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As April 15 approaches, American taxpayers might wish to contemplate the $37.5 million in tax credits for the Northrop Grumman corporation approved by a Maryland Senate committee. The military-industrial giant’s annual revenues have been in the $25 billion range in recent years–most of it thanks to government contracts, of course–making it the fifth largest such […] Seventy years of being a nuclear superpower have resulted in astonishing numbers of dollars spent on armaments that exist to be on perpetual standby. And then there is the nasty radiotoxic stuff that would make their actual use an act of national suicide. The White House has released a fact sheet touting the reduction of […] The death at 78 of writer Jim Harrison has revved up the outboard motor of Key-West-in-the-Seventies lore that substantial numbers of American men of a Walter Mitty bent have been yanking on for 40 years to Jimmy Buffett’s furniture music. Harrison and his more talented but more bourgeois friend, Tom McGuane, produced some very entertaining […] In a weird twist on the old Wernher von Braun model for contradictory celebrityhood, Robert De Niro is now both a hero of cinematic art and a patron of fraudulent science. We may or may not learn more about where the money came from to make the ghastly, stupid anti-vaccination propaganda film Vaxxed, but at […] Taking a long sea voyage on a tramp freighter has a romantic ring, but the two decidedly non-tramp vessels that arrived today at the port of Tokai in northeast Tokyo would not fit the bill. The British Pacific-Egret and Pacific-Heron will be loaded with 331 kilograms of weapons-usable plutonium. They will then embark on a […] On the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster: 97,324 people are still living as evacuees 400-500 tons of radioactive water accumulate onsite every day, stored in tanks that now number 1000 spent fuel assemblies are still inaccessible in 3 reactor buildings because of debris and high radiation levels the amount and location of […] The Israel Defense Forces–in conjunction with their U.S. military industrial subsidiaries Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin– placed an advertisement in the Washington Post today for Israel’s $3+ billion anti-missile system, a gift from American taxpayers. The ad looks just like a news column, even signed by Jerusalem-based reporters William Booth and Ruth Eglash, with cool […] A new regulation from the office of National Intelligence Director James “Not Wittingly” Clapper creates a high-priced menu for anyone who dares ask for the declassification and release of secret documents: Sec. 1704.8 Fees. (a) Requesters making requests directly to the ODNI shall be responsible for paying all fees under this regulation. (b) Requesters making […] There is an august statue in the otherwise lovely environs of Mt. Vernon Place in my native city that has puzzled me for most of my life. It honors Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1836 until his death in 1864. Taney delivered the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, ruling […] After two years of construction, $300 million, and a lot of fanfare, the wall of frozen soil that was supposed to solve Fukushima’s radioactive groundwater problem has been nixed by Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority. “TEPCO is scattering a strange illusion” about the efficacy of the wall, warned NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka last spring. Tests showed […] |