Tag Archives: citizen

VIDEO: Meet the Olympic Workers Still Waiting for Payday

by DonnyLangston Posted on February 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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In November, Milenko Kuljic left Bileca, his rundown town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for Sochi. He was lured by a recruiter who promised he’d make about 2,000 Euro ($2,700) a month building infrastructure for Sochi’s winter Olympics .

Kuljic says he began working for a major construction company overseeing work at some of the games’ most iconic venues, where he says he never got anywhere near the amount of money he was promised. Instead over two months of working, he says he was only given the equivalent of about $1000 for basic living expenses. living in a dormitory with pay-to-use showers, sharing four toilets with some 200 other workers. All the while, he says his employers promised to eventually pay him in full.

At the end of the two months, he was suddenly arrested, detained for a week, and then flown home with 122 other workers from the Balkans on a flight chartered by the Serbian government.

Hundreds of other guest workers from all around the world feared a similar fate, and fled Sochi without pay to avoid arrest, and the arguably worse punishment it would bring: a 5-year ban on returning to Russia as a guest worker.

It was Kuljic’s second time seeking work in Russia. The first time, he says no one cared about workers, like him, who lacked official work permits: “I suspect that they told the authorities about us so that they wouldn’t have to pay the money they promised.”

Kuljic’s experience is far from unique. Of the approximately 96,000 workers who helped build Sochi’s Olympic buildings, parks, and infrastructure about 16,000 were migrant workers, according to Human Rights Watch. Most hailed from former Soviet countries, primarily Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, as well as from communities—like Kuljic’s in Bosnia—where families rely on money sent by workers abroad.

For years, such workers put up with rampant xenophobia and exploitative conditions—overcrowded housing, paltry and unsavory food—in pursuit of a decent wage in Russia. But this fall, with just six months left until the games, thousands of migrants were rounded up and deported. In October alone, according to Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS), over 3,000 workers were expelled from the Krasnodar region, which includes Sochi.

Migrants to Russia face routine discrimination, as nationalists blame them for taking work from employable Russians. Polls have shown that two-thirds of Russians believe immigrants are prone to crime, and, whether or not they came legally or illegally, want to reduce their numbers in the country.

As non-Russian workers flooded Sochi, such anti-immigrant sentiment escalated—and was encouraged at the highest levels of government.

“It would be very easy for people of other nations to take over this land,” Alexander Tkachev, the governor of the Krasnodar region, declared in August of 2012. “We have no other choice: we will squeeze them out, restore order, ask for documents…so that those who are trying to come here on illegal business understand that maybe it’s better they don’t come.”

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VIDEO: Meet the Olympic Workers Still Waiting for Payday

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The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

by DwainOquinn Posted on February 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Eli Lake talks with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the NSA’s massive collection of phone records:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Clapper said the problems facing the U.S. intelligence community over its collection of phone records could have been avoided. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it. “I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”

Two things. First, Clapper is quite possibly right. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Congress might well have approved DNA testing of everybody in the country if George Bush had proposed it. Hell, they approved the invasion of Iraq.

Second, though, Clapper is also wrong. I think he is, anyway. It wasn’t Snowden’s “shocking revelation” about the phone records program that did so much damage to the NSA. After all, we’ve known about that in fuzzy terms since 2005 and in very specific terms since Leslie Cauley reported it in 2006:

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

This provoked a bit of controversy at the time, but it faded away pretty quickly. It’s true that Snowden provided documentary evidence that had been missing in the earlier reports, but he didn’t really change what we knew. The sad fact is that the mere knowledge that the NSA was collecting an enormous database of every call made in the United States simply didn’t bother people very much when it was first revealed.

No, what hurt the NSA was Snowden’s revelations about everything it was doing. If it had just been phone records, interest might have died out quickly, just as it did in 2006. But it was far more than that, and that’s what’s kept this alive. Clapper is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise.

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The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

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We Shouldn’t Denigrate the Diginity of Work, Even Accidentally

by FNEVaughnzo Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Krugman writes today about the Republican insistence that when they oppose safety net programs, they’re doing it because they really care about the poor. Paul Ryan, for example, says that Obamacare is bad because it reduces incentives to work: “Inducing a person not to work who is on the low-income scale, not to get on the ladder of life, to begin working, getting the dignity of work, getting more opportunities, rising their income, joining the middle class, this means fewer people will do that.” Here’s Krugman:

Let’s talk, in particular, about dignity.

It’s all very well to talk vaguely about the dignity of work; but the idea that all workers can regard themselves as equal in dignity despite huge disparities in income is just foolish. When you’re in a world where 40 money managers make as much as 300,000 high school teachers, it’s just silly to imagine that there will be any sense, on either side, of equal dignity in work.

….Now, one way to enhance the dignity of ordinary workers is through, yes, entitlements: make it part of their birthright, as American citizens, that they get certain basics such as a minimal income in retirement, support in times of unemployment, and essential health care.

But the Republican position is that none of these things should be provided, and that if somehow they do get provided, they should come only at the price of massive government intrusion into the recipient’s personal lives — making sure that you don’t take advantage of health reform to work less, requiring that you undergo drug tests to receive unemployment benefits or food stamps, and so on.

In short, while conservatives may preach the dignity of work, their actual agenda is to deny lower-income workers as much dignity — and personal freedom — as possible.

There’s so much here that I agree with. Massive levels of inequality are indeed corrosive to both dignity and a basic sense of fair play. Making certain entitlements universal is indeed a way of enhancing dignity. And the endless Republican efforts to shame the poor are simply loathsome.

And yet….I really hate to see liberals disparage the value of work, even if it’s only implicit, as it is here. Even people who hate their jobs take satisfaction in the knowledge that they’re paying their way and providing for their families. People who lose their jobs usually report intense stress and feelings of inadequacy even if money per se isn’t an imminent problem (perhaps because a spouse works, perhaps because they’re drawing an unemployment check). Most people want to work, and most people also want to believe that their fellow citizens are working. It’s part of the social contract. As corrosive as inequality can be, a sense of other people living off the dole can be equally corrosive.

I know, I know: Krugman wasn’t trying to advocate a life of government-supported sloth. I’m not trying to pretend he was. And yet….we should be careful about this stuff. Work is important for dignity, both at a personal level and a broader societal level. We all acknowledge this when we talk about economic policy, making it clear that our goal is to attack high unemployment and create an economy that provides a job for everyone. We should acknowledge it just as much when the talk gets more personal.

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We Shouldn’t Denigrate the Diginity of Work, Even Accidentally

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"The Lego Movie" Is Actually a Satire

by Lazaro7386 Posted on February 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, New York mag critic Bilge Ebiri praised The Lego Movie as, “the best action flick in years, a hilarious satire, and an inquiry into the mind of God.” And it isn’t over-the-top praise—it accurately reflects the overwhelmingly positive critical response to the computer-animated comedy, released on Friday.

The film, which is based on—and pays loving tribute to—Lego toys, was co-written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the pair who directed the fantastic 21 Jump Street reboot and its upcoming sequel. The Lego Movie takes place mostly in a city in a Lego universe. A construction worker Lego named Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt) must save the Lego realms from imminent destruction and coerced conformity. His comrades are a mysterious female Lego warrior named Wyldstyle; a wizard; a “Unikitty,” which is a unicorn-animé kitten hybrid; a pirate called Metalbeard; Lego Batman; and many more goofy and heroic Lego characters.

The simple tale is loaded with gleeful pop-culture references and great voice-acting (everyone is in this movie, by the way, from Morgan Freeman and Jonah Hill to Cobie Smulders and Alison Brie). But what makes The Lego Movie even more accessible for viewers above the age of six is the fact that the film is full of political and social satire. The villain is President/Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell), who presides over a totalitarian surveillance state. President Business’ regime creates virtually everything in the Lego society—generic pop music, lousy TV comedy, cameras, rigged voting machines, you name it. The dictator/CEO uses extended televised broadcasts to inform his citizens (with a friendly grin on his face) that they’ll be executed if they disobey. He controls a secret police led by Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson), who is charged with torturing dissidents and rebels.

President Business is the Lego CeauÈ&#153;escu, if you swap the communism for capitalism.

Some of this sounds pretty heavy, but it’s all filtered through the soft, giddy lens of a kids’ movie. Like all other entries into the “kids’ movies that their parents can dig, too!” subgenre of cinema, it’s this thinly-disguised maturity that makes the film both fun and winkingly smart.

UPDATE, February 8, 2014, 12:39 a.m. EST: I missed this earlier, but on Friday, Fox personalities went after The Lego Movie for its allegedly “anti-business” and anti-capitalist message. One says President Business looks a bit like Mitt Romney. Another starts defending Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life (which is just an act of life imitating parody).

This is weird, but not all that different from the Fox reaction to The Muppets and The Lorax. Watch below:

Now check out this trailer for The Lego Movie:

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"The Lego Movie" Is Actually a Satire

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Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

by TammaraMog Posted on February 4, 2014

Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

By

Duke Energy

The Dan River Steam Station during less spilly times.

Retiring a coal power plant in North Carolina wasn’t enough to prevent it from fucking up the environment.

Tens of thousands of tons of coal ash and tens of millions of gallons of polluted water have burst out of Duke Energy’s shuttered Dan River Steam Station, severely soiling the Dan River — a waterway popular with hikers, campers, fishing folks, and recreational boaters. The pollution can be seen miles downstream.

The power plant operated from 1949 until 2012, and the coal ash being stored on site was residue left behind after coal was burned. Coal ash contains poisonous heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, and lead. A state agency and environmentalists have been suing Duke in an effort to force it to clear out 14 such coal-ash dump sites across the state, including the one that just ruptured.

But Duke insisted that its dump sites were safe. Just last month, Duke spokeswoman Erin Culbert told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the utility was monitoring groundwater around its coal-ash storage sites to ensure that its neighbors are protected. She rejected environmentalists’ calls for the coal-ash ponds to be cleaned up. “[S]pecial interest groups rely on emotion, not facts, to advance their mission to phase out coal,” Culbert told the newspaper.

It gets worse.

“We are confident,” Duke’s general manager at the power plant told the EPA in a 2009 letter, “that each of our ash basin dams has the structural integrity necessary to protect the public and the environment.”

We sure hope it felt nice to be so confident about that.

Specifics on the spill are still hard to come by, but it appears that a 48-inch stormwater pipe burst at the power plant, releasing enough ash from a 27-acre storage pond to fill 20 or 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools. According to company estimates, 50,000 to 82,000 tons of ash flowed into the river, along with 24 million to 27 million gallons of tainted water.

The pipe gave way on Sunday, and the company is being criticized for waiting until Monday to tell anybody about the disaster.

Cue inevitable statements from environmentalists about Duke’s utter irresponsibility in allowing this disaster to happen. From the Charlotte Business Journal: 

“This is the latest, loudest alarm bell yet that Duke should not be storing coal ash in antiquated pits near our state’s waterways,” says Frank Holleman, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

He noted that two South Carolina utilities have taken steps to remove coal ash from earthen ponds and called Duke “grossly negligent” for not doing the same.

It’s not like this is the first time such a disaster has happened. After more than a million gallons of coal-ash slurry escaped from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in late 2008, the EPA vowed to craft new regulations to help prevent such disasters from happening again. We’re still waiting for those promised regulations.


Source
Coal ash spills into Dan River from closed Duke Energy plant, Charlotte Business Journal
Broken pipe spills coal ash in Dan River near Eden Read more here, The Associated Press
Groups seek to join Duke coal ash lawsuits, Asheville Citizen Times
Update on Dan River Steam Station ash basin release, Duke Energy

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

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6 Unanswered Questions About Obama’s Drone War

by CathleenZWLM Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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On January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama authorized his first drone strike. The attack, launched against a compound in northwestern Pakistan, killed between 7 and 15 people—but missed the Taliban hideout the Central Intelligence Agency thought it was targeting. Over the next five years, the CIA carried out more than 390 known drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (The agency carried out 51 drone strikes between 2004 and 2009, during the Bush administration.)

Obama made a brief reference to the drone campaign in last week’s State of the Union address, assuring Congress that “I’ve imposed prudent limits on the use of drones.” This wasn’t the first time the president had acknowledged the need for a clear drone policy. Last May, Obama remarked at the National Defense University, “This new technology raises profound questions—about who is targeted, and why.” Yet the answers the administration has provided to these profound questions and the prudent limits it has put in place remain vague.

Here are six major questions about the US drone program that remain unanswered a decade after the first strike:

1. Who’s being targeted?
A declassified summary of the Presidential Policy Guidance states that “the policy of the United States is not to use lethal force when it is feasible to capture.” If capture is feasible, “lethal force will not be proposed or pursued as punishment or as a substitute for prosecuting a terrorist suspect in a civilian court or a military commission.” According to the Obama administration, lethal force can only be used against “Al Qaeda and its associated forces.” Yet as an investigation by McClatchy DC reported last year, the administration has not publicly identified any Al Qaeda-associated forces beyond the Afghan Taliban. McClatchy’s review of top secret US intelligence reports covering most drone strikes in Pakistan between 2006 and 2008 and between 2010 and 2011 showed that “drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence.” More than half of the 482 people killed between September 2010 and September 2011 were not senior Al Qaeda leaders but were “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani, or unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top Al Qaeda leaders in those months.

2. What constitutes an “imminent threat”?
The Presidential Policy Guidance outlines a number of conditions for the use of lethal force, including “a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” According to an undated leaked Department of Justice white paper, defining a target as an “imminent threat” does not “require clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” The ongoing threat of Al Qaeda plots and attacks, the paper explains, “demands a broader concept of imminence.” The DOJ memo argues that the United States should be able “to act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack.” This broad legal definition of “imminent threat” appears to allow the Obama administration to strike at any time.

3. What about signature strikes?
Apart from a kill list of targets, a key feature of the drone war has been the use of signature strikes—presidentially-approved attacks on targets displaying a terrorist “signature,” such as “training camps and suspicious compounds.” The administration has refused to acknowledge the use of these signature strikes or discuss their legal justifications. The CIA does not disclose what criteria it uses to identify a terrorist signature. This particularly challenging to do in the northwest of Pakistan, where militants and civilians may dress alike, and where openly carrying weapons is customary.

4. Does Congress really know what’s going on?
The House and Senate intelligence committees oversee the drone program, however their ability to set limits is severely constrained because the program is classified. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Hill last February, “Right now it is very hard to oversee because it is regarded as a covert activity, so when you see something that is wrong and you ask to be able to address it, you are told no.” The administration has repeatedly denied requests for further information from lawmakers. For instance, since 2011, 21 requests by members of Congress to access Office of Legal Counsel memoranda that provide the legal basis for targeted killings have been denied. The White House also refused to provide witnesses representing the administration at recent Senate and House Judiciary Committee hearings on targeted killings.

5. How are civilian casualties avoided—and counted?
The Presidential Policy Guidance states that lethal strikes may be carried out only with “near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.” However, the Obama administration counts all military-age males killed by drones as militants. That explains why official counts of civilian deaths vary widely from independent counts. While in Sen. Feinstein stated last year that annual civilian casualties from drones fall in the “single digits”, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that total civilian casualties since 2004 in Pakistan alone have ranged from 416 to 951.

6. How does the administration justify the targeting of American citizens?
In September 2011, Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. A secret Department of Justice memo provided the legal justification for targeting an American citizen. The memo, obtained by NBC News, found that it is lawful to use lethal force in a foreign country against an American citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al-Qaeda or an associated force if a high-level official has determined that the individual poses an imminent threat, capture is infeasible, and the operation would be consistent the laws of war.

The memo notes that assassinations of American citizens in this manner are justified as long as civilian casualties aren’t “excessive.” Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also an American, was killed in a separate strike two weeks later. When asked about the legal justification for his death, Obama advisor and former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki “should have (had) a far more responsible father.”

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6 Unanswered Questions About Obama’s Drone War

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Did Congress Just Kill Regulation of Spending By Political Groups?

by EstelaPalfreyma Posted on January 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last week’s budget bill was hurried through before anyone really had a chance to read the hundreds of riders and amendments that got tacked onto it. This was a very deliberate decision. John Boehner may have said that he wished Congress had more time to review the bill, but he knew perfectly well that the main reason for the rush was the fact that the House passed a 3-day continuing resolution after the final text was first posted. There were only three days to look at the bill because that’s what the Republican leadership wanted.

This means that we’ll be discovering cute little buried acorns in this bill for a while, and today Patrick Caldwell digs one up:

One small section could upend the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to regulate political organizations hoping to become nonprofits. Tacked on as a symbolic effort to mollify conservatives’ anti-IRS mania, the text is so overly vague that it could mean the dissolution of longstanding rules. Or nothing at all. No one’s really sure.

….The relevant section is buried on page 439 of the gigantic bill. Just nine lines long and 68 words, the two clauses say money designated for the IRS cannot be used to “target citizens of the United States for exercising any right guaranteed under the first Amendment” or to target “groups for regulatory scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs.”

….All of the tax experts reached by Mother Jones were mystified by the use of the word “target,” an unusual term to be applied to the IRS. “I’m not even sure what targeting means,” says Owens.

This is obviously a sop to tea partiers, who continue to be obsessed by the idea that the IRS “targeted” them unfairly in 2010. The real scandal, of course, wasn’t the fact that tea party groups got some scrutiny, but the fact that more groups don’t get scrutiny. The law pretty clearly limits the tax exemption of groups that are directly engaged in political activity, and it ought to be applied to far more groups than it is now. That includes tea party groups, virtually all of which were created specifically to engage in political activity.

But now that law is in conflict with a hastily written provision that forbids “targeting” any groups for engaging in free speech. If courts interpret that as forbidding the IRS from going after groups engaged in political advocacy, it could upend campaign finance law in the United States.

Or maybe not. But you can rest assured that this will be coming to a court near you sometime soon.

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Did Congress Just Kill Regulation of Spending By Political Groups?

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Chris Christie Will Not Be the 45th President of the United States

by SherlynHa Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Earlier today I argued that the messaging wars over Bridgegate don’t matter very much. What matters are the facts. If it turns out that Chris Christie really played no role in the lane closures, he’ll probably survive. But if evidence surfaces that he knew more than he’s letting on, he’s doomed.

Via Twitter, Jonathan Bernstein disagreed: “Facts matter, but so do interpretations.” I sort of lamely responded by saying that I never really thought Christie had a serious chance at the presidency anyway. So really, neither facts nor interpretation will make much difference. He’s not going to be the 45th president of the United States.

But why? Jonathan Chait provides part of the argument:

There are now two ongoing investigations into alleged abuses of power, each of which is potentially fatal. Even if neither produces further damaging allegations, they both have already yielded enough public information to be used against him. Beyond that, there is a long list of potential scandals dating back to before his governorship. The odds that any one of them develops into something indictable are high.

And they’re not just high in the mathematical sense that a person who gets shot at a bunch of times is more likely to be hit by a bullet. They’re high because the high number of scandals surrounding Christie, and the pattern of gleefully using his power to punish his foes, suggests that at least some of the allegations against him are true. The odds of any scandal striking pay dirt are not mathematically independent. The deeper problem is simply that Christie appears to be genuinely corrupt on a scale that is rare for a modern top-tier presidential candidate.

The scandals don’t kill Christie’s chance in the sense that Republican voters will read the news stories and decide irrevocably they can never vote for the man. The way it works is to create a series of liabilities that his opponents can easily exploit: regional (an untrustworthy Northeastern political boss), personal (the traitor who hugged President Obama and thereby handed him the election), and ideological (gun-controlling, Obamacare-surrendering moderate.)

Yep. Here’s my nickel list of why I’ve never thought Christie can win either the Republican nomination or—in the unlikely event he does—the presidency:

He’s very, very attackable. The ads practically write themselves. Neither his fellow Republicans nor his eventual Democratic opponent will be shy about exploiting this.
He’s fat. I know that’s not fair, but it’s not fair that Obama is black or Hillary is a woman, either. It’s a liability regardless of whether it’s fair.
His bullying of random citizens can seem vaguely like a breath of fresh air when you see it occasionally and from a distance. But if you see it up close, all the time—as you will during a presidential campaign—it won’t wear well.
He has too many non-conservative positions. Mitt Romney did too, and even though he spent years disowning his earlier self and prostrating himself to the tea party, conservatives still never really trusted him. Christie isn’t the kind of guy who’s even willing to do that much, and that means the Republican base will be even less inclined to trust him.

I could see Christie winning if the country were undergoing some kind of horrific disaster, like the Great Depression. In a case like that, it’s possible that Americans would just want someone who’d kick all the right asses and wouldn’t much care about the other stuff. But 2016 seems likely to be a fairly ordinary year, with a decent economy and no huge foreign crises. If that’s how it turns out, I have a hard time seeing how Christie manages to win.

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Chris Christie Will Not Be the 45th President of the United States

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Shadowy Wisconsin Group That Helped Scott Walker Win His Recall Was Backed by the Koch Network

by DeenaBumg Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Days before Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s June 2012 recall election, two TV ads ran on stations statewide. Paid for by a group called the Coalition for American Values (CAV), the ads attacked the very notion of holding a recall election (even though it’s in the state constitution) and featured supposed Wisconsin citizens speaking out against the recall. “I didn’t vote for Scott Walker, but I’m definitely against the recall,” one man says. In another ad, the narrator says, “Recall isn’t the Wisconsin way…End the recall madness. Vote for Scott Walker June 5th.”

CAV put $400,000 behind those ads, which stoked a sense of unease about the recall among Wisconsin voters. Walker coasted to a seven-point victory. Exit polls strongly suggested that CAV’s ads played a part in the governor’s win. Yet the mystery surrounding the Coalition for American Values persisted. The group never disclosed how much it spent, how much it raised, or who funded it.

Until now. As first reported by the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy, new tax filings reveal that the main source of CAV’s funding was the Center to Protect Patient Rights, an Arizona nonprofit that gave CAV $510,000 in 2012. CPPR is a linchpin in a network of nonprofit groups Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists, use to shuffle money around the country while keeping donors anonymous. California’s Fair Political Practices Commission identified the group as “the key nonprofit in the Koch Brothers’ dark money network of nonprofit corporations,” and hit the group and a related nonprofit with a $1 million fine for failing to disclose donations made during the 2012 election season. All told, CPPR doled out $156 million in dark money in 2011 and 2012, a sizable chunk of the $407 million moved by the Kochs’ network of nonprofit groups.

Run by a onetime Koch operative named Sean Noble, CPPR is expected to play less of a role in the Koch network going forward. The California investigation—which revealed the identities of hundreds of previously secret donors and private marketing material used by Republican operatives—brought unwanted scrutiny to the Kochs and their conservative and libertarian allies. An October 2012 Huffington Post story reported that Noble, the former “the wizard behind the screen” for the Kochs, had fallen out of favor. “Noble has had his wings clipped,” one Republican operative told HuffPost.

The Center for Media and Democracy says it has filed a formal complaint with Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board alleging that the Coalition for American Values violated state campaign finance laws by not disclosing its CPPR funding. A message left at the phone number listed on CAV’s website was not returned.

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Shadowy Wisconsin Group That Helped Scott Walker Win His Recall Was Backed by the Koch Network

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14 Haunting Portraits of Life After Nuclear Disaster

by bt88jtv Posted on December 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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If you lived near Chernobyl or Fukushima, would you stay?

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant changed history, sending radiation and political shockwaves across Europe. Radioactive fallout contaminated 56,700 square miles of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, a region larger than New York state.

A generation later in Japan, on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and the tsunami it triggered brought on multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the initial fires, Fukushima released ten to thirty percent as much radiation as Chernobyl, contaminating some 4,500 square miles of Japan—nearly the area of Connecticut. Radioactive water continues to leak from the Fukushima plant to this day.

To the world, Chernobyl and Fukushima seem like dangerous places, but for the people who live there, that danger is simply a fact of life.

In my photography, I explore the human consequences of environmental contamination. I am interested in questions about home: how do people cope when their homeland changes irreversibly? Why do so many stay?

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14 Haunting Portraits of Life After Nuclear Disaster

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