Tag Archives: taxes

Fukushima

Radiation decontamination in Japan will be complicated

The Japanese government is about to vote on a standardized decontamination plan.

Here’s a list of suggested decontamination procedures for cities and towns:

High pressure washing of homes and buildings, including rain gutters.

Trimming of outer leaves and branches on bushes and trees.

Pulling up smaller plants and removal of top soil.

Washing roads, including flushing joints on asphalt and concrete roads, removing mud and dirt along roadsides.

All removed soil and plant material must be treated as nuclear waste.

The Japanese government will vote on a standardized plan on 26 August 2011.  The amazing thing is that it’s been more than five months since the start of the ongoing nuclear disaster, and they’re just now coming up with a standardized national government decontamination plan.

Business/Economics, Idaho, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? One Idaho city wants to give itself a raise, taxpayers say Bull Crap! City does it anyway, increases property taxes!

The city of Chubbuck gave city employees a raise in salary and benefits, at the expense of property owners.  Property taxes were increased 2%.

Residents had told city officials no way!  Not when so many taxpayers have seen their incomes go down, and many don’t have health insurance.

One resident even suggested an end of year performance bonus for city employees.  But that fell on the deaf ears of the city council, they ended up voting to increase property taxes.

There are several abandoned homes in the area I live in, the city has taken over lawn care because everything was dying.  There are even more homes with ‘for sale’ and ‘for rent’ signs.  How can the city justify increasing the property tax?!?

Fukushima, U.S.

Nuclear plant shut down by Viginia Earthquake, 9 other nuke plants affected

The North Anna nuclear power plant, outside Richmond, Virginia, has shut down.

The plant is on the coastline, just seven miles from the epicenter of the 5.9 quake (earlier reports said it was 5.8).

Diesel generators are supplying power to basic systems at the plant.

Nine nuke plants from New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania to Maryland have declared unusual events.  They have not shut down.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Pentagon admits Direct involment with military action in Libya, despite Obama’s claims, big loss for U.S. taxpayers

President Obama has said over and over that the United States would play a supporting role for NATO, in the attacks on Libya.

Now the Pentagon admits they’ve been directly involved with attacking Libya.

U.S. forces have launched at least three air strikes per day, for the past 12 days.  These attacks are done by UAVs.  Even though the bombings are done with UAVs that does not negate the fact that it means direct U.S. military involvement.

The total cost of U.S. involvement in the attacks on Libya, have cost taxpayers $1 billion, so far.  And don’t think the U.S. military industrial complex is making enough money off this to make up for the $1 billion in spent tax revenues, so far only $220 million in weapons and ammo have been sold to NATO members.

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Japan government now realizes contamination too high to cancel evac orders!

When orders were finally given to evacuate areas around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, government officials led people to believe it would only be a few months.

It’s more than five months, and now the government realizes the level of contamination is so bad that it will be “…a long, long time…” before some city and towns can be considered safe for people to live in.

A meeting is being arraigned with local officials to explain the severity of the situation, and to better explain to evacuees why they might never be able to return home.

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Japan announced beef was safe to eat, then once again, more cesium contaminated cows!

The day after the Japanese government announced it was lifting the contaminated cattle ban on Fukushima cows, four cows tested for cesium levels above safe limits.

Then, the very next day five more cows showed up with cesium contamination.

The contaminated cows had already been shipped to a slaughter house in Yokohama.  It was there that the beef was found to be highly contaminated.

To make matters worse, the cow farmers swear they were not feeding the cows local rice hay, but more expensive imported hay.  The imported hay had been stored indoors.

This means that the cows could be getting contaminated on their way to the slaughter house.  Officials are trying to figure it out.

And yes, the Japanese government suspended the lifting of the contaminated cattle ban.

International

Obama wants troops to stay in Afghanistan until 2024, Russia says it doesn’t make sense

Afghan officials have told British media that the U.S. and Afghanistan have agreed to keep thousands of U.S. troops in country until 2024!

The deal would allow U.S. forces to use Afghan military bases, provide facilities to store massive numbers of U.S. military equipment, and allow thousands of military personnel to stay, including special forces.

Russian officials pointed out that the deal doesn’t make sense: “If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases?  If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do.  It is not possible.”-Andrey Avetisyan, Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan

The Russians should know, they got their butts kicked by the Afghans back when Russia was part of the Soviet Union.  They did exactly what the U.S. is doing now, trying to train up the Afghan government to take on the “terrorists”.  The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989, but continued to supply weapons and trainers to the Afghan government.  The Afghan government lasted until 1992, brought down by a civil war that lasted until 1996.  The civil war ended in 1996 when the Taliban took control of the country.

Business/Economics, International

Government Incompetence: Spanish taxpayers forced to pay for Catholic Pope’s visit

“We criticize this scandalous show at a time of such a terribly distressing economic situation, with entire families unemployed.”-Evaristo Villar, Christian Networks

The Pope is visiting Spain, and the taxpayers are paying for it, to tune of U.S.$70 million to $150 million.  This comes at a time when 20% of Spaniards are unemployed.

One protestor called the Pope’s visit a “huge Christian circus”.

72% of Spaniards claim to be Catholic, but that’s not stopping younger Catholics from joining the protests.  However, Catholics have also joined riot police in attacking protestors: “I was at the protest with my father, and one of the Catholics punched me in the face.” 18 year-old protester

When you break down Spain’s unemployment by age, 45% of teenagers and young adults are jobless.

 

Fukushima

Corporate Incompetence: TEPCo knew explosion could occur, but just didn’t want to believe that it would!

In a case of hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil, a Japanese government investigation into the corporate mind of Tokyo Electric Power Company revealed that officials just couldn’t believe the worse case scenario could happen at Fukushima Daiichi.

TEPCo officials admitted that they discussed the possibility of explosions inside the reactor buildings, but dismissed the possibility as unlikely.

Then, just one day after the 11 March 2011 quake/tsunami, Reactor 1 exploded.  TEPCo officials were focused so much on other concerns, that it took the second explosion, in Reactor 3 on 14 March, to wake them up.

Some government officials conclude that Tokyo Electric officials don’t realize just how dangerous a nuclear reactor can be.

Fukushima

Corporate Incompetence: Nuclear Plant workers say Reactor 1 was already melting down even before the Tsunami hit, decreasing radiation levels due to fuel rods being washed away

Many workers who were at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant the day of the 11 March 2011 quake and tsunami, say reactor 1 was already in trouble and possibly melting down, immediately after the 9.0 quake.

“There’s certainly a great deal of evidence that appears to suggest that the first reactor, reactor number one, was melting down by the time the tsunami hit. So, if that’s the case that the reactor was melting down as a result of the earthquake, and not as a result of the tsunami, a nine-point earthquake is something that has the potential to happen throughout Japan, and that would put the reliability and the design safety of all of these reactors in question.”-Robert Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute

Also, Tokyo Electric Power Company has been reporting decreasing radiation levels coming from Pacific Ocean water inlets and outlets.  It’s not a sign they have things under control, because they certainly don’t.  Rather, after 5 months of ongoing nuclear disaster, what’s happened is that the remains of nuclear fuel rods have been washed out into the Pacific Ocean by TEPCo’s continued water injection.

“When you have a fragile structure that’s already suffered a great deal of damage and when you have continual aftershocks at the level of six-point, or there’s been some even higher, what we have now is we have the radioactive core that has melted down into the basement, into the bottom of the containment vessel of these reactors, and if the radiation level is going down, where it’s been monitored inside the buildings, and if the water pressure is going down, and the temperature is going down, it’s not that the radiation is just suddenly going away, it means that the radioactive material, the melted core, is simply moving further away from where it’s been measured.”-Robert Jacobs