mt. Cobb, PA, Sunday mornings at 10 (EDT).

Nine Republican governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their secretaries of state, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state’s Government Accountability Board, appointed by the governor.

In tandem with the GOP's massive nationwide disenfranchisement campaign, they could -- in the dead of election night -- flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.

Thankfully, resistance has arisen to the disenfranchisement strategy, which seems designed to deny millions of suspected Democrats the right to vote. The intent to demand photo ID for voting could result in some 10 million Americans being disenfranchised, according to the Brennan Center at New York University. Other methods are being used to strip voter rolls -- as in Ohio, where 1.1 million citizens have been purged from registration lists since 2009. This "new Jim Crow" -- personified by groups like Houston-based True the Vote -- could deny the ballot to a substantial percentage of the electorate in key swing states.

This massive disenfranchisement has evoked a strong reaction from voting rights activists, a number of lawsuits, major internet traffic and front page and editorial coverage in The New York Times.

But there has been no parallel campaign to guarantee those votes are properly counted once cast. Despite serious problems with electronic tabulations in the presidential elections of both 2000 and 2004, electronic voting machines have spread further throughout the country.

In Ohio, former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell awarded a no-bid state contract to GovTech -- a well-connected Republican-owned company which no longer exists -- to help count Ohio’s vote. GovTech contracted with two equally partisan Republican companies: Smartech for servers and Triad for IT support (Push and Pray Voting).

Electronic voting machines with ties to Republican-connected companies have proliferated throughout Ohio. Federal money from the Help America Vote Act has helped move electronic voting machines into other key swing states in substantial numbers that are not easy to track.

The machines can quickly tabulate a winner. But their dark side is simple: there is no way to monitor or double check the final tally. These partisan Republican vote counting companies have written contracts to avoid transparency and open records laws.

American courts have consistently ruled that the hardware and software used in e-voting machines is proprietary. For example, California’s Public Records Act (CPRA) contains a Trade Secret Exemption. The courts in California apply a “balancing test” to determine whether the Trade Secret Exemption applies, but the contracts with voting machine vendors are written in such a way that the court usually has no other choice but to side with the vendors and the state and county election officials who inked the contract. High priced attorneys like Daniel McMillan of the Jones Day firm are often hired to "clarify" the law for the court.

In a filing with the Voting Systems Procedures Panel of the California Secretary of State’s office during the 2004 election, McMillan hammered out a “Stipulated Confidentiality Agreement” that states in part that a public records request by a voting activist “contain[s] confidential proprietary or trade secret information” and thus, is not a public record.

Also that year, McMillan showed up in Georgia on behalf of the infamous Diebold Election Systems company and invoked the Peach State’s Trade Secret Exemption to the open record law. McMillan wrote: “If information constitutes a trade secret under the Georgia Trade Secrets Act, the government agency in custody of the information has a duty to protect the information” from public scrutiny.

McMillan goes on to argue that there’s also a Computer Software Exclusion that, “To the extent that any request is made for Diebold’s computer program or software, such a request would not be a valid request for a public record.” Diebold’s attorney cited the concern that “...it makes it easier to sabotage and hack the system and circumvent security features” if there’s transparency.

That same year in Ohio, Diebold’s secret pollbook system "accidentally" glitched 10,000 voters in the Cleveland area from the registration rolls. During the 2004 election in Toledo, thousands of voters lost their votes on Diebold optiscan machines that were improperly calibrated or had the wrong markers. How the calibration and markers work is a trade secret.

So, even the election boards that buy them cannot access their tabulation codes. The bulk of the major e-voting machine companies are owned by Republicans or by corporations whose roots are difficult to trace. While We Still Have Time by Sheila Parks of the Center for Hand Counted Ballots warns that we enter the 2012 election with no reliable means of guaranteeing that the electronic vote count will be accurate.

In fact, whether they intend to do it or not, the Republican governors of the nine key swing states above have the power to flip the election without significant public recourse. Except for exit polls there is no established way to check how the official electronic vote count might square with the actual intent of the electorate. And there is no legal method by which an electronic vote count can be effectively challenged.

There is unfortunate precedent. In the heat of election night 2000, in Volusia County, Florida, 16,000 electronic votes for Al Gore mysteriously disappeared, and 4,000 were erroneously awarded to George W. Bush, causing an incorrect shift of 20,000 votes. This was later corrected. But the temporary shift gave John Ellis at Fox TV News (Ellis is George W. Bush’s first cousin) an opening to declare that the GOP had won the presidency. NBC, CBS, and ABC followed Fox’s lead and declared Bush the winner based on a computer error. That "glitch," more than anything else, allowed the Republicans to frame Gore as a “sore loser.”

In Ohio 2004, at 12:20 election night, the initial vote tabulation showed John Kerry handily defeating Bush by more than 4%. This 200,000-plus margin appeared to guarantee Kerry’s ascent to the presidency.

But mysteriously, the Ohio vote count suddenly shifted to Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With private Republican-connected contractors processing the vote, Bush jumped ahead with a 2% lead, eventually winning with an official margin of more than 118,000 votes. Such a shift of more than 6%, involving more than 300,000 votes, is a virtual statistical impossibility, as documented in our Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?.

That night, Ohio’s vote count was being compiled in the basement of the old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The building also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee and thus the e-mail of Bush advisor Karl Rove. Secretary of State Blackwell was co-chair of the Ohio Committee to Re-Elect Bush and Cheney. He met earlier that day in Columbus with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. That night, he sent the state’s chief IT worker home early.

The official Ohio vote count tabulation system was designed by IT specialist Michael Connell, whose computer company New Media was long associated with the Bush family. In 2008 Connell died in a mysterious single-engine plane crash after being subpoenaed to testify in the federal King-Lincoln-Bronzeville voter rights lawsuit (by way of disclosure: Bob is an attorney and Harvey a plaintiff in this lawsuit).

FreePress.org covered the vote shift in depth. The King-Lincoln suit eventually resulted in a federal injunction ordering Ohio’s 88 counties to turn over their ballots and election records.

But 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties violated the injunction and destroyed their election records. Thus no complete recount of Ohio 2004 has ever been done. More than 90,000 “spoiled” ballots, like those in Toledo, went entirely uncounted, and have since been destroyed.

No way was ever found to verify the 2004 electronic vote count. There are no definitive safeguards in place today.

In 2008, swarms of election protection volunteers filled the polling stations in Ohio and other swing states. They guaranteed the right to vote for many thousands of Americans who might otherwise have been denied it.

They had no means of guaranteeing the accuracy of the electronic vote count. But Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan all had Democratic governors at the time. Florida’s governor was the moderate Republican Charlie Crist, not likely to steal an election for a party he would soon leave.

At the time, we advocated banning money from electoral politics, abolishing the Electoral College, universal automatic voter registration for all U.S. citizens, universal hand-counted paper ballots, and a four-day weekend for voting, with polls worked and ballots counted by the nation's students.

But as Sheila Parks puts it in her new book, which is subtitled The Perils Of Electronic Voting Machines and Democracy's Solution: Publicly Observed, Secure Hand-Counted Paper Ballots (HCPB) Elections: "In 2010, ultra-right-wing Republican governors were elected in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. In several of these states, these governors were not part of a long line of Republican governors. In fact, in some of these states, these governors interrupted a long line of Democratic governors."

So this year Rick Scott is governor in Florida, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Jan Brewer is in Arizona. All are seen as hard-right Republicans unlikely to agonize over flipping a Barack Obama majority into a victory for Mitt Romney.

That doesn’t mean they would actually do such a thing. But the stark reality is that if they choose to, they can, and there would be no iron-clad way to prove they did.

Another stark reality: hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to win this election by multi-billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David Koch, the Chamber of Commerce, and other corporate interests. For them, spending a few extra million to flip a key state's electoral votes would make perfect sense.

While Obama seems to be moving up in the polls, the huge reservoir of dollars raised to elect Mitt Romney will soon flood this campaign. We might anticipate well-funded media reports of a “surge” for Romney in the last two weeks of the election. Polls could well show a "close race" -- for Congress as well as the presidency -- in the early hours of election day.

And then those electronic voting machines could be just as easily flipped on election night 2012 as they were in Ohio 2004.

Would this batch of swing state Republicans do that for Romney? We don’t know.

COULD they do it? Absolutely.

Would you be able to find definitive, legally admissable proof that they did it? No.

Would the courts overturn such a tainted victory? Not likely.

What could ultimately be done about it?

In the short term: nothing.

In the long-term, only a bottom-up remaking of how we cast and count ballots can guarantee this nation anything resembling a true democracy. It is, to put it mildly, a reality worth fighting for.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are authors of Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?, their fifth book on election protection. It is available as an e-book at harveywasserman.com and freepress.org. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Bonnie Raitt Lights Up the World

Bonnie Raitt. Image from R.C.'s Twin Cities Beat.
Bonnie Raitt lights up the world

Bonnie has balanced an astonishing musical range with a message and a way of carrying herself that are firmly rooted in her Quaker heritage.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2012

Adversity can debilitate and defeat a lesser soul. But for those with the inner strength to make the climb, new heights can beckon.

Along the way -- especially for a musician -- it helps to have an other-worldly talent, a gift that combines decades of hard work with those inexplicable powers that come from the slipstream of the spirit.

A combination like that can light up the world, especially at jam-packed concerts that become joyful communions.

Now on the second leg of an epic U.S. tour -- to be followed in Asia and Europe -- Bonnie Raitt has taken it to a new level. Reading through the show-by-show reviews of her performances is like being witness to an ecstatic coronation.

Bonnie’s well-deserved joyride comes after a long ordeal of personal loss. Her parents, brother, and a close friend all passed in scary succession. She has also set sail with her own Redwing Records label.

None of which have shaken her political convictions or willingness to act on them (by way of disclosure, I’ve worked with Bonnie since 1978 and edit the website for NukeFree.org, whose core she comprises with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and benefit producer Tom Campbell).

Bonnie’s Slipstream has the trappings of an album made by someone with a transcendent talent doing exactly what she wants -- and making it work. The opening song -- with which she opened concerts I saw in Indianapolis and near Dayton -- is Randall Bramblett's searing "Used to Rule the World," an admonition to egos and empires about the immutable laws of karma:

Dr. Feelgood
Sitting on a park bench
Can I get a witness?

For all these decades, through a score of albums, nine Grammys, a slot at the Rock Hall, appearances with Leno-Letterman-Ellen-Colbert, Bonnie has balanced an astonishing musical range with a message and a way of carrying herself that are firmly rooted in her Quaker heritage. A mainstay of the No Nukes movement for more than 30 years, she is not shy.

Last week, while receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville, she told a standing-room-only crowd that this year's election had become an "auction. The efforts that are going on in our country to actively discourage people from voting and to put up roadblocks to people getting registered to vote" are among "the saddest threats to our democracy to come along in a long time."

The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision," she added, "is one of the worst things that has ever happened to our democratic process…If you look at the millions of dollars that are being wasted trying to buy elections when that money could help so many people, it makes you really sad."

In many ways Bonnie's newest album is her most interesting. My own favorite has long been the double-shot Road Tested, which puts her live and on stage.

But Slipstream is quirky, challenging, edgy, brilliant, brimming with confidence, and often just downright gorgeous. The songs work live and on stage, especially when mixed with classics like John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” which she opened a capella, and the tear-inducing “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Bonnie’s talent and politics are both family affairs. A supporter of the legendary Quaker-based sea-faring opposition to nuclear testing in the Pacific, John Raitt was one of the great stage performers of his generation, bringing epic depth and power to Oklahoma and Carousel, which he took on tour for decades. Bonnie’s mother Marjorie was an accomplished pianist.

With them came a vital dose of essential good cheer. Bonnie thanked one audience for coming because "we're not really suited for any other kind of work." In the Rock Hall’s inductee film, when asked by a young girl why she took up the guitar, Bonnie explains it was “to meet boys.”

The four in her band include Hutch Hutchison on bass, George Marinelli on guitar, and Ricky Fatarr on drums -- all with her forever. New piano man Mike Finnegan adds some Irish zip... and the chutzpah to “thank Bonnie for opening for me” when he takes a solo turn.

Having weathered her storms and grown into her unique talent, Bonnie is now being greeted by fans -- at the sold-out Dayton show, one of them was my neighbor -- turning up in bright red wigs and giant grins. What they get in exchange is a warm, unaffected master of spunk and joy, thankful to be performing, genuinely grateful to be with you. As no one else can, she brings rock, folk, country, blues, Broadway, soulful ballads, that amazing slide guitar, and an evergreen glow of accomplished integrity.

“My dad performed until he was 88,” she said at the end of the Dayton show. Hale, happy, and hearty at 62, Bonnie Raitt’s promise of decades more to come is the best music you’ll hear in many a year.

[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org and is author of Solartopia!: Our Green-Powered Earth. He is co-author with Bob Fitrakis of Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election? Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman : Will the GOP Steal the Election?

Political cartoon by Bob Englehart / Hartford Courant. Image from Collin Dems.
Will the GOP steal America's 2012 election?

Would the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Chamber of Commerce, and their related billionaires spend tens of millions of dollars to win the White House but stop short of spending the relatively small amount it would take to flip the vote?

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / September 10, 2012

The Republican Party could steal the 2012 U.S. presidential election with relative ease.

Six basic factors make this year's theft a possibility:

1. The power of corporate money, now vastly enhanced by the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens' United decisions;
2. The Electoral College, which narrows the number of votes needed to be moved to swing a presidential election;
3. The systematic disenfranchisement of -- according to the Brennan Center -- 10 million or more citizens, most of whom would otherwise be likely to vote Democratic. More than a million voters have also been purged from the rolls in Ohio, almost 20% of the total vote count in 2008;
4. The accelerated use of electronic voting machines, which make election theft a relatively simple task for those who control them, including their owners and operators, who are predominantly Republican;
5. The GOP control of nine of the governorships in the dozen swing states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 campaign; and,
6. The likelihood that the core of the activist "election protection" community that turned out in droves to monitor the vote for Barack Obama in 2008 has not been energized by his presidency and is thus unlikely to work for him again in 2012.

Winning a fair and reliable electoral system can be achieved only with a massive grassroots upheaval.

The power of money is now enshrined by the infamous Citizens United decision. In at least 90% of our congressional races and at least 80% of our U.S. Senate races, the candidate who spends the most money wins.

From the presidency to the local level, our elections -- and thus control of our government -- are dominated by cash.

For more than a century, the ability of corporations and the super-rich to buy in directly has been legally constrained. But the concentration of media ownership in the hands of ever-fewer corporations has vastly enhanced their power.

Already in 2012, the tsunami of dollars pouring in from corporations and super-rich individuals has soared to entirely new levels. Even the floodgates opened by Citizens United can't handle the flow. With its June decision denying Montana's attempt to keep some spending restrictions in tact, the John Roberts U.S. Supreme Court has inaugurated an era in which virtually unrestrained "pay-to-play" money will redefine the electoral process. Republicans in the U.S. Senate have also blocked attempts to require that these campaign "donations" be made public.

It's not hard to guess where this leads. The June 2012, recall election in Wisconsin saw at least eight times as much money being spent on protecting Republican governor Scott Walker as was spent to oust him.

Barack Obama has spent much of his presidency courting corporate interests. But he will be out-raised by the corporate/super-rich 1% backing Mitt Romney. A handful of high-profile billionaires will spend "whatever it takes" to put the GOP back into the White House. Just a dozen of them have already provided more than 70% of Romney's early campaign budget.

Most of this corporate money is being used to persuade voters to oust Obama, which they may well decide to do. But U.S. history shows that some of it can also restrict the ability of Americans to vote. It can then "bend" the vote count in ways the public may not want.

Our nation's history shows that given the same chance, the Democrats would gladly do the same to the Republicans. And it's happened many times, especially in the Jim Crow south.

But in 2012, it will be primarily Republicans using gargantuan sums of corporate money to take control of the government from Democrats, and democracy be damned.


We are not writing this in support of Barack Obama or the Democratic Party. We are mystified by their unwillingness to fight for meaningful electoral reform. Both Al Gore and John Kerry were legitimately elected president, but neither was willing to fight for significant change, or even to discuss the issue. When we broke many of the major stories on the theft of Ohio 2004, it was the Democrats who most fiercely attacked us.

We're continually asked why the Democrats have been willing since 2000 to sit back and let the GOP get away with this. Frankly, we have no answer.

But for us, the more important reality is that this electoral corruption dooms the ballot as an instrument of real democracy. A system this badly broken means a bipartisan oligarchy can always deny third and other grassroots parties the use of elections to challenge the status quo, in this case one increasingly defined by war, bigotry, injustice, moneyed privilege, and ecological suicide.

Thus it's been a century since the last significant electoral challenges to the Democrat-Republican corporate domination of the political system.

That challenge was staged by the People's (Populist) and then Socialist Parties. In rapid succession they rallied huge grassroots followings demanding core changes to the corporate domination of American politics. The 30-year upheaval they represented laid the groundwork for major changes. But it failed to crack the corporate domination of our political system.

The Populists were shattered in 1896 with a combination of cooption by William Jennings Bryan's Democratic Party and election theft engineered by Mark Hanna's Republicans. (Republican strategist Karl Rove, a serious student of the 1896 election, considers Mark Hanna to be one of his great heroes.)

The Socialists were co-opted and divided in 1916 by the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who then crushed them in the most violent wave of physical repression ever imposed by a U.S. President on a mass movement that derived from the heart of America's working public.

No third party has since risen up with enough real political clout to threaten corporate power through the electoral system. As long as our ballot box is corrupted and unaccountable, none will.

That one party could steal an election from the other means our democracy, if it could still be called that, is essentially in shambles.

Would the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Chamber of Commerce, and their related billionaires spend tens of millions of dollars to win the White House but stop short of spending the relatively small amount it would take to flip the vote?

Thankfully, we are citizens of a nation born with the bottom-up overthrow of the planet's then-most powerful king. As believers in grassroots democracy, we know that the survival instinct is ultimately more powerful than the profit motive. When it comes to the basics, we have no doubt the power of the people will ultimately prevail.

For those working on the 2012 election, and for democracy in general, that will mean an extraordinary commitment to protecting the registered status of millions of Americans, getting them to the polls, guaranteeing their right to vote once there, and making sure there is an accurate vote count -- electronic and otherwise -- once those votes are cast.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are authors of Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?, their fifth book on election protection. It is available as an e-book at harveywasserman.com and freepress.org. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

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MUSIC / Harvey Wasserman : A Transcendent CSN

From left, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and David Crosby. Photo by Darrel Ellis / Toledo Blade.
Shamans of sound:
A transcendent Crosby, Stills and Nash

Hearing CSN’s standards reminds us boomers of a time and place, an era of history when we were young and open and a whole new genre of music and politics and way of being was in the birthing.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / August 2, 2012

The power of music is one of the great unknowns in the human saga. For reasons we don’t quite understand (yet) its vibrations can lift us to great heights, drop us down into deep depression, liberate us, make us joyous, help us grieve, and so much more.

Thus its practitioners -- the best of them -- can rise to shaman status. They can speak to higher realities, lead us on political issues, arouse our spirits, calm our souls.

Those with the power are rare. There is a huge corporate industry designed to manufacture and sell commercial imitations.

But real ones still walk among us, and if we catch them at the right moment, they can move us as little else in this life.

Monday night, July 30, was such a time. Crosby, Stills and Nash played under a pavilion on the Ohio River outside Cincinnati on a gorgeous warm night before some 4,000 folks who must be described at this point as elders.

(By way of disclosure, I’ve worked with Graham Nash since 1978, when he toured California with Jackson Browne, raising funds and consciousness to fight the Diablo Canyon nukes. With Bonnie Raitt, Jackson and Graham are the core of www.nukefree.org, whose website I edit.)

The show was a mix of old and new, but stayed within the terrain of melodies and harmonies the trio essentially invented.

Wooden ships on the water
Very free
And easy
The way it’s supposed to be.

Hearing CSN’s standards reminds us boomers of a time and place, an era of history when we were young and open and a whole new genre of music and politics and way of being was in the birthing. There was a war on and we wanted peace, and injustices and bigotries we wanted done away with, and with all that came a mindset and culture that changed the world -- but not yet enough.

With a superb supporting cast (including David Crosby’s son, James Raymond), the band reminds us of why these songs became standards in the first place. It’s not enough that music is of a time -- it also has to be good on its own. The deep resonance of the chord changes, the perfect harmonies, master guitar riffs, intriguing lyrics... there are reasons these songs are still with us. "Carry On," "Helpless," Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Our House" will always carry the touch of greatness that inspired them.

Thankfully, the group has also kept its political focus. Graham dedicated "Teach Your Childre" to the underpaid, overworked professionals who do just that.

He also sang "Almost Gone," a searing accusation written with James Raymond about the ghastly torture of Bradley Manning, the whistleblowing young soldier being pilloried by our imperial army for the “crime” of telling the truth.

Graham’s epic "Winchester Cathedral" asked “how many people have died in the name of Christ?” The question was underscored with "Military Madness," reminding us that our species continues to poison and bleed itself with an unfathomable addiction to violence and war that could someday soon kill us all.

To do this kind of politics in a concert for which people have paid good money is a delicate dance. But these guys are good enough -- and then some -- to make it work. It is, after all, who they are, and have been, and we would expect no less.

The riverfront night was clear and clean, but global-warmed, and at one point Graham complained of the heat.

“Take off your shirt,” someone yelled.

“Are you kidding,” said Graham. “I’m 70 years old.”

Well, yeah, but he and his brothers haven’t lost a beat, and their core audience has the aura of being as fit and bright and full of life as we were way back when.

In those days, we never doubted we would live forever. In the parallel universe CSN still has the power to create, it seems we actually have.

[Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States is at www.solartopia.org, along with A Glimpse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit. He edits www.nukefree.org. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog

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Harvey Wasserman : DOE and the Southern Company's Nuclear Sweetheart Deal

Two new nuclear reactors are being constructed at Plant Vogtle near Augusta. Image from EcoWatch.
The Southern Company's
nuclear sweetheart deal

Why should nuke guarantees cost less than home or student loans?

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / July 3, 3012

The Department of Energy wants to give the Southern Company a nuclear power loan guarantee at better interest rates than you can get on a student loan. And unlike a home mortgage, there may be no down payment.

Why?

The terms DOE is offering the builders of the Vogtle atomic reactors have only become partially public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

We still may not know all the details.

SACE has challenged the $8.33 billion loan guarantee package announced by President Obama in 2010.

The documents show the DOE has intended to charge the Southern a credit subsidy fee of one to 1.5%, far below the rates you would be required to pay for buying a house or financing an education.

On a package 15 times bigger than what the federal government gave the failed solar company Solyndra, Southern would be required to pay somewhere between $17 million and $52 million. Advocates argue the fee is so low that it fails to adequately take into account the financial risks of the project. Numerous financial experts have estimated the likely fail rate for new nuclear construction to be at 50% or greater.

Furthermore, since a primary lender would be the Federal Financing Bank, the taxpayer is directly on the hook. Guaranteed borrowings are not supposed to exceed 70% of the project's projected costs, but it's unclear what those costs will actually turn out to be, as the public has been given no firm price tag on the project.

There is apparently no cash down payment being required of Southern as it seems the loan is designed to be secured with the value of the reactors themselves, whatever that turns out to be. In the unlikely event they are finished, liability from any catastrophe will revert to the public once a small private fund is exhausted.

Southern wanted the terms of the DOE offer kept secret, and we still don't know everything about it. But in March, a federal circuit court judge ordered that the public had a right to know at least some of the details.

Apparently no final documents have actually been signed between Southern and the DOE. The Office of Management & Budget has reportedly balked at offering the nuke builder such generous terms. Southern has reportedly balked at paying even a tiny credit fee.

Construction at the Vogtle site has already brought on delays focused on the use of sub-standard concrete and rebar steel. The projected price tag -- whatever it may be -- has risen as much as $900 million in less than a year.

Southern and its Vogtle partners are in dispute with Westinghouse and the Shaw Company, two of the reactors' primary contractors. Georgia ratepayers have already been stuck with $1.4 billion in advance payments being charged to their electric bills. Far more overruns are on their way.

The Vogtle project is running somewhat parallel with two reactors being built at V.C. Summer in South Carolina, where $1.4 billion was already spent by the end of 2011. Delays are mounting and cost overruns are also apparently in the hundreds of millions.

Southern and Summer's builders both claim they can finance these projects without federal guarantees. But exactly how they would do that remains unclear.

Two older reactors now licensed at the Vogtle site were originally promised to cost $150 million each, but came in at $8.9 billion for the pair. The project's environmental permits are being challenged in court over claims the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to account for safety lessons from the Fukushima disaster.

The terms of the guarantees are now apparently being scrutinized by the Office of Management & Budget, which reports to a White House that may be gun-shy over new construction guarantees due to bad publicity from the Solyndra fiasco.

Numerous petitions are circulating in opposition to this package.

The Nuclear Information & Resource Service has already facilitated more than 10,500 e-mails sent directly to DOE Secretary Chu.

You might ask: why should the builders of nuclear power reactors get better terms than students struggling to pay for college or working families trying to buy a home?

At least the home buyers can get private liability insurance, which the nuke builders can't.

If mounting grassroots opposition can stop this package, it's possible no new reactors will ever be built in the U.S.

So send the OMB and DOE a copy of your mortgage or student loan statement.

Demand that before they finance any more nukes, they drop your own payment to 1%, just like they're offering the reactor pushers. Also demand the right to buy a home without a down payment.

See how far you get, and then make sure Vogtle goes no farther.

[Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org. He edits the www.nukefree.org website. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.

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Harvey Wasserman : Nuclear Industry Meltdown in Japan, France

Participants hold a traditional "Koinobori" carp-shaped banner for Children's Day during anti-nuke march in Tokyo Saturday, May 5, 2012. Photo by Itsuo Inouye / AP.
Nuclear industry melts in Japan, France;
opposition heats up in United States

This weekend’s message from Japan and France could not be more clear: at nuclear power’s historic core, the collapse has come.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2012

There are zero commercial reactors operating in Japan today. On March 10, 2011, there were 54 licensed to operate, well over 10% percent of the global fleet. But for the first time in 42 years, a country at the core of global reactor electricity is producing none of its own.

Worldwide, there are fewer than 400 operating reactors for the first time since Chernobyl, a quarter-century ago.

And France has replaced a vehemently pro-nuclear premier with the Socialist Francois Hollande, who will almost certainly build no new reactors. For decades France has been the “poster child” of atomic power. But Hollande is likely to follow the major shift in French national opinion away from nuclear power and toward the kind of green-powered transition now redefining German energy supply.

In the United States, a national grassroots movement to stop federal loan guarantees could end new nuclear construction altogether. New official cost estimates of $9.5 to $12 billion per reactor put the technology off-scale for any meaningful competition with renewables and efficiency.

In India, more than 500 women have joined an ongoing hunger strike against construction of reactors at Koodankulam. And in China, more than 30 reactors hang in the balance of a full assessment of the true toll of the Fukushima disaster.

But it seems to have no end. Three melted cores still smolder. New reports from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), confirm that at least one spent fuel pool suspended 100 feet in the air, bearing tons of hugely toxic rods, could crash to the ground with another strong earthquake -- a virtual certainty by most calculations.

Those uncovered fuel rods contain radioactive cesium and other isotopes far beyond what was released at Chernobyl. A fire could render vast stretches of Japan permanently uninhabitable (if they are not already). The death toll could easily claim millions worldwide, including many of us here, where the cloud would come down within a week.

Japan’s total shutdown cuts to the core of the historic industry. The globe’s primary reactor designers, General Electric and Westinghouse, are now primarily Japanese-owned. Pressure vessels, steam generators, and much more of the industry’s vital hardware have long been manufactured in Japan.

But the archipelago’s antinuclear movement also has deep roots. In 1975-6, large, angry crowds I spoke to were already demanding the end of Fukushima and other reactor projects. They warned that all Japanese reactors were vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis, and that disasters on par with what happened at Fukushima were essentially inevitable. Now that it’s happened, the public rage in what has been a traditionally conservative, authoritarian society is almost unfathomable.

Along the way, local governments did win the right (not enjoyed in the United States) to keep shut nearby reactors that were closed for repairs and refueling. On Saturday, May 5, a deep-rooted, highly focused grassroots movement shut the archipelago’s last operating nuke. It’s bound and determined to keep them that way.

As summer air conditioning demand skyrockets, Japan’s Prime Minister will try to prove that atomic power is essential. But an efficiency-oriented public has dealt very well with cutbacks in supply since Fukushima. Each potential restart will have its own dynamic.

Japan’s stunning reality is that its gargantuan capital investment in more than 50 commercial reactors is now dead in the water... and being irradiated by its own deadly fallout. That can only drag the global industry closer to oblivion at a moment when the public’s financial and political commitments to renewables and efficiency are deepening daily.

Likewise the demise of Nikolas Sarkozy. His allies at France’s nuclear-commited utility, EDF, have been Europe’s primary pushers of the “Peaceful Atom.” Now his Socialist rival is running the country, backed by a constituency largely supportive of a green conversion to parallel the one in neighboring Germany.

America’s green activists also want atomic power ended. In Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere, escalating grassroots campaigns have put the future of 104 licensed reactors in doubt.

The confrontation may be most immediate at San Onofre, on the Pacific shore between Los Angeles and San Diego. Faulty steam generator tubes have forced two reactors shut. As in Japan, the industry loudly warns of shortages when summer hits. It wants at least one reactor back by June. But experts warn that San Onofre’s design deficiencies threaten the public safety, as does its uninsured vulnerability to earthquakes and tsunamis.

The battle parallels the one over new construction. Already plagued with faulty concrete and design-deficient rebar steel, two reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle still await final agreement on federal loan guarantees granted by President Obama last year.

But Progress Energy’s guess that its own double-reactor proposal for Florida’s Levy County could cost a staggering $24 billion casts a long shadow over Vogtle, where tax/ratepayers are already being stuck with huge bills for a project that could be vastly underfunded. A national petition drive has been fired up to stop the guarantees from going through.

And while India’s growing nonviolent army of nuclear opponents vow to fast to the death, the global reactor industry awaits word from China on how many new reactors it thinks it will build. The world will then watch with bated breath as the Middle Kingdom’s own nascent anti-nuclear movement gathers strength in the inevitable race to shut the local reactor before it melts.

But for now, this weekend’s message from Japan and France could not be more clear: at nuclear power’s historic core, the collapse has come. Humankind is running ever-faster toward a green-powered Earth, desperate to win before the next Fukushima strikes.

[Harvey Wassermansoc edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org. The Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show airs at www.progressiveradionetwork.com. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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