Ballot tampering in Oregon !

Second state elections official dispatched to Clackamas County amidst state investigation into possible ballot tampering 04 Nov 2012 Oregon's deputy director for elections has joined another elections monitor, a private security guard and a state trooper at the Clackamas County Elections Office, where a temporary elections workerallegedly tampered with ballots to cast additional votes for Republicans. Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown today dispatched Brenda Bayes to help oversee ballot processing at the office amidst a state criminal investigation. She joins Fred Neal, another elections monitor, to help ensure the integrity of the Nov. 6 election results.

Oregon Department of Justice investigates alleged ballot tampering in Clackamas County as candidates consider legal action 02 Nov 2012 A temporary elections employee allegedly tampered with ballots to cast additional votes for Republican candidates in Clackamas County, where several hotly contested races could tilt the balance of power in cities, the county and even the state legislature. The Oregon Department of Justice confirmed that it has launched a criminal investigation but did not identify the female employee or disclose how many ballots might be affected. The department is investigating the matter promptly since the Nov. 6 election is just days away, said Jeff Manning, spokesman for the Department of Justice.

Oregon Department of Justice investigating potential ballot tampering at Clackamas County Elections Office 02 Nov 2012 The Oregon Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into possible ballot tampering at the Clackamas County Elections Office. "We can confirm we are currently investigating criminal felony violations of Oregon's elections laws, which allegedly took place in Clackamas County and allegedly involved a temporary county elections employee tampering with cast ballots," said Jeff Manning, spokesman for the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice launched its investigation after the Oregon Secretary of State's Office referred the case to them, he said.

Glitch held up absentee ballots 01 Nov 2012 Thousands of absentee-ballot requests may have been erroneously rejected statewide because of voter-registration issues, voter advocates say. Secretary of State Jon Husted (R-RMoney) has acknowledged that a data-sharing glitch between his office and the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles likely caused some absentee-ballot applications to be wrongfully rejected because county boards did not have up-to-date information on registrants' addresses. Meanwhile, a voter advocacy group said yesterday that it had found cases in which county boards rejected applications for absentee ballots of legitimately registered voters because elections officials erroneously determined them to be unregistered. [Coup 2012 is underway in Ohio, commencing in the same counties that the GOP stole for Bush bin Laden in 2004. See, everyone knows that DemocRATs just 'offer their concession' (think Al Gore) when an election is stolen, whereas Republicans (think Sharron Angle) proffer '2nd Amendment solutions.']

Judge orders early voting extended at site in Fla. where suspicious package caused delays 04 Nov 2012 A judge extended early voting hours in one Florida county on Sunday after the state Democratic Party sued in an effort to give people more time at the polls. Some voters had faced waits several hours long on Saturday, the last scheduled day of early voting. The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed late Saturday in Orange County after an early voting site was shut down for several hours. The Winter Park library was evacuated when a suspicious package - a cooler - was found outside. It was later detonated by a local bomb squad.

Florida bomb squad detonates 'suspicious packages' found outside early voting site 03 Nov 2012 A Florida bomb squad has detonated two suspicious packages that were discovered outside one of the state's early voting stations on Saturday morning. Voting was suspended until 2 p.m. on the final day of early voting, with a long line of reportedly upset voters waiting to cast their ballots. Early voting has been popular in Florida, with an estimated 3.9 million votes already cast before next week's official Election Day.

Last-Minute Ohio Directive Could Trash Legal Votes and Swing Election 03 Nov 2012 A last-minute directive issued by Ohio Secretary of StateSuppression Jon Husted (R) could invalidate legal provisional ballots. The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted. According to a lawsuit filed late Friday by voting rights advocates, this is "contrary to a court decision on provisional ballots a week ago and contrary to statements made by attorneys for Husted at an Oct. 24 court hearing."

Florida early vote totals revised, raising questions --Across the 17 Broward polling locations, 15 saw their vote totals revised. 29 Oct 2012 With early voting underway as of Saturday, there are already questions being raised about the vote count in Broward County, Florida. An analysis of the unofficial totals by early voting location on the Broward Supervisor of Elections website from Saturday, compared to the tallies posted on Sunday, shows that in one location, the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, located on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Pompano Beach, the revised totals showed 1,003 fewer votes. The initial tally reported from the polling place in the heavily black neighborhood showed 2,945 votes, but the revised tally was 1,401.

'Dark Money' in 2012 Election Tops $400 Million, 10 Candidates Outspent by Groups With Undisclosed Donors 02 Nov 2012 Four conservative nonprofits and the business industry's lead trade association have spent nearly $300 million on political efforts over the course of the past two years, accounting for 70 percent of the so-called "dark money" reported to have been spent since the beginning of 2011. The Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS, the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the shadowy American Future Fund, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have spent $295 million since the beginning of 2011, targeting candidates from President Barack Obama on down to the most contested House and Senate races, all without disclosing the names of their donors to the public.

Chevron gives $2.5 million to conservative super PAC 26 Oct 2012 The dearth of large contributions being made by big corporations to super PACs so far this election has ended. Chevron Corp., ranked No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. companies, made a $2.5 million contribution on Oct. 7 to the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the House and Senate. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, which allowed corporate money to be spent on elections, there were predictions that companies would tap their treasuries and flood races with unlimited cash.

US Navy is arming drone boats 03 Nov 2012 While the US Air Force's drones have been firing all sorts of air-to-surface missiles and bombs for roughly a decade now, the Navy took a big step toward getting in on the action last week when it launched six Israeli-made Spike missiles from an unmanned 36-foot motorboat. The project -- the unmanned surface vehicle precision engagement module (USV PEM) -- is part of a joint-US-Israeli collaboration run out of the US Navy's sea systems command's Special Warfare Program Office. The same shop is responsible for, among other things, fielding a number of tiny submarines used to listen for enemy submarines, deliver Navy SEALS and other secret squirrel activities.

Afghanistan: Inspector General announces audit into $230m worth of repair parts that 'went missing' --Afghanistan security forces report raises fears over long-term stability 01 Nov 2012 Afghanistan will struggle to maintain its security forces' buildings and equipment after foreign forces leave at the end of 2014, a US government watchdog said in a bleak report that raised serious questions about long-term stability prospects. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction has also announced an audit into $230m (£142.5m) worth of repair parts ordered for the Afghan army that have gone missing, underlining problems with corruption and accountability.

U.S. service member, 4 Afghan police killed 02 Nov 2012 Four Afghan police officers were shot dead Friday in southern Helmand province in an insider attack by their colleagues, one day after a U.S. service member was killed in an insurgent attack, officials said. The U.S. service member was killed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a military statement said. Mohammad Toryali, police chief of Grish district, said the shooting of the four policemen occurred at a police outpost during a shift change. The officers on duty were killed by four of their colleagues who had arrived to replace them, Toryali said.

Nuclear industry funded NRA's safety experts --Officials drafting new regulations raked in millions 04 Nov 2012 Four of the six members on a government panel drafting new nuclear safety regulations each received between ¥3 million and over ¥27 million in payments, donations and grants from entities in the atomic energy industry in the last three to four years, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said. Critics cited the risk of their judgment being swayed by power companies and other nuclear-related bodies, and of the possibility that new safety regulations could be watered down. Of the four members, Akira Yamaguchi, a professor at Osaka University's graduate school, and Akio Yamamoto, a Nagoya University professor, each received payments in excess of ¥500,000 annually from entities including Nuclear Engineering Ltd., an affiliate of Kansai Electric Power Co.

Police pepper-spray anti-austerity protesters in Portland 03 Nov 2012 (OR) Several anti-austerity protesters were pepper-sprayed by police Saturday afternoon in the Lloyd District apparently over the issue of what route the protesters were marching along. The Portland Police Bureau said the event, which grew to several hundred demonstrators, did not have a permit. There was one arrest.

Liberals fear grand bargain betrayal if President Obama wins --'It's the entitlements [sic] that worry them.' 02 Nov 2012 Labor unions and liberal interest groups are going all-out for President Barack Obama's reelection -- but they’re just as ready to turn that firepower back on him if he betrays them with a grand bargain. These groups fear a victorious Obama would ink a deal with Republicans during the fiscal cliff negotiations that slashes entitlement benefits. And that could hurt the very coalition of voters — minorities, women and low- and middle-income families -- that would claim credit for his second term. Even as they turn out the vote in public to keep Obama in office, in private they're plotting a strategy aimed at pressuring him to protect those who reelected him. Obama signaled last week that he could revive the offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), which included entitlement benefit cuts such as raising the Medicare eligibility age and lowering the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.[Apparently, Barack Obama has already declared the terms of his own surrender -- whether he wins or 'loses' in the coup-addled Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Wisconsin. --LRP]

Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory-GOP Suppresses Study 02 Nov 2012 What do you do when the Congressional Research Service, the completely non-partisan arm of the Library of Congress that has been advising Congress-and only Congress-on matters of policy and law for nearly a century, produces a research study that finds absolutely no correlation between the top tax rates and economic growth, thereby destroying a key tenant of conservative economic theory? If you are a Republican member of the United States Senate, you do everything in your power to suppress that report--particularly when it comes less than two months before a national election where your candidate is selling this very economic theory as the basis for his candidacy.

Power bill prompts Gretna man to make nuclear threat, authorities say 01 Nov 2012 A Gretna man angry about surcharges on his power bill called the Louisiana Public Service Commission and allegedly threatened to blow up a nuclear power plant. A federal grand jury charged William Dugas, 48, Thursday with two counts of using a telephone to make threats to kill individuals and damage or destroy buildings, according to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's Office. Dugas was arrested Oct. 11 at his home by members of the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. He allegedly left two threatening voicemails for employees of the Public Service Commission before delivering a threat during a live telephone call while an FBI agent was present, court records said. Dugas was allegedly angry about Entergy surcharges to repair infrastructure damaged during recent Hurricanes. According to court records, Dugas felt he didn't owe any extra money because his account was new and the company had received insurance payments for the damage.

Matthew 'Maddy' Pfeiffer Subpoenaed for Grand Jury (Committee Against Political Repression) 30 Oct 2012 On October 25, 2012, a fifth subpoena was served to Matthew "Maddy" Pfeiffer to appear before the federal grand jury on November 7, 2012. Pfeiffer's statement: On October 25th, the day before my 23rd birthday, two FBI agents wearing ill-fitting khakis and too much gel in their hair, served me a subpoena for 9am on November 7th. I knew my fate right away: 18 months in SeaTac Federal Detention Center. Matt, Kteeo and Leah have all been imprisoned for their refusal and I will be the next. Despite the urgings of lawyers, agents and judges, I only have one option: non-cooperation. Any other option is unthinkable. I am being asked to testify before a Grand Jury on November 7th and will likely be detained on that date for refusing to cooperate. The vultures of the state will try to imprison my comrades and me until we give in. We will never give in...

New storm may bring wind, rain to Sandy-hit region 04 Nov 2012 The National Weather Service says a storm system currently brewing could bring colder temperatures, wind, rain and even snow to areas recovering from Superstorm Sandy. The forecast for the area around New Jersey and New York, which were hit hard by Sandy on Monday, calls for temperatures to fall into the 20s by Monday night. The weather service says a possible coastal storm Wednesday and Thursday could bring gusty wind, rain and snow.

Military to Deliver Fuel to Storm Region 03 Nov 2012 As long lines persisted at gas stations in the New York metropolitan area, federal authorities moved Friday to restore supplies, turning to the Defense Department to send 24 million gallons of extra fuel to the region and lifting restrictions on deliveries by foreign-flagged ships. The Obama administration authorized the Defense Department to hire hundreds of trucks that will be used to deliver 12 million gallons each of gasoline and diesel fuel to staging areas in New Jersey. The Defense Logistics Agency is handling the fuel purchases and deliveries. And on Thursday, the Defense Department used 17 of its aircraft to move 630 tons of equipment from West Coast utility companies to an Air National Guard base 60 miles north of New York City.

Anger boils over at lack of US storm relief 03 Nov 2012 With the death toll from Hurricane Sandy climbing towards 100, and several million people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut facing a fifth day without electricity, heat and, in many cases, food and water, anger and frustration has boiled over at the failure of the federal, state and local governments to provide adequate relief...The storm, like Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, has laid bare the immense social inequalities that saturate every facet of American society, nowhere more starkly than in New York City, among the hardest hit areas on the US Eastern Seaboard.