As the Occupy movement enters its third month, it is moving into a new phase. Colder weather in the north, combined with aggressive push back from city officials around the country, is requiring the movement to adopt new, innovative approaches that include, but transcend, public presence as protest.

Pundits are wondering aloud whether Occupy is through. But this young movement is just getting started. An exciting piece of evidence to that effect is a new focus on foreclosures.

Alongside its call for job creation, corporate accountability, and relief from crushing student loan debt is a growing demand that Wall Street and Washington make right the disaster that their greed and neglect respectively caused. The movement has deemed December 6th a National Day of Action to Stop and Reverse Foreclosures.

The new “OccupyOurHomes.org” website describes the stakes and the problem well:

“Everyone deserves to have a roof over their head and a place to call home. Millions of Americans have worked hard for years for the opportunity to own their home; for others, it remains a distant goal. For all of us, having a decent place to live for ourselves and our families is the most fundamental part of the American dream, a source of security and pride.

 In 2008, we discovered bankers and speculators had been gambling with our most valuable asset, our homes—betting against us and destroying trillions of dollars of our wealth. Now, because of the foreclosure crisis Wall Street banks created with their lies and greed, millions of Americans have lost their homes, and one in four homeowners are currently underwater on their mortgage.”

These Americans are joining many others, particularly in communities of color, who were victimized by predatory lending and lax enforcement for decades. A new report by the Center for Responsible Lending, for example, shows that African Americans and Latinos were consistently more likely than whites to receive high-risk loans. While an unacceptable 12 percent of White Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure or are delinquent, a staggering one-quarter of Latinos and African-American borrowers are in the same position.

Fortunately, there are a range of solutions that can save homes, restore communities, and rebuild the American Dream of fair and sustainable homeownership. They range from mandatory mediation of foreclosure proceedings, to pre- and post-purchase counseling, to principal reduction and bankruptcy reform. Also important are approaches like own-to-rent programs, community land trusts, and improved fair housing enforcement. And when Congress again takes up the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it will be crucial to maintain a government role that keeps homeownership accessible and sustainable for working Americans.

The Occupy movement and its allies have been criticized, unfairly in my view, for failing to articulate solutions. As their attention turns to addressing foreclosures, it is clear what they are working for.

Read also:

• Lip Balm You Can Believe In?
  
• What 21st Century Democracy Looks Like
• Heeding the Voice of the 99 Percent

The Florida Independent's Luke Johnson:

Ending Spending is one of four “super PACs” registered since late September to Nancy Watkins, a CPA at Robert Watkins and Co., at 610 South Blvd. in Tampa, an address well known in Florida political circles. Collectively, groups registered to that address have spent close to $2.9 million in races across the country, all within the last five weeks of the election. Because many of the groups formed after the October quarterly filing date, they won’t have to disclose the names of their donors till after the election.

[...] Thirty-two PACs are registered to the Watkins firm through the Florida Division of Elections and 24 committees are registered through the FEC. Fifty-eight 527s have registered there with the IRS since 2001. The groups range from campaign committees to groups with banal-sounding names, such as the “Common Sense Committee” or the “Alliance for a Strong Economy,” which takes donations from interests such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Legal Institute and U.S. Sugar and transfers them to the Republican Party of Florida.

The FEC fined Watkins $99,000 in February 2009 for failing to file contribution notices and exceeding contribution limits in her work as the treasurer of the Mel Martinez Senate campaign.

Watkins would only answer “technical” questions about the groups registered in her name when reached by phone Friday. “I provide a service to them. We are a CPA firm,” she said. She added that she provides a service just like a “shoe factory makes shoes.”

Mutli-million dollar shoes meant to tap dance across elections throughout the country, that is. 

Johnson details how this is all possible and legal and reminds readers that the ads this concentrated funnel of money go to have often been less concerned with accuracy than heavy rotation.  Some great reporting here from TFI's mothership The American Independent on an indepth analysis of Florida's "independent" spending by FollowtheMoney.org, which ultimately concludes:

Independent spending rose from $31.5 million in 2006 to $48.2 million in 2010, an increase of nearly 53 percent. This type of increase indicates that electioneering communication organizations are no longer an obscure type of political committee, but becoming a major feature of gubernatorial campaigns, as well as being used by both Republican and Democratic legislative leaders in the state house and senate.

The seemingly prosaic names of ECOs—Florida’s Working Families, Coalition to Protect the American Dream, People for a Better Florida—obscure the corporations and, in many cases, the politicians who actually control them. This confusion is further underscored by the nature of electioneering communications themselves, which, because they cannot simply say vote for or against particular candidates, tend to engage in vague, negative, and in some cases, false, attacks.⁴⁷

Florida is typically one of the largest and most important electoral battlegrounds in the nation, but it lacks a comprehensive campaign finance disclosure system. Absent one, the public’s ability to understand their government will invariably suffer. Its elections will continue to be influenced by a shadowy network of ECOs that obscure the connections between wealthy campaign donors and the public’s elected representatives.

ECO's controlled by a handful of people like Nancy Watkins, CPA.  And no rules prohibit their direct involvement with candidates or campaigns, because their just "providing a service."

This laundering scheme created in one flawed Supreme Court decision has rendered even aggressive campaign finance statutes meant to protect voters into mere excuses to go underground with SuperPac's and hyper-concentrated spending hubs.  In states with weak reporting laws, 2012 is spending is going to be a free-for-all at the mercy of a few, legally sanctioned and tied only to the flimsiest of disclosure rules.

What could go wrong?

It's as an obscene a scenario as you can imagine.  Year after year, Afghan villages to which aid can easily be delivered are faced with starvation because the regions are peaceful and there is no need for Pentagon press releases about winning "hearts and minds."  

BBC reports:

"More than 2.5 million people face hunger in drought-stricken areas of Afghanistan despite billions of dollars of aid that have poured into the country in recent years, aid agencies say. Many villagers have only limited supplies of food left as winter looms...Aid agencies have been concerned for some time about the amount of aid directed towards conflict areas of Afghanistan.  Much of it is designed to win hearts and minds through "quick impact projects" in insurgency-plagued provinces in the south and east of the country. According to a US Congressional study, 80% of US aid has gone to troubled regions....For example, last year Kandahar province received four times more US aid per head than Bamiyan, while the equally quiet neighbouring Daykundi province saw five times less."

BBC says the policy of  letting people starve in the north and focusing on the southern, Pashtun regions is "roundly defended" by the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker.  Crocker says:

"We have put substantial assistance into the south. You know, we are trying to end an insurgency here and that means, in part, funding a better future and giving people alternatives."

Getting aid to the villages faced with starvation is easy because security is not as big a problem.  The US manages to get food aid through to much "hotter" zones just fine.  Even in winter, airdrop capacity and technology is such that cargo planes can drop pallets of food and ammunition within a quarter mile of a combat outpost in all but worst of weather.   But ordinary, non-combatant Afghans who are starving in the snow don't rate this kind of attention (although I have no doubt that rank-and-file American soldiers would vie for these missions.)

Ten years after the occupation began,  Afghans at times are still often literally reduced to eating grass.

(Note: Bimayan Province is where our new little friends, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, are from.)  

David Swanson of War is a Crime reports:

"While the “Super” Committee works on the federal budget for FY 2013 and beyond, under the radar, the Congress is moving forward with another huge Defense budget for FY 2012. When it returns from Thanksgiving break, the Senate will be voting on a $682.5 billion Defense Authorization bill."

2.5 million are in imminent danger.  $2 worth of foodstuffs, protein/vitamin-enriched flour, cooking oil, etc., is a reasonable cost per person since most people are already living on less than a dollar a day.  That's 2 times 2.5 million times 90 days or about a half billion dollars for a solid commitment to warding off hunger during the three harshest months of the winter.  We spend $10 billion per month in Afghanistan on military operations.  So the entire food part of the program would cost less what we spend in 2 days in fuel, ammo, and the cost of maintaining the occupation.

2 days.  Obama should ask Congress for an emergency appropriation and begin relief operations immediately.

The kicker is that the insurgency has steadily spread from the south, the "conflict areas," to the north, and Washington and the generals can't seem to figure out why. Why, why are Afghans so cynical about the US presence?  Now there is fighting where there was never fighting before!

When one looks at the dynamics, one thing starts to become perfectly clear: this is no recipe for winning a war.  Keep the masses in hunger and starvation, unleash brutal, indiscriminate force, such as drone attacks which kill mostly civilians, in the chase for a few insurgents, and make sure the Taliban is well-funded by the Pentagon itself through pay-offs for allowing military supply convoys to pass through.  This is a perfect recipe for keeping any war going.  

And why not?  In 2006 the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy reported that "stock price gains for defense contractors have averaged 48 percent" more than the overall stock market.  CEOs of major defense contracting corporations are not only in Occupy Wall Street's top one percent, but in the top .1%.

Investing Daily gushed last year:

The Afghanistan Troop Surge Means Profits!

the likelihood that the U.S. will end up the loser in Afghanistan is a long-term worry. In the short-term, military contractors doing business in Afghanistan will make a boatload of money...  - "How To Profit From the War in Afghanistan"

In 1934 Marine General and double Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler took off his uniform and traveled the country to tell Americans what he had learned from his career.  The title of his book and speech was "War is a Racket."  Butler until his dying day shook people by the scruff and begged them to understand what he had seen:

   "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives... A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

The failure of direct aid in the north is a microcosm of the greater, almost deliberate neglect on the part of the US to support the many avenues available, over the last ten years, for delivering meaningful assistance to Afghans wishing to rebuild the country's war-torn basic infrastructure, and instead directing billions toward foreign contractors and their subsidiaries who soak up 40-60 percent of the funds for profits and overhead, so that little of that aid actually reaches Afghans or goes toward projects that they themselves want and need.  

Much more effective would be fully funding the indigenous Afghan National Solidarity Program (NSP), which has thousands of local projects voted on by community councils which are ready for ground-breaking but lack funds.  The NSP has been found by the US Special Inspector General to be honest and efficient.  These are the kinds of projects which put Afghans on the path to sustainability by rebuilding vital parts of the traditional agrarian economy: water projects, canal clearing and irrigation, and secondary (unpaved) road improvement. It is a myth that development cannot be done in rural regions because of security concerns, a myth that is used to excuse years of abysmal neglect.  Dr. Greg Mortenson says:

“Aid can be done anywhere, including where Taliban are...But it’s imperative the elders are consulted, and that the development staff is all local, with no foreigners.”

The UN World Food Programme country director in Afghanistan, Louis Imbleau, in the BBC article is adamant about the looming food crisis in the country where fuel costs alone amount to at least $300,000 per year for every single US soldier on the ground.  Speaking of the effects of malnutrition on those children who survive, Imbleau says:

"it's irreversible and should just not be allowed to happen. It should not be allowed to happen."

Obama ask Congress for an emergency appropriation and begin relief operations immediately.

White House
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414

Contact Congress
Switchboard: 202-224-3121

RAWA (2008): "Hunger Could Kill More People in Afghanistan Than the Taliban"

For more information of Afghan development go to Jobs for Afghans.

by WALTER BRASCH

The Penn State Board of Trustees may have several times violated state law for its failure to publicly announce meetings and how it handled the firing of Coach Joe Paterno. However, these violations may be the least of the Board’s worries, as it scrambles to reduce fall-out from the scandal that began with revelations that an assistant football coach may be a serial child molester, and that the university may have been negligent.

The state’s Sunshine Act [65 Pa.C.S.A §701–710] requires all public bodies to publish notices at least 24 hours before their meetings. The purpose is to eliminate secret meetings. Penn State, a private university, which received $279 million from the Commonwealth for its 2011–2012 budget, is bound by the Sunshine Act.

A public notice did appear in the Centre Daily Times, State College’s hometown newspaper, three days before a regularly-scheduled board meeting, Friday Nov. 11. But, the Trustees were caught flat-footed the week before by what eventually turned into the largest scandal in its history. These are events the Trustees should have been aware of for at least two years; certainly, the Board should have known there was a problem when the Harrisburg Patriot-News broke a story in March that the Grand Jury was investigating former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

But, based upon Board incompetence, there wasn’t even a crisis management plan in place when Sandusky was arrested Nov. 5, and Athletic Director Tim Curley; and Gary Schultz, senior vice-president of finance and administration, were charged with perjury and failure to report a crime to police. The Trustees allowed Curley to take an administrative leave, and Schultz to return to retirement. Schultz, who had worked for Penn State for 40 years, had retired in 2009, but had been brought back on an interim basis in July. Both Curley’s and Schultz’s decisions were probably influenced by the Board demands.

During the two weeks, beginning Nov. 5, the Board had conference calls, executive sessions, and emergency meetings, all without public notice.

Conference calls involving a quorum without public notice aren’t allowed. At least one conference call was conducted on Saturday, Nov. 5. A meeting by telephone is just as illegal as a meeting with all persons at a table if it isn’t publically announced.

Several emergency meetings were held the next few days. The Sunshine Act allows emergency meetings. The Trustees conducted meetings Sunday, Nov. 6, Monday, Nov. 7, and Wednesday, Nov. 9. By law, an emergency meeting can be called, without public notice, only for “the purpose of dealing with a real or potential emergency involving a clear and present danger to life or property.” [65 Pa.C.S.A §703] Even in the wildest stretch of that definition, there was no clear and present danger. That occurred years ago when the university didn’t contact police to report the actions of a man believed to be a child molester.

Executive sessions to discuss personnel issues and some other items are allowed—if they are announced at public meetings “immediately prior or subsequent to the executive session.” [65 Pa.C.S.S. §708(b)] But, they were not. About 10 p.m., Nov. 9, following an emergency meeting, Board vice-chair John P. Surma, flanked by 21 of the 31 trustees, publicly announced it had fired Paterno and PSU president Graham Spanier.  Surma told the media the decision was unanimous, thus indicating a vote was done in secret and not under public scrutiny as required.

The Trustees also violated both Paterno’s and Spanier’s rights under law. It’s doubtful the Board members, most of them in corporate business, even care. How they handled Paterno’s firing is indicative they have little regard for employee rights and due process. Paterno had previously said he would retire at the end of the season, since he believed, “the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.” The Trustees, undoubtedly, believed firing Paterno immediately would take heat off the university. Again, it was wrong.

Although executive sessions may be conducted in private, the Sunshine Act requires that “individual employees or appointees whose rights could be adversely affected may request, in writing, that the matter or matters be discussed at an open meeting.” [65 Pa.C.S.A. §708(a)(1)] The Board, according to a report in the Easton Express-Times, had ordered Spanier to resign or be fired. He chose to resign. Paterno was not contacted by the Board prior to termination, either to request to be heard or to request an open meeting. Paterno was informed of his termination by a hand-delivered letter that demanded he place a phone call to a board member. There was no indication in that letter of what the Board’s decision was.

Violating the law could result in invalidating decisions made at those meetings, and penalties of $1,000 for each violation; until September, the penalty had been a paltry $100. But here’s a nice twist. The Trustees probably don’t care.

A district attorney must approve prosecution for Sunshine Act violations. Although the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) receives about 1,000 inquiries each year about what may be Sunshine Act and Right-to-Know law violations, “it’s rare for criminal prosecutions of the Sunshine Act,” according to Melissa Melewsky, media law council for the PNA. Civil actions by individuals are likewise difficult to pursue because of significant costs.

Here’s another surprise. Because of heavy lobbying to the legislature, whose members are feasted at one home game a year and can also receive comp football tickets to other home football games, Penn State is not bound by the state’s Right-to-Know law. This means that innumerable records, including minutes of all meetings— both public and those that are illegal under the Sunshine Act—can still be secret.

Here’s something not so surprising, however. Penn State’s Public Affairs office punted all questions to the Board. The Board arrogantly has refused to answer both verbal and written questions. However, possibly using public funds, it did hire a PR firm to handle crisis management issues. We won’t know the cost—that’s something it doesn’t have to tell the taxpayers.

[Assisting on this story was Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Walter Brasch, as president of both the Keystone chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Pennsylvania Press Club, was active in fighting for a stronger Right-to-Know law and enforcement of the Sunshine Act. He is an award-winning syndicated columnist and retired university professor. His latest book is Before the First Snow, a mystery/thriller set in Pennsylvania.]

Politicians love to go for the easy applause line and lately, in Washington, that has meant decrying “job-killing regulations.”

Republican candidates for president have all gone for this crowd-pleaser.

• Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has promised to “tear down the vast edifice of regulations the Obama administration has imposed on the economy.”
• Texas Governor Rick Perry claims he would halt all regulations and impose a sunset so that they would automatically expire.
• Herman Cain claims that eliminating regulations would provide “an immediate boost for our weakened economy.”

Even President Obama has at times appeared to buy-in to this notion, ordering every agency to review its existing regulations to eliminate burdens on business, even though such analysis would have been completed when the regulation was first written.

It may be a crowd-pleaser, but it turns out that it simply isn’t true that regulations kill jobs. The Washington Post talked with some of the country’s top economists and experts on the relationship between job creation and regulations. The conclusion?

“Overall impact on employment is minimal.”

The truth is that regulations can impact jobs but don’t have much effect when it comes to employment. That means that a particular regulation might reduce jobs in one industry but create them in another. For example, a clean air regulation might reduce jobs at a dirty coal-fired power plant and create new jobs at a clean-burning natural gas plant. But, looking at the big picture, employers report that only 0.3% of layoffs are due to “government regulations/intervention.” That’s small potatoes compared with the 25% of jobs lost due to reduced demand for products and services in our weak economy.

While they may not have a big impact on jobs, regulations do have a big impact in a lot of other areas, namely in protecting workers, the public and the environment. So, let’s put “job-killing regulations” to rest. If our politicians are looking for new descriptions, how about “life-saving, people-protecting, society-benefiting regulations”? It’s not so catchy, but it has the benefit of being true.

A new poll shows that a majority of Americans want the government to pursue policies that would reduce the income disparity in the United States.

The search continues in the Republican party for the "Un-Romney". In a recent poll 20% of Republicans would not vote for Mitt Romney because of his religion and 70% of Romney voters could change their mind. Cenk Uygur discusses Romney's chances of winning the Republican nomination.

by WALTER BRASCH 

For a few hours on the afternoon of Nov. 1, the people of southern California were scared by initial reports of an alert at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. An “alert” is the second of four warning levels.

Workers first detected an ammonia leak in a water purification system about 3 p.m. Ammonia, when mixed into air, is toxic. The 30 gallons of ammonia were caught in a holding tank and posed no health risk, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC).  

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the peak of the nuclear reactor construction, organized groups of protestors mounted dozens of anti-nuke campaigns. They were called Chicken Littles, the establishment media generally ignored their concerns, and the nuclear industry trotted out numerous scientists and engineers from their payrolls to declare nuclear energy to be safe, clean, and inexpensive energy that could reduce America’s dependence upon foreign oil.

Workers at nuclear plants are highly trained, probably far more than workers in any other industry; operating systems are closely regulated and monitored. However, problems caused by human negligence, manufacturing defects, and natural disasters have plagued the nuclear power industry for its six decades.

It isn’t alerts like what happened at San Onofre that are the problem; it’s the level 3 (site area emergencies) and level 4 (general site emergencies) disasters. There have been 99 major disasters, 56 of them in the U.S., since 1952, according to a study conducted by Benjamin K. Sovacool Director of the Energy Justice Program at Institute for Energy and Environment  One-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.

At Windscale in northwest England, fire destroyed the core, releasing significant amounts of Iodine-131. At Rocky Flats near Denver, radioactive plutonium and tritium leaked into the environment several times over a two decade period. At Church Rock, New Mexico, more than 90 million gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Rio Puerco, directly affecting the Navajo nation.

In the grounds of central and northeastern Pennsylvania, in addition to the release of radioactive Cesium-137 and Iodine-121, an excessive level of Strontium-90 was released during the Three Mile Island (TMI) meltdown in 1979, the same year as the Church Rock disaster. To keep waste tanks from overflowing with radioactive waste, the plant’s operator dumped several thousand gallons of radioactive waste into the Susquehanna River. An independent study by Dr. Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina revealed the incidence of lung cancer and leukemia downwind of the TMI meltdown within six years of the meltdown was two to ten times that of the rest of the region.

At the Chernobyl meltdown in April 1986, about 50 workers and firefighters died lingering and horrible deaths from radiation poisoning. Because of wind patterns, about 27,000 persons in the northern hemisphere are expected to die of cancer, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. An area of about 18 miles is uninhabitable. The nuclear reactor core is now protected by a crumbling sarcophagus; a replacement is not complete. Even then, the new shield is expected to crumble within a century. The current director at Chernobyl says it could be 20,000 years until the area again becomes habitable.

In March, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale and the ensuing 50-foot high tsunami wave led to a meltdown of three of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency reported that 31 radioactive isotopes were released. In contrast, 16 radioactive isotopes were released from the A-bomb that hit Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945.  The agency also reported that radioactive cesium released was almost 170 times the amount of the A-bomb, and that the release of radioactive Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 was about two to three times the level of the A-bomb. The release into the air, water, and ground included about 60,000 tons of contaminated water. The half lives of Sr-90 and Cs-137 are about 30 years each. Full effects may not be known for at least two generations. Twenty-three nuclear reactors in the U.S. have the same design—and same design flaws—as the Daiichi reactor.

About five months after the Daiichi disaster, the North Anna plant in northeastern Virginia declared an alert, following a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt throughout the mid-Atlantic and lower New England states. The earthquake caused building cracks and spent fuel cells in canisters to shift. The North Anna plant was designed to withstand an earthquake of only 5.9–6.2 on the Richter scale. More than 1.9 million persons live within a 50-mile radius of North Anna, according to 2010 census data.

Although nuclear plant security is designed to protect against significant and extended forms of terrorism, the NRC believes as many as one-fourth of the 104 U.S. nuclear plants may need upgrades to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters, according to an Associated Press investigation. About 20 percent of the world’s 442 nuclear plants are built in earthquake zones, according to data compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The NRC has determined that the leading U.S. plants in the Eastern Coast in danger of being compromised by an earthquake are in the extended metropolitan areas of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chattanooga. Tenn. The highest risk, however, may be California’s San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants, both built near major fault lines. Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, was even built by workers who misinterpreted the blueprints.  

Every nuclear spill affects not just those in the immediate evacuation zone but people throughout the world, as prevailing winds can carry air-borne radiation thousands of miles from the source, and the world’s water systems can put radioactive materials into the drinking supply and agriculture systems of most nations. At every nuclear disaster, the governments eventually declare the immediate area safe. But, animals take far longer than humans to return to the area. If they could figure out that radioactivity released into the water, air, and ground are health hazards, certainly humans could also figure it out.  

Following the disaster at Daiichi, Germany announced it was closing its 17 nuclear power plants and would expand development of solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources. About the same time, Siemens abandoned financing and building nuclear power plants, leaving only American-based Westinghouse and General Electric, which own or have constructed about four-fifths of the world’s nuclear plants, and the French-based Areva.

The life of the first nuclear plants was about 30–40 years; the newer plants have a 40–60 year life. After that time, they become so radioactive that the risk of radiation poison outweighs the benefits of continuing the operation. So, the operators seal the plant and abandon it, carefully explaining to the public the myriad safety procedures in place and the federal regulations. The cooling and decommissioning takes 50–100 years until the plant is safe enough for individuals to walk through it without protection. More critical, there still is no safe technology of how to handle spent control rods.

The United States has no plans to abandon nuclear energy. The Obama administration has proposed financial assistance to build the first nuclear plant in three decades, and a $36 billion loan guarantee for the nuclear industry. However, the Congressional Budget Office believes there can be as much as 50 percent default.  Each plant already receives $1–1.3 billion in tax rebates and subsidies. However, in the past three years, plans to build nuclear generators have been abandoned in nine states, mostly because of what the major financiers believe to be a less than desired return on investment and higher than expected construction and maintenance costs.

A Department of Energy analysis revealed the budget for 75 of the first plants was about $45 billion, but cost overruns ran that to $145 billion. The last nuclear power plant completed was the Watts Bar plant in eastern Tennessee. Construction began in 1973 and was completed in 1996. Part of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, the Watts Bar plant cost about $8 billion to produce 1,170 mw of energy from its only reactor. Work on a second reactor was suspended in 1988 because of a lack of need for additional electricity. However, construction was resumed in 2007, with completion expected in 2013. Cost to complete the reactor, which was about 80 percent complete when work was suspended, is estimated to cost an additional $2.5 billion.

The cost to build new power plants is well over $10 billion each, with a proposed cost of about $14 billion to expand the Vogtle plant near Augusta, Ga. The first two units had cost about $9 billion.

Added to the cost of every plant is decommissioning costs, averaging about $300 million to over $1 billion, depending upon the amount of energy the plant is designed to produce. The nuclear industry proudly points to studies that show the cost to produce energy from nuclear reactors is still less expensive than the costs from coal, gas, and oil. The industry also rightly points out that nukes produce about one-fifth all energy, with no emissions, such as those from the fossil fuels.

For more than six decades, this nation essentially sold its soul for what it thought was cheap energy that may not be so cheap, and clean energy that is not so clean.

It is necessary to ask the critical question. Even if there were no human, design, and manufacturing errors; even if there could be assurance there would be no accidental leaks and spills of radioactivity; even if there became a way to safely and efficiently dispose of long-term radioactive waste; even if all of this was possible, can the nation, struggling in a recession while giving subsidies to the nuclear industry, afford to build more nuclear generating plants at the expense of solar, wind, and geothermal energy?

[Walter Brasch’s latest book is Before the First Snow, a fact-based novel that looks at the nuclear industry during its critical building boom in the 1970s and 1980s.]

Interest in high-speed rail (HSR) is growing around the world and the number of countries running these trains is expected to nearly double over the next few years, according to new research by the Worldwatch Institute for Vital Signs Online. By 2014, high-speed trains will be operating in nearly 24 countries, including China, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States, up from only 14 countries today. The increase in HSR is due largely to its reliability and ability to cover vast geographic distances in a short time, to investments aimed at connecting once-isolated regions, and to the diminishing appeal of air travel, which is becoming more cumbersome because of security concerns.

The rise in HSR has been very rapid—in just three years, between January 2008 and January 2011, the operational fleet grew from 1,737 high-speed trainsets worldwide to 2,517. Two-thirds of this fleet is found in just five countries: France, China, Japan, Germany, and Spain. By 2014, the global fleet is expected to total more than 3,700 units.

Not only is HSR reliable, but it also can be more friendly than cars or airplanes. A 2006 comparison of greenhouse gas emissions by travel mode, released by the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, found that HSR lines in Europe and Japan released 30–70 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometer, versus 150 grams for automobiles and 170 grams for airplanes.

Although there is no universal speed definition for HSR, the threshold is typically set at 250 kilometers per hour on new tracks and 200 kilometers per hour on existing, upgraded tracks. The length of HSR tracks worldwide is undergoing explosive growth in order to meet increasing demand. Between 2009 and 2011, the total length of operational track has grown from some 10,700 kilometers to nearly 17,000 kilometers. Another 8,000 kilometers is currently under construction, and some 17,700 kilometers more is planned, for a combined total of close to 43,000 kilometers. That is equivalent to about 4 percent of all rail lines—passenger and freight—in the world today.

By track length, the current high-speed leaders are China, Japan, Spain, France, and Germany. Other countries are joining the high-speed league as well. Turkey has ambitious plans to reach 2,424 kilometers and surpass the length of Germany’s network. Italy, Portugal, and the United States all hope to reach track lengths of more than 1,000 kilometers. Another 15 countries have plans for shorter networks.

But in Europe, France continues to account for about half of all European high-speed rail travel. HSR reached an astounding 62 percent of the country’s passenger rail travel volume in 2008, up from just 23 percent in 1990, thanks to affordable ticket prices, an impressive network, and reliability. And in Japan, the Shinkansen trains are known for their exceedingly high degree of reliability. JR Central, the largest of the Japanese rail operating companies, reports that the average delay per high-speed train throughout a year is just half a minute. On all routes in Japan where both air and high-speed rail connections are available, rail has captured a 75 percent market share.

Further highlights from the research:

• A draft plan for French transportation infrastructure investments for the next two decades allocates 52 percent of a total of $236 billion to HSR.
• In 2005, the Spanish government announced an ambitious plan for some 10,000 kilometers of high-speed track by 2020, which would allow 90 percent of Spaniards to live within 50 kilometers of an HSR station.
• Currently, China is investing about $100 billion annually in railway construction. The share of the country’s railway infrastructure investment allocated to HSR has risen from less than 10 percent in 2005 to a stunning 60 percent in 2010.
• Intercity rail in Japan accounts for 18 percent of total domestic passenger-kilometers by all travel modes—compared with just 5 to 8 percent in major European countries and less than 1 percent in the United States.
• In France, rail’s market share of the Paris-Marseille route rose from 22 percent in 2001 (before the introduction of high-speed service) to 69 percent in 2006. In Spain, the Madrid-Seville rail route’s share rose from 33 to 84 percent.

Last year I posted about IBM's Smarter Cities challenge because I thought it was a really clever and positive program. Just wanted to post an update as they're launching their 2nd Smarter Cities Challenge for cities to get them grants for projects that improve transportation, government accountability, sustainability and create infrastructure and jobs.

Triple Pundit has more:

IBM is in the midst of a three-year program that amounts to a gift of technology and assistance to cities that can can make a compelling case for a helping hand.

The data and consulting giant’s Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, US$50 million grant program in which IBM’s top technical experts and consultants help cities solve vexing problems through data analysis.

IBM opened up the 2012 grant application process last week and cities have until December 16 to apply for a grant. IBM is focusing on urban centers because they’re home to more than half the world’s population and, as IBM describes them, they’re more “economically powerful, politically influential, and technologically advanced than at any time in human history.”

And as anyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows, urban centers have gargantuan problems managing budgets, safety, transportation infrastructures, and a host of other functions. IBM believes it can provide technological fixes to these problems through its consultation services and resources such as City Forward,  an online trends and statistics tool.

Video after the jump.

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