NORTON META TAG

26 January 2013

Sea Shepherd E-News: Operation Zero Tolerance 25JAN13 & Statement from Captain Paul Watson 7JAN13 & Sea Shepherd Ordered By U.S. Appeals Court To Keep 500 Yards Away From Japanese Whalers 18DEZ12

Capt Paul Watson has resigned his leadership positions in Sea Shepherd and as captain of the Steve Irwin as a result of a ruling by the US 9th Circuit Court. This is in response to the case brought against Sea Shepherd by the japanese whaling industry which continues to violate international law with their whaling in the Southern Whale Sanctuary. Below is the statement from Capt Watson on his resignation, an article from HuffPost on the court decision and the latest e mail newsletter from Sea Shepherd on the new leadership of the organization and Operation Zero Tolerance. If you can please make a donation to Sea Shepherd (a 4 star charity per Charity Navigator) to show the japanese whaling industry Sea Shepherd will continue their anti-whaling operations with the support of people around the world. 

STATEMENT FROM CAPTAIN PAUL WATSON

January 7, 2013

Statement from Captain Paul Watson

Captain Paul Watson on the bridge of the SSS Steve irwinCaptain Paul Watson on the bridge of the SSS Steve irwin
Photo: Tim Watters / Sea ShepherdFor the 35 years since I founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society I have strived to act non-violently and within the boundaries of the law.
Sea Shepherd has never been a protest organization nor have we engaged in civil disobedience. We are an anti-poaching organization established to uphold international conservation law. We operate within the guidelines of the United Nations World Charter for Nature that allows for intervention by non-profit non-governmental organizations and individuals to uphold international conservation law.
During Sea Shepherd’s long history we have never caused a single injury to any person. Although we have broken some bureaucratic regulations like Canada’s so called Seal Protection Act, we did so to challenge the validity of these regulations, which were in contradiction to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In all other respects we have always operated within the boundaries of the law, both international and national.
In 1998 Sea Shepherd USA complied with the order by the United States Coast Guard to not approach within a thousand yards of the Makah whaling operation in Washington State.
I myself have never been convicted of a felony crime.
And for this reason, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in the United States and myself as a U.S. citizen must comply with the order by the 9th Circuit court of the United States.
Because I have been personally named in the injunction I have resigned as the President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in the United States and as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Australia. I have also resigned my position of Executive Director of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society USA and I will hold no paid position with Sea Shepherd anywhere Sea Shepherd is registered and operates as a non-profit organization in any nation.
I have also stepped down as campaign leader for Operation Zero Tolerance. Former Greens Party leader and former Australian Senator, Bob Brown of Tasmania will now hold this position.
I have also stepped down as Captain of the Steve Irwin. Captain Siddharth Chakravarty of India is now in command of the Steve Irwin. The other three Captains are citizens of Sweden, France and Australia.
As a United States citizen, I will respect and comply with the ruling of the United States 9th District Court and will not violate the temporary injunction granted to the Institute for Cetacean Research.  I will participate as an observer within the boundaries established by the 9th Circuit Court of the United States.
http://www.seashepherd.org.au/commentary-and-editorials/2013/01/07/statement-from-captain-paul-watson-592

Sea Shepherd Ordered By U.S. Appeals Court To Keep 500 Yards Away From Japanese Whalers



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Why winning back the House is a tough task for Democrats 25JAN13 &What The 2012 Election Would Look Like Under The Republicans' Vote-Rigging Plan 24JAN13

A pretty good article on the political landscape of the nation and the challenges facing the Democrat's attempts to gain control of the US House. It also re-enforces the fact that all politics are local, and without winning local, state and regional offices it will be next to impossible for the Democrats to win the House. Redistricting to benefit the party in control is a tactic both parties have used since it has been available, both parties are guilty of using redistricting to deny the  opposition a fair chance in elections. (From Wikipedia A redistricting commission is a body designated to draw electoral district lines. Usually the intent is to avoid gerrymandering by specifying a nonpartisan or bipartisan body to comprise the commission. However, some of these commissions, much like some state boards of election, are set up to give the majority party more seats on the commission; see e.g. the New Jersey Redistricting Commission.
The Campaign Legal Center reports that eleven (11) states currently utilize non-partisan or bi-partisan redistricting commissions composed of non-office-holding citizens.[1] The states include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, and Washington.[1] The Campaign Legal Center also reports that Arkansas and Ohio use redistricting commissions that are composed entirely of elected officials.[1]
In 2008 California voters approved Proposition 11[2] amending the state's constitution creating a bi-partisan Citizens Redistricting Commission composed of non-office-holding citizens.[2]
Efforts to establish a redistricting commission in Virginia have so far failed.[citation needed] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_commission ) The real threat to democracy are the attempts of repiglicans and tea-baggers, the recent developments in Virginia being the latest example, to restrict voting rights and try to manipulate the electoral college to deny the candidate receiving the the majority vote in a presidential election. This from the Washington Post...

Posted by Aaron Blake 

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal asked his fellow Republicans to shift their focus outside of Washington, D.C.  in his speech Thursday night at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting.
Doing so might cheer them up a little.
While the party’s Washington contingent is struggling mightily, the GOP retains full control of nearly half the state governments across the nation. And that control, combined with the just-completed round of redistricting, has set up Republicans to hold onto many of those state governments — and by extension, the U.S. House of Representatives — for potentially the next decade or more.
“The Republicans will have an advantage in partisanship in districts for a long time. That, I think, is indisputable,” said Rob Richie, the executive director of the electoral reform group Fair Vote. Of the Democrats, he said, “I think that they’re probably settling in for a long stay in the minority, unless it’s a really big year.”
Here’s why.
Because Republicans exercise full control (both legislative chambers plus the governorship) of big swing states and blue-leaning states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, they were able to draw congressional maps that strongly favored their party. In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney won 64 of 104 congressional districts in those six states, despite all of them going for President Obama statewide.
This chart, from Wonkblog’s Dylan Matthews, pretty much says it all. It shows how many congressional seats Democrats won in each state in 2012 versus their percentage of the presidential vote:
What redistricting also did, though, was allow Republicans to draw very favorable state legislative maps. Those maps will also make it hard for Democrats to regain control of those chambers and, by extension, overhaul the existing GOP-friendly maps at both the state and congressional levels.
Nobody is saying Democrats can’t win back the U.S. House in the coming years, but most everyone agrees that it’s significantly more difficult today than it was before and that Democrats need a sizable wave to do it. In fact, they would need to win as much as 55 percent of the popular vote, according to the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman, something neither party was able to achieve even in the wave elections of 2006, 2008 and 2010.
So, Democrats have little control, which makes it harder for them to gain control. And until they gain back control — at least long enough to draw new maps — it will be difficult for them to get anything resembling consistent majorities.
The numbers tell the story.

The GOP lost what had been full control of just one state government, Maine, where Democrats took back both state legislative chambers. But Republicans gained full control over three additional states: Alaska, North Carolina and Wisconsin. So while the GOP controlled a total of 22 states before 2012, it now controls 24 (including many swing states), compared with just 14 under Democrats’ control.While the GOP had a bad year nationally in 2012, it actually might have been a net-positive at the state level — in large part due to the new maps that Republicans drew before the election.
And it’s going to be tough for Democrats to win back control of many of those states.
In Ohio, for instance, Republicans actually expanded their state House and state Senate majorities in 2012, to 60-39 in the House and 23-10 in the Senate, even as Obama carried the state by three points.
For Democrats to have won the House, the statewide vote would have needed to shift more than four points toward Democrats (judging by the median race, which Republicans won 54.18 percent to 45.82 percent). Translating that shift to the presidential race, it would have meant that Obama needed to carry the state 55 percent to 43 percent, rather than 51 percent to 48 percent.
(This is not a perfect calculation, of course, because campaigns matter. But state legislative races are often very reflective of the overall political environment.)
Another good example is the Virginia House. Republicans retained a 67-31 edge there, despite Obama having carried the state by four points. A look at past election results suggests that the 2012 election would have had to shift about five points toward Democrats for them to have taken the chamber. That means Obama’s margin would have needed to be 56 percent to 42 percent.
Needless to say, it would take a huge wave for Democrats to win either Ohio or Virginia by double digits at the presidential level. And while such swings have happened in U.S. political history, these days voters are much more polarized, making such a swing quite unlikely.
Now, we should stress that this doesn’t mean that Democrats are in the dark for the next decade. There are more than enough congressional seats in play to make it happen in a good year, even if they don’t get 55 percent of the popular vote. And merely winning back a governorship would give them a seat at the table in the next round of redistricting. (The GOP will have a tough time holding governor’s seats in all six states listed above over the next two years.)
“It’s ridiculous to assume the redistricting will go the Republicans’ way,” said one Democratic strategist. “All you need is to win a governorship, and it ends up in court, and anything could happen.”
The strategist also pointed to demographic changes that favor Democrats in key states, including the fact that Texas appears likely to be a swing state in the coming years.
A GOP strategist agreed that it’s too early to say that Republicans will again be in the driver’s seat come the next round of redistricting.
“I think it’s just a little early to be predicting that Republicans will be in a position of strength. There could be a lot more split-control states. All it takes is one of those chambers to go, and you’re in a court situation or making a deal.”
But at this point, it’s going to be very hard for Democrats to gain full control over the redrawing of the maps in most of these vital states, and if they can’t win the governor’s mansions back, Republicans could again redraw the maps after the 2020 Census.
And by extension, that means that state governments and the congressional map could favor Republicans for years (or decades) to come.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/01/25/beyond-the-beltway-gop-remains-in-very-good-shape/?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
What The 2012 Election Would Look Like Under The Republicans' Vote-Rigging Plan

  Republicans have a new strategy for 2016: Change the rules of presidential elections in order to swing the Electoral College in the GOP's favor.
On Wednesday, Virginia's Republican-controlled legislature became one of the first to advance a bill that would allocate electoral votes by congressional district. Last week, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed pushing through similar proposals in other states with Republican legislative majorities.
The strategy would have states alter the way they translate individual votes into electors -- thereby giving Republican candidates an advantage. Had the 2012 election been apportioned in every state according to these new Republican plans, Romney would have led Obama by at least 11 electoral votes. Here's how:
In the 2012 election, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 126 electoral votes.
Within the 26 states that Obama took, Romney won a plurality of votes in 99 congressional districts.
Obama, on the other hand, won only 32 congressional districts in red states.
Each state has two more electoral votes than congressional districts. The most common Republican proposal -- under consideration inPennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan -- follows the same rules already in effect in Maine and Nebraska, which allocate the two additional votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
This is what the 2012 electoral map would have looked like had each state apportioned its electors using these rules.
The legislation introduced in Virginia, however, goes even further and proposes to allocate the two remaining votes not to the candidate who wins the state-wide popular vote, but to the candidate who wins the majority of congressional districts. This would give Republicans an even bigger advantage in that state.
 2012 ELECTION RESULTS
 ObamaRomney
ObamaRomney
ELECTORAL VOTES 
(270 TO WIN)		332206
Map
OBAMA LEADING
OBAMA WON
ROMNEY LEADING
ROMNEY WON
Battleground States
OBAMAROMNEY
VIRGINIA99% RPT.51.2%47.3%
FLORIDA100% RPT.50.0%49.1%
N. CAROLINA100% RPT.48.4%50.4%
OHIO100% RPT.50.7%47.7%
NEW HAMPSHIRE100% RPT.52.0%46.4%
COLORADO100% RPT.51.5%46.1%
WISCONSIN99% RPT.52.8%45.9%
IOWA100% RPT.52.0%46.2%
NEVADA100% RPT.52.4%45.7%
Popular Vote
OBAMAROMNEY
TOTAL65,367,93960,707,106
PERCENT51.0%47.3%
SENATE
33 out of 100 seats are up for election. 51 are needed for a majority.
DEMOCRAT LEADING
DEMOCRAT WON
HOLDOVER
REPUBLICAN LEADING
REPUBLICAN WON
DEMOCRATS*REPUBLICANS
CURRENT SENATE5347
SEATS GAINED OR LOST+2-2
NEW TOTAL5545
* Includes two independent senators expected to caucus with the Democrats: Angus King (Maine) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
HOUSE
All 435 seats are up for election. 218 are needed for a majority.
DEMOCRAT LEADING
DEMOCRAT WON
REPUBLICAN LEADING
REPUBLICAN WON
DEMOCRATSREPUBLICANS
SEATS WON201234
Click for Full Results

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