EFTA00844429.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 10/04/2015 Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2015 07:22:16 +0000 Attachments: Our_Other_Drinking_Problem_Roberto_A._Ferdman_Huff_Post_August_28,_2015.docx; It's_Time_to_Close_the_Carried_Interest_Loophole_Bill_de_Blassio_Huff_Post_09.11.15.d ocx; Otis_Redding_bio.docx; Fiorina'sfalsehoods_Editorial_Board_September_26,2015.docx; Likely_House_Speaker_Praises_Benghazi Committee_For_Hurting_Hillary_Clinton Politi cally_Sam_Levine_Huff_Post_09.30.15.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(I8).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png DEAR FRIEND BLOODBATH USA Guns Kill An Average 36 People Per Day... PATHETIC: Politicians Tweet Prayers Instead OfActing... Obama's Sickened And Angered Response To Oregon Shooting: 'We Should Politicize' This... Guns Kill An Average Of 36 People Every Day, And The Nation Doesn't Even Blink... and since 9/11 more than 150,000 Americans have been killed in gun homicides, and we have done ... nothing. EFTA00844429  Inline image t The nation was once again confronted with the horror of a deadly school shooting on Thursday, this time a massacre at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon where 26 year-old gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, killed at least 10 people and wounded seven before police fatally shot him. This latest tragedy marked the 45th shooting on a school campus this year, according to Every town for Gun Safety, a group pushing for legislative reforms to reduce gun violence. It was the 142nd shooting at a school since the December 2012 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where 27 people were killed, including 20 young children, six faculty members. Those numbers alone may come as a surprise, because we typically don't talk about school shootings unless they inflict a level of devastation that makes them impossible to ignore. Most people are familiar with Columbine and Sandy Hook. When we look at the bigger picture, however, those mass shootings are revealed as tragic outliers in the overall trend of gun violence that has infiltrated American schools. On-campus shootings are themselves just a small part of U.S. gun violence. School shootings and even mass shootings — of which there have already been hundreds in 2015, according to some counts -- are overshadowed, at least statistically, by the hail of bullets that rip through the nation each day, claiming an average of 36 lives. These victims, more often than not, die without much public attention outside their communities. They are men and women like Annoqunette Starr, who was killed on Wednesday. People who knew her called her Arm. They say the 41-year-old was endlessly compassionate, and that her community in Louisville, Kentucky, adored her. "We've known herfor years, grew up together," one of Starr's friends told WHAS on Thursday. "She was a sweet person. She'd give you the shirt off her back if she had it. Food, if you need it, she was there. Ann was just Ann." EFTA00844430 Starr's io-year-old niece was in an apartment on Wednesday morning when her aunt's boyfriend allegedly pulled a gun and started shooting. Police arrived a short time later to find Starr dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Starr's niece was uninjured, and her boyfriend later surrendered. Starr would end up being one of at least 1,3 people killed by gunfire on Wednesday, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a not-for-profit corporation that tracks U.S. shootings. That toll makes Wednesday a relatively peaceful day in the U.S. An average of more than three times that many people have been killed by guns each day this year, which has seen more than 9,900 gun deaths so far. More than 20,000 people have been injured by guns in 2015. Attention seems to gravitate toward high-profile instances of gun violence, whether they take place at a church, a political campaign event or a community college. And it's not hard to see why. School shootings serve as a flashpoint for otherwise uncomfortable conversations about gun violence. These episodes terrorize students everywhere, because they can happen anywhere. They terrify the parents and families, who entrust the safety of their children and loved ones to schools every day. They disgust anyone who believes that people should be able to obtain an education without fear of being gunned down in the process. But when, or perhaps if, we decide to discuss how to address gun violence, we should keep people like Annoqunette Starr in mind, along with the victims at Umpqua Community College. Thirteen weapons were recovered, six from the school and seven from Mercer's residence, said Celinez Nunez, assistant special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives and all of the weapons were purchased legally and traced to a federal firearms dealer. Seven of the weapons were purchased by the shooter or his family members in the last three years, Nunez said. Law enforcement also recovered a jacket with steel plates and additional magazines. According to the Douglas County Sheriffs Office, the weapons recovered were pistols, rifles and a shotgun were all purchased legally as federal law only prohibits felons, drug users, domestic violence misdemeanants and people involuntarily committed to mental institutions from possessing firearms. After a question from the audience about the massacre on Thursday, Republican Presidential candidate and former Governor of the state of Florida, Jed Bush said, "We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everyone else. It's very sad to see." If that answer wasn't clueless enough on Friday Bush said, "But I resist the notion—and I had this challenge as governor—because we had—look, stuff happens, there's always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do." And for those of you who feel that Bush's "stuff happens" was taken out of context, I counter by suggesting that it is indicative of the GOP's indifference to find a solution that includes any expansion of gun control. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said in 2012 that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." His point is often repeated by gun control opponents. Except that Oregon allows concealed carry on postsecondary campuses and there was at least one armed civilian on campus at the time of the shooting. This latest atrocity serves as another reason why America needs to ramp up firearm restrictions. But as President Obama said on Thursday, 'As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough." EFTA00844431 AGAIN: Since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 27 people were killed, including 20 young children, six faculty members and the shooter and the 45th shooting at a school in 2015 and this latest mass shooting at a community college in Oregon also marks the 142nd shooting at a school since Newtown. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in an op-ed on Friday in The Washington Post — Since 9/11, the United States has responded aggressively to the danger of terrorism, taking extraordinary measures, invading two countries, launching military operations in many others, and spending more than $800 billion on homeland security. Americans have accepted an unprecedented expansion of government powers and invasions of their privacy to prevent such attacks. Since 9/11, 74 people have been killed in the United States by terrorists, according to the think tank New America. In that same period, more than 150,000 Americans have been killed in gun homicides, and we have done ... nothing. Our attitude seems to be one of fatalism. Another day, another mass shooting. Which is almost literally true. The Web site shootingtracker.com documents that in the first 207 days of 2015, the nation had 207 mass shootings. After one of these takes place now, everyone goes through a ritual of shock and horror, and then moves on, aware that nothing will change, accepting that this is just one of those quirks of American life. But it is 150,000 deaths. Almost three Vietnams. After last week's incident in Lafayette, La., the governor of the state and Republican presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, pointed his finger at what has now become the standard explanation for these events: "Look, every time this happens, it seems like the person has a history of mental illness." But it makes little sense to focus on mental health. The United States has a gun homicide rate that is at least a dozen times higher than those of most other industrialized countries. It is 5o times higher than Germany's, for instance. We don't have 5o times as many mentally disturbed people as Germany does — but we do have many, many more guns. EFTA00844432 At least we have stopped blaming gun violence on video games. Perhaps someone noticed that other countries have lots of violence in their pop culture but don't have this tsunami of gun deaths. Japan, for example, is consumed by macabre video games and other forms of gory entertainment. In 2008, Japan had just 11 gun homicides. Eleven. Why? Hint: It has very tough gun-control laws. Jindal at least suggested that states follow or even strengthen laws to make sure that mentally unstable people can't buy guns, but this has placed him beyond the pale for the gun lobby. Former Texas governor Rick Perry's solution is to loosen the few restrictions on guns that do exist so that, in the Lafayette movie theater, other patrons could have been armed and would have shot the gunman. The notion that the solution — in dark, crowded movie theaters — is a mass shoot-out is so dangerous that it should rule out Perry as a serious Republican presidential candidate. When asked about such proposals after the mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., William Bratton, who has now been police chief in three major U.S. cities, dismissed the idea. To him the solution is obvious. "[We need] some sanity in our gun control laws. ... Gun control can reduce these numbers of incidents," he told CNN. We have become so inured to the catastrophic levels of violence in our cities that we gloss over them. People often ask me if I think it's safe for them to travel to countries such as Egypt or Morocco. The reality is that many major U.S. cities have homicide rates that are many times higher than those in places such as Cairo or Casablanca. (And it's worth noting that non-Islamic terrorists — as in Charleston, S.C. — have killed almost twice as many people as jihadis have in the United States since 9/11.) In the wake of this ongoing tragedy, we have actually loosened restraints on the ability and ease with which people can buy, own and carry guns. This is partly because in June 2008, the Supreme Court broke with 200 years of precedent and — in a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia — created an individual right to gun ownership that has made common-sense regulation of guns much harder. In his powerful dissent in that case (District of Columbia u. Heller), Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that Scalia's opinion was an act of extreme judicial activism — that for two centuries, federal courts had recognized that the government had the power to regulate the sale of firearms, and that the Supreme Court in particular had for at least seven decades consistently affirmed that interpretation. It is not an act of fate that has caused 150,000 Americans to die over the past 14 years. It is a product of laws, court decisions, lobbying and pandering politicians. We can change it. ****** Who's Pulling the Strings EFTA00844433  to Presidents & Politicians Who Told Us That A "Secret Government" Controls The World & What They Said Inline image 1 "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Edward Bernaya rthefather ofpublic relations" If you told somebody to years ago that there existed some sort of secret group or "secret government" pulling the strings behind the scenes of government policy, international law, various global rules/regulations, and more, they would have called you a "conspiracy theorist" Today things have changed, largely as a result of information leaked by Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and various other whistleblowers and activists in recent years. Their bravery has shed light on the world of secrecy that's been blinding the masses since its inception. By the way did you know that the U.S. Government classifies more than 500 million pages of documents each year? Did you know that the United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret? For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, but its existence was hidden until the mid-1960's. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, it was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 3o years. Then we have the entire black budget world, a world dominated by secrecy that was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a couple of years ago. This deals with what are known as "Special Access Programs." It's not just statements that these "high-lever people are making. It's all of the proof and evidence that goes along with it. EFTA00844434  Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer Former Minister of National Defense, Paul Hellyer, is one of Canada's best known and most controversial politicians. He was first elected in 1949, and was the youngest cabinet minister appointed to Louis S. St. Laurent's government eight years later. He held senior posts in the governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau. He achieved the rank of senior master (Deputy Prime Minister), and went on to become the Canadian Defence Minister. He is best known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces, and in September 2005 he became the first person of cabinet rank in the G8 group of countries to state unequivocally that "UFOs are as real as the airplanesflying overhead." Here's what he had to say about the world of secrecy: It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark. The 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson Woodrow Wilson, an American academic, politician, and the 28th president of the United States, had this to say (among other things) in his book The New Freedom. The book also contains several other, similarly eye-opening statements: Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. The 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy Here's what JFK had to say in one of his most famous speeches: The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of EFTA00844435  our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. ... For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence-on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of The United States John C. Calhoun was the 7th Vice President of the United States, from 1825-1832. He was also a political theorist during the first half of the 19th century. Here's what he had to say: A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. This quote reminds me of a great clip from the Thrive documentary by Foster Gamble, heir to the Proctor Gamble Corporation. He was groomed for the establishment, but chose a different path. New York City Mayor John F. Hylan John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925. He has been famously quoted as saying: The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation ... The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties ... [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. Senator William Jenner A United States senator who said this to Congress in 1954: EFTA00844436  Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means ... We have a well- organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state ... It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government ... This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century... This group ... is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable. Senator Daniel K. Inouye Inouye was the highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history, serving the Democratic Party from 1963 until his death in 2012. There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. 34th U.S. President And 5 Star General, Dwight Eisenhower In his farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower offered these words of caution: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. ... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful message and goals. This speech is relevant to share here, because the disastrous rise of misplaced power within the military industrial complex has indeed occurred... Benjamin Disraeli, First British MP The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. (Coningsby, Book 4, Chap. is.) — Page 131 26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt EFTA00844437  Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. Let's think about it, we know that politicians are at the beck and call to billionaires, corporations and special interest group — but do they work together or is it that many of their interest coincide and they are willing to accommodate the trade-offs of other equals which allows them to operate as an amorphous living organ somehow interconnected across the planet at will. ****** Liar Liar Pants on Fire Inline image 1 Last Sunday in an interview on NBC's Meet The Press, I watched in amazement Carly Fiorina doubling down on a lie when confronted by Andrea Mitchell about something she said. Arguing during the Sept. i6 GOP debate to defund Planned Parenthood, Ms. Fiorina offered this description of a disturbing scene that was supposedly captured on controversial undercover videos of the organization: "Watch a fullyformedfetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." Except, no such scene exists, as even some of her defenders have had to admit, but she wouldn't back down. Later in the day, Ms. Fiorina was also challenged by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace to acknowledge "what everyfact checker hasfound": that the scene was only described by someone who claimed to have witnessed it but was not shown in the video. Ms. Fiorina could have acknowledged her error while maintaining, fairly, that the tapes contain other disturbing images and language and while affirming her objections to Planned Parenthood. Instead she insisted: "No, I don't accept that at all. I've seen thefootage." She went on the attack against the mainstream media, and her supporters concocted a video that splices video and audio from different places in an effort to buttress her claims. Most deceptive in the CARLY for America video is use of an EFTA00844438 image (also used in the videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress) of a fetus born prematurely, not aborted, at 19 weeks of development. The premature birth by a Pennsylvania woman had no connection to Planned Parenthood or to abortion. That, though, didn't stop Ms. Fiorina's supporters from using it — with the voice-over and caption of "Here's a stomach, heart, kidney, and adrenal" — to support specious allegations of Planned Parenthood selling fetal tissue for profit. Ms. Fiorina may have deeply felt objections to abortion. But that doesn't excuse her use of mistruths to justify her willingness to shut down the government, which by the way she seems to consider no big deal. "I'm not aware of any hardship to anyone, other than the veterans trying to get to the World War II memorial," she said of the last shutdown. When it comes to character and capability, that kind of blithe ignorance is another worrying sign. As The Washington Post pointed out in an editorial, "ONE OF the benefits of a presidential campaign is the character and capability, judgment and temperament of every single one of us is revealed over time and under pressure." Since presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina made that comment at the start of the second Republican debate, there have been a number of other telling revelations about her character and her judgment. Caught making a false claim, like some of her other Republican competitors, she couldn't just admit she made a mistake but instead doubled down and worsened the falsehood. Again as for Fiorina who has called Hillary Clinton a liar, she is definitely the pot calling the kettle black -- and if she is willing to lie to the American public during the courtship do you really think that she is going to change after the marriage. ****** The Real Drug Epidemic in America Prescription Drugs Now Kill More People In The US Than Heroin And Cocaine Combined Inline image 1 EFTA00844439 According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), prescription opioid painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the U.S. than heroin and cocaine combined. Opioid painkillers include prescription narcotics such as like Vicodin (hydrocodone), OxyContin (oxycodone), Opana (oxymorphone) and methadone, all are approved by the FDA and basically are pharmaceutical grades of heroin. More importantly they actually don't not treat pain but act as an anesthesia blocking the feelings of pain (symptoms) — which often leads to the pain getting worse. As a result, they are as addictive as either heroin or cocaine. Yet, medical doctors in America are prescribing opioids like aspirins. "An epidemic of prescription drug abuse is devastating Americanfamilies and draining state and federal time, money and manpower," Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a press release. The authors recommended that prescription drug monitoring programs "shift from a reactive to a proactive approach" by actions such as collecting prescribing data for all controlled substances, sending alerts about possible abuse to physicians and pharmacists, analyzing trend data to help law enforcement agencies identify "pill mills" that illicitly distribute prescription painkillers. Finally, if banned, these "killers" could easily be replaced by other drugs. Below is a presentation from the Pew Health Group that lays out the extent of the problem: Based on data from the drug enforcement agency, sales of prescription painkillers to pharmacies and healthcare providers have increased by more than 300% since 1999. In 2009, the number of people killed by drug poisoning, driven by large increases of painkiller abuse, surpassed motor vehicle without fatalities for the first time ever. EFTA00844440  And 2010, more people age 12 and older abused or were dependent on prescription painkillers then cocaine, however, this stimulants and sedatives combine. That's from prescription painkiller overdose in the United States have more than tripled between 1999 and 2008. "Overdoses involving prescription painkillers are at epidemic epidemic levels and now two more Americans than heroin and come back and cocaine combine." Dr. Thomas Frieden Director of Center of Disease Control and Prevention Nearly 5oo,000; the number of emergency room visits in 2009 due to people abusing prescription painkillers. The annual cost to health insurance in the United States due to nonmedical abuse of prescription painkillers is $72.5 billion. Into 2010,1 in every 20 people in the United States age 12 and older reported using prescription painkillers nonmedically. That is 12 million people and more than the population of the state of Ohio. One in five high school students reported to have abused prescription drugs. If the above does not suggest that prescription drug abuse isn't an epidemic, then nothing is. While awareness of the dangers of illegal drugs has increased, many Americans, especially teens are still ignorant of the significant physical danger posed by legally prescribed drugs, according to a new study in Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. The same study says that prescription drug use and abuse has increased in direct proportion to psychological states such as anxiety, and use of other restricted substances such as alcohol. Under some conditions, however, prescription drug abuse accelerated exponentially, such as when the level of anxiety or desire to be popular was at its very highest. Both teens and adults need help before they reach these tipping points for prescription drug abuse. Spotting potential abusers, especially teens with very high levels of anxiety and at least moderate use of other restricted substances should realize that these are students with a high likelihood of prescription drug abuse. Teens with a high need to be popular and teens in general appear to be at exceptional risk. Campaigns must target all Americans, including government, since it is dear that the population as a whole has underestimated both the physical risks of prescription drugs and the likelihood that from children to elders every age of Americans are now abusing drugs. Another Admission EFTA00844441  Likely House Speaker Praises Benghazi Committee For Hurting Hillary Clinton Politically Inline image 2 "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" I have been saying this since it became the focal point of the GOP that the Benghazi investigation was a bogus witch hunt perpetuated by Conservative Republicans to discredit the reputation damaging the political future of Hillary Clinton. And as recently as last weekend even media pundits were castigating Bill Clinton for suggesting that the Benghazi investigation was essentially a conspiracy, with even mainstream media suggesting that the Clintons had dusted off the "old conspiracy card." Well bot Bill Clinton and I were right as Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the man likely to become the next speaker of the House, applauded the Select Committee on Benghazi for damaging the poll numbers of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. McCarthy said last Tuesday that Clinton would have remained "unbeatable," had it not been for the committee. "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee, what are her numbers today?" McCarthy told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "Her numbers are dropping, why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened." Clinton responded to McCarthy's comments last Wednesday, calling them "deeply distressing." "When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise," Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC, which aired in full on "PoliticsNation"last Sunday. "Ifeel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of thefour that we lost but of everybody who has served our country." Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member on the committee, said McCarthy's comments were just further evidence that the Benghazi Committee was a waste of taxpayer money. "This stunning concessionfrom Rep. McCarthy reveals the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public: the core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi Committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and never to conduct an even-handed searchfor thefacts," Cummings said in a statement. "It is shameful that Republicans have used this tragedy and the deaths of our fellow Americans for political gain. Republicans have blatantly abused their authority in Congress by spending more than $4.5 million in taxpayer funds to pay for a political campaign against Hillary Clinton." Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the Benghazi Committee, disputed that the committee's work was politically motivated. "People view the Benghazi Committee through whatever lens or spin they choose, meanwhile, the Benghazi Committee isfocused on, and our work is driven, by thefacts," EFTA00844442 Ware said in a statement. In a different interview with CNN, McCarthy touted that the committee's work had exposed Clinton's use of a private email address while she was secretary of state, an issue that has dogged Clinton on the campaign trail. "They don't trust her because of what theyfound out about the server and everything else. Would you have everfound that out had you not gathered the informationfrom the Benghazi Select Committee," he said. But Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the Benghazi Committee, noted earlier this month in a New York Times op-ed that none of the emails the committee has seen have revealed "anything of consequence" about Clinton's role in Benghazi. "The Select Committee became little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race, a dangerous precedent that will haunt Congressfor decades," Schiff wrote. "The committee is solely concerned with damaging [Clinton's] candidacy, searchingfor something, anything that can be insinuated against her." Critics say the committee, charged with understanding all of the "policies, decisions and activities" related to the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, is just a way to attack Clinton politically. Even though other committees have cleared the Obama administration of wrongdoing in the attacks, the Benghazi Committee will not release its final report until 2016. McCarthy's comments are reminiscent of Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) who in 2015 admitted what so many had speculated: Voter identification efforts are meant to suppress Democratic votes in this year's election. — At a Republican State Committee meeting, Turzai took the stage and let slip the truth about why Republicans are so insistent on voter identification efforts — "it will win Romney the election," he said. And Carly Fiorina's description of a disturbing scene that was supposedly captured on controversial undercover videos of Plan Parenthood: "Watch a fullyformed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." Except, no such scene exists and what she described was stock footage without sound that had nothing to do with Plan Parenthood. More disturbing is that when confronted with the evidence, she still refused to back down. Aren't these types of misinformation which led us into the unnecessary and disastrous War in Iraq? We have to ask ourselves why are these politicians so cavalier about instigating non-issues for partisan gain based on innuendos, mischaracterization and lies. And the fact that mainstream media are so willing to follow these charlatans down any road.... is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS Volkswagen's appalling clean diesel scandal, explained Volkswagen couldn't balance performance with low pollution. So it cheated. EFTA00844443  Inline image 3 It sounds like the sinister plot of some straight-to-DVD movie. Since 2009, Volkswagen had been installing elaborate software in 482,000 "clean diesel" vehicles sold in the US, so that the cars' pollution controls only worked when being tested for emissions. The rest of the time, the vehicles could freely spew hazardous, smog-forming compounds. Suffice to say, regulators were livid once they caught on. On September 18, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that Volkswagen had very flagrantly violated the Clean Air Act. Not only did the EPA order the German firm to fix the affected vehicles — which include diesel TDI versions of the Golf, Jetta, Beetle, and Passat — but the agency could end up levying fines as high as $18 billion. The Department of Justice is also contemplating criminal charges. The scandal has only widened from there. On Tuesday, Volkswagen admitted that some 11 million clean diesel cars sold worldwide contain "defeat devices" meant to fool regulators, with the vast majority of cars likely to be in Europe. The company has so far set aside $7 billion in the third quarter to deal with the problem. Volkswagen, in other words, is in deep shit. The CEO, Martin Winterkorn, is apologizing profusely and pledging an external probe to find out what happened. The company has halted US sales of its 2015 and 2016 clean diesel vehicles and now has to fix millions of existing cars. Meanwhile, VW's stock price has plummeted, with the company losing one-third of its market cap in the last week: Inline image 0 EFTA00844444  Vi Inline image 5 This scandal raises a few larger questions, though: Why did Volkswagen cheat in the first place? And why was it so easy for the company to evade regulators for years? To get a better handle on the story, we need to take a brief trip through the tangled history of clean diesel vehicles — the specific cars that VW was selling. Clean diesel cars were supposed to offer great mileage and low pollution — a tricky task One basic fact to understand here is that there are two main types of combustion engines widely available today: diesel and gasoline. And there are real trade-offs to each. Diesel engines have long been popular in Europe, and one of their major advantages is fuel economy. Diesel fuel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline, and the diesel engines work more efficiently. Put it together, and the typical diesel car can travel up to 3o percent farther on a gallon of fuel than its gasoline counterpart. But there's a catch. While diesel cars get better mileage and emit fewer carbon-dioxide emissions, they also emit more nitrogen oxides (NOx), which help form smog, and particulate matter, which can damage lungs. Both types of pollution can have serious health effects. DUE TO HIGHER NOX EMISSIONS, DIESEL CARS DIDN'T CATCH ON IN THE US FOR MANY YEARS Historically, Europe has dealt with this trade-off by imposing relatively looser emissions standards on diesel cars in the pursuit of better fuel economy. Roughly one-third the passenger cars in Europe now run on diesel, and its one reason cities like Paris have a serious smog problem. In the United States, by contrast, we've imposed far stricter rules around smog and other conventional pollutants since the 1970s, which is why diesel cars haven't caught on widely here: until recently, few could pass America's stringent NOx standards. Since 2009, however, things have changed. The Obama administration has been ratcheting up fuel- economy standards in the United States, which puts a higher premium on mileage. At the same time, diesel technology has been gradually getting cleaner through a combination of lower-sulfur fuel, advanced engines, and new emission-control technology. So automakers have shown a renewed EFTA00844445 interest in "clean diesel" cars that, in theory, don't suffer from that trade-off between performance and pollution. These vehicles have proved increasingly popular in the United States, even if they still represent less than 1 percent of the market. Since 2009, Volkswagen has sold more than 482,000 clean diesel cars containing a four-cylinder turbocharged direct injection engine. This included versions of the Passat, Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and Audi's A3. Except, as it turns out, VW was lying about its dean diesel cars. Volkswagen couldn't balance performance with low pollution. So it cheated. Since 2009, we now know, Volkswagen had been inserting intricate code in its vehicle software that tracked steering and pedal movements. When those movements suggested that the car was being tested for nitrogen-oxide emissions in a lab, the car automatically turned its pollution controls on. The rest of the time, the pollution controls switched off. Regulators didn't notice this ruse for years. The problem was only uncovered by an independent group, the International Council on Clean Transportation, which wanted to investigate why there was such a discrepancy between laboratory tests and real-road performance for several of VW's diesel cars in Europe. So they worked with researchers at West Virginia University, who stuck a probe up the exhaust pipe of VW's clean diesel cars and drove them from San Diego to Seattle. What the researchers found was shocking. On the road, VW's Jetta was emitting 15 to 35 times as much nitrogen oxide as the allowable limit. The VW Passat was emitting 5 to 20 times as much. These cars were emitting much more pollution than they had in the labs. In May 2014, both California's air-pollution regulator and the EPA ordered Volkswagen to investigate and fix the problem, and the company claimed that it had done so. Once again, the cars performed well in testing, but real-world performance still didn't match up. At that point, EPA regulators really started grilling Volkswagen about the discrepancy, even threatening not to approve the company's 2016 line of clean diesel cars. VW finally cracked and admitted the existence of these defeat devices, which had been carefully hidden in the software code. Scandal ensued. Volkswagen hasn't explained exactly why it cheated, but outside analysts have a good guess. The NOx emission controls likely degraded the cars' performance when they were switched on — the engines ran hotter, wore out more quickly, and got poorer mileage. Some experts have suggested that the emission controls may have affected the cars' torque and acceleration, making them less fun to drive. (Indeed, some individual car owners have been known to disable their cars' emission controls to boost performance, though this is against the law.) EFTA00844446 In other words, Volkswagen wasn't able to produce diesel cars that had the ideal mix of performance, fuel economy, and low pollution. (Or, at least, they couldn't do this profitably.) So they "solved" this trade-off by sacrificing cleanliness and loosening the pollution controls. And they accomplished this via software designed to deceive regulators. This was wildly illegal, and they got caught. The VW scandal exposes problems with current emission tests Volkswagen isn't the first company to cheat on its emission tests. As Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch pointed out to me, the EPA caught a number of truck manufacturers, including Caterpillar and Volvo, doing something similar back in 1998 — programming their diesel trucks to emit fewer pollutants in lab tests than they did on the road. (The trucks would slowly emit more and more NOx as they traveled longer distances at constant speed, something that labs couldn't catch.) Part of the problem here is that regulators usually test these vehicles under laboratory conditions, placing them on giant treadmills and requiring them to do a series of maneuvers. Because this process is predictable, it's easier to game. Combined with the fact that automakers are developing ever-more- elaborate software that can control and fine-tune engines, there are ample opportunities for fraud. EUROPEAN REGULATORS WILL SOON START REQUIRING ON-ROAD EMISSIONS TESTING In theory, governments can find ways to make cheating harder. Starting with model year 2017 vehicles, European regulators are going to start requiring automakers to test their passenger cars on the road in addition to laboratory tests. That sort of regime would've made it harder for Volkswagen to pull its little stunt. But it's also unlikely this is the last time well see an automaker come up with a fiendishly clever way to cheat. Meanwhile, the VW scandal raises another issue surrounding car regulations, as Alex Davies explains at Wired. Modern-day cars feature complex computer systems and software. And, right now, this software is protected under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act — it's illegal to fiddle with the software. The ostensible rationale is to make it harder for consumers to tamper with emissions controls. But these protections also make it harder for independent researchers to scrutinize that code and identify problems. Some experts have proposed DMCA exemptions to allow researchers to test and evaluate these engines, but so far automakers and the EPA have resisted this. Presumably, if those exemptions had existed, Volkswagen's deception might have been caught sooner. Volkswagen is now facing serious blowback The US scandal wasn't the end of the story. On Tuesday, Volkswagen announced that some ii million clean diesel cars sold worldwide contained these "defeat devices" — every car that featured a Type EA 189 diesel engine. Most of these cars are in Europe. (The company says its newest European diesel engines aren't affected and comply with EU pollution rules.) EFTA00844447 At this point, Volkswagen has been caught red-handed and has to face the consequences. The company straight-up lied about its cars and knowingly evaded pollution limits. (Getting a precise estimate of the health damages caused by the extra pollution that resulted could be difficult, since it would depend on where the cars were located, how much extra smog actually resulted, and so forth.) In response, the company has pledged to stop selling 2015 and 2016 Volkswagen and Audi models equipped with TDI clean diesel engines in the United States and will likely end up recalling existing cars to fix the problem.** It's still unclear how many customers will actually want to fix the problem, however, since