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Thursday, July 21
Blog for Iowa’s Lead Balloon Award Goes to . . . MidAmerican!
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 21 Jul 2005 05:43 PM CDT
 Blog for Iowa’s Lead Balloon Award Goes to . . . MidAmerican!
by Linda Thieman
Yes,
friends and neighbors, Blog for Iowa’s First Ever Lead Balloon Award
goes to (drum roll, please) . . . MidAmerican Energy Company, the
Number One Industrial Polluter in the State of Iowa!
 If it
were a contest to see which industrial facility could pollute Iowa the
most, MidAmerican Energy Co., with pollution production plants in five
Iowa towns – Sergeant Bluff, Council Bluffs, Muscatine, Salix and
Bettendorf – would be the grand champion.
In fact,
in 2002, according to the pollution information website Scorecard set
up by Environmental Defense, MidAmerican dumped 6,573,317 pounds of
toxins into Iowa air, water and onto the land [from public toxicant
reports provided by MidAmerican].
The
MidAmerican plants in Sergeant Bluff, Council Bluffs, Muscatine and
Salix each, individually, rank in the top ten percent of dirtiest/worst
pollution-generating facilities in the ENTIRE United States.
Into the Iowa Air
Into the
Iowa air alone, MidAmerican, in the year 2002, spewed 19,272 pounds of
known or suspected carcinogens, and over a million pounds each of
recognized or suspected developmental and reproductive toxicants.
Two of
these toxic chemicals are arsenic and mercury, both of which are
“ranked as one of the most hazardous compounds (worst 10%) to
ecosystems and human health.”
MidAmerican
did not respond to two inquiries from Blog for Iowa when asked to
comment for this article. But, hey, did you know that MidAmerican
has an explicit Environmental Respect policy spelled out on their
website? I kid you not.
MidAmerican’s Environmental RESPECT Policy
"MidAmerican
Energy Holdings Company believes responsible environmental management
is good business. It benefits our customers and improves the quality of
the environment in which we live. This policy establishes the
environmental RESPECT principles that guide our corporate commitment to
the environment."
If
dumping six and a half million pounds of toxic waste in Iowa per year
is a sign of respect, I’d hate to think what would happen if they
didn’t care.
If
MidAmerican ever responds to this issue, I will post their blah, blah,
blah PR babble for you to read. That is, if they don’t cut off my
electricity in retaliation for mentioning the truth about their
pollution-generating company based on reports from their own records.
As Molly likes to say, when it comes to the environment, it’s time to administer CPR: CONSERVE – PARTICIPATE – RECYCLE.
Vote Fraud: Diebold Dumpster Dive Yields Financial Documents
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 21 Jul 2005 12:18 PM CDT
 Vote Fraud: Diebold Dumpster Dive Yields Financial Documents
BlackBoxVoting.org
JULY 20, 2005: One late night in Texas, 51-year-old Kathleen Wynne did something she never thought she would consider: She jumped into a dumpster.
An ordinary citizen who had become concerned about the integrity of Diebold voting machines, Wynne was amazed to find hundreds of pages of documents in the trash. Among them: internal notes and memos, planning information, problems with equipment and customers, price bid worksheets, staff bonuses, and financial statements from Diebold Election Systems. It was early July, just after second quarter financials, and the Diebold elections division seemed to be cleaning house.
Wynne was a citizen volunteer then - she is nowa full-time investigator for Black Box Voting, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501c(3) consumer protection group for elections.
Diebold, a company that boasts of its security, had made no attempt to shred the documents, or protect them in any way. Instead, the company was in the habit of discarding its internal records in various publicly available locations -- an apparent violation of the management requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The first batch of documents is posted here.
(We'll come back to the document stash in a minute.)
DIEBOLD DENIES INVOLVEMENT IN GALLINA MONEY
In May, Black Box Voting broke the story of ACG Group, LLC, which has been funneling money from Diebold into the pockets of . . . someone.
The 'G' in ACG stands for Gallina - Pasquale "Pat" Gallina. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Gallina was caught giving $10,000 to the Franklin County Republican Party, handed off through the Franklin County Director of Elections. The Dispatch also contains a report of a $50,000 donation by Gallina to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's political interests.
Diebold, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, denies any involvement in the donations by Gallina, pointing to "Celebrezze & Associates" and vowing to fire that organization (set up by Anthony Celebrezze, now deceased) if it is proved to have "provided the check in the name of Diebold."
Excerpts from the above news articles can be found here
(scroll down).
Let us now dissect the spin:
1. The money was flowing through ACG Group LLC. A few dollars may also have wandered into Gallina's pocket through "Celebrezze & Associates," but the large, UNDISCLOSED cash was flowing through ACG Group LLC, an entity Diebold has not uttered a word about.
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