My Name is Paul H Cosentino. I started this Blog in 2011 because of what I believe to be wrongdoings in town government. This Blog is to keep the citizens of Templeton informed. It is also for the citizens of Templeton to post their comments and concerns.
The Templeton Police Department and the Templeton Fire Department are hosting this year’s Horribles Parade to kick off Trick or Treat on Halloween. The parade begins at the police department at 4:50 p.m. and ends at the Common. The Narragansett Regional High School Band will march in the parade. Anyone wishing to join the parade is asked to stage in the police department parking lot at 4:40 p.m.
Immediately following the parade, members of the police and fire departments will go to the St. Vincent de Paul Church parking lot on Forrest St. for Trick or Treat. Officers and firefighters will pass out candy to trick or treaters in Baldwinville.
As always, thank you to CO&S Garage for donating the candy given out at the police department, and thank you to Baldwinville Garage for donating the candy given out by fire and police at the St. Vincent de Paul Church.
Hope to see you at these festivities on Tuesday. Happy Halloween!
It started as a plan small-government conservatives could get behind:
spinning off a Department of Energy project into the private sector,
where it would save the government money and prosper, a nimble ship
steered towards access to cutting-edge non-governmental technology by
executives unencumbered by the federal bureaucracy.
It didn’t work out that way. Instead, the United States Enrichment
Corp. became a revolving door where federal bureaucrats left their
government jobs for a publicly traded company that paid them millions of
dollars, even as it perennially begged the government for assistance in
deals that tended to add to taxpayer liabilities and didn't produce any
innovative technology on its own.
Scarcely three months passed after the company was privatized in 1998
before it ran to the government for an “emergency supplemental”
appropriation of $325 million.
Since then, it has received virtually every form of government
assistance, including loans, grants, and contracts, as well as
technology giveaways and obscure swaps.
USEC’s curious position straddling the government and the New York
Stock Exchange allowed its leaders to pick and choose the best from both
worlds, relying on government support like a federal agency to create
its product, but also functioning as a high-priced government
contractor.
That made it a perennial thorn in DOE’s side, aggressively asking for money and even suing the government for breach of contract this year, saying federal officials gave the firm too little.
That suit was filed at the same time company officials hoped to win
approval for a new $2 billion loan guarantee. DOE encouraged them to
withdraw that application because of serious problems, yet USEC refused
and managed to wrangle a quarter-billion dollars in cash out of the
agency as it awaits a decision.
Enrichment at the public till
How Republicans - and some Democrats - steered billions to a failing
privatized arm of the government many times the size of Solyndra,
executives profited, and taxpayers lost.
The company leases its land in Ohio and Kentucky from the government
for free, and received government contracts for security and cleanup on
its own property, including $118 million in stimulus funds. The base
technology it uses was developed by the government and given to USEC for
free.
DOE has also helped the company manage its books by assuming costly
on-paper liability for nuclear material while allowing profit earned
from those materials to go to USEC. In 2012, DOE gave $700 million worth
of uranium material to USEC.
“You begin to look more and more into the repetitive grants that come
through appropriations bills, the statement every year is ‘this is the
last year we need any help,’” said Rep. Michael C. Burgess, a Texas
Republican who is among a handful of lawmakers seeking to strike USEC
funds from bills.
“It’s like a never-ending story: ‘We're right there, we just about have it,’” Burgess said.
USEC’s executive compensation structure is striking. At a company
currently valued at $28 million, its CEO’s pay package totaled nearly $7
million in 2011, and a slew of deputies made nearly $2 million each.
The high compensation and chronic bottom-line losses led to a virtual revolt by shareholders, with 46 percent voting against a "say-on-pay" motion approving the salaries.
"The compensation committee attributed the votes against the
company’s say-on-pay proposal primarily to dissatisfaction with the
company’s total shareholder return performance," the company said in
shareholder disclosures.
Though the work is done in Kentucky and Ohio, top USEC executives are based only a few miles from the Capitol in Bethesda, Md.
Phil G. Sewell,
USEC's senior vice president and chief development officer, ran DOE's
uranium enrichment program in the late 1980s and early 1990s before
joining the company.
John E. Neumann,
USEC'S vice president for government relations, worked for the House
Republican Policy Committee. And USEC hired Howard Schweitzer, chief
operating officer of the Treasury's Troubled Assets Relief Program,
President George W. Bush's bailout of big banks.
The revolving door swung the other way, too. A former official in
President Ford’s administration, Dennis R. Spurgeon, became USEC’s chief
operating officer, then left to become a DOE assistant secretary during
the administration of George W. Bush.
Company officials have told shareholders and creditors that without
government money, they have no "viable" business plan and could soon go
bankrupt. It has a junk-bond rating and no source of private financing
for the new plant it wants to build. Last year, it lost more than a
billion dollars.
With economic factors failing to make a compelling case for
investment, USEC has pointed to national security considerations to
justify continued government backing because tritium, a byproduct of
uranium enrichment, and uranium itself can be used for nuclear weapons.
USEC's more efficient competitor in New Mexico, Urenco, is partially
owned by the Dutch and English governments. European-licensed
technologies have restrictions on using the uranium for military uses,
though it is unclear how they apply to byproducts like tritium.
But the new USEC plant would produce low-enriched uranium, while the U.S. nuclear weapons use high-enriched uranium.
And specialists say that there is no need for the plant at all
because the U.S. has enough tritium to last decades and that more can be
obtained at any time from stockpiled uranium. The company's own filings
concede that supply of enriched uranium far exceeds demand and that,
even before its proposed expansion, it has accumulated a backlog of the
material for which it can't find buyers.
Scientists
also point out that the Navy’s nuclear-powered vessels have 100-year
supplies of uranium and that the U.S. is shrinking its nuclear arsenal,
not growing it.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has delved more deeply
into USEC issues than any other member of Congress, noted that the plans
for USEC's new plant include foreign parts and worse, USEC has
partnered with a Russian company that supplies Iran with its nuclear
material.
"DOE itself has determined that simply using the current uranium
supplier to the U.S. Navy's nuclear powered fleet of aircraft carriers
and submarines would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over
buying these services from USEC," noted a bipartisan coalition
including the National Taxpayers Union, Friends of the Earth and the
Union of Concerned Scientists that unsuccessfully implored Congress to
strip $48 million in 2014 appropriations from USEC.
The privatized former government agency and its highly-paid
executives said the problem is the government hasn’t played a big enough
role, and that has caused technological failings and losses that
totaled $491 million in 2011 and $1.2 billion in 2012, according to
Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
“The government has not, as some have claimed, kept USEC afloat and
you need look no further than our financial statements,” spokesman Paul
E. Jacobson, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, told
the Examiner.
Police in Southbridge issued a warning over the weekend about a strong batch of heroin in the area that caused six overdoses in less than eight hours.
The department issued the warning on Facebook Friday and stated the people who overdosed were revived after police and fire personnel used Narcan.
"These six overdoses would have likely been fatal without the prompt response of the police and fire department," said the department in the post, which has been shared by Warren police as well.
Police asked people to call 911 and ask for help if they suspect someone overdosed while using heroin.
The department reminded people that officers will help anyone in need of addiction services. The C.A.R.E. Program will help people in need of services through the help of Harrington Hospital.
Anyone in need of help can go into the station and ask to be enrolled in a program.
In Uxbridge, more than a third of the roughly 60 public records
requests received by the town clerk in the past year have come from one
requester.
In Hubbardston, a single requester has racked up 38 percent of the records requests.
Both
towns petitioned the supervisor of records in the secretary of state’s
office earlier this year to be relieved of the requirement to provide
requested documents and videotapes. One of the updates to the state
Public Records Law, which went into effect Jan. 1, allows for exceptions
on the grounds that requests are frivolous or intended to harass or
intimidate the agency or municipality.
The towns’ petitions arguing harassment were denied.
Two
weeks ago, state Supervisor of Records Rebecca S. Murray issued the
first granting of a request from a town to ignore public records
requests from a citizen because of harassment.
In that case, Ms.
Murray agreed with Wellesley’s petition that a recent request from
resident Ronald Alexander, who had filed more than 200 public records
requests since 2013, was at best “frivolous,” as town officials argued.
Mr. Alexander had requested all of the 190 public records requests since
2013, most of which had been filed by him.
The Massachusetts
Public Records Law gives people the right to access, in a reasonable
manner and electronically if possible, documents and materials of the
workings of state and local government. The law outlines deadlines,
allowable fees and processes for appeals and exemption requests.
In a series if tweets this morning, President Trump has exposed some of the narratives that much of the mainstream media seems loathed to touch...
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more.
Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia "collusion," which doesn't exist.
The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's are now fighting back like never before.
There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!
And while Democrats and their mouthpieces continues to try and focus
attention on the unverified frivolous claims within the dossier - as
opposed to the illegalities of the dossier's production, collusion, and
exhibition - The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins warns then that the Trump Dossier dam is breaking...
A U.S. political party applied to a hostile power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent.
Journalists who investigated the Trump dossier now say their Democratic sources lied to them. That’s already a start. Please, Democrats, release journalists from their confidentiality agreements so they can tell us more about your lying.
The revelations provide new context for Harry Reid’s “October
surprise,” his attempt 10 days before Election Day to lever the
dossier’s allegations into the press with a public letter to then-FBI Director James Comey accusing him of withholding “explosive information.”
Mr. Reid knows how the responsible press works.
Implausible, scurrilous and unsupported allegations are not reportable,
but a government official making public reference to such allegations is
reportable.
TruePundit.com
warns that one haunting paragraph unearthed from 3,000
never-before-seen documents will shake Patriots to their core about the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Or perhaps worse. Make that haunting three paragraphs.
This is not pretty.
But it is likely President Donald Trump understands what Kennedy comprehended, which now appears to have led to his murder:
The out-of-control shadow government in this country threatens the fabric and the future of the United States.
See for yourself.
As a reminder, here is the position of the alleged shooter explained...
...the "Surgeon General's Report" on the assassination stated that
the first bullet entered the President's throat below the adams apple,
clearly showing that two persons were involved with the first shot being
fired from the bridge across the park way in front of the car.
To further substantiate this, POTITO said there was a bullet hole in the wind shield of the President's car...
Here is Douglas P. Horne, via LewRockwell.com, detailing the photographic evidence of a bullet hole in JFK's limousine's windshield "hiding in plain sight."
In 2009, I believed I had discovered new evidence in the JFK assassination never reported by anyone else: convincing photography
of the through-and-through bullet hole in the windshield of the JFK
limousine that had been reported by six credible witnesses. I revisited
that evidence today, and am more convinced than ever that the bullet
hole in the limousine windshield is what I am looking at in those
images. But the readers of this piece don’t have to take my word for it —
you can examine the images yourself, and make up your own minds. The
evidence is contained in one of the banned, suppressed episodes of Nigel
Turner’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy
— episode 7 in the series, called “The Smoking Guns,” which was aired
in 2003, and then removed from circulation by The History Channel in
response to intense political pressure by former LBJ aides Jack Valenti
and Bill Moyers.
I’ll tell you about the stunning evidence I have found in that
episode at the end of this article, but first we need to set the stage
by reviewing the eyewitness testimony about the damage to the windshield
observed the day of JFK’s assassination, on Friday, November 22nd,
1963; as well as three days later, on Monday, November 25th, 1963.
Introduction
Before I reveal the details about the “new” photographic evidence I
am talking about here, let’s review the Big Picture, the “evidentiary
landscape” on this issue (see pages 1439-1450 of Volume V of my book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, for full details):
(1) Dallas motorcycle patrolmen Stavis Ellis and H. R. Freeman both
observed a penetrating bullet hole in the limousine windshield at
Parkland Hospital. Ellis told interviewer Gil Toff in 1971: “There was a
hole in the left front windshield…You could put a pencil through it…you
could take a regular standard writing pencil…and stick [it] through
there.” Freeman corroborated this, saying: “[I was] right beside it. I
could of [sic] touched it…it was a bullet hole. You could tell what it
was.” [David Lifton published these quotations in his 1980 book, Best Evidence.]
(2) St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Richard Dudman wrote an article
published in The New Republic on December 21, 1963, in which he stated:
“A few of us noted the hole in the windshield when the limousine was
standing at the emergency entrance after the President had been carried
inside. I could not approach close enough to see which side was the
cup-shaped spot which indicates a bullet had pierced the glass from the
opposite side.”
(3) Second year medical student Evalea Glanges, enrolled at
Southwestern Medical University in Dallas, right next door to Parkland
Hospital, told attorney Doug Weldon in 1999: “It was a real clean hole.”
In a videotaped interview aired in the suppressed episode 7 of Nigel
Turner’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy, titled “The Smoking Guns,” she
said: “…it was very clear, it was a through-and-through bullet hole
through the windshield of the car, from the front to the back…it seemed
like a high-velocity bullet that had penetrated from front-to-back in
that glass pane.” At the time of the interview, Glanges had risen to the
position of Chairperson of the Department of Surgery, at John Peter
Smith Hospital, in Fort Worth. She had been a firearms expert all her
adult life.
(4) Mr. George Whitaker, Sr., a senior manager at the Ford Motor
Company’s Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan, told attorney (and professor
of criminal justice) Doug Weldon in August of 1993, in a tape recorded
conversation, that after reporting to work on Monday, November 25th, he
discovered the JFK limousine — a unique, one-of-a-kind item that he
unequivocally identified — in the Rouge Plant’s B building, with the
interior stripped out and in the process of being replaced, and with the
windshield removed. He was then contacted by one of the Vice Presidents
of the division for which he worked, and directed to report to the
glass plant lab, immediately. After knocking on the locked door (which
he found most unusual), he was let in by two of his subordinates and
discovered that they were in possession of the windshield that had been
removed from the JFK limousine. They had been told to use it as a
template, and to make a new windshield identical to it in shape — and to
then get the new windshield back to the B building for installation in
the Presidential limousine that was quickly being rebuilt. Whitaker told
Weldon (quoting from the audiotape of the 1993 interview): “And the
windshield had a bullet hole in it, coming from the outside through…it
was a good, clean bullet hole, right straight through, from the front.
And you can tell, when the bullet hits the windshield, like when you hit
a rock or something, what happens? The back chips out and the front may
just have a pinhole in it…this had a clean round hole in the front and
fragmentation coming out the back.” Whitaker told Weldon that he
eventually became superintendent of his division and was placed in
charge of five plant divisions. He also told Weldon that the original
windshield, with the bullet hole in it, had been broken up and scrapped —
as ordered — after the new windshield had been made.
When Doug Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, his witness
insisted on anonymity. Weldon reported on the story without releasing
Whitaker’s name in his excellent and comprehensive article titled: “The
Kennedy Limousine: Dallas 1963,” which was published in Jim Fetzer’s
anthology Murder in Dealey Plaza,
in 2000. After Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, Mr.
Whitaker subsequently — on November 22, 1993 (the 30th anniversary of
President Kennedy’s assassination) — wrote down all he could remember
about the events he witnessed involving the Presidential limousine and
its windshield. After George Whitaker’s death in 2001, his family
released his written testament to Nigel Turner, who with their
permission revealed Mr. Whitaker’s name, as well as the text of his
“memo for history,” in episode 7 of The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The
Smoking Guns.”
In “The Smoking Guns,” the text of Whitaker’s memo can be read on the
screen employing freeze frame technology with the DVD of the episode.
It said, in part: “When [I] arrived at the lab the door was locked. I
was let in. There were 2 glass engineers there. They had a car
windshield that had a bullet hole in it. The hole was about 4 or 6
inches to the right of the rear view mirror [as viewed from the front].
The impact had come from the front of the windshield. (If you have spent
40 years in the glass [illegible] you know which way the impack [sic]
was from.”
(5) The sixth credible witness to a bullet hole in the windshield of
the limousine was Secret Service agent Charles Taylor, Jr., who wrote a
report on November 27, 1963 in which he detailed his activities
providing security for the limousine immediately after the car’s return
to Washington following the assassination. The JFK limousine and the
Secret Service follow-up car known as the “Queen Mary” arrived at
Andrews AFB aboard a C-130 propeller-driven cargo plane at about 8:00 PM
on November 22, 1963. Agent Taylor rode in the Presidential limousine
as it was driven from Andrews AFB to the White House garage at 22nd and M
Streets, N.W. In his report about what he witnessed inside the White
House garage during the vehicle’s inspection, he wrote: “In addition, of
particular note was the small hole just left of center in the
windshield from which what appeared to be bullet fragments were
removed.”
Summary of the Eyewitness Testimony About the Windshield Bullet Hole
Summarizing, six credible witnesses — Stavis Ellis, H. R. Freeman,
Richard Dudman, Evalea Glanges, George Whitaker, and Charles Taylor —
all reported seeing a bullet hole in the windshield of JFK’s limousine
either on the day of the assassination (for five of the six witnesses),
or on the following Monday (in the case of Mr. Whitaker, who did not see
the limousine and its windshield until he reported to work at the Ford
Motor Company’s Rouge Plant, in Detroit, on Monday morning, November
25th, 1963).
Two of these witnesses — Evalea Glanges and George Whitaker — were
absolutely positive that the bullet causing the damage had been a shot
from the front, which had entered the front surface of the windshield,
and exited the inside surface.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Because if true, the windshield bullet evidence alonedisproves the lone assassin myth aggressively promoted by the U.S. government for 49 years now, since the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was supposedly firing from above and behind the limousine as it traveled down Elm Street.
The Windshield Evidence Was Twice Switched-Out — Substituted — By the U.S. Government…
Tom Brady:All-star NFL Quarterback Warns Against Fluoride All-star NFL Quarterback Warns Against Fluoride
Tom Brady, the star veteran quarterback of the New England Patriots and considered possibly the best quarterback of all time, has recently authored a book on staying healthy in which he mentions fluoride in water.
In chapter seven of his new book (The TB12 Method: How to Achieve A Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance), while discussing the importance of hydration, Brady acknowledges the risks of ingesting fluoride, advising readers to remove it from tap water by filtration. He writes, "Tap water is water that comes from a municipal source. Depending on where you live, most sources of tap water contain fluoride, chlorine, and, in some cases, lead. Excessive amounts of both fluoride and chlorine have now been linked to a number of health risks. Drink tap water only if you filter it first, which gets rid of many impurities. Even when you use tap water for steaming vegetables, it's better to filter it first."
(**Special Thanks to Mike Dolan from UMASS Amherst for pointing this out.)
Drug Take Back Day on October 28th 2017 The Templeton Police Department and Templeton Fire Department along with the Templeton Board of Health will be participating in Drug Take Back Day on October 28th 2017 from 10:00 am - 02:00 pm at the main entrance to the Narragansett Middle School. Please turn in all your unused and expired medications for proper destruction. We hope to see you at this event.
But Bad Rabbit is a “targeted attack” with widespread implications.
A new cyber attack is affecting numerous computer systems around
Europe. The new strain of ransomware known as “Bad Rabbit” is believed
to be behind all of the trouble.
Bad Rabbit has spread to Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and Germany. Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, which is monitoring the malware, has compared it to the WannaCry and Petya attacks that caused so much chaos earlier in the year.
According to the Kaspersky Lab, the majority of victims are located
in Russia, and the ransomware appears to have infected devices through
the hacked websites of Russian media organizations. Interfax and Fontanka in Russia have both been hit by a cyber attack, as have Odessa Airport and the Kiev Metro in Ukraine.
“Based on our investigation, this is a targeted attack against corporate networks,using methods similar to those used in the ExPetr attack,” Kaspersky Lab has said. “However, we cannot confirm it is related to ExPetr.”
According to Secure Lst, ExPetr is a wiper, not ransomware. “The
dangerous aspect is the fact that it was able to infect many
institutions which constitute critical infrastructure in such a short
timeframe,” says Robert Lipovsky, a malware researcher at ESET, “which indicates a well-coordinated attack.”
Kaspersky
also found strong evidence tying the new attack to the creators of
NotPetya. After the June NotPetya outbreak, the company’s analysts found
that one Ukrainian news site, Bahmut.com.ua,
had been hacked to deliver the malware, along with dozens of other
sites that were similarly corrupted—but hadn’t yet been activated to
start infecting victims. Now Kaspersky has found that 30 of those hacked
sites began to distribute the BadRabbit malware on Tuesday. –Wired
“This indicates that the actors behind ExPetr/NotPetya have been carefully planning the BadRabbit attack since July,” writes Costin Raiu, the director of Kaspersky’s global research and analysis team, in a note to Wired.
Is Fluoride Bad for You? It’s Not Just in the Water
There are two sides to any story, and
that is definitely true in the case of fluoride. Since being introduced
into the public water supplies of much of the U.S. (and several other
countries) in the 1960s, a consistent debate has existed on whether or
not fluoride is truly safe as a water additive or dental health product.
It’s more complex than you might
believe at first. On the one side, many public health organizations hail
fluoride as a near-miracle for dental health and insist there are no
questions or contrary pieces of evidence whatsoever.
For example, the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) states on their website, “Because of its contribution to the large decline in cavities
in the United States since the 1960s, CDC named community water
fluoridation one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th
century.” (1)
The American Dental Association and American Academy of Pediatrics
agree, and have since the beginning of public water fluoridation in the
mid 1900s. (2, 3, 4)
Pretty convincing, right?
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t that simple.
The controversy over fluoride in
water has been the main point of contention for anti-fluoridationists
for the last several decades, since it was introduced widely in 1960. (5) Is it just kooks and conspiracy theorists that are continuing the pointless complaining about a public health victory?
Quite the opposite proves to be true
after a bit of digging. A growing body of research has existed since
before fluoride was ever approved for dental use finding it has the
ability to cause long-lasting negative health effects in various bodily
systems. (6)
What Is Fluoride?
“Fluoride” refers to any compound
containing a fluorine ion. Sporting a chemical symbol of “F” and an
atomic number of 9, fluorine is one of the well-recognized elements on
the periodic table. As a pure gas, fluorine is “the most reactive and
electronegative of all the elements.” It has extremely damaging effects
to any living organism with which it comes into contact. (7)
In nature, calcium fluoride (CaF2)
is found in soil and water. Spring water in areas without industries
that regularly use fluoride generally contains about .01-.03 ppm (parts
per million, also known as milligrams per liter or mg/L) of calcium
fluoride naturally, while seawater is closer to 1.3 ppm. (8)
These amounts vary greatly depending on location — in some parts of the
world, calcium fluoride is found up to 10–20 ppm in water supplies,
which is universally recognized as an unsafe ingestible amount of the
compound.
Despite the insistence of various
organizations to tell the public that this same compound is what’s added
to their drinking water, this isn’t actually true. Calcium fluoride is
not well-absorbed into the body, whereas sodium fluoride (NaF) is. This
chemical compound does not occur in nature and was generally considered
industrial toxic waste until 1950, when it was announced as a new dental
health initiative.
1945 marked the start of studies in
several cities across the U.S. to compare the prevalence of cavities
(dental caries) between children and adults drinking fluoridated or
unfluoridated water. According to the CDC, dental caries were reduced
50–70 percent in fluoridated communities during the 13–15 years of these
“studies.” (9)
However, no data is available for the
amount of cavity reduction experienced by the “control” communities in
these experiments. As dental health has improved steadily in both
fluoridated and unfluoridated communities of the U.S., this data would
be very worthwhile but, unfortunately, does not exist or is not readily
available to the public. (10)
As of 2014, about 74.4 percent of people in the U.S. with community water systems were provided with fluoridated water. (11)
This is a 0.2 drop in the previous 2012 statistic, resulting partly
from community efforts of citizens urging their leaders to remove
fluoride from public drinking water. Unlike you may expect, though, the
fluoride used in your drinking water is not calcium fluoride nor sodium
fluoride. Now, in 90 percent of our fluoridated water, it’s a compound
known as hydrofluorosilicic acid (HFS or FSA). HFS is a by-product of
the process used to create phosphate fertilizers that used to be
considered toxic waste and is now (more than likely) an additive in your
family’s water. (12)
In the last months of President Obama's 'reign', Reuters reports that, thanks to a presidential executive order, bypassing congressional and court review, a
Department of Defense manual on procedures governing its intelligence
activities permits the collection of information about Americans for
counterintelligence purposes even "when no specific connection to
foreign terrorist(s) has been established."
As Reuters exclusively details, the change last year to a Department of Defense manual on procedures governing its intelligence activities was made possible by a decades-old presidential executive order, bypassing congressional and court review.
The new manual, released in August 2016, now
permits the collection of information about Americans for
counterintelligence purposes “when no specific connection to foreign
terrorist(s) has been established,” according to training slides created last year by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI).
Executive order 12333, signed by former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and later modified by former President George W. Bush, establishes
how U.S. intelligence agencies such as the CIA are allowed to pursue
foreign intelligence investigations. The order also allows surveillance
of U.S. citizens in certain cases, including for activities defined as
counterintelligence.
Under the previous Defense Department manual’s definition of counterintelligence activity, which was published in 1982, the
U.S. government was required to demonstrate a target was working on
behalf of the goals of a foreign power or terrorist group.
In August 2016, during the final months of former President Barack Obama’s administration, a Pentagon press release announced that the department had updated its intelligence collecting procedures but it made no specific reference to “homegrown violent extremists.”
The
Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped
fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing
allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible
coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with
the matter said.
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton
campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to
conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author
Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to
the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm,
Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the
Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s
research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during
the GOP primary.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the
law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of
October 2016, days before Election Day.
Former
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier on
President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. (Victoria Jones/AP)
Fusion
GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the
people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of
that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in
those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One
person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not
informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS’s role.
The
dossier has become a lightning rod amid the intensifying investigations
into the Trump campaign’s possible connections to Russia. Some
congressional Republican leaders have spent months trying to discredit
Fusion GPS and Steele and tried to determine the identity of the
Democrat or organization that paid for the dossier.
The Templeton Democratic Town Committee will meet on Thursday, October 26, 2017 (TODAY) at 7 pm at 79 Bridge St. in the community room. Topics will include reorganization, future plans and members and guests updates.
At least one member of the State Democratic Committee will be present. Light refreshments will be available.
Much like Hillary's former IT consultant Paul Combetta
who admitted to deleting Hillary's emails despite the existence of a
Congressional subpoena, it seems as though James Comey has just had his
very own "oh shit" moment.
After months of inexplicable delays, the chairman of the House
Judiciary and Oversight committees, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Trey
Gowdy (R-S.C.), announced moments ago a joint investigation into how the
Justice Department handled last year's investigation into Hillary
Clinton's private email server.
Among other things, Goodlatte and Gowdy said that the FBI must answer
for why it chose to provide public updates in the Clinton investigation
but not in the Trump investigation and why the FBI decided to "appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton," a power typically left to the DOJ.
"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman
holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the
left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status.
The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic
and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity,
independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force
in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.
"Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a
host of outstanding questions that must be answered. These include, but
are not limited to:
FBI's decision to publicly announce the investigation into
Secretary Clinton's handling of classified information but not to
publicly announce the investigation into campaign associates of
then-candidate Donald Trump;
FBI's decision to notify Congress by formal letter of the status of the investigation both in October and November of 2016;
FBI's decision to appropriate full decision making in
respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton to the FBI rather
than the DOJ;
FBI's timeline in respect to charging decisions.
'The Committees will review these decisions and others to better
understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn.
Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our
justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions
taken."
Of course, this comes just one day after Comey revealed his secret Twitter account which
led the internet to wildly speculate that he may be running for a
political office...which, these days, being under investigation by
multiple Congressional committees might just mean he has a good shot.
Finally, we leave you with one artist's depiction of how the Comey 'investigation' of Hillary's email scandal played out...
I have not had a chance to read it in its entirety as of yet but – in simplest terms – it calls attention to the need to fully fund Transportation (for instance this year the state budget only reimburses NRSD about 75% of regular-ed transportation costs leaving us and Phillipston to pick up 25%+/-); the need to allow for more creative bidding opportunities for transport to lower costs (perhaps letting regional transit entities to bid) and points out how the RSD’s are – in general – uncontrollable by local officials (excepting the Town Meeting and trying to argue the budget down before it even makes it there) and the need for periodic updates of regional agreements (as you supported last fall with respect to Monty Tech). It highlights not only the challenges the RSD’s face but the conflicts the current system crtes between the RSDs and their member comunites.
I urge you to review this document in detail and determine if you wish to add your voice of support for many of the positive changes recommended therein.
Many Thanks
Carter Terenzini
************************************
Your assignment: Review document above. Look for any indication that the "NUCLEAR OPTION" has been removed. You must remember - 603 CMR 41.05 ??? Remember turning 4 NO votes into a YES ?
Former U.S. Congressional Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine was
confronted in San Diego Friday and questioned on why Imran Awan and
family were allowed to run roughshod in Congress while she was charged
with oversight of its cyber security.
She offered few answers and her handlers at the security conference
quickly provided cover for Grafenstine, who recently retired as
Inspector General charged with Congressional oversight.
Grafenstine, questioned by CrowdSource the Truth editor Jason
Goodman, acknowledged the Awan’s case was indeed her case, however, she
“turned” the case over to federal law enforcement officials in late
2016. After Goodman pressed the squeamish former IG — who now works for
Deloitte as a managing director in Virginia — Grafenstine admitted no
one from the FBI has questioned her about the case since late 2016.
Goodman was all but tossed out of the event for asking legitimate questions regarding Congressional security.
Grafenstine’s speech, ironically, focused on cyber security and touted her as an expert on the subject.
Goodman, along with journalist George Webb have been doggedly pursuing the Awan case for a solid year.
Webb who updates his YouTube log daily about the Awan clan and their
assorted crimes while employed by Congress, has done so for 365
consecutive days.
Awan and wife Hina Alvi were charged in a four-count indictment in
August, charging the couple for defrauding the Congressional Federal
Credit Union, making false statements and illegal money transfers to
Pakistan. The Awans, along with two brothers, worked for Rep. Debbie
Wasserman Schultz and dozens of other Democratic members of Congress,
performing IT work.
In recent weeks, GOP members of Congress said they believed the Awans could have sold secrets to foreign governments.
Grafenstine was employed as Congressional Inspector General for 19 years before she retired three weeks ago.
Interesting article regarding hurricane relief in Texas:
Houston Suburb Conditions Hurricane Relief Money On Residents’ Vow Not To Boycott Israel
Residents in Dickinson, Texas, who were
affected by Hurricane Harvey may be ineligible for money to rebuild
their homes because of their political beliefs.
A
suburb outside of Houston is requiring residents who were affected by
Hurricane Harvey to certify that they do not boycott Israel in order to
apply for grant money to rebuild their home or business.
Dickinson,
Texas, located alongside a bayou about 30 miles southeast of Houston,
suffered extensive damage during the hurricane that tore through the
area two months ago. Half of the city’s 20,000 residents were impacted,
and the storm caused serious damage to more than 7,000 homes and 88
businesses, according to local police reports.
On Monday, the city posted a three-page application
for grant money on its website. The application requires residents to
commit to using the money to repair their damaged homes or businesses,
to follow all building codes and to verify that they do not boycott
Israel.
A snapshot of the relevant boycott section of the application is shown.
“It’s
completely unreasonable,” said Ayesha Khan, a UTHealth PhD student who
has been active in rebuilding and recovery efforts in Houston, and an
organizer in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
“This
can prolong the time it will take to rebuild homes,” she said. “It’s
institutionalized in a way that can impact families that are still
homeless.”
Dickinson
Mayor Julie Masters told HuffPost that her office has been “inundated”
with angry phone calls and emails about the anti-BDS language in the
grant application.
When
Dickinson’s city attorney recommended including the Israel boycott
clause, Masters thought, “God, this kind of feels like it’s infringing
on free speech,” she said. But she said city officials also didn’t feel
like they had much of a choice in the matter.
The
Israel boycott provision in Dickinson’s application is a strict
interpretation of a Texas state law passed earlier this year that
prohibits state agencies from contracting with companies that boycott
Israel. Dickinson applicants have to agree to act as an “independent
contractor” in order to receive grant money from the city.
Masters
said she spoke with officials in the Texas attorney general’s office on
Friday about clarifying the language in the state law so that the
anti-boycott provision would only apply to contracts on the state
level.
The
American Civil Liberties Union argues that the Texas law is
unconstitutional and is asking anyone who was forced to choose between
signing the Dickinson application and forgoing hurricane relief money to
contact the group’s Texas chapter.
