October 23, 2016


News and Views


ARE WE ALREADY WAGING NUCLEAR WARFARE? SEE “DU MISSILES,” FROM WIKIPEDIA, BELOW.

https://www.laprogressive.com/next-commander-in-chief/

Commander In Chief: Not Needed
BY ROBERT KOEHLER
October 22, 2016


Maybe it’s the phrase — “Commander in Chief” — that best captures the transcendent absurdity and unaddressed horrors of the 2016 election season and the business as usual that will follow.

I don’t want to elect anyone commander in chief: not the xenophobic misogynist and egomaniac, not the Henry Kissinger acolyte and Libya hawk. The big hole in this democracy is not the candidates; it’s the bedrock, founding belief that the rest of the world is our potential enemy, that war with someone is always inevitable and only a strong military will keep us safe.

The big hole in this democracy is not the candidates; it’s the bedrock, founding belief that the rest of the world is our potential enemy, that war with someone is always inevitable and only a strong military will keep us safe. [Repetition is from original article.]

In a million ways, we’ve outgrown this concept, or been pushed beyond it by awareness of global human connectedness and the shared planetary risk of eco-collapse. So whenever I hear someone in the media bring “commander in chief” into the discussion — always superficially and without question — what I hear is boys playing war. Yes, we wage war in a real way as well, but when the public is invited to participate in the process by selecting its next commander in chief, this is pretend war at its most surreal: all glory and greatness and hammering ISIS in Mosul.

“What about our safety here?” Brian Williams asked Gen. Barry McCaffrey on MSNBC the other night, as they were discussing the awfulness of terrorism and the need to bomb the bad guys out of existence. I cringed. How long can they keep selling this?

Our safety is far, far more imperiled by the fact that we have a military at all than by any enemy that military is allegedly fighting, but is, in fact, creating as it churns out endless collateral damage, a.k.a., dead and injured civilians.

The essential truth about war is this: The enemies are always on the same side. Regardless who “wins,” what matters is that war itself continues. Just ask the military-industrialists.

The only commander in chief I want to vote for is the one who will turn that title over to the historians and cry out that war is an obsolete and monstrous game, revered and coddled for five millennia now as the most sacred of activities that a (male) human can engage in. We need a commander in chief capable of leading us beyond the age of empire and the horrific games of conquest that are killing this planet.

“What about our safety here?”

When Brian Williams threw this question out to the American public, I thought, among much else, about the devastation and contamination the U.S. military has wrought on our deserts and coastal waters over the last seven decades by testing weapons — both nuclear and conventional — and playing, good God, war games; and then, sooner or later, by disposing of its obsolete toxins, usually with zero concern for the environmental safety of the surrounding area, whether it be in Iraq or Louisiana. Because the military is what it is, neither EPA regulations nor sanity itself usually applies.

For instance, as Dahr Jamail wrote recently at Truthout: “For decades, the U.S. Navy, by its own admission, has been conducting war game exercises in U.S. waters using bombs, missiles, sonobuoys (sonar buoys), high explosives, bullets and other materials that contain toxic chemicals — including lead and mercury — that are harmful to both humans and wildlife.”

Why do we need to worry about ISIS when, as Jamail reports, “the batteries from dead sonobuoys will leach lithium into the water for 55 years”?

And then there’s depleted uranium, the extraordinarily toxic heavy metal the U.S. military loves; DU missiles and shells rip through steel like it was butter. They also spread radioactive contamination across Planet Earth. And they help poison the waters off the Washington-Oregon coast, where the Navy plays its games, just like they poisoned the waters surrounding Vieques, a tropical paradise island off the coast of Puerto Rico, which, as I wrote several years ago, “was commandeered by the U.S. military as a throwaway site for weapons testing” for 62 years. The Navy finally left but left behind contaminated soil and water and many thousands of live shells that had failed to detonate, along with a legacy of serious health problems for the island’s 10,000 residents.

“They are indeed the largest polluters on Earth,” environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani told Truthout, speaking of the U.S. military, “as they produce more toxic chemicals than the top three U.S. chemical manufacturers combined. Historically, large global ecosystems and significant human food sources have been contaminated by the U.S. military.”

What does it mean to vote for the next commander in chief of the largest polluter on the planet?

bob-koehlerI confess that I do not know — at least not in the context of this absurd and superficially debated election, with virtually every serious question or issue pushed to the margins. How do we transcend nationalism and the game of war — the reality of endless war — and engage in securing the safety of the whole planet? How do we acknowledge that this planet is not just “a jumble of insensate stuff, a random melee of subatomic particles” for us to exploit, as Charles Eisenstein writes, but a living entity of which we are, crucially, a part? How do we learn to love this planet and one another?

Any potential “commander in chief” who asks lesser questions than these is engaging in a childish game with real guns.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

Depleted uranium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IMAGE: The DU penetrator of a 30 mm round[1]

Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium.[2] (Natural uranium contains about 0.72% of its fissile isotope U-235, while the DU used by the U.S. Department of Defense contain 0.3% U-235 or less). Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3 (68.4% denser than lead). Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical radiation therapy and industrial radiography equipment, and containers for transporting radioactive materials. Military uses include armor plating and armor-piercing projectiles.

Most depleted uranium arises as a by-product of the production of enriched uranium for use as fuel in nuclear reactors and in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Enrichment processes generate uranium with a higher-than-natural concentration of lower-mass-number uranium isotopes (in particular U-235, which is the uranium isotope supporting the fission chain reaction) with the bulk of the feed ending up as depleted uranium, in some cases with mass fractions of U-235 and U-234 less than a third of those in natural uranium. Since U-238 has a much longer half-life than the lighter isotopes, DU emits less alpha radiation than natural uranium. DU from nuclear reprocessing has different isotopic ratios from enrichment–by-product DU, from which it can be distinguished by the presence of U-236.[3]

DU used in US munitions has 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium.[4] Trace transuranics (another indicator of the use of reprocessed material) have been reported to be present in some US tank armor.[4]

The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of concerns about potential long-term health effects.[5][6] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by exposure to uranium, a toxic metal.[7] It is only weakly radioactive because of its long radioactive half-life (4.468 billion years for uranium-238, 700 million years for uranium-235; or 1 part per million every 6446 and 1010 years, respectively). The biological half-life (the average time it takes for the human body to eliminate half the amount in the body) for uranium is about 15 days.[8] The aerosol or spallation frangible powder produced by impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites, leading to possible inhalation by human beings.[9]

The actual level of acute and chronic toxicity of DU is also controversial. Several studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure.[5] A 2005 epidemiology review concluded: "In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU."[10] . . . . "



LAPROGRESSIVE EXCERPTS – “The only commander in chief I want to vote for is the one who will turn that title over to the historians and cry out that war is an obsolete and monstrous game, revered and coddled for five millennia now as the most sacred of activities that a (male) human can engage in. . . . . So whenever I hear someone in the media bring “commander in chief” into the discussion — always superficially and without question — what I hear is boys playing war. Yes, we wage war in a real way as well, but when the public is invited to participate in the process by selecting its next commander in chief, this is pretend war at its most surreal: all glory and greatness and hammering ISIS in Mosul. . . . . And then there’s depleted uranium, the extraordinarily toxic heavy metal the U.S. military loves; DU missiles and shells rip through steel like it was butter. They also spread radioactive contamination across Planet Earth. . . . .


WIKIPEDIA EXCERPTS – “Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium.[2] . . . . Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical radiation therapy and industrial radiography equipment, and containers for transporting radioactive materials. Military uses include armor plating and armor-piercing projectiles. . . . . The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of concerns about potential long-term health effects.[5][6] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by exposure to uranium, a toxic metal.[7] . . . . Several studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure.[5] A 2005 epidemiology review concluded: "In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU."[10]


Shades of Dr. Strangelove! How is it that the use of this material in munitions doesn’t violate nuclear treaties? This DU sounds an awful lot like “nuclear fallout” to me, and we were warned against that all my life. And how it useful in radiation shielding? It would seem that it adds radioactivity instead. Perhaps the “DU” has room in its’ atomic structure to absorb dangerous radiation from some other materials? I know. I just made that theory up, but it makes some sense as a possibility.

About war, I love his description of it as “an obsolete and monstrous game, revered and coddled for five millennia now as the most sacred of activities that a (male) human can engage in.” I will simply add that it only slightly exceeds football and other very rough games in its’ holiness – which in my opinion are probably ancient religious rituals based directly on warfare. If we are, indeed, distant cousins by an ancient predecessor to the modern-day chimpanzee or bonobo, our deepest instincts are eating, fighting and engaging in “romantic” activity.

I would disagree with this writer in only a couple of ways. First, there are times when fighting is the only way to survive. The instinct to do that goes back to the very beginning of lifeforms larger than a few cells. However, I do agree with him that if we were to educate our populations well enough in practical, logical, intellectual and spiritual thinking we could get reduce the incidence of wars, at least until some new Hitler (or Trump?) comes along to revitalize the activity.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fighting-genetic-disease-with-help-from-hiv-virus/

Fighting genetic disease with help from HIV virus
CBS NEWS
October 23, 2016, 9:23 AM


The genetic legacy each of us inherits is a powerful force -- and in a few extreme cases, it can be deadly. Still, thanks to science, genetics need not always be destiny, as Martha Teichner shows us in our Cover Story:

Amy and Brad Price’s home in Omaha, Nebraska, is crazy with all the kids around. There are seven of them, ages 2 to 11. But if you look closely, you’ll see small memorials to one more: Liviana, who died in 2013 at the age of 5½ of a rare, nightmare disease called late infantile metachromatic leukodystrophy. MLD destroys brain cells and is caused by a single, faulty gene.

“She was happy all the time,” Brad said.

Amy added, “She loved pretty dresses.”

“She loved her tutu,” Brad said.

She was talkative, addicted to “Caillou,” the animated TV series, a lively little girl, ‘til she was two. “Her knees were going a little knock-kneed,” Amy said. “And she had been just randomly falling down.”

Her doctor said, “Nothing to worry about,” but she quickly got worse.

“I was in the kitchen doing something and I heard her crying,” Amy recalled. “And I turned around and said, ‘Liviana, what’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘Mommy, my legs don’t work.’”

Liviana was diagnosed in the fall of 2010. Amy recalled: “She’s sitting on the bed in her tutu and her colorful sweater, and they’re telling me she’s gonna die.”

Many children with the disorder are dead by the age of 6. And it runs in families. If it hadn’t been for Liviana, Amy and Brad Price would never have known to have their other children tested. They learned that their infant son, Giovanni, had inherited the faulty gene, too.

“I get a call from the doctor’s office,” said Amy, “I knew. And I was thinking, ‘I’ve just been told two of my kids now are gonna die.’”

Except that’s not what happened.

Doing research online, Amy Price discovered the existence of a medical trial in Milan, Italy, of an extraordinary gene therapy treatment for MLD that would save Giovanni’s life -- and later, when his sister, Cecilia, was born with MLD, hers, too. The treatment works only on children who, like them, have not yet started showing symptoms.

The Price family scraped together the money to go to Milan.

“The patients go to the surgery room for collection of the stem cells on Monday, and receive their cells back on Friday evening,” said Dr. Alessandra Biffi, who oversaw the trial.

A patient’s stem cells contain the faulty gene, which the doctors have learned how to fix. Amazing, right? But then they need a vehicle to insert the good gene into the stem cells before those are put back into the patient’s body.

Here’s what’s really amazing: That vehicle is the HIV virus, re-engineered so the children can’t get AIDS.

Why the HIV virus? “Is it particularly efficient at getting around the body?” Teichner asked.

“Yeah, it’s very efficient in entering our cells, and that’s why we use it,” Dr. Biffi replied.

How well did the children do? It will take years to know for sure, but so far so good. “At least 70-80% of them have an outstanding benefit coming from the treatment,” Dr. Biffi said. “Some of the children were going to school and having a normal life.”

Giovanni Price is six now, in first grade. He and his sister Cecilia (Ceci for short) have to go back to Milan twice a year to be tested and monitored.

Brad Price calls Dr. Biffi “Our angel. She took us in like family.”

So why Italy, and not the United States?

Gene therapy has a checkered history. In the 1990s, hyped as the Next Big Thing, research withered here after serious setbacks, including a death during clinical trials. But more than 15 years later, it’s back. One sign: Dr. Biffi is now head of the gene therapy program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

Teichner asked, “Do you believe that gene therapy is finally coming into its own?”

“I think yes, absolutely,” Dr. Biffi replied.

The MLD trial, she thinks, demonstrates what’s possible -- offering promise to the 30 million Americans who suffer from some 7,000 rare diseases.

Trials for the experimental treatment Ceci and Giovanni Price received in Milan have not begun in the U.S. They are two of only 24 children in the world with MLD to receive it.

Compare Giovanni to Calliope Joy Carr, also six, from Bala Cynwyd, Pa., outside Philadelphia. She can turn her head, a little. She can still smile and laugh. But that’s about all. She was diagnosed at 2.

For her parents, college professors Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalis, coming to terms with the disease was wrenching. “It’s decline in slow motion, and that’s difficult,” said Carr.

“I remember the social worker said, ‘It’s good to try to cry in the shower to save it from your family and your children,’” Kefalis said.

After more than a year of rage and grief, Kefalis decided that she had to find some way of helping MLD children. It was too late for Cal, but she was desperate to give her daughter’s life meaning.

“We’re not wealthy people,” she said. “We didn’t know very influential people who could write a big check for a million dollars. And so we said, ‘Well, we’ll start selling cupcakes.’”

The Calliope Joy Foundation was formed in 2013. It’s been slow going, but the money added up. And when Kefalis learned about the Italian trial, and the fact that Amy Price had to keep going back to Milan with Giovanni and Ceci, it was clear she would use the money to help families get to Italy.

“She sent me a picture of Giovanni playing in his front yard,” Kefalis said. “He’s three months younger than Cal, so he should’ve been as sick as Cal. He should have been on a feeding tube. He should be paralyzed. And I thought, I gotta be a part of this. I need to help this happen again and again and again.”

Maria Kefalis has turned cupcakes into weapons of war -- her war against MLD. She’s raised more than $250,000, and helped where she could, but she’s hit a wall. So far, not a single gene replacement therapy has been approved by the FDA. The trial in Italy is closed to new patients. It could be years before any children with MLD will be allowed to receive the treatment in the United States.

“Now, it’s just impatience,” Kefalis said. “Now it’s, like, ‘When do we get this here? What will it take. Tell me what you need me to do.’”

Until then, she continues to fight her battles one cupcake at a time -- the Price children, Giovanni and Cecilia, proof to her the war can be won.

Teichner asked Brad and Amy Price, “You keep using the word ‘miracle.’ In what way is all of this a miracle?”

“Our son’s still with us, and Cecilia as well,” they replied. “That’s the miracle.”

Putting a face on rare, incurable diseases (“Sunday Morning,” 08/28/16)
New hope for young patients with rare genetic disease (“CBS Evening News,” 10/16/15)
Hard cases: Investigating rare & tough diseases(“60 Minutes,” 02/25/13)

For more info:

Leukodystrophy Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Calliope Joy Foundation
Follow the Calliope Joy Foundation on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Calliope Joy Foundation (Crowdrise)
Liviana’s (and Giovanni’s) Journey (Blogspot)
Alessandra Biffi, MD, director, gene therapy program, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center
GlaxoSmithKline



“Trials for the experimental treatment Ceci and Giovanni Price received in Milan have not begun in the U.S. They are two of only 24 children in the world with MLD to receive it.” This issue came up during the Ebola epidemic/or “outbreaks” of several years ago. In a “for profit” medical research system such as we have, if the drug and therapy community don’t think they can make a profit, they just won’t even research the issue. Luckily the US does have agencies that actively attempt to find cures.

Thank goodness for the Italians, however, for being more forward-looking and profit driven than we are. Perhaps the influence of the Pope steers them in the direction, toward the improvement of human lives for its’ own sake, like “art for art’s sake.” I hope the situation here will soon change. Finding a solution for one problem often ends up suggesting other similar uses and newly discovered general principles. In that way, scientific knowledge is built up, bit by bit. Though scientific and medical knowledge can be misused an abused horribly – The Andromeda Strain – it produces, for the most part, a path to a brighter future for Earth and her inhabitants.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-man-gets-1503-years-in-prison-for-raping-teen-daughter/

California man gets 1,503 years in prison for raping teen daughter
CBS/AP
October 23, 2016, 12:03 PM


FRESNO, Calif. - A Fresno man was sentenced to 1,503 years in prison for raping his teenage daughter over a four-year period, a case that stands in stark contrast to a recent controversial ruling in a Montana rape and incest case.

The 41-year-old California man was sentenced Friday to the longest-known prison sentence in Fresno Superior Court history, the Fresno Bee reported.

The Associated Press and CBS News are avoiding naming the man because it could identify his daughter.

In announcing the punishment, Judge Edward Sarkisian Jr. told the man he is a “serious danger to society” and noted that he had never shown remorse and has blamed his daughter for his predicament.

The man’s daughter was first sexually abused by a family friend but instead of protecting her, he turned her into “a piece of property,” prosecutor Nicole Galstan said.

The victim was raped two to three times a week from May 2009 to May 2013, when the girl got the courage to leave him, Galstan said.

A jury in September found him guilty of 186 felony counts of sexual assault, including dozens of counts of rape of a minor.

“When my father abused me, I was young. I had no power, no voice. I was defenseless,” said the daughter, who now is 23 years old. She also told the judge that her father never has shown remorse for her pain and suffering.

The man turned down two plea deals. Before his preliminary hearing, if he had admitted his guilt, prosecutors would have recommended 13 years in prison. He rejected the offer. Then before his trial, he was offered 22 years in prison if he admitted his guilt. He declined that offer, saying he should be released from jail for the time he already had served, Sarkisian said before announcing the sentence.

“He ruined her teenage years and made her feel like it was her fault,” Galstan said in arguing for the maximum sentence.

Some observers are comparing the outcome in the Fresno case to a recent one in Montana, where a man who raped his 12-year-old daughter was not sent to prison. Instead the judge handed down a 30-year suspended sentence after the man pleaded guilty to incest and ordered him to spend 60 days in jail, giving him credit for 17 days already served.

The judge in the Montana case has come under fire for the ruling. District Judge John McKeon defended himself against criticism, saying a plea agreement that recommended a 25-year minimum sentence allowed for a lesser one, depending on the results of a psychosexual evaluation. He said that evaluation found the defendant could be safely treated and supervised in the community. McKeon also notes the victim’s mother and grandmother asked that the defendant not be sentenced to prison.



This man really is totally worthless. To blame his daughter for “his predicament,” which could simply mean for having the gall to turn him in to the police, or worse for “tempting him,” is the oldest trick in the book. To this day in rape trials the world over, courts allow arguments that the woman or girl was immodestly dressed to be used as an excuse for the crime. This is one thing that the Women’s Liberation Movement failed to get written out of the laws, or at least it still goes on. I think I’ll check on that question:

The following on the psychology of rape and “politics” is interesting, but long and complex. Read it for yourself at
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1260&context=bglj, “Feminism, Foucault, and Rape: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” By Holly Hendersont. I read persistently through the first five or so pages until the writer (a woman) arrives at the point of rape prevention, based on the idea that rape is merely a point in a progression of violence. No short skirt, no lust, therefore no rape.

Fourcault, from the title of this interesting if frustrating article, was a modern French philosopher with a strong interest in “power and knowledge,” b. 1926 to d. 1984. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault) who took on the issue of punishment of the crime of rape. He states something that psychologists now say, that rape is about power rather than about sexuality. “Well, so it is, but it is still worse than what Fourcault compares it to – “a punch in the face.” Like all aggression against a weaker or more innocent victim, it is, to me, decidedly worse than “a punch in the face,” which usually occurs outside a bar where two guys square off against each other after too many drinks and maybe some jealousy over a girl. The two simply aren’t comparable.

In the case of child rape especially, or any violent rape – it is often men or boys who are the victims -- it does also damage the victim’s psychological condition causing increased anxiety in daily life, fear of all men, self-blaming, loss of self-esteem for ones’ inability to present an effective self-defense, an irrepressible hatred of the subhuman attacker, etc. etc. etc.

It is like child abuse. It destroys the faith, hope, and ability to love to one degree or another. Just as a frequently beaten dog will always cringe down when threatened, so does a human. It is MUCH more damaging than “a punch in the face.” It’s little short of murder. It murders the soul.

Therefore, for philosophers like this man to bolster the already prevalent tendency in nearly all human societies to blame the woman/victim first last and always as a generalized societal assumption of their “complicity” in the crime; that is a sin of the mind, not unlike rape itself. I feel considerable anger against Foucault and the writer of this article, Holly Hendersont, as they are by their very smug assumptions setting legal justice on the subject of rape back in time, rather than helping our societies to improve.

The reason I talk so much about bullying in all forms, from the policing problems we see so frequently to the rape of a man’s own 12-year-old daughter in just the last several weeks, is that it is becoming increasingly prevalent in Western society. We are on the path downhill rather than upward toward a higher goal. We white, Protestant Christians talk so strongly against Islam, when we are not sufficiently different from them in the realm of societally accepted cruelty, that we should look at the hypocrisy of maintaining our attitudes against Islamic believers. It’s all really depressing, unfortunately.

Luckily I’m an optimist because I am certain that a healthy person can walk away from a “temptation” like the urge to rape another human. Most people do that every day. I have hope that in the long haul, even if we keep doing the same bad things over and over at this point, things can and hopefully will improve. Better public education including psychological issues would really help. Perhaps humans will “evolve” sufficiently to have decent and successful societies in the future. Before we get to that point, however, I believe we will have to stop letting those “perps” off with a mere slap on the wrist and charge rape as the hideous crime that it is.


BERNIE / CLINTON EMAILS 10/23/16


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-emails-hillary-clinton-campaign-john-podesta-sanders/

By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS October 22, 2016, 4:49 PM
WikiLeaks email details Hillary Clinton allies' reaction to Sanders defector

The WikiLeaks email dumps from John Podesta’s personal Gmail account keep coming.

The latest batch on Saturday details how some of Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides felt about an adviser to then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, among other revelations.

Here are the highlights:

February 2016: Clinton campaign slams Bernie Sanders adviser

In one exchange between Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), the two discuss a recently added adviser to Bernie Sanders.

The email, with the subject line of “Faiz advising Bernie,” refers to former CAP vice president Faiz Shakir.

Podesta wrote to Tanden that he gave Shakir “a very hard time” over the defection to the Sanders camp.

“I have to say this does not go down easy with me,” Podesta said, before adding: “Wish him well in life.”

Tanden replied: “He’s a f***er.”

March 2015: Clinton camp “nervous” about email jokes

Just as the controversial news on Hillary Clinton’s private email servers heated up, the campaign debated whether the Democratic presidential candidate should joke about the issue at an event with the pro-choice group EMILY’s List.

In one email chain from last March, Nick Merrill, Clinton’s press secretary, noted that he wouldn’t “think it’s nuts if we can come up with the right thing.”

Kristina Schake, Clinton’s deputy communications adviser, added that “it would be good for her to show some humor.”

“This is her crowd so the response would be great,” Schake said.

But at least one person on staff -- Mandy Grunwald, a communications adviser to Clinton -- expressed discomfort at the possibility of joking about the sensitive news.

“Margolis and I discussed,” Grunwald wrote in the email referring to media adviser Jim Margolis. “We don’t know what’s in the emails, so we are nervous about this. Might get a big laugh tonight and regret it when content of emails is disclosed.”



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-wikileaks-emails-clinton-black-voters-20161022-story.html

WikiLeaks emails show Clinton campaign worried about Sanders' appeal to black voters
Tribune news services Contact Reporter
October 23, 2016


Hacked emails from the personal account of Hillary Clinton's top campaign official show some of the attention her team paid to courting black voters.

There were worries about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' appeal to that historically Democratic voter group. There was angst over whether Clinton should give a major speech on race relations. Meanwhile, a South Carolina Democratic Party official voiced concerns that Clinton hadn't visited a particular region of the state.

The emails were among hundreds released Saturday by WikiLeaks. The notes were stolen from the email account of John Podesta, the Clinton campaign's chairman, as part of a series of high-profile computer hacks of Democratic targets that U.S. intelligence officials say were orchestrated by Russia, with the intent to influence the Nov. 8 election.

It was impossible to authenticate each hacked email that WikiLeaks published, but Democrats have openly acknowledged they were hacked and have not pointed to any specific case where an email was altered to inflict political damage.


WHY SOME PEOPLE JUST DON’T TRUST “THE GOVERNMENT”

FOR A YUUGE SCANDAL IN THE PENTAGON, SEE THE LATIMES.COM STORY AND THE DOZEN OR MORE OTHERS ON THE SAME SUBJECT. THIS ONE IS THE MOST COMPLETE, DOWN TO REASONS GIVEN IN SOME CASES, AND A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT BY BRYAN STROTHER AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT, WHICH IS BEING LITIGATED AT THIS TIME.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html

Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war
After he fought for the country, the U.S. is asking him to give back his enlistment bonus
Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses. Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.
David S. Cloud

SEE ALSO: Report: Federal officials complicit in deportation of U.S. veterans
Photograph -- California Army National Guard, Soldiers from the California Army National Guard have been ordered to return enlistment bonuses they received a decade ago when the Pentagon needed troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (California Army National Guard)


Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.

But soldiers say the military is reneging on 10-year-old agreements and imposing severe financial hardship on veterans whose only mistake was to accept bonuses offered when the Pentagon needed to fill the ranks.

People like me just got screwed.

— Christopher Van Meter, former Army captain
“These bonuses were used to keep people in,” said Christopher Van Meter, a 42-year-old former Army captain and Iraq veteran from Manteca, Calif., who says he refinanced his home mortgage to repay $25,000 in reenlistment bonuses and $21,000 in student loan repayments that the Army says he should not have received. “People like me just got screwed.”

In Iraq, Van Meter was thrown from an armored vehicle turret — and later awarded a Purple Heart for his combat injuries — after the vehicle detonated a buried roadside bomb.

Susan Haley, a Los Angeles native and former Army master sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, said she sends the Pentagon $650 a month — a quarter of her family’s income — to pay down $20,500 in bonuses that the Guard says were given to her improperly.

“I feel totally betrayed,” said Haley, 47, who served 26 years in the Army along with her husband and oldest son, a medic who lost a leg in combat in Afghanistan.

Haley, who now lives in Kempner, Texas, worries they may have to sell their house to repay the bonuses. “They’ll get their money, but I want those years back,” she said, referring to her six-year reenlistment.

U.S. veterans support legal fight by Yemeni man whose relatives were killed in drone strike »

The problem offers a dark perspective on the Pentagon’s use of hefty cash incentives to fill its all-volunteer force during the longest era of warfare in the nation’s history.

Even Guard officials concede that taking back the money from military veterans is distasteful.

“At the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price,” said Maj. Gen. Matthew Beevers, deputy commander of the California Guard. “We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.”

Facing enlistment shortfalls and two major wars with no end in sight, the Pentagon began offering the most generous incentives in its history to retain soldiers in the mid-2000s.

It also began paying the money up front, like the signing bonuses that some businesses pay in the civilian sector.

They’ll get their money, but I want those years back.
— Susan Haley, former Army master sergeant

“It was a real sea change in how business was done,” said Col. Michael S. Piazzoni, a California Guard official in Sacramento who oversaw the audits. “The system paid everybody up front, and then we spent the next five years figuring out if they were eligible.”

The bonuses were supposed to be limited to soldiers in high-demand assignments like intelligence and civil affairs or to noncommissioned officers badly needed in units due to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The National Guard Bureau, the Pentagon agency that oversees state Guard organizations, has acknowledged that bonus overpayments occurred in every state at the height of the two wars.

But the money was handed out far more liberally in the California Guard, which has about 17,000 soldiers and is one of the largest state Guard organizations.

In 2010, after reports surfaced of improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite paperwork errors.

Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.

Instead of forgiving the improper bonuses, the California Guard assigned 42 auditors to comb through paperwork for bonuses and other incentive payments given to 14,000 soldiers, a process that was finally completed last month.

Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.

Because of protests, appeals and refusal by some to comply, the recovery effort is likely to continue for years.

In interviews, current and former California Guard members described being ordered to attend mass meetings in 2006 and 2007 in California where officials signed up soldiers in assembly-line fashion after outlining the generous terms available for six-year reenlistments.

Robert Richmond, an Army sergeant first class then living in Huntington Beach, said he reenlisted after being told he qualified for a $15,000 bonus as a special forces soldier.

The money gave him “breathing room,” said Richmond, who had gone through a divorce after a deployment to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003.

In 2007, his special forces company was sent to the Iraqi town of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad in an area known as the “Triangle of Death” because of the intense fighting.

Richmond conducted hundreds of missions against insurgents over the next year. In one, a roadside bomb exploded by his vehicle, knocking him out and leaving him with permanent back and brain injuries.

He was stunned to receive a letter from California Guard headquarters in 2014 telling him to repay the $15,000 and warning he faced “debt collection action” if he failed to comply.

I signed a contract that I literally risked my life to fulfill.
— Robert Richmond, former Army sergeant first class
Richmond should not have received the money, they argued, because he already had served 20 years in the Army in 2006, making him ineligible.

Richmond, 48, has refused to repay the bonus. He says he only had served 15 years when he reenlisted, due to several breaks in his Army service.

He has filed appeal after appeal, even after receiving a collection letter from the Treasury Department in March warning that his “unpaid delinquent debt” had risen to $19,694.62 including interest and penalties.

After quitting the California Guard so the money wouldn’t be taken from his paycheck, he moved to Nebraska to work as a railroad conductor, but was laid off.

He then moved to Texas to work for a construction company, leaving his wife and children in Nebraska. With $15,000 debt on his credit report, he has been unable to qualify for a home loan.

“I signed a contract that I literally risked my life to fulfill,” Richmond said bitterly. “We want somebody in the government, anybody, to say this is wrong and we’ll stop going after this money.”

Though they cannot waive the debts, California Guard officials say they are helping soldiers and veterans file appeals with the National Guard Bureau and the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, which can wipe out the debts.

But soldiers say it is a long, frustrating process, with no guarantee of success.

Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed.

Now D’Andrea, a financial crimes investigator with the Santa Monica Police Department, says he is close to exhausting all his appeals.

“Everything takes months of work, and there is no way to get your day in court,” he said. “Some benefit of the doubt has to be given to the soldier.”

Bryan Strother, a sergeant first class from Oroville north of Sacramento, spent four years fighting Guard claims that he owed $25,010.32 for mistaken bonuses and student loans.

Guard officials told Strother he had voided his enlistment contract by failing to remain a radio operator, his assigned job, during and after a 2007-08 deployment to Iraq.

Strother filed a class-action lawsuit in February in federal district court in Sacramento on behalf of all soldiers who got bonuses, claiming the California Guard “conned” them into reenlisting.

The suit asked the court to order the recovered money to be returned to the soldiers and to issue an injunction against the government barring further collection.

In August, Strother received a letter from the Pentagon waiving repayment of his bonus.

“We believe he acted in good faith in accepting the $15,000,” a claims adjudicator from the Pentagon’s Defense Legal Services Agency wrote in the letter. He still owed $5,000 in student loan repayments, it said.

Within weeks, lawyers for U.S. Atty. Phillip A. Talbert in Sacramento petitioned the court to dismiss Strother’s lawsuit, arguing that it was moot since most of his debt had been waived. A federal judge is supposed to rule on the government’s motion by January.

“It’s a legal foot-dragging process to wear people out and make people go away,” said Strother. “It’s overwhelming for most soldiers.”

Indeed, some have just given up, repaying the money even before exhausting their appeals.

“It was tearing me up, the stress, the headaches,” said Van Meter, the former Army captain from Manteca who paid off his $46,000 debt by refinancing his mortgage. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The amount of stress it put us through financially and emotionally was something we wanted to move past.”