VoteKansas.org

First working in Romney's favor are eight winner-take-all or congressional district winner-take-all contests that would most likely wind up in his win column. They are Puerto Rico, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, Delaware, California, New Jersey, and Utah. They could give Romney an impressive haul of up to 386 Delegates. If past contests are any indication, it is likely that his opponents wouldn't even try to compete in most of these states given their geography and demographic make-up. California is likely too large (and too big of an obstacle) for a lesser organized and underfunded campaign to compete in.

Assuming Romney is able to secure almost all of these delegates, he would only need around 350 more delegates from the remaining 1100+ available, or around 30%.

Next, a number of states that deliver delegates proportionally also favor Romney. Illinois (66), Hawaii (20), New York (95), Rhode Island (19), Oregon (28), New Mexico (23), Montana (26), and four US territories (28) combine for another 305 delegates. The good news for Romney here is he has been winning the proportionally-awarded states that favor him by wide margins, meaning he doesn't share many of the delegates. If he dominates in most of these states, the path to victory becomes very easy

Assuming Romney does well where he should, he would be less than 100 delegates away from the nomination, with a lot of states to go. This is where the other good news comes in. Most of the states that do not naturally favor Romney also offer proportional delegates, and he would likely pick up support even when he loses. For instance, although Santorum won 3 states that gave him 52 delegates during the "Super Tuesday" contests, Romney's 2nd place finish in those three states netted him a strong 35 delegates. So although Santorum won three states, he barely gained any ground.

Theoretically Romney could lose Kansas, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Nebraska and still get more than enough delegates from each state to pull out a victory. Or simply by winning just one or two of these states, he would fly past the delegate threshold.

The delegate map is very favorable to Mitt Romney. This isn't to say that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich should drop out of the race, but there simply doesn't exist a plausible scenario where they could win or force a brokered convention, absent a complete Romney meltdown. The 13 states listed above that would favor the anti-Romney candidates, don't deliver delegates in a way that could overcome such a large deficit.

Romney's Delegate Math originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Thursday, March 8th, 2012 at 08:11:56.

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"Completely and Utterly Fail in an Earthquake"

by Greg Palast
for FreePress.org

I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake.

"Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure.

The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have.  Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building ....

WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR
NEW YORK, 1986

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday.  Click here to get the videos and the book.]

Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station.

The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That’s what happens. Have a nice day.

On March 12 this year, as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew:  the "SQ" had been faked.  Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK.  He'd flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit.  The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0.  Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts.  The 9.0 shake was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 90 miles away.  It was barely a tenth of that power at Fukushima.

I was ready to vomit.  Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it:  Shaw Construction.  The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies.

But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company.  I'd squirreled it out sometime before the Trade Center went down.  I shouldn't have done that.  Too bad.

All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn’t sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the “SQ” tests.

SQ is nuclear-speak for “Seismic Qualification.” A seismically qualified nuclear plant won’t melt down if you shake it. A “seismic event” can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can’t run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ.

This much is clear from his notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules.

Here’s what we learned: Dick’s subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn’t want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] “I believe these are bad results and I believe it’s reportable,” and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies.

Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn’t report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law. . . .

The law is clear. It is a crime not to report a safety failure. I could imagine Wiesel standing there with that big, thick rule book in his hands, The Law. It must have been heavy. So was his paycheck. He weighed the choices: Break the law, possibly a jail-time crime, or keep his job.

What did Wiesel do? What would you do?

Why the hell would his company make this man walk the line? Why did they put the gun to his head, to make him conceal mortal danger? It was the money. It’s always the money. Fixing the seismic problem would have cost the plant’s owner half a billion dollars easy. A guy from corporate told Dick, “Bob is a good man. He’ll do what’s right. Don’t worry about Bob.”

That is, they thought Bob would save his job and career rather than rat out the company to the feds.

But I think we should all worry about Bob. The company he worked for, Stone & Webster Engineering, built or designed about a third of the nuclear plants in the United States.

From the fifty-second floor we could look at the Statue of Liberty. She didn’t look back.

***

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores.

Get it now!

Download Chapter 1 of the book:

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GregPalast.com

********

5 years ago, we published out first report on the Vultures with BBC TV and Democracy Now! - in the UK it set London MP's to action - the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown called them "morally outrageous” and pledged to make them illegal in that country.

In the US it was two Congressman, Donald Payne and John Conyers that stormed the White House with our report and told the President that he must act.

Congressmen Donald Payne, tirelessly fought against Vulture Funds in this country, calling hearings, pushing the Washington beltway to take notice of this practice. He died this week, he will be missed. State Senator Richard Codey said it best "He was bigger than life but never conducted himself that way, If you were violating somebody’s rights, you better get out of the way.”

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Warrant was vague as to a search for “further analysis” of the digital media, so the subsequent searches were suppressed. The first searches are enough for the case to proceed. United States v. Salceda, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28211 (C.D. Cal. February 27, 2012):

The government conducted searches of defendant's digital media in September and October 2011 based on the following language of the original search warrant:

If, after conducting such an initial search [within 60 days from the date of the execution of the search warrant], the case agents determine that a digital device is an item to be seized or contains any data falling within the list of items to be seized pursuant to this warrant, the government will retain the digital device for further analysis; otherwise, the government will return the digital device.

. . .

The Court finds that any evidence discovered during the September and October 2011 forensic searches is inadmissible. The original warrant's "further analysis" language is ambiguous as to whether it permits the government to analyze defendant's digital devices for additional evidence of contraband, or whether it merely permits additional analysis of previously discovered contraband. Given this ambiguity, suppression of the evidence is appropriate. See Transfiguracion, 442 F.3d at 1228 (construing ambiguities in plea agreements in favor of a defendant because the government, as drafter of the agreement, bears the "responsibility for any lack of clarity") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Wilhelm, 425 F.3d at 463 (finding fourth amendment violation because officer "recognized the warrant as ambiguous before the execution of the warrant, but failed to immediately stop execution and seek the necessary clarification of a warrant in order to make certain the warrant particularly described the place to be searched. ..."). The Court's decision is informed by the fact that the government sought—and was denied—a new warrant from Judge Zarefsky, and thereafter sought ex parte relief from this Court before conducting the subsequent searches. At the very least, the government's conduct demonstrates its acknowledgment that the "further analysis" language is ambiguous. In denying the government's ex parte application, the Court directed the government to seek clarification from the issuing judge to cure any ambiguities. Because the government chose to proceed with the searches without clarification or without securing a new search warrant, that evidence must be suppressed. See Wilhelm, 425 F.3d at 463.