Posted by FreedomPrefered on 10/26/09
Last updated 10/26/09

Swine Flu Pandemic?

The government is considering mandatory flu shots. Could this be due to drug company lobbyists?

Why are Flu Shot Ingredients not required to be listed?

1. Chicken Embryos
2. Live Flu Virus
3. Ether
4. Detergent
5. Formaldehyde
6. Mercury

The United States contains only 4.5% of the World's population. If only 1,100 people Worldwide have died from the Swine Flu and 36,000 people, (in America Alone) die from the Regular Flu every year, then how can the Swine Flu be considered a Pandemic. Maybe the Flu by itself is not an effective enough "Depopulator" for Elitist Standards.

U.S. Population: 307,789,900
World Population: 6,793,025,081

(CNN) -- More than 1,100 people worldwide have died from swine flu since it emerged in Mexico and the U.S. in April, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.

Center for Disease Control: Regular Flu Kills 36,000 Americans Every Year

Posted 10/26/09 illuminati hater Las Vegas, NV

That's not all. In New York alone, the seasonal flu kills 2,000 people almost annually. A single state has triumphed what the swine flu has done worldwide. So much for the pandemic.

Posted 10/26/09 illuminati hater Las Vegas, NV

If people want to know more: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=26542

Posted by FreedomPrefered on 10/25/09
Last updated 10/26/09

Testimony of Jeff Ruch
PEER Executive Director

"Improving Information Quality in the Federal Government"

Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs
House Committee on Government Reform

July 20, 2005
Good morning. My name is Jeff Ruch and I am the Executive Director of Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
PEER is a service organization dedicated to protecting those who protect our
environment. PEER provides federal, state, local and tribal employees dedicated to
ecologically responsible management with a safe, collective and credible voice for
expressing concerns. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., PEER has a network of ten
state and regional offices. Most of our staff and board are former public employees who
left public service after experiencing ethical conflicts within their former agencies.
On a daily basis, public employees in crisis contact PEER. In our D.C. office alone, we
average five "intakes" per day. A typical intake involves a scientist or other specialist
who is asked to shade or distort the truth in order to reach a pre-determined result, such as
a favorable recommendation on a project or approval; of commercial release of a new
chemical.
From PEER's perspective, the federal government is suffering from a severe
disinformation syndrome. The level of official dissembling from federal environmental
and resource agencies has never been worse.
Today, I will outline the dimensions of this disinformation syndrome, trace some of the
dynamics that drive this syndrome, examine the slight effectiveness and profound
weaknesses of one tool, the Information Quality Act, and recommend key remedial steps.

I. The Disinformation Syndrome
The cases that PEER sees increasingly involve agencies manipulating scientific or other
technical conclusions to fit a preset political agenda. Moreover, as detailed below,
employees who try to expose falsehoods often lose their careers while managers who
deliberately sanction official falsehoods more often than not are rewarded or promoted
and are rarely, if ever, punished. Admittedly, the employees who seek out PEER are a self-selected sample. Employees come to PEER to report dysfunctions or retaliation. In that respect, PEER sometimes resembles a battered staff shelter. Scores of individual cases do not necessarily represent an overall agency culture. As a means of obtaining a broader perspective for determining how intense and widespread these pressures have become, PEER, in partnership with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), has undertaken a series of surveys of federal
agency scientists. I believe that the results should be of interest to the Subcommittee.
This past February, we released the results of a survey of biologists, ecologists, botanists
and other science professionals working in U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS)
Ecological Services field offices across the country The survey posed 42 questions that
had been selected by a committee of current and former agency staff to gauge current
perceptions of scientific integrity within the USFWS, as well as political interference,
resources and morale. Despite agency directives not to reply-even on their own time-
nearly 30% of all the scientists returned surveys yielding the following results:

• Nearly half of all respondents whose work is related to endangered species scientific
findings (44%) reported that they "have been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to
refrain from making jeopardy or other findings that are protective of species;"

• One in five agency scientists revealed they have been instructed to compromise their
scientific integrity-reporting that they have been "directed to inappropriately
exclude or alter technical information from a USFWS scientific document;"

• More than half of all respondents (56%) reported cases where "commercial interests
have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or
decisions through political intervention;" and

• More than a third (42%) said they could not openly express "concerns about the
biological needs of species and habitats without fear of retaliation" in public while
nearly a third (30%) felt they could not do so even inside the confines of the agency.
Almost a third (32%) felt they are not allowed to do their jobs as scientists.
In essays submitted on the topic of how to improve the integrity of scientific work at
USFWS, one biologist wrote, "We are not allowed to be honest and forthright, we are
expected to rubber stamp everything. I have 20 years of federal service in this and this is
the worst it has ever been." By far, the most frequent concern raised by the scientists in
the written responses was political interference.
A number of the essays spoke to the climate of fear within the agency. One biologist in
Alaska wrote, "Recently, [Department of Interior] officials have forced changes in
Service documents, and worse, they have forced upper-level managers to say things that
are incorrect...It's one thing for the Department to dismiss our recommendations, it's
quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is
counter our best professional judgment."
One manager wrote, "There is a culture of fear of retaliation in mid-level management. If
the manager were to speak out for resources, they fear loss of jobs or funding for their
programs." And a biologist from the Pacific region added that the only "hope [to correct
the record is that] we get sued by an environmental or conservation organization."
These results strongly suggest that political science, not biology, has become the
dominant discipline in today's Fish & Wildlife Service. While political pressures within
Fish & Wildlife Service have been particularly intense, especially on issues relating to
threatened and endangered species, we do not believe that this agency is unique with
regard to manipulation of scientific information.
This past June, PEER and UCS released the results of a similar survey of scientists within
the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. While NOAA
Fisheries resides within a completely different Cabinet agency, the results paralleled
those from within the Interior Department:

• A strong majority (58%) said they know of cases in which high-level Commerce
Department appointees or managers "have inappropriately altered NOAA
Fisheries determinations;"

• More than one third of respondents working on such issues (37%) have "been
directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are
protective" of marine life;

• Nearly one in four (24%) of those conducting such work reported being "directed
to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a NOAA Fisheries
scientific document;" and

• More than half of all respondents (53%) are aware of cases in which "commercial
interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of NOAA
Fisheries scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention."
In essays submitted on the topic of how to improve the integrity of scientific work at the
agency, once again the predominant concern raised by the scientists was political
interference. One biologist wrote, "It seems that we are encouraged to think too much
about the consequences and how to get around them, rather than just basing our
recommendations on the best available data." Another added, " . . . it is not uncommon
to be directed to not communicate debates in writing. I have also seen written documents
that include internal discussions/debate purposefully omitted from administrative records
with no valid reasoning."
In both USFWS and NOAA Fisheries, official spokespersons dismissed these results and
suggested that the survey methodology was flawed. Notwithstanding the fact that
hundreds of agency scientists reported scientific manipulation, neither agency deemed it
valuable to explore the matter further. These official responses only reinforce the
perceptions that debate, let alone dissent, is unwelcome within the federal ranks,
particularly among scientists who come from disciplines that are supposed to value
disputation and rigorous examination.
While we know of few official surveys on precisely these topics, those that we do know
about produced outcomes that paralleled the results produced by the PEER/UCS surveys.
A previously unpublished internal survey of Food and Drug Administration scientists,
that PEER obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, closely tracks the concerns
raised by the agency's own Associate Director for Science and Medicine in the Office of
Drug Safety, Dr. David Graham, in testimony before the Senate this past November.
The Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General conducted the survey in late
2002 as part of a management review of how the agency was meeting stringent deadlines
for approving new drugs. OIG polled 846 FDA scientists, with nearly half (47%)
completing the survey. Survey findings included the following:

• Nearly one in five scientists (18%) said that they "have been pressured to approve
or recommend approval" for a drug "despite reservations about the safety,
efficacy or quality of the drug;"

• Less than one third of scientists (29%) felt that the "work environment" at FDA
allowed wide leeway for "expressions of differing scientific opinions related to"
new drug application decisions, while 21% said the work environment offered
little or no room for dissent, with fully half (50%) answering that scientific dissent
was allowed only "to some extent"; and

• Less than one in five (17%) felt the agency had "adequate procedures in place to
address scientific disagreements" to a "great extent," while 45% felt adequate
procedures existed only to "some extent" and more than a third (38%) said
procedures for resolving dissent existed only to a "small extent" or "not at all."

II. Factors Driving the Disinformation Syndrome
In PEER's view, three major factors are contributing to the declining state of truthfulness
in federal agencies:

1. Whistleblowers Lack Adequate Legal Protection
The House Government Reform Committee is currently reviewing legislation to
strengthen the distressingly weak Whistleblower Protection Act. I will not reiterate that
discussion in this testimony except to note that scientists who raise concerns about the
quality of studies or the validity of findings often have no legal protection at all.
In the federal civil service, scientists have little protection against reprisal for delivering
accurate but politically inconvenient findings. For example, the practice of "good
science" is not recognized as protected activity under the federal Whistleblower
Protection Act, unless 1) the scientist is reporting a falsification that violates a law or
regulation; or 2) the scientific manipulation itself creates an imminent danger to public
health and safety.
Absent those unusual circumstances, a disclosure of a skewed methodology or
suppression of key data is treated as if it were a policy dispute, for which the disclosing
scientist has no legal protection or standing.
In 2003, nearly half of the federal civilian workforce lost traditional civil service
protections (in the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense). In these agencies,
the emerging management regime resembles a private sector, at-will employment system.
Scientists in these agencies can easily be fired, de-funded, transferred or otherwise
redirected simply because the results of their scientific work cause political displeasure.
The only body of law that protects government scientists is the handful of environmental
statutes, including the federal Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, that protect disclosures
made by any employee, public or private sector, that further the implementation of those
acts. Scientific disclosures falling outside of these eight laws, however, lack similar legal
protection.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has introduced a bill that wiould prohibit political tampering
or censorship of government science and protect scientists who blow the whistle on
abuses. The bill is a companion to the House "Restore Scientific Integrity" bill
introduced earlier this year by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN).

2. Agencies Reward Lack of Truthfulness
The other side of the whistleblower coin is the fabrication on which the whistle is being
blown. In PEER's experience, it is rare that agency fabricators are ever punished. To the
contrary, it is common for official fabricators to be rewarded and promoted. In the U.S.
Forest Service, the phrase describing this phenomenon is "Screw up and move up."
The reason behind this perverse dynamic seems evident: managers who dissemble to
achieve a pre-determined result are simply doing the bidding of the agency's top political
appointees. To convey just how widespread this "lie to succeed" culture has become in
federal service, consider the example of the Forest Service. Successful environmental
litigation against the Forest Service usually revolves around an agency action that a
federal court has found to be "arbitrary and capricious" or "lacking a rational basis."
Thus, in order for a non-profit group to prevail against the government in a challenge
under statutes like the Endangered Species Act or the National Environmental Policy Act,
that group, in essence, must show that the government is proceeding on almost a
complete absence of factual basis. The way these small non-profit groups successfully
meet this heaviest of burdens in civil jurisprudence is by demonstrating that the agency
falsified its own scientific record, ignored its own specialists, and produced a decision
document or finding that gets laughed out of court.
How often does this happen? In the Forest Service it happens about once every two
weeks. According to an internal memo obtained by PEER, the Forest Service lost 44
court cases during the past two years in which the agency was found guilty of violating
environmental laws by a federal court. The list of 44 cases, covering the period 2003 and
2004 fiscal years, is limited to cases where the court found both that the Forest Service
violated the law and that its position could not be "substantially justified." In those
instances, the agency was ordered to pay the attorneys fees of the environmental group
bringing the lawsuit. As a result, the Forest Service has made payments to environmental
groups totaling $2.2 million over the last two years.
The agency figures point to a growing rate of court rulings against the agency, with 27
adverse rulings in FY 04 and 17 adverse rulings in FY 03. An online search of federal
court decisions in cases where the Forest Service was a defendant showed 10 adverse
rulings in 2002 and only 4 in 2001. The totals for prior years were even smaller with the
highest total for any year going back to 1994 being 3 adverse rulings. The list of 44 cases
understates the extent of violations by the Forest Service in that it does not include cases
that were settled by the agency in order to avoid adverse rulings. Nor does it include
cases that were thrown out on technical grounds even though substantive environmental
violations occurred.
More disturbing than the rulings is that, to our knowledge, not a single Forest Service
manager was transferred, disciplined or suffered any discernible negative career
consequences for committing deliberate environmental violations where a federal court
found that the agency official acted in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In other words, the Forest Service appears to reward its line managers for breaking the
law.

3. Congressional and Other External Oversight Has Diminished
With unfortunately very few exceptions, Congressional scrutiny of the quality of
information disseminated, used or relied upon by federal agencies is in marked decline.
Without going into the reasons for the lack of willingness or ability of Congressional
committees to act as a meaningful check on incorrect information issued by the Executive
Branch, suffice it say that agency whistleblowers who approach committees with cases of
misinformation face long odds of success - or survival.
Outside of Congress, a federal employee may approach the U.S. Office of Special
Counsel. Sadly, the performance of this office has been far less than special, especially
of late. According to the figures released by Special Counsel Scott Bloch, in the past year
the Office of Special Counsel dismissed or otherwise disposed of 600 whistleblower
disclosures where civil servants have reported waste, fraud, threats to public safety and
violations of law (100 disclosures are still pending). The Special Counsel has yet to
announce a single case in which he has ordered an investigation into the employee's
charges.
To put those numbers in perspective, in 700 cases where federal employees reported
fraud or abuse from 2000 through 2003, none have moved forward. There are no official
reports of what, if any, action occurred as a result of employee whistleblower disclosures
in 2004 and 2005. It seems that a federal employee would have better chances of
winning the Powerball lottery than of getting a problem redressed by the Office of
Special Counsel.
Lastly, there is the agency Inspector General. The "IGs," however, are under no
compulsion to investigate complaints of false or fraudulent agency documents, even
when an agency employee makes a formal complaint. If it decides to investigate, an IG is
under no deadline to finish a report, and some investigative reports are kept in draft or
un-releasable status for years. Moreover, an IG can reframe the issue it decides to
investigate and report back on a question that is not the focus of the original complaint.
PEER has seen instances where employees who make complaints to an IG themselves
become the subject of the IG investigation. Further, on technical or scientific questions,
the IG often does not have the resident expertise to undertake an inquiry. And finally,
even if the IG identifies a false or fraudulent study or record, it has no power to do more
than recommend its correction.
Consequently, a federal employee who seeks to correct an incorrect federal document,
especially on any matter of political import, faces daunting odds.

III. Pros and Cons of the Information Quality Act
1. Overview
In 2000, Congress enacted a provision commonly referred to as the Data Quality Act or
the Information Quality Act (IQA). It was enacted without hearings as part of an
omnibus measure (Section 515 of the FY 2001 Treasury and General Government
Appropriations Act; PL106-554). Today's hearing, five years after the fact, is, I believe,
the first Congressional hearing on the IQA.
The IQA directed the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish
government-wide standards in the form of guidelines designed to maximize the "quality,"
"objectivity," "utility," and "integrity" of information that Federal agencies disseminate
to the public. The Act also required agencies to develop their own conforming data
quality guidelines, based upon the OMB model.
I believe I was invited to testify today because PEER is one of the few non-industry
organizations to make use of the IQA. PEER has used the IQA to assist federal scientists
seeking to stop their agencies from perpetuating a fraud. We think other progressive and
public interest organizations should be using the IQA. Perhaps, this is a distinctly
minority viewpoint among organizations in which PEER is commonly in coalition. As
stated earlier, PEER is a service organization for public employees; as such, we do not
feel that we have the luxury of using only laws that are considered politically correct in
seeking to help our clients.
In the handful of scientific challenges where we have employed the IQA, no better
procedural avenue presented itself to achieve the results sought by our employee clients.

Compared to the other avenues of oversight described above, the IQA has certain
advantages:
1. It allows the scientist/complainant to frame precisely the grounds for rescinding,
removing or disclaiming a particular document or study;
2. The agency rules require it to respond within a time certain. In some instances,
the agency reply is the first time the agency will have gone on record in response
to the issue raised in the complaint;
3. If the agency rejects the challenge, the rules allow the complainant to appeal;
4. The appeal is usually decided by officials not involved in the issuance of the
document that is the subject of the complaint; and
5. The entire exchange of complaint, response, appeal and final decision is a matter
of public record.

2. Weaknesses of the IQA
In PEER's assessment, the IQA is better than nothing, but only slightly.
The frailties of the IQA reflect the fact that it was a last minute rider stuck onto an
omnibus bill with no hearings or debate. The Act reflects the drafting of corporate
authors who apparently viewed the mechanism of an IQA challenge as a way to monkey
wrench regulation. Presumably, this is why the principal users of the IQA have thus far
been industry groups.
Notwithstanding this usage pattern, the IQA is a weak law that essentially consists of a
process to formally request that an agency correct itself. As detailed below, the Act has
no teeth, requires no consistency and lacks follow-through mechanisms to ensure that the
same "mistake" does not recur.

A. Requires the Violator to Discipline Itself
A classic example of how meaningless the IQA is to federal operations can be found the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In PEER's experience, no agency is more anathema to
requirements that its studies display "quality," "objectivity," and "integrity" than the
Corps. Unsurprisingly, the Corps has not even adopted IQA rules. An IQA challenge
against a Corps document must be filed with the Department of Defense.
Just last week, the House of Representatives passed Water Resources Development
legislation authorizing an estimated $2.5 billion in new construction to accommodate
barge traffic on the Upper Mississippi River and the Illinois Waterway.
In 2000, the Corps economist for this project, Dr. Donald Sweeney, filed a whistleblower
disclosure saying top commanders had altered key numbers in an effort to "cook the
books" so that the project would appear justified. A Pentagon investigation upheld the
whistleblower and two generals were disciplined. In the wake of that scandal, the Corps
announced a "restructured" study. But at the heart of the restructured study are economic
models that have been severely criticized by three separate panels of the National
Academy of Sciences and even by President Bush's OMB.

In 2003, PEER filed an IQA complaint that the Corps ignored. The Corps also ignored
the appeal that PEER filed for lack of responsiveness. After several months, PEER filed
a complaint in federal district court which we abandoned after the Corps issued a new but
equally flawed successor draft to its Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway
Navigation System Study.
Despite the scandal and the cascade of critical reports, the House overwhelmingly
defeated an amendment to make the project authorization contingent on reliable
information indicating future growth in barge traffic.
If Congress repeatedly demonstrates that it does not care about the quality of information
that the Executive agencies serves to it, no tinkering with the IQA will make a difference.

B. No Consistency Required
The experience with the Corps demonstrates that some agencies completely ignore the
IQA. Other agencies, however, are at least going through the motions of compliance.
PEER has filed two IQA complaints with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, each
producing completely dissimilar results.
In May 2003, PEER charged that USFWS relied on false information when it determined
that Rocky Mountain trumpeter swans do not constitute a distinct population segment,
thereby blocking an effort to protect the rare swans under the Endangered Species Act.
The previous January the Service published a 90-day Finding in response to a lawsuit
seeking to designate the Tri-state Population of trumpeter swans as a Distinct Population
Segment. The finding concluded that there was no "substantial information" to justify a
listing. More to the point, the finding also allowed the agency to authorize swan hunters
in Utah to shoot trumpeters, which had previously been protected.
In order to support this finding, the Service produced and relied primarily on a previously
unpublished study that directly contradicted decades of biological understanding of the
Tri-state Population. The PEER complaint detailed how the study failed to meet the most
basic standards of the Information Quality Act:

• While the IQA requires that the Service rely on peer-reviewed studies, the
primary basis of the finding had never been evaluated, or even read, by trumpeter
swan experts;

• The study omitted important available data that contradicted the authors' thesis;
and

• The authors used politically driven language and sweeping generalizations that
were not supported by data.

In fact, the study's lead author complained that the Service distorted her conclusions. In a
March 7, 2003 letter to USFWS Director Steve Williams, biologist Ruth Shea argued that
the Service "wrongly cites" the study "while omitting any mention of that report's real
conclusion."
The PEER complaint asked that the Interior Department remove the original 90-day
Finding. The agency initially rejected the complaint and PEER appealed.
This was to be the very first appeal under IQA that USFWS handled. Per its rules, the
agency empanelled three scientists who had not been involved in the trumpeter swan
decision to review the matter. In November 2003, the panel issued a recommendation in
PEER's favor. That recommendation sat on the desk of then-Director Steve Williams
until March of the next year.
In a one-page letter dated March 26, 2004, Director Williams overruled his scientific
panel and rejected PEER's appeal. Williams did not explain his reasons, nor did the IQA
require him to do so.
Nonetheless, the Director ordered the challenged agency's work to undergo a "peer
review process." In other words, Mr. Williams ruled the data was not broken but that he
would fix it right away.
Soon thereafter, another organization filed a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act to
force a federal listing of the trumpeter in Greater Yellowstone. Due to the lawsuit, the
agency shelved even the Pyrrhic peer review that it had promised.
Less than two months later, PEER filed a second IQA complaint with USFWS. This
complaint was filed jointly with PEER by one of the agency's own scientists. It charged
that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service was knowingly using flawed science in assessing
the habitat and population of the endangered Florida panther. Studies relied upon by FWS
to make decisions about proposed development in Southwest Florida inflated panther
population and inaccurately minimized habitat needs.

The principal problems cited by the complaint included -

• Equating daytime habitat use patterns (when the panther is at rest) with nighttime
habitat use patterns (when the panther is most active);

• Assuming that all known panthers are breeding adults, discounting juvenile, aged
and ill animals; and

• Using population estimates, reproductive rates, and kitten survival rates not
supported by field data.

That summer, the agency rejected the complaint and PEER and the USFWS scientist
appealed. In November, USFWS fired our co-complainant, Andrew Eller, Jr., an 18-year
biologist, who had spent the past ten years working in the Florida panther recovery
program.
As with the trumpeter swan challenge, the agency created a three-scientist panel to
review the appeal. Again, the panel found in our favor. This time, Director Williams
agreed with the panel. In a letter dated March 16, 2005, Williams formally conceded that
his agency had been using flawed science in assessing the habitat and population of the
endangered Florida panther and ordered the Southeastern Regional Office to effectuate
the requested relief.
This seeming victory was mitigated by several factors. Just ten days earlier Director
Williams indicated he would resign. His letter to PEER about the IQA decision was
formally released on the Monday morning following his very sudden departure. I highly
doubt that if the same decision were before Matt Hogan, the acting USFWS Director, or
even Dale Hall, who President Bush just nominated to serve as the next Director, the
decision would have been the same.
Moreover, on the day that it was released, the USFWS Southeastern Regional Office held
a press conference in which it announced that not one single decision or biological review
would change as a result of the decision. So, despite an admission of that its key
population and habitat assessment measures were significantly inaccurate, the agency
intends to continue approving mega-developments in the shrinking, tattered habitat of the
endangered Florida panther without skipping a beat.
As of today, the USFWS still has not delivered the relief sought by the IQA complaint.
Instead, according to a statement on the Southeastern Regional Office website, they hope
to have a revised document ready for comment on December 31, 2005.
Despite the IQA decision that vindicated him, the USFWS did not reinstate Andy Eller.
Eller was finally restored to his former pay-grade in a settlement that PEER reached with
the agency in late June 2005.
To our knowledge, no responsible official was ever disciplined. Instead, the central
official in the affair has reportedly received a Meritorious Service Award.

C. No Enforcement Mechanism
As the foregoing discussion illustrates, nothing in the IQA forces the agency to
implement the corrective action that it promises in any sort of timely fashion. Even in
cases where the agency has issued disclaimers, there is little to prevent the agency from
continuing to base decisions on the disclaimed documents.
In short, the IQA produces meaningful relief only if the agency feels like giving it.

IV. Recommendations
The underlying problem is one of corruption - intellectual corruption where heads are
turned the other way so long as disinformation delivers the desired result. This
corruption is fed by ideology more than money. In this sense, the federal government
today is thoroughly corrupt.
The most important measures for cleaning up the corruption and improving the quality of
information in the federal government have little to do with the IQA. The following three
simple steps would go a long way, in our judgment, to increasing the factual content of
official documents:

1. Stop Punishing Civil Servants for Telling the Truth
As laws are written and implemented currently, the fact that a public servant was trying
to stop his or her agency from lying is almost no defense.
We have lost sight of the fact that federal employees work for the taxpayer, not a
particular bureau or department. Civil servants work within agencies not for agencies
and owe their ultimate allegiance to the public.
As the case of U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers amply illustrates, agencies are
aggressively punishing their employees for telling the truth without permission. In the
Chambers case, the Interior Department has made up a new undefined category of
"sensitive" information, the disclosure of which will result in termination. The resulting
chill on candor even has a name: "the Chambers Effect."
Last August, the U.S. Department of Interior Office of Inspector General published a
survey in which it found that agency workers live within in a "culture of fear" where
"hatchet people" mete out punishment based on office politics. The Inspector General
sent its survey out to more than 25,000 employees, including supervisors, human
resource managers and lawyers, in agencies such as the National Park Service, Bureau of
Land Management and the Fish & Wildlife Service. Nearly 40% of those who received
surveys responded, with key results including-

• More than one quarter of staff fear retaliation for reporting problems;

• A solid majority do not see the disciplinary system as being fairly administered on
a consistent basis; and

• Nearly half believe that discipline is taken on the basis of whom the person knows
rather than what they did.
The federal workforce is literally scared to death. There can be no hope of improving the
quality of federal agency information if the specialists within the agencies face
termination if they dare to try.

2. Congress Should Stop Being Content With Being Lied To
If agencies can lie with impunity to Congress, why should they be expected to tell anyone
else the truth?
During the past several months there have been instances where scientists and other
experts were constrained from communicating findings directly to Congress. The most
prominent instance involved Richard Foster, the Medicare actuary who was ordered
under threat of termination not to reveal that the Bush Administration's prescription drug
benefit plan would cost an additional $150 billion over previous estimates. A deceived
Congress narrowly passed a huge bill, the true implications of which are only now being
realized.
In its subsequent review of that case, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) opined
that the restrictions on Foster violated prohibitions against interfering with the
communication by a federal employee to Congress (Lloyd Lafollette Act, 5 U.S.C. §
7211 and § 618 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005, PL 108-477). The
Government Accountability Office came to a similar conclusion.
The problem was what to do about this blatant violation of the right to communicate with
Congress. A review of those prohibitions shows that Congress envisioned the denial of
appropriated funds for such violations but Congress failed to provide a means for
invoking that sanction. Without a way to enforce it, the law becomes merely a rhetorical
prop.
Members of Congress were reduced to asking then HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to
withhold the salary of one of his top deputies. Not surprisingly, Secretary Thompson
demurred.
PEER would suggest that Congress allow for citizen suits to recover appropriated funds
misused in restricting communication directly from the salaries paid to officials who
violate this law. This somewhat personal sanction would yield a very public benefit.

3. Government Officials Should Be Held Responsible When They Lie or
Deliberately Disregard the Truth
Under Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate CEOs are held personally responsible for the annual
reports that they sign. This notion should be expanded to include federal officials as well.
At the very least, in cases where federal courts have issued adverse rulings based upon an
agency's arbitrary and capricious action, the responsible official should actually be held
responsible, in the form of a disciplinary action that would be a permanent part of his or
her personnel record.
Why would Congress want to reward, promote and honor officials who violate the very
statutes that they are sworn to uphold? Today, such officials have a much better chance
of career advancement than those who insist on following the law.
Until the time that there is more than a remote chance of some personal, negative career
accountability for approving official documents that do not pass even minimal litmus test
of reliability and accuracy, Congress should have no expectation that the quality of
federal agency data will improve.

V. Conclusion
While certain members of the Subcommittee may be more interested in strengthening the
provisions of the IQA, such actions would have marginal impact, at best. Making the
IQA subject to the Administrative Procedure Act, and thus subject to judicial review,
would help curb some arbitrary agency decisions. It would not address the fundamental
problems, however.
When your rowboat has a hole in the bottom, having a bigger bucket will help you bail
water faster, but even with the new, big bucket, you will still sink. Similarly, a stronger
IQA in the absence of steps that protect those who tell the truth and punish those who lie
will not keep one's head above a deluge of disinformation.
Thank you for this invitation to testify.
###

Posted by FreedomPrefered on 08/10/09

Hello Folks,
Because of the Cabalistic Control of American oil reserves and of the U.S. Senate, our oil reserves lie dormant, while we have the Largest reserves the Entire World. This story is separate from the Gull Island discovery in Prudoe Bay, Alaska (first released by Reverend Lindesy Williams), if you are familiar with that news. Following this story, I will disclose other unbelievable but true energy information such as Plama Arc Energy from Garbage and Anything into Oil, not that we need this additional energy since General Motors filed bankruptcy rather than produce their Opel Eco Speedster with a top speed of 155 mph and average 113 mpg at 143 mph average, that they have had since their 2002 24 hour race in Paris, France:

This is an article that my friend from the Oil and gas Industry just sent me...

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report ( hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota ; western South Dakota ; and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels..
Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years.' reports, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.'
And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada .
For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago.
However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for2041 years straight.

2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy........WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entir e Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again!
It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?
Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you're thinking about it .... and hopefully P.O'd, do this:

3. Pass this along. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you
should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices ..
because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain.
--------
Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book.
By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!!
GOOGLE it or follow this link. It will blow your mind.
h
ttp://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroo
m/article.asp?ID=1911

--------------------
Regards

Arpad Ujvarosy

IN MEMORIUM
-Marika Ujvarosy - Nagyon szeretlek Anyu (1931-2008)
-Barry Kilbourn - R.I.P. my Brother (1959-2007)
-Walt Poddubny - R.I.P. (1960-2009)

Garbage or Pure Energy

Plasma arc waste disposal

While citizens have been disappearing for decades after inventing better carburetors or cars that run on Tap or Sea Water, now comes 100% Clean Energy for our homes from, you guessed it, your garbage. And I mean all of your garbage. The end of Landfills as you know them. Millions upon Millions of homes will be powered by passing ground up garbage past a high voltage arc of electricity turning all of the garbage into Elemental Plasma and Synthesis Gas for 100% pure Energy Generation. Energy Solutions like these are the reason that International Banker and Oil Elites know that they have to hurry to Complete their New World Order to stop from having a Utopian Society and replace it with a Satanic Despotic Future. Enjoy more truth below on Plasma Arc Waste Disposal:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage

http://science.howstuffworks.com/plasma-converter.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal

http://www.startech.net/plasma.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2002/06/17/story4.html

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-09-10-vaporized-garbage_x
.htm

http://www.plascon.com.au/

http://www.recoveredenergy.com/d_plasma.html

http://www.pyrogenesis.com/content_en/technologies/overview.asp

http://www.zerowasteottawa.com/en/About-Project/

http://www.juniper.co.uk/services/Our_services/plasma.html

Anything into Oil

DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 (May 2003)
Anything into Oil
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year
By Brad Lemley
Photography by Tony Law

Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil.

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil.

Really.

"This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."

Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true.

"Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

"The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world."

"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director.

The offal-derived oil, is chemically almost identical to a number two fuel oil used to heat homes.

Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into thermal depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil. Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil. Referring to U.S. dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East, R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and an adviser to Changing World Technologies, says, "This technology offers a beginning of a way away from this."

But first things first. Today, here at the plant at Philadelphia's Naval Business Center, the experimental feedstock is turkey processing-plant waste: feathers, bones, skin, blood, fat, guts. A forklift dumps 1,400 pounds of the nasty stuff into the machine's first stage, a 350-horsepower grinder that masticates it into gray brown slurry. From there it flows into a series of tanks and pipes, which hum and hiss as they heat, digest, and break down the mixture. Two hours later, a white-jacketed technician turns a spigot. Out pours a honey-colored fluid, steaming a bit in the cold warehouse as it fills a glass beaker.

It really is a lovely oil.

"The longest carbon chains are C-18 or so," says Appel, admiring the liquid. "That's a very light oil. It is essentially the same as a mix of half fuel oil, half gasoline."

Private investors, who have chipped in $40 million to develop the process, aren't the only ones who are impressed. The federal government has granted more than $12 million to push the work along. "We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process. "We are going to be able to switch to a carbohydrate economy."

Making oil and gas from hydrocarbon-based waste is a trick that Earth mastered long ago. Most crude oil comes from one-celled plants and animals that die, settle to ocean floors, decompose, and are mashed by sliding tectonic plates, a process geologists call subduction. Under pressure and heat, the dead creatures' long chains of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon-bearing molecules, known as polymers, decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons. However, Earth takes its own sweet time doing this-generally thousands or millions of years-because subterranean heat and pressure changes are chaotic. Thermal depolymerization machines turbocharge the process by precisely raising heat and pressure to levels that break the feedstock's long molecular bonds.

Many scientists have tried to convert organic solids to liquid fuel using waste products before, but their efforts have been notoriously inefficient. "The problem with most of these methods was that they tried to do the transformation in one step-superheat the material to drive off the water and simultaneously break down the molecules," says Appel. That leads to profligate energy use and makes it possible for hazardous substances to pollute the finished product. Very wet waste-and much of the world's waste is wet-is particularly difficult to process efficiently because driving off the water requires so much energy. Usually, the Btu content in the resulting oil or gas barely exceeds the amount needed to make the stuff.

That's the challenge that Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor who lives in Rantoul, Illinois, confronted in the late 1980s. He says he "had a flash" of insight about how to improve the basic ideas behind another inventor's waste-reforming process. "The prototype I saw produced a heavy, burned oil," recalls Baskis. "I drew up an improvement and filed the first patents." He spent the early 1990s wooing investors and, in 1996, met Appel, a former commodities trader. "I saw what this could be and took over the patents," says Appel, who formed a partnership with the Gas Technology Institute and had a demonstration plant up and running by 1999.

Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

So how does it work? In the cold Philadelphia warehouse, Appel waves a long arm at the apparatus, which looks surprisingly low tech: a tangle of pressure vessels, pipes, valves, and heat exchangers terminating in storage tanks. It resembles the oil refineries that stretch to the horizon on either side of the New Jersey Turnpike, and in part, that's exactly what it is.

Appel strides to a silver gray pressure tank that is 20 feet long, three feet wide, heavily insulated, and wrapped with electric heating coils. He raps on its side. "The chief difference in our process is that we make water a friend rather than an enemy," he says. "The other processes all tried to drive out water. We drive it in, inside this tank, with heat and pressure. We super-hydrate the material." Thus temperatures and pressures need only be modest, because water helps to convey heat into the feedstock. "We're talking about temperatures of 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of about 600 pounds for most organic material-not at all extreme or energy intensive. And the cooking times are pretty short, usually about 15 minutes."

Once the organic soup is heated and partially depolymerized in the reactor vessel, phase two begins. "We quickly drop the slurry to a lower pressure," says Appel, pointing at a branching series of pipes. The rapid depressurization releases about 90 percent of the slurry's free water. Dehydration via depressurization is far cheaper in terms of energy consumed than is heating and boiling off the water, particularly because no heat is wasted. "We send the flashed-off water back up there," Appel says, pointing to a pipe that leads to the beginning of the process, "to heat the incoming stream."

At this stage, the minerals-in turkey waste, they come mostly from bones-settle out and are shunted to storage tanks. Rich in calcium and magnesium, the dried brown powder "is a perfect balanced fertilizer," Appel says.

The remaining concentrated organic soup gushes into a second-stage reactor similar to the coke ovens used to refine oil into gasoline. "This technology is as old as the hills," says Appel, grinning broadly. The reactor heats the soup to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit to further break apart long molecular chains. Next, in vertical distillation columns, hot vapor flows up, condenses, and flows out from different levels: gases from the top of the column, light oils from the upper middle, heavier oils from the middle, water from the lower middle, and powdered carbon-used to manufacture tires, filters, and printer toners-from the bottom. "Gas is expensive to transport, so we use it on-site in the plant to heat the process," Appel says. The oil, minerals, and carbon are sold to the highest bidders.

Depending on the feedstock and the cooking and coking times, the process can be tweaked to make other specialty chemicals that may be even more profitable than oil. Turkey offal, for example, can be used to produce fatty acids for soap, tires, paints, and lubricants. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC-the stuff of house siding, wallpapers, and plastic pipes-yields hydrochloric acid, a relatively benign and industrially valuable chemical used to make cleaners and solvents. "That's what's so great about making water a friend," says Appel. "The hydrogen in water combines with the chlorine in PVC to make it safe. If you burn PVC [in a municipal-waste incinerator], you get dioxin-very toxic." Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies, strolls through a thermal depolymerization plant in Philadelphia. Experiments at the pilot facility revealed that the process is scalable-plants can sprawl over acres and handle 4,000 tons of waste a day or be "small enough to go on the back of a flatbed truck" and handle just one ton daily, says Appel.

The technicians here have spent three years feeding different kinds of waste into their machinery to formulate recipes. In a little trailer next to the plant, Appel picks up a handful of one-gallon plastic bags sent by a potential customer in Japan. The first is full of ground-up appliances, each piece no larger than a pea. "Put a computer and a refrigerator into a grinder, and that's what you get," he says, shaking the bag. "It's PVC, wood, fiberglass, metal, just a mess of different things. This process handles mixed waste beautifully." Next to the ground-up appliances is a plastic bucket of municipal sewage. Appel pops the lid and instantly regrets it. "Whew," he says. "That is nasty."

Experimentation revealed that different waste streams require different cooking and coking times and yield different finished products. "It's a two-step process, and you do more in step one or step two depending on what you are processing," Terry Adams says. "With the turkey guts, you do the lion's share in the first stage. With mixed plastics, most of the breakdown happens in the second stage." The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for example, yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other solids. So far, says Adams, "nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we try."

"The only thing this process can't handle is nuclear waste," Appel says. "If it contains carbon, we can do it." à

This Philadelphia pilot plant can handle only seven tons of waste a day, but 1,054 miles to the west, in Carthage, Missouri, about 100 yards from one of ConAgra Foods' massive Butterball Turkey plants, sits the company's first commercial-scale thermal depolymerization plant. The $20 million facility, scheduled to go online any day, is expected to digest more than 200 tons of turkey-processing waste every 24 hours. The north side of Carthage smells like Thanksgiving all the time. At the Butterball plant, workers slaughter, pluck, parcook, and package 30,000 turkeys each workday, filling the air with the distinctive tang of boiling bird. A factory tour reveals the grisly realities of large-scale poultry processing. Inside, an endless chain of hanging carcasses clanks past knife-wielding laborers who slash away. Outside, a tanker truck idles, full to the top with fresh turkey blood. For many years, ConAgra Foods has trucked the plant's waste-feathers, organs, and other nonusable parts-to a rendering facility where it was ground and dried to make animal feed, fertilizer, and other chemical products. But bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, can spread among cattle from recycled feed, and although no similar disease has been found in poultry, regulators are becoming skittish about feeding animals to animals. In Europe the practice is illegal for all livestock. Since 1997, the United States has prohibited the feeding of most recycled animal waste to cattle. Ultimately, the specter of European-style mad-cow regulations may kick-start the acceptance of thermal depolymerization. "In Europe, there are mountains of bones piling up," says Alf Andreassen. "When recycling waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything."

Because depolymerization takes apart materials at the molecular level, Appel says, it is "the perfect process for destroying pathogens." On a wet afternoon in Carthage, he smiles at the new plant-an artless assemblage of gray and dun-colored buildings-as if it were his favorite child. "This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into the system to make heat to power the system," he says. "It will make 21,000 gallons of water, which will be clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number two heating oil." He shakes his head almost as if he can't believe it. "It's amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers-that's what our permit says. This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."

He watches as burly men in coveralls weld and grind the complex loops of piping. A group of 15 investors and corporate advisers, including Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, stroll among the sparks and hissing torches, listening to a tour led by plant manager Don Sanders. A veteran of the refinery business, Sanders emphasizes that once the pressurized water is flashed off, "the process is similar to oil refining. The equipment, the procedures, the safety factors, the maintenance-it's all proven technology."

And it will be profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in Philadelphia, we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there."

"We've got a lot of confidence in this," Buffett says. "I represent ConAgra's investment. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success." Buffett isn't alone. Appel has lined up federal grant money to help build demonstration plants to process chicken offal and manure in Alabama and crop residuals and grease in Nevada. Also in the works are plants to process turkey waste and manure in Colorado and pork and cheese waste in Italy. He says the first generation of depolymerization centers will be up and running in 2005. By then it should be clear whether the technology is as miraculous as its backers claim.

EUREKA:

Chemistry, not alchemy, turns (A) turkey offal-guts, skin, bones, fat, blood, and feathers-into a variety of useful products. After the first-stage heat-and-pressure reaction, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates break down into (B) carboxylic oil, which is composed of fatty acids, carbohydrates, and amino acids. The second-stage reaction strips off the fatty acids' carboxyl group (a carbon atom, two oxygen atoms, and a hydrogen atom) and breaks the remaining hydrocarbon chains into smaller fragments, yielding (C) a light oil. This oil can be used as is, or further distilled (using a larger version of the bench-top distiller in the background) into lighter fuels such as (D) naphtha, (E) gasoline, and (F) kerosene. The process also yields (G) fertilizer-grade minerals derived mostly from bones and (H) industrially useful carbon black.

Garbage In, Oil Out

Feedstock is funneled into a grinder and mixed with water to create a slurry that is pumped into the first-stage reactor, where heat and pressure partially break apart long molecular chains. The resulting organic soup flows into a flash vessel where pressure drops dramatically, liberating some of the water, which returns back upstream to preheat the flow into the first-stage reactor. In the second-stage reactor, the remaining organic material is subjected to more intense heat, continuing the breakup of molecular chains. The resulting hot vapor then goes into vertical distillation tanks, which separate it into gases, light oils, heavy oils, water, and solid carbon. The gases are burned on-site to make heat to power the process, and the water, which is pathogen free, goes to a municipal waste plant. The oils and carbon are deposited in storage tanks, ready for sale. - Brad Lemley

A Boon to Oil and Coal Companies

One might expect fossil-fuel companies to fight thermal depolymerization. If the process can make oil out of waste, why would anyone bother to get it out of the ground? But switching to an energy economy based entirely on reformed waste will be a long process, requiring the construction of thousands of thermal depolymerization plants. In the meantime, thermal depolymerization can make the petroleum industry itself cleaner and more profitable, says John Riordan, president and CEO of the Gas Technology Institute, an industry research organization. Experiments at the Philadelphia thermal depolymerization plant have converted heavy crude oil, shale, and tar sands into light oils, gases, and graphite-type carbon. "When you refine petroleum, you end up with a heavy solid-waste product that's a big problem," Riordan says. "This technology will convert these waste materials into natural gas, oil, and carbon. It will fit right into the existing infrastructure."

Appel says a modified version of thermal depolymerization could be used to inject steam into underground tar-sand deposits and then refine them into light oils at the surface, making this abundant, difficult-to-access resource far more available. But the coal industry may become thermal depolymerization's biggest fossil-fuel beneficiary. "We can clean up coal dramatically," says Appel. So far, experiments show the process can extract sulfur, mercury, naphtha, and olefins-all salable commodities-from coal, making it burn hotter and cleaner. Pretreating with thermal depolymerization also makes coal more friable, so less energy is needed to crush it before combustion in electricity-generating plants. - B.L.

Can Thermal Depolymerization Slow Global Warming?

If the thermal depolymerization process WORKS AS Claimed, it will clean up waste and generate new sources of energy. But its backers contend it could also stem global warming, which sounds iffy. After all, burning oil creates global warming, doesn't it?

Carbon is the major chemical constituent of most organic matter-plants take it in; animals eat plants, die, and decompose; and plants take it back in, ad infinitum. Since the industrial revolution, human beings burning fossil fuels have boosted concentrations of atmospheric carbon more than 30 percent, disrupting the ancient cycle. According to global-warming theory, as carbon in the form of carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, it traps solar radiation, which warms the atmosphere-and, some say, disrupts the planet's ecosystems.

But if there were a global shift to thermal depolymerization technologies, belowground carbon would remain there. The accoutrements of the civilized world-domestic animals and plants, buildings, artificial objects of all kinds-would then be regarded as temporary carbon sinks. At the end of their useful lives, they would be converted in thermal depolymerization machines into short-chain fuels, fertilizers, and industrial raw materials, ready for plants or people to convert them back into long chains again. So the only carbon used would be that which already existed above the surface; it could no longer dangerously accumulate in the atmosphere. "Suddenly, the whole built world just becomes a temporary carbon sink," says Paul Baskis, inventor of the thermal depolymerization process. "We would be honoring the balance of nature." - B.L.

Posted 08/10/09 Remember Gadsden Stillwater, NJ

"Anything into Oil" (aka Changing World Technologies) is sooooooo Goldman Sachs

Posted by FreedomPrefered on 06/09/09
Last updated 06/09/09

NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
April 21, 2009

FEMA is preparing to take its martial law exercises to the next level this July. According to a factsheet buried on the FEMA website, the agency will host National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) on July 27 through July 31, 2009.
featured stories NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level
Harman

Previous TOPOFF exercises concentrated on natural disasters and bio-attacks.

"NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery," the factsheet states. It is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise, or TOPOFF, which are exercises conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), "which serves as the nation's overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises," according to FEMA.

NLE 09 "will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants" in the "aftermath of a notional terrorist event outside of the United States." So-called "exercise play" will concentrate on "preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks."

Such a large and coordinated exercise seems inappropriate, considering the fact there has not been a terrorist attack on the United States since September 11, 2001. In 2007, the neocon-connected Jamestown Foundation chalked this lack of threat up to "stepped-up counter-terrorist efforts after 9/11 and possibly the simple luck enjoyed by government authorities."

As the Washington Post noted in 2005, the government has a poor record when it comes to apprehending and prosecuting terrorists within the United States. "Except for a small number of well-known cases - such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge - few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States."

In fact, as recently leaked Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and local law enforcement (in particular, the Missouri State Police) documents reveal, the real target is not al-Qaeda or Muslim terrorists, but rather "rightwing extremists" who support the Second Amendment and states' rights and oppose abortion and open borders. The liberal corporate media has worked tirelessly with the government to demonize activists and supporters of these movements. It has orchestrated a disinformation campaign against the Tea Party movement and has attempted to link the alleged white supremacist cop killer Richard Poplawski to Alex Jones and others erroneously classified as "rightwing extremists."

The FEMA factsheet states NLE 09 "will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants." In other words, the exercise will concentrate on surveillance and counter-intelligence targeted at "terrorists" (rightwing extremists) who will - according to the NLE scenario - carry out attacks following a vaguely defined international terrorist event. A FEMA bullet point underscores the need for "counter-terror investigation and law enforcement." Local law enforcement, through relationships previously established by DHS, the FBI and the CIA, will be on the front lines of this surveillance effort.
featured stories NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level
Obama featured stories NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level

The FBI in particular has experience in surveilling Americans. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, the FBI kept a list - dubbed the "ADEX" list - of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive. More recently, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007. The list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month, according to the ACLU. The list now totals well over a million entries.

Although not specifically mentioned in the FEMA factsheet, NLE 09 will also include exercises designed to round-up and intern suspected terrorists. Under REX 84 and other operations, FEMA, in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, trained to detain large numbers of American citizens.

During Hurricane Katrina, FEMA performed a "dry-run" of this unconstitutional power in New Orleans, not only rounding up "refugees" and "relocating" them in camps, but also testing its ability to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens. Blackwater USA, a private mercenary outfit, participated in this illegal confiscation.

InfraGard, the FBI organized "public-private partnership" (classical fascism as defined by Mussolini), will participate in NLE 09, as they have in past TOPOFF exercises.

As Matthew Rothschild documented last March, there are more than 23,000 representatives of private industry working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. InfraGard "may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations - some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers - into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," Rothschild explains, citing the ACLU. The FBI has given the private organization the ability to use lethal force against suspected "terrorists."

FEMA's National Level Exercise 2009 represents the next phase of preparations to implement martial law in America under the guise of fighting loosely defined terrorists. As the DHS, FBI, and MIAC reports indicate, the government now defines terrorists as "rightwing extremists" and indicates the threat is not from fanatics with beards in caves half way around the world, but from law-abiding Americans who are opposed to government policies.

The FEMA camps corporate media shill Glenn Beck insists do not exist but are documented to in fact exist around the country are not for Muslims, but the real threat to government - increasing numbers of Americans determined to return the nagtion to a constitutionally limited republic.

Posted 07/21/09 Harry Madison, IN

Thanks for the heads up. FEMA and DHS is just looking for a reason to declare martial law. It is scary, the WHO raised the swine flu pandemic to level 6. Couple this with the far left advocating a 90% reduction in the world's population. Read William Grigg's essay, "Too Many (Other) People": http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/

Posted by FreedomPrefered on 05/27/09

Income Tax: Why We Have It

Article from AlanStang.com

Tote that barge, lift that bale, and make sure you pay on time. April 15th approaches and my guess is that only a relative handful of Americans knows why we have the income tax. With rare exceptions, they will exclaim that we must have the income tax to "pay the expenses of the government." Of course the truth is exactly the opposite. The income tax has nothing to do with paying the expenses of the government.

First an obvious fact, something you already know. When was the country created? Pick a date. Many would pick July 4th, 1776, when the Continental Congress adopted the nation's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. Many others would pick the date of ratification of the Constitution. Let's arbitrarily use 1776.

Now, when did we get the income tax? Except for the temporary income tax during Lincoln's Communist War to Destroy the Union, there was no income tax in this country until 1913, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its validity in Brushaber, 240 U.S. 1. Indeed, even then it did not affect more than a handful of our people.

As late as 1942, only 3% of our people paid income tax. Until that date, most people probably had heard of it, but they didn't pay it and had never seen the form. It didn't apply to them. Indeed, if you check the records, you will see that in 1941, when the reader may have already been alive, the federal government collected more in alcohol and tobacco taxes than it did in income tax. Remember "moonshine" and the "revenooers?"

The income tax finally did hit the people in a big way only in 1942, and then only because we were of course in the middle of the war Franklin Roosevelt had finally succeeded in tricking us into by arranging Pearl Harbor. Even so, the conspiratorial warmongers could put the tax over only by calling it the "Victory" tax, a "temporary" tax collected by withholding, which would be repealed as soon as we had won the war.

Question: Name for me a year, just one year, between 1776 and 1942, when the nation couldn't function because we had no income tax. Can't find one? Okay name a month, just one month, when the nation collapsed, couldn't pay its bills, because we had no income tax. How about a week?

Indeed, remember that during all that time, we fought many wars. We won them all. Yes, we won World War II with the income tax because it was "temporary," not yet a permanent part of our lives, but mainly because we fought that war on behalf of Stalin. With the income tax we have not outright won a war since, from Korea to Iraq.

Remember, you knew all this. I am simply reminding you of something you already knew. So, if we didn't have an income tax, yet never collapsed, where did the federal government get the funds to pay for itself? Again, they came from alcohol and tobacco taxes.

They also came from tariffs, which made foreigners pay for the privilege of selling products here. And they came from other indirect taxes. These were enough to pay for the few powers the Constitution grants to the federal government. Did you know that one of the biggest problems in Congress before the turn of the Twentieth Century was what the newspapers called the "tariff monster?" So much tax money was pouring into the Treasury that Congress didn't know what to do with it.

So, if we don't need an income tax to pay for the federal government, why do we have one? In August, 1942, Meyer Jacobstein, of the Brookings Institution, testified to a Senate subcommittee that "it is necessary to mop up the excess purchasing power of the community . . . because of its effect on the price situation . . . ." There are also a couple of Ohio University economists, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, whose study showed that for every dollar of increased taxes, Congress increased spending $1.58. In other words, taxes cause spending.

Now, another question you know the answer to. When there was money (gold and silver) behind our currency, the government had to deposit in the treasury the appropriate amount of money, in grains or ounces, whenever it printed paper currency. In the same way, you must deposit the appropriate sum in your checking account before you write a check against it.

U.S. currency used to say it was "redeemable" downtown at the bank. The bank would pay the amount of money printed on the face of the bill to the "bearer on demand." Even early Federal Reserve Notes said that. The only difference between your personal check and government currency is that your check names the person to be paid and the government currency does not. It paid the "bearer," whoever had it in his hand when he walked into the bank.

Now here comes the question. Since there no longer is any money behind our currency; since the government no longer need find and deposit rare gold or silver into its account in order to write a check against it; and since paper and ink are relatively limitless in supply - indeed, computer entries, today's "money," are utterly limitless - why does the government bother to tax at all? Why the audits, the penalties, the raids and seizures, the divorces and suicides?

Why doesn't the government just print what it needs; bigger numbers on bigger pieces of paper? Even easier, why not just boot up and click on ever bigger computer entries; then use those computer entries to pay the bills? This is what Meyer Jacobstein was talking about. The answer is that doing so would constitute hyperinflation, which would send prices to Alpha Centauri and destroy the dollar here.

That is what happened in the Weimar Republic in post-World War I Germany, where the process took two years. It is happening now in Zimbabwe. The reason it has taken so long to happen here is that the financial geniuses who run the conspiracy for world government run the unbacked printings and now the computer entries through the non-Federal non-Reserve System, which is brilliantly designed to confuse and conceal what is happening. Extra layers of obfuscation have since been added, including the CDO and other alphabetical horrors. I have explained the process many times; no need to do so again here. But it is happening and when the train stops we shall be in Weimar.

The man with the answers is Beardsley Ruml. Ruml was a lifelong Rockefeller factotum. Rockefeller is the family David Rockefeller boasts in his Memoirs is part of a globalist conspiracy against the United States. Ruml was chairman of the New York Fed. It was he who devised World War II "temporary" withholding. It was originally named for him: the "Ruml pay-as-you-go plan."

In January, 1946, American Affairs published a speech by Beardsley Ruml. The title was, "Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete." In it, Ruml speaks of two remarkable changes: "the gaining of vast new experience in the management of central banks," and "the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the convertibility of the currency into gold."

Under the heading, "What Taxes Are Really For," Ruml listed three main purposes: "as an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar"; to express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income tax and estate taxes"; to express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups."

Redistribution of the wealth by government is communism. Subsidizing and penalizing various industries by government is fascism. You are seeing such fascism right now in the government "bailout" of certain favored companies. For instance, the government saved Goldman Sachs but flushed Lehman Brothers. What about stabilizing the purchasing power of the dollar? Ruml says this by far is the most important reason for the income tax and other federal taxes, sometimes called "the avoidance of inflation."

Ruml explains that "federal taxation has much to do with inflation and deflation, with the prices which have to be paid for the things that are bought and sold. . . ." If people have "too much" purchasing power, prices will rise. ". . . This will mean that the dollar is worth less than it was before - that is inflation. . . .

"The dollars the government spends become purchasing power in the hands of the people who have received them. The dollars the government takes by taxes cannot be spent by the people, and, therefore, these dollars can no longer be used to acquire the things that are available for sale. . . ." So this is what Meyer Jacobstein meant by "mopping up purchasing power."

The true purpose of the income tax, therefore, is to inhibit the inflationary effect of ravenous government spending. The income tax allows our rulers to juggle their fiscal balls in the air a bit longer, by offering a safety valve through which the inflationary pressure generated by that spending can more safely be released. The income tax does that by transferring purchasing power from the people to the government. Again, it has nothing at all to do with paying the government's bills.

By the way, if you would like to read all this on paper, you will find most of it in my book, TaxScam: How IRS Swindles You and What You Can Do About It. There you will see a picture of the "tariff monster," from Puck, a magazine of the time. Why I don't know, but they tell me it has become something of a "minor classic," maybe merely because of its advanced age: twenty one.

It originally was $9.95. Despite its "classic" status, we ask only $5.95 (plus shipping and handling) because the covers are no longer perfect, in some cases no good. But the pages are like new, and, of course, so is the information. You can order at alanstang.com. Click on STORE and scroll down to the book.

All right, now you know why you pay income tax. Are you not inspired? On April 15th, when you put your head on the block, you will do so happily, maybe even singing the national anthem, in the knowledge that you are doing your patriotic part to mop up, to fight inflation and save the dollar. Illegal alien Also Known As thanks you.
Posted by Alan Stang on 03/26 at 04:16 PM