Ben Masel, October 17, 1954 to April 30, 2011. 

In arrest at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago sent Ben Masel on a life course like no other. Ben joined the protestors who sued the City of Chicago and Mayor Dailey over their illegal detentions and police brutality. After several years fighting city hall, Ben collected $40,000 in damages. His career course was set.

Born in the Bronx, Ben Masel moved to Madison Wisconsin after he met a group of Madison activists at the May Day 1970 mass protest against the Vietnam War. Madison and the world will never be the same.

Ben Masel in his trademark shirt protests in front of the State Capital, Madison, WI.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Tired, poor, huddled people seeking jobs in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, America and Europe have died on the high seas, suffocated in vehicles, toiled in sweatshops, and been expelled to countries where dictators lock them up.

Human traffickers eagerly profit from migrant workers' poverty, ignorance and desperation, including many unemployed men and women who beg to be smuggled abroad despite knowing the risks.

People pay huge fees and bribes to unscrupulous agents and officials to secure access to jobs, but often end up working in wretched conditions, cheated out of their meager wages or busted by authorities who squeeze them for cash or sex while imprisoning them before expelling them back home.

In an all-too-typical case, a group of frightened workers on April 20 climbed out of the window of a Bangkok garment factory where employers were allegedly exploiting up 60 people from Burma.

One of the workers, who filed a case with police, said they were locked in the factory from 8 a.m. to midnight, and paid less than $7 a month instead of the $200 salary previously agreed upon.

With the Ohio House of Representatives ready to ram through the reactionary budget of former Fox commentator and now-Governor John Kasich, the Columbus Dispatch ran a Washington Post article entitled “U.S. detour to debt on road to surplus.” The lead is both accurate and timely for Ohio. It reads: “The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.” That choice is about to be echoed in Ohio budget policies.

The Post and the Dispatch should be praised for stating the obvious. In January 2001, as President Clinton departed the Oval Office, the budget was balanced and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted even larger annual surpluses through the new millennium. Within a decade, they predicted, we would pay off all of the U.S. debt.

Ballots are an open record under Colorado law though clerks are fighting the public on this. Marilyn Marks, supported by Black Box Voting, is litigating over wrongful denial of public right to inspect Colorado ballots. This is currently in the Colo. Supreme Court now (Looking good so far ... more on that below).

In Wisconsin where a hot political recount is taking place, the public can opt to examine ballots with or without a recount. In Michigan, the public can even take pictures of ballots. In Florida, a consortium of news organizations examined ALL the ballots from the 2000 presidential election. In California, two counties (Humboldt and Yolo) make photocopies of all the ballots available to the public for examination.

But in 2003, New Hampshire ballots were ever-so-quietly EXCLUDED from public right to know. How could this happen?

THE INVESTIGATION INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE'S REMOVAL OF BALLOTS FROM RIGHT-TO-KNOW LAW

Dear President Obama,
Why Atomic Energy Should Not be Used to Generate Electricity:
The plants are inherently unsafe
· Most of the current plants are operating beyond their age limit.

· Failure to inspect and maintain them.
· Operators are sometimes not reporting safety hazards to NRC.
· Human error puts them at risk.
· When there is an accident, there is risk of injury and death to a large numbers of people, areas becoming uninhabitable and food becoming unsafe to eat.
· Since insurance companies are unwilling to insure them, government assumes the liability.

Problems with spent fuel (atomic waste)
· It must be kept under water to cool it and protect personnel from radiation.
· There is no safe way to dispose of it after it can be taken out of the water. It is usually left on site. · It is dangerous for thousands of years.
· It can easily be used to make a “dirty bomb”.

Government must subsidize nuclear power plants in order that energy companies will invest in them.