From the IRE listserv

Have you ever heard of www.governmentattic.org? Fun fun fun for document junkies........this post is reprinted from the Investigative Reporters and Editors listserv.

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 07:58:01 -0400
From: Michael Ravnitzky
Subject: [IREPLUS-L] Spotted on Government Attic - Navy Salvage
Reports
To: Discussion of Investigative Reporting Techniques and Training
, State and Local Freedom of Information Issues
, "ireplus-l@ire.org"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

SPOTTED ON GOVERNMENT ATTIC - NAVY SALVAGE REPORTS

Seven US Navy Salvage Reports (SUPSALV), 1968 - 1992

http://www.governmentattic.org/SUPSALV_Reports.html

Included are:

US Navy Salvage Report: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) Stranding Salvage, 25 Oct
1968

US Navy Salvage Report: Suez Canal Salvage Operations in 1974

US Navy Salvage Report: Ex-Tortuga (LSD 26) Salvage Report, 14 Sep 1989

US Navy Salvage Report: USCGC Mesquite Salvage Operation Dec 89 - July 90,
19 July 1991

US Navy Salvage Report: Commercial Aircraft Salvage Operations, 1 Apr 1992

US Navy Salvage Report: Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm Vol. 1, July
1992

US Navy Salvage Report: Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm Vol. II, July
1992

Doctors Arrested at Senate "Roundtable" on Healthcare

PM Tuesday, May 5, 2009



Institute for Public Accuracy -- Interviews Available

Doctors and other advocates of a national single-payer health system -- also known as improved Medicare for All -- directly confronted senators at a Senate Finance Committee "roundtable" on health reform today. Videos are available here http://www.singlepayeraction.org.

One by one, single-payer advocates in the audience stood up and asked why single-payer experts were being excluded from the proceedings. They each spoke out in turn until they were removed from the committee hearing room by Capitol police, at which point another person would speak up. Eight were arrested.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is "off the table" of health reform. As advocates spoke up today, he joked that he needed more police.

Today's roundtable, the second of three, consisted of 15 witnesses with no single-payer advocates among them. By contrast, several witnesses have direct ties to the for-profit, private health insurance industry.

Among the single-payer advocates who spoke up at the hearing, several have been released from custody this afternoon and are now available for interviews:

MARGARET FLOWERS, MD, nose1@aol.com, http://www.md.pnhp.org, http://www.pnhp.org
Flowers, who is co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (a national organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance), said today: "Health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license. The result is the suffering and death of thousands of patients for the sake of private profit."
After Flowers and others where removed from the hearing room, Baucus stated that he "deeply respected" their views while "orderly process" was needed. Flowers said: "We tried the orderly process, we contacted the senators, and they excluded us. The first person who spoke up noted that there were doctors who could testify -- and they arrested him."

RUSSELL MOKHIBER, russellmokhiber@gmail.com, http://www.singlepayeraction.org
Founder of Single Payer Action, Mokhiber said today: "It's a pretty spectacular display of raw political power. The health insurance industry demands that not one of the 15 people who testified today shall be a single-payer advocate. And the industry gets what it wants. It’s time for the American people to storm the gates and demand -- put single payer on the table."

KATIE ROBBINS, healthcarenow08@gmail.com, http://www.healthcare-now.org
Assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, a grassroots advocacy organization in support of single-payer national health care with a network of activists in 42 states, said today: “The current discussion on health reform is political theater at its best. Our elected officials are hosting these events to go through the motions of what developing effective national health policy should look like. There is a big difference between getting health policy experts in the room and the witnesses here today who would profit the most from reform. That difference means our hard-earned dollars will go to further insurance industry profits, not to guarantee health care to the American people."

Wolves Targeted

PM Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Institute for Public Accuracy -- Interviews Available

AP reports: "Wolves in parts of the northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region come off the endangered species list on Monday, opening them to public hunts in some states for the first time in decades."

RODGER SCHLICKEISEN, SUZANNE ASHA STONE, sstone@defenders.org,
President of Defenders of Wildlife, Schlickeisen said: "This delisting is a potentially disastrous turn for a venture that began in 1995 in such a hopeful and rewarding manner: the restoration of wolves to their natural landscape in the West. We are outraged and dismayed that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put his stamp of approval on this premature and inadequate Bush administration plan.

"We all expected more from the Obama administration, which repeatedly promised it would consult with conservationists, scientists, and other stakeholders on key issues before making decisions. Secretary Salazar rejected our offer to work with him to find the right way to delist wolves in the region and, instead, made his surprise announcement that he was removing federal protections for vulnerable wolves with no transparency at all. Defenders of Wildlife immediately filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act so we could learn who the Secretary talked to about the issue and what scientific review he undertook -- and we are still waiting for an answer. Meanwhile we are moving to sue Secretary Salazar as soon as possible to overturn this misguided and unwarranted decision.

"The delisting plan allows these two states [Idaho and Montana] to reduce wolf populations to levels that would threaten genetic diversity between populations and undermine the goal of ensuring a healthy, sustainable wolf population in the region. Secretary Salazar's terrible decision leaves us no choice. We will stand up for wolves and endangered species conservation by moving to challenge this delisting in court as soon as the law allows."

Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife, Suzanne Stone, added: "All the reasons why this plan was a bad idea when the Bush administration proposed it still stand today. Idaho, which hosts the majority of the region's wolf population, has already publically announced its desire to aggressively reduce its state wolf population once federal protections are lifted. Today, there are at least 25 packs on the short-list that may be targeted for removal. ... Delisting the wolf at this point in time completely undermines the serious work, consideration and cooperation among all stakeholders that is necessary before being able to objectively declare the gray wolf recovered."

Reprint: Newspapers’ Essential Strengths, by David Carr, NY Times, Monday, May 4

Reporters like to think of themselves as essential to the national well-being, which might be just one more measure of how out of touch we are, but journalists are not the only ones who are suggesting as much.

Speaking Tuesday in Washington at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation meeting, the day after the business magazine Portfolio closed, Mary L. Schapiro, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, suggested that because federal regulators cannot be everywhere at once, experienced reporters constitute additional critical boots on the ground.

“Financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,” said Ms. Schapiro. “But for journalists having been dogged and determined and really pursuing some of these things, they might not be known to the regulators or they might not be known for a long time.”

A current accounting of the news business — grim and grimmer by the day — suggests that there may be a subsequent bear market in accountability as well. The day before she spoke, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed that for the six months ended March 31, newspapers, which employ the vast share of paid watchdogs, were down an average of 7 percent in circulation from the previous year, a steepening decline that foretells additional layoffs in a business that has already had its share.

On Friday, it was announced that The Washington Post lost $53.8 million in the first quarter of the year, and perhaps more ominously, that revenue in its online properties dropped 8 percent.

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