Every year, the negative consequences of climate change become more evident. This year, volatility in the weather, with extreme heat followed by a normal cold snap, has devastated fruit orchards in the northern United States. This month, I’ve walked through peach orchards without a single fruit growing on any branch. In my back yard, an apple tree is barren, and my currant bushes are almost completely devoid of the little growing berries I expect at this time of year.

The economic harm is direct: There is less healthy food for us to eat. Fruit prices this autumn are going to be much higher than normal. The agricultural benefits of global warming that corporate polluters predicted years ago are not materializing.

Yesterday, the world received more reason to worry. The International Energy Agency reported that carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by a gigaton last year, a 3.2 percent increase that made last year’s carbon emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas the highest ever in human history.

1. Facebook Fan: someone who “likes” Americans Elect on Facebook. As of this morning, 466,625 people have “liked” Americans Elect on Facebook.

2. Account holder: someone who signed up for an account at americanselect.com. Americans Elect has never revealed how many people hold an account at americanselect.com.

3. Delegate: According to the official Americans Elect bylaws, delegates are not mere Facebook fans or account holders. Delegates are people who have signed up for accounts, and then “have submitted sufficient information to permit verification of their lawful status as registered voters and citizens of the United States, and who have been so verified by Americans Elect, and who have accepted the Delegate Pledge as provided by the Rules Committee.”

On February 2 2012, under the signature of Americans Elect National Press Secretary Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect issued a press release declaring that “The candidate page enables Americans Elect delegates – now numbering more than 360,000 – to bypass the two-party primary process, identify and draft candidates who share their concerns, and have their voices heard regardless of where they live.”

On March 28 2012, again under the signature of Americans Elect National Press Secretary Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect issued another press release declaring that “To date, there have been over 2.9 million visitors to the site, 19 million questions answered, over 400,000 delegates and over 460,000 Facebook fans.” (This count indicates that over the past two months, Americans Elect’s Facebook fanbase has been stagnant.)

On March 29 2012, again under the signature of Americans Elect National Press Secretary Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect issued another press release declaring that “Americans Elect is inviting every registered voter to sign up at AmericansElect.org to join over 400,000 delegates to choose the ticket that will serve as a serious alternative to the two major parties and be on the ballot nationwide this November.”

On April 17 2012, again under the signature of Americans Elect National Press Secretary Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect issued another press release declaring that “To date, there have been 3 million visitors to the site, 19 million questions answered, over 400,000 delegates have signed up and there are over 460,000 Facebook fans.” (This count indicates that approximately 100,000 people visited the website americanselect.com in a one month period. For purposes of comparison, this only modestly-popular website had 82,231 unique visitors in the month of March.)

In March, John Lumea carefully showed how these claims by Americans Elect could not possibly be true.

Now Will Evans of California Watch has caught Wachtel acknowledging that Americans Elect’s prior claims are not true:

Even Americans Elect die-hards had their share of gripes. One of the main complaints was that prospective voters had a hard time registering as delegates through the website.

Risley said the Americans Elect model gave her “hope for the first time in a long time.” But as she held campaign gatherings at her home and reached out to like-minded activists at Occupy protests, she became frustrated with the group’s online system. Some supporters couldn’t get through the site’s intensive verification of whether they were registered voters or didn’t want to provide the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, she said.

“Why make it so hard for people?” Risley said.

Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect’s press secretary, said only 300 out of tens of thousands of people had problems with the website that couldn’t be resolved, mostly because of inaccurate voter registration data.

“When dealing with voters most precious franchise, the vote, there cannot be any compromise on the issue of security,” she said in an e-mail.

Only 300 out of “tens of thousands” had trouble registering as delegates? Tens of thousands? Counting generously, that means less than a hundred thousand people registered as delegates. If less than a hundred thousand people registered as delegates, that means Americans Elect inflated its delegate count in publicity materials by at least 400% — and most likely by more.

Why does this matter?

It matters because Americans Elect wanted to be the first corporation in the history of America to run its own privatized online presidential nomination — and it wanted to count the votes. Americans Elect has just shown it can’t be trusted to produce an accurate count.

It matters because Americans Elect may have failed in the 2012 elections, but you can bet that it will come back, just like it changed its name from Unity08 and came back after its even bigger failure in the 2008 cycle. Americans Elect will tell people that it’s the solution to a corrupt political system. With its delegate count lie, situated among dozens of other incidents, Americans Elect has shown that it is not the solution.

After Obama was elected President, most people dismissed the Bill Ayers controversy, pointing out that President Obama’s policies in the White House appeared to be mainstream capitalist, without a hint of Communist radicalism… as if that proved anything.

Well, now, as you see here, there is proof that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama are still palling around – and working together to bring about the downfall of the United States of America as we know it. This photograph shows Bill Ayers attending a White House Cabinet meeting, sharing a good laugh with Comrade Presidente himself!

What most liberals don’t want to talk about is that the Barack Obama presidency is just part of a plan hatched by Bill Ayers back in 1969.

In the summer of 1969, instead of taking a shower and getting a job, Bill Ayers sat in the basement of the San Francisco Young Communists Commune and wrote a plan for achieving ultimate political domination. Part Three, Section 5, Subsection A, reads, “Throughout the first decade of the next century, I will insinuate myself into the company of Barack Obama, the Kenyan child whose brainwashing appointments are even now going according to plan. With the pre-embedded hypnotic cue ‘platinum rosebud’, I will reactivate his subconscious programming, and he will obey my every command. We will buy Obama the White House, using the Secret Communist Slush Fund I have established, in 2008. The first term in the Oval Office will appear to be normal, so as to lull the American people into complacence. However, in the first month of the second Obama term, we will institute the new Communist People’s Republic of America. We will quash any resistance by first confiscating all guns and Bibles, and then rolling out the Communist tanks now hidden in the Women’s Studies sections of used bookstores across the country. We will devastate the capitalist system with health care reform, and then, when our triumph is complete, I will be the power behind the throne! Only then will we openly drink the blood of the infants in public, as no patriots will remain with the capability of defeating my plan! And to think, none of it will be possible without the creation of public radio!”

Is it too late to stop the Ayers-Obama plan? Pray that it is not, Americans. Pray very, very hard. Pray until it hurts.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Americans Elect’s letter — even after its failure to draw significant support from the American people — represents another delay of disclosure.

Six days ago, I filed a formal request for IRS Form 990 from Americans Elect, four days after the form was due. Americans Elect is required to supply this document to any citizen, and it matters, because it provides information about Americans Elect’s finances that Americans Elect hasn’t provided voluntarily. But Americans Elect has played the same card it played last year, filing for a delay of 3 months on the disclosure of its Form 990.

May 25, 2012

VIA EMAIL: retorts@irregulartimes.com

Jim Cook
52 Conway Road
Camden, ME 04843

Re: Americans Elect

Dear Mr. Cook:
Thank you for your recent inquiry. Americans Elect has not yet filed its 2011 Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service. Americans Elect has filed Form 8868 with the Internal Revenue Service and therefore has received an automatic 3 month extension for the deadline to file its 2011 Form 990.

In three months — that’s August 15, 2012 — Americans Elect’s 3 month extension for filing Form 990 will expire. I’ll be sending another letter to Americans Elect at that time, and we’ll see what Americans Elect is willing — or unwilling — to share.

Amid the multiple nationwide media mentions of the David Walker draft campaign supporting Walker’s platform of social security and health care cuts, was there ever any real grassroots “Walker Fever” spreading anywhere? One indication is the number of people who voted to support Walker’s presidential candidacy: out of 313 million Americans, only 692 people.

Another indication of actual “Walker Fever” would be a large number financial contributions from all sorts of Americans. The public won’t gain any direct information about the contributors to the draft Walker committee until July, the next disclosure deadline mandated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Watch this space for disclosures.

But independent expenditure data already indicate that the Walker “fever” may have been no more than a beltway media illusion. In its official registration as an “Independent Expenditure-Only Committee” on April 24 2012, the Committee to Get Walker Running informed the FEC that:

This committee intends to make unlimited independent expenditures and consistent with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit decision in SpeechNow v. FEC, it therefore intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts.

But if the Committee spent any funds, they must have been in very limited amounts indeed. According to the FEC, once the Committee’s expenditures topped $10,000, reports of any expenditures must be made to the FEC by midnight on the day after the expenditure has been made.

I invite you to search through Independent Expenditure reports between the dates of April 1 2012 and May 25 2012 (that’s today). You’ll find no indication whatsoever of any expenditure made by the Committee to Get Walker Running, or by any other independent expenditure committee with “Walker” in its name for that matter.

The only symptom of “fever” apparent here is hallucination.

Nearly 10 people across the country have called the hotline of the National Fashion Association after small children placed the packets on their feet and attempted to go jogging. “The rapid onset of bubbles, particularly when these packets are misused on a rainy day, can be pretty scary,” says Michelle Bondler, publicity director of the Shoewear Alliance for Public Safety.

The question of why so-not-actually-that-many preschoolers have been strapping the new detergent pods to their feet in the first place is a puzzling one. One possibility, according to Buffalo River University Associate Professor of Home Economics Dae Z. Chen, is that they evoke brand strong suggestions, especially for youngsters who are regularly exposed to television advertisements. “The colorful presence of the Nike swoosh on the Tide packets in particular is instantly apparent,” explains Chen. “Over and over again, our kids have been told to ‘Just Do It.’ We should not surprised when 3-year-olds do as they are told.”

The National Fashion Association’s alert does not name particular products or brands, but advises consumers to be on the lookout for children with an intense curiosity regarding the objects. Reached for comment, an industry spokesman told Irregular Times that starting in summer the packets will be shipped with shoelaces attached to discourage use.

Five people boarded an immense coal barge and chained themselves to the ship, immobilizing it for 3 hours. At about the same time, a group of protesters stood on a road with signs protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. They blocked 9 coal trucks for the duration of their protest.

The road protesters were dispersed by police without arrest. The protesters on the barge are facing criminal charges.

Barack Obama has been President for more than three years now. Human rights conditions now existing cannot be attributed merely to leftover problems from the terms of George W. Bush.

Obama supporters: How do you react to Amnesty International’s description of human rights under President Obama?

Sen. Michael Enzi (Republican of Wyoming)
Sen. Michael Bennet (Democrat of Colorado)
Sen. Kent Conrad (Democrat of North Dakota)
Sen. John Hoeven (Republican of North Dakota)
Sen. Mike Johanns (Republican of Nebraska)
Sen. Tim Johnson (Democrat of South Dakota)
Sen. Jerry Moran (Republican of Kansas)
Sen. John Thune (Republican of South Dakota)
Sen. Tom Udall (Democrat of New Mexico)
Sen. Mark Udall (Democrat of Colorado)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat of Rhode Island)

Given this list, what do you guess the proposed national mammal is? Would you make a different choice?

In the just plain idiotic category goes S6779, a bill written by Republican New York State Senator Thomas F. O’Mara. The law would give any person, business or organization the right to force the removal from a web site of an anonymously written piece of material unless the true legal name, IP address and street address of the writer is posted along with the original written material and confirmed by the owner of the web site where the content is posted.

The law is necessary, says Senator O’Mara, to protect “a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting”. Who says people have a legal right to know what other people are saying about them? The Constitution of the United States has no such provision in it, and neither does the Constitution of the State of New York.

In fact, the Constitution of the State of New York may prohibit pieces of legislation of the sort that Thomas O’Mara has introduced. The state’s constitution declares, “The legislature shall not pass a private or local bill in any of the following cases: Changing the names of persons…” It seems to be that there’s a good argument to be made that S6779 is a law that forces people to change the names people use for themselves, and is therefore unconstitutional.

Our national Constitution has a little old thing in it that’s called the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees both the right to free speech and freedom of the press, both of which would be denied by the censorship facilitated by S6779.

If the New York State Assembly and Senate pass this bill, what’s next? Is there going to be a law prohibiting a spoken conversation without the prior exchange of drivers’ licenses?

Thomas O’Mara justifies his censorship legislation by saying that bullying online must be stopped. Why must online bullying behavior receive especially harsh treatment, while offline bullying gets a free pass?

This legislation seems like an attempt to stifle all speech online. It contains no provision requiring proof of bullying, or restricting the censorship to cases in which bullying is even alleged to be involved.

Besides, the legislation is poorly written, with a loophole a mile wide. It only applies to web sites that enable interactive discussion: “a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages”. So, even if this bill was passed, “cyberbullying” could go on as before, using web sites where there is no comment or discussion function.

Another idiotic flaw in the legislation is that it contains no restriction on the original date of publication of material. That means that, if Senator O’Mara’s legislation were signed into law, if a person published this poem…

I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.
Since I have lost my friend by not being good
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood.
I’ll send him word and make it understood
that I will be good company.
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.

…on a blog with a comments section, then anyone could legally force the censorship of the poem. The poem, you see, was created by an anonymous writer over 800 years ago. It would be impossible to find the street address of the writer, and so the poem would have to be removed.

For that reason, I hereby rename S6779 as The Thomas O’Mara Medieval Poetry Censorship Act.

If writing bills like this is how Thomas O’Mara chooses to spend his time in the New York State Senate, why don’t the voters in his district just send him home to avoid further embarrassment?