All posts by Hutchins AAron

Born in Deutschland 1965, hometown was Bütthart, parents were not U.S. government employees. However, when father was tricked into joining the U.S. Air Force Civil Service, in 1969, with the promise that we could remain in Germany, we were promptly shipped off to Iran. Due to one of my Iranian educators being disappeared, along with her husband, by the U.S. ally Shah of Iran's Israeli & U.S. created Savak (for the then official terrorist act of promoting the idea that women can vote), and due to my U.S. citizen mother being placed on Savak's Terrorist Arrest List (for supporting the idea that women should vote, at that time the U.S. ally Shah of Iran did not allow women to vote, now they can) we left Iran for the United States in 1973, literally in the middle of the night. At the U.S. Embassy airbase the CIA operated Gooney Bird (C-47) was so packed with other U.S. citizens fleeing our ally Iran (because the Shah gave the OK to arrest any U.S. citizen for such terrorist acts as promoting the concept of voting) that we were turned away by the Loadmaster and had to take a chance on a civilian flight out of Tehran's airport. My father told me he and my mother had three culture shocks; first when they arrived in Germany as civilians, then after being shipped off to Iran as U.S. government employees, then again returning to the United States as unemployed civilians (because so much had changed in the U.S. while they were gone, their only news source was the U.S. Armed Forces Radio & Television Service which heavily censored information about the home front). Since I graduated high school in 1982 I've worked for U.S. government contractors and state & local government agencies (in California), convenience store manager in California, retail/property management in Georgia, California and Idaho. Spent the 1990s in the TV news business producing number one rated local news programs in California, Arizona and Idaho. 14+ years with California and Idaho Army National Guard and the U.S. Air Force. Obtained a BA degree in International Studies from Idaho State University at the age of 42. Unemployed since 2015, so don't tell me the economy has recovered.
Fukushima

Strontium 90 in ground water & Pacific Ocean

For the first time, Tokyo Electric Power Company says strontium 90 is contaminating ground water, and the Pacific Ocean.

Water samples that were taken on 16 and 18 May, 2011, are positive for strontium.  Sample testing takes three weeks for results.

Three ocean inlets were tested on 16 May.  The lowest reading was 53 times safe limits.  The highest, 240 times, was taken at reactor 3 inlet.

Ground water samples were taken on 18 May.  The highest reading was 6,300 becquerels per liter near reactor 2.

Strontium 90 is created during nuclear fission. It has a half life of 29 years and causes bone cancer.

Idaho, Opinion

Idaho Education Spending Scandalous

Property taxes/fees, where I live in Bannock county, have gone up year after year, and there’s been no improvement in services, especially grade school education.

The last time I complained to the county assessor’s office (when my three kids were attending Pocatello High School) the employee told me to blame school district 25.  The employee showed me a chart that proved that the largest chunk of property taxes/fees was going to the school district 25.  The county employee also said that every time a levy is passed it increases the school district fee portion of the overall property tax bill.

That fee has gone up year after year, and is one of the reasons Bannock county has one of the highest property taxes/fees in all of Idaho.  All of Bannock county has a population of more than 82,ooo, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2010 numbers.  Compare that to Ada county, where the state capitol Boise is located, where the population is more than 390,000.

Then comes the U.S. Census Bureau report on how much each state spends on education, and surprisingly Idaho is second to last in spending (Utah is dead last).

Another surprise is that most of Idaho’s education funding comes from the state, not the counties.  66% of education spending in Idaho comes from state taxes (that’s higher than the national average of 46%).  So where’s all our county school tax/fees going to?

I am now the guardian of my children’s half sister.  She is attending Pocatello High School, and I’m amazed at how much the quality of education has gone down since my kids graduated (by the way, you also have to pay huge fees directly to the high school that your child attends, which is another reason to question the school district’s taxes/fees).  Not only that, but I finished high school in the early 1980s, and I can tell you that nothing has improved since then, as far as the quality of education.

Only since the No Child Left Behind act (aka Adequate Yearly Progress, AYP) went into effect, has school district 25 made real efforts to improve test scores, but they’re still not doing well enough: For 2009-10, one elementary school failed AYP,  all four middle schools failed and all three high schools failed.  It’s interesting that school district 25 officials are blaming the failures on “economically disadvantaged students“, as well as disabled and Hispanic students.  What is this a new kind of class/race warfare?

Decade after decade U.S. taxpayers have paid more and more money for crappy education that never improves!  What do we get for our money?  There’s been lots of paranoid new rules created: One year a high scoring student at Pocatello High School was not allowed to graduate because she dyed her hair pink (her parents sued and won)!  Also, huge school administrative bodies were created through the 1980s-90s, which suck up more money than the actual education of our children!  Do the kids get new books?  No: When my children attended Junior High they showed me their science book, which had an intro that said “One day man will walk on the moon.”!

As a parent and local taxpayer I’ve seen the funding for schools going up year after year (that might finally be over with this bad economy), and the quality of education going down year after year.  That is what makes education funding scandalous!

 

U.S.

The U.S. IS a Police State: Schools becoming temporary prisons

What’s really scarey about the following list, is that there are a lot of parents who actually agree with increased “security” measures in schools.

1: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students if there are “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”

2: It came out in court that one school district in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 66,000 images of students using webcams that were embedded in school-issued laptops that the students were using at home.

3: If you can believe it, a “certified TSA official” was recently brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom.

4: A few years ago a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after $5.00 went missing.  During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.

5: At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home.  Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.

6: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.

7: A teenager in suburban Dallas was recently forced to take a part time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

8: It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police.  In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students.  In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave “1,000 tickets” to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.

9: A few months ago, a 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

10: A little over a year ago, a 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

11: In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.

12: There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.

13: Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by police for bringing a plastic picnic knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.

14: The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using computer software to predict crime by students and will place “potential offenders” in specific prevention and education programs.

15: A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

16: In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn. YouTube video shows police officers aiming their guns at school children on the floor.

17: Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and underwent psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

18: This year, 13 parents in Duncan, South Carolina were actually ticketed for cheering during a high school graduation.

Source: The American Dream

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Proof that it’s gotten worse since Obama became President

The following list is not necessarily blaming Obama for the economic problems, it’s just showing how things have gotten worse since he became President.

1: In January 2009, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.

2: When Barack Obama took office, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.

3: When Barack Obama first became president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83. Today it is $3.79. This also affects the price of almost everything else that we buy.

4: In April 2009, the average U.S. household spent approximately $201 on gasoline. In April 2011, the average U.S. household spent approximately $369 on gasoline.

5: According to an article in the Daily Mail, the cost of a Memorial Day cookout was 29 percent higher this year than it was last year.

6: When Barack Obama was sworn in, there were nearly 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million on food stamps.

7: According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years.

8: When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.  Today it is 14.3 trillion dollars.

9: The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

10: During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

11: The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011.  Thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.

12: Under Obama, the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow. The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.

13: Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

14: Just since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force.

15: In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

16: The U.S. real estate crisis just continues to get worse. During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.

17: The U.S. dollar has fallen by 17 percent compared to other major national currencies since 2009.

18: Faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries is rapidly declining.  The mainstream news is not reporting on it much, but right now the Chinese are rapidly dumping U.S. government debt. That is not a good sign.

19: When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs about $1500.

20: Americans seem to be more pessimistic about the economy than ever.  According to a brand new poll, 61 percent of Americans believe that they will not return to their “pre-recession” lifestyles until at least 2014.

Source: The American Dream

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? U.S. Investor Markets about to crash

1: According to The New York Post, nearly all of the major Wall Street banks are planning huge layoffs….

“Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley currently are among those financial institutions either weighing staff cuts or actually paring payroll.”

2: A new CNBC article claims that a “negative feedback loop” has “taken control” on Wall Street.  Essentially what is happening is that bad economic news is creating an “environment of pessimism” which creates even more bad economic news, etc. etc.

3: OPEC has announced that oil production levels will not be raised. This is likely to spook the financial markets and cause the price of oil to go up even higher in the coming weeks. The last time U.S. energy expenditures were over 9 percent of GDP was back in 2008 and at that point the economy rapidly plunged into a very deep recession. For the first time since 2008 we have reached the 9 percent figure again, and many on Wall Street fear that this could lead to bad things.

4: QE2 will be wrapping up at the end of June, and many on Wall Street had been counting on yet another round of quantitative easing. Over the past couple of days, however, it has started to become clear that is just not going to happen – at least for now. In fact, Pimco’s co-chief investment officer, Bill Gross, is telling investors that for the Fed it will “be difficult to initiate a QE3.” But without artificial stimulation the U.S. economy may start really struggling again, and Wall Street knows this.

5: Moody’s recently warned that it may downgrade the debt ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Bank stocks were on the cutting edge of the financial collapse of 2008, and it looks like that may happen again this time.

6: Faith in the U.S. dollar continues to decline. Back on April 18th, Standard & Poor’s changed its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating. China has been very busy dumping short-term U.S. government debt and there does not seem to be a lot of people (other than the Federal Reserve) that are eager to buy U.S. Treasuries right now.

7: U.S. consumer confidence is already lower than it was back in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Consumer spending makes up approximately 70 percent of the U.S. economy and Wall Street is watching this number closely.

8: A whole slew of bad economic news has been pouring in lately. Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently pointed out to CNBC some of the data points that have been particularly alarming….

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

9: A whole lot of folks in the financial industry have been warning about the next financial collapse lately. For example, economist Nouriel Roubini recently made the following statement….

“I think right now we’re on the tipping point of a market correction. Data from the U.S., from Europe, from Japan, from China are suggesting an economic slowdown.”

10: According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 48% of Americans believe that it is either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the United States will experience a “depression” within the next 12 months. Needless to say, Wall Street is highly influenced by the overall mood of the nation.

Source: The American Dream

 

International, Opinion, U.S.

Iraq tells U.S. Congressmen to get the F out!

“They are unwelcome in Iraq from now on. Their demand to conduct an investigation into the raid is categorically unacceptable and has upset Iraq.“-Ali Al-Dabbagh, Iraqi government spokesman

The U.S. Congressional delegation in Iraq has really put their feet in the their mouths, by showing just how arrogant U.S. officials are when it comes to Iraq.

First, the stupid Kalifornian (sic) Congressman Dana Rohrabacher demanded that Iraq pay for being invaded and occupied by the United States.  He said it was to pay back the U.S. for the service of taking out Saddam Hussein, something the Iraqis never really asked for (most of the testimonies before Congress have proven to be faked).

The Kalifornian described the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a sign that we care about Iraqis: “We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.”-Dana Rohrabacher

Moron Rohrabacher!  The only justified “payback” is that Iraq invades the United States and takes out our government!

Second, idiot Congressmen have arrogantly demanded that the United States conduct an investigation into the Iraqi attack on the Iranian refugee Ashraf camp.  The Iranian’s were long time refugees in Iraq, but they were also pro-U.S./anti-Iranian rebels who had been using Iraqi territory for training, supply and a safe haven for decades.

The U.S. demand to investigate the Iraqi raid makes it sound like the United States was really using Ashraf camp to stage terrorist raids into Iran, despite denials of such action by our leaders.

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq, has been notified that the Congressional delegation needs to leave NOW.

 

Business/Economics, Idaho

What Global Warming? Idaho Potato farmers running out of time, cool weather adding to Global Food Crisis

It’s June 11, and potato farmers in Ashton, and Driggs, Idaho, have been hoping for warmer, dryer weather.  They can’t plant potatoes in wet, cold ground: “This season has been especially hard because every time we are about to get into the fields for a couple days it rains us out. It takes sometimes five to 10 days to dry up in good enough shape in preparation for planting.”-Dennis Fransen, potato seed farmer

Potato seed farmers are at the bottom of the potato farming chain.  Commercial potato farmers rely on the seed farmers for their new crop.  Bigger potatoes are sent to the commercial farmers to grow even bigger.  The small potatoes are kept for ‘seed’ for the next planting.  This year, because of the wet, cool weather it looks like most of the seed crop will be the small type, that commercial farmers don’t want.

 

Idaho, International

What Global Warming? Cooler weather delays East Idaho road construction, What Economic Recovery? Lack of funds will reduce Idaho road construction

“Every time we tried to schedule something, we had a storm come through. With the temperature and the moisture, you just can’t do it.”-James Orner, Idaho Transportation Department

Temperatures are finally warming up in eastern Idaho, and ITD officials hope to get ongoing road construction finished, and start new ones.

But just as the weather is warming up for ITD, funding is running out: “In the next few years, we’re going to see a rapid decline in the amount of construction that’s going to be available because there’s less funding available. With gas prices going up, people are driving less, and it’s affecting our revenues.”-Corey Krantz, Idaho Transportation Department

Funding for ITD comes, in part, from state gas taxes.    

U.S.

Obama has worst Veto record since Garfield

According to Smart Politics at the University of Minnesota, President Barack Obama has the worst veto record since President James Garfield in 1881.

Obama has vetoed only two bills since becoming President; a stopgap appropriations bill on December 30, 2009, and a housing foreclosure bill on October 7, 2010.

So it looks like Obama is the most Congress/Corporate America friendly President in the past 130 years!

International

Government Incompetence: Germany back to blaming sprouts for E Coli, no evidence

“The whole thing is a big scandal.  People were very unsettled.  Every day something different was announced.  Now I hear on the radio that it was the sprouts.  But people were even buying less fruit.  That is simply insane.’’ Riza Cetinkaya, Berlin grocer who says sales have dropped 70%

Out of frustration the German health officials are back to blaming sprouts for the deadly e. coli outbreak.  The problem is that they are simply guessing, again.

Officials say the sprouts are the ‘most likely’ source, but at the same time admit the produce has tested negative for e. coli.

How did they come to their conclusion?  They made a map showing the concentration of infection cases, then basically concluded that the sprout farm near the center ‘must’ be the source.  Police detectives know you can’t rely solely on lines drawn on a map.

Consumer Protection officials then announced that they had found a contaminated container of sprouts, in the trash can of a family that is infected.  The officials concluded that it was ‘proof’ that the sprouts were the cause.  Is it possible the sprout container itself is the source of contamination?  Remember e. coli is spread by contact with fecal matter, or animal/human waste.  What else was in the trash can?

One government official, Reinhard Burger, of the Robert Koch Institute, admitted that the window of opportunity to link fecal waste and contact with produce, was gone.  So all officials can do now is guess.

The sprout farm, in Lower Saxony, has been shut down and sealed off.