Author Archives: Denise Simon

National Preparedness is up to YOU

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At no other time in American history has the United States been so vulnerable to national security threats. The text below is for you benefit, take is seriously and don’t rely on FEMA, you are your own best resource.

National Preparedness Report

Main Content

This page provides information on the 2015 National Preparedness Report, including the overarching findings on national issues, preparedness progress, and opportunities for improvement. This page is for anyone interested in seeing how preparedness can inform priorities and community actions.

National Preparedness Report

The 2015 National Preparedness Report marks the fourth iteration of this annual report. Required annually by Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness, the National Preparedness Report summarizes progress in building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities described in the 2011 National Preparedness Goal (the Goal). Each year, the report presents an opportunity to assess gains that whole community partners—including all levels of government, private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations, communities, and individuals—have made in preparedness, and to identify where challenges remain.

The intent of the National Preparedness Report is to provide the Nation with practical insights on preparedness that can inform decisions about program priorities, resource allocations, and community actions. The 2015 National Preparedness Report focuses primarily on preparedness activities undertaken or reported during 2014, and places particular emphasis on progress made in implementing the National Planning Frameworks (the Frameworks) across the Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery mission areas. The Frameworks describe how the whole community works together to achieve the goal of a secure and resilient Nation.

Overarching Findings on National Issues

In addition to key findings for each of the five preparedness mission areas, the 2015 NPR identifies overarching national trends that cut across multiple mission areas:

  • Incorporating Emergency Preparedness into Technology Platforms: Businesses and public-private partnerships are increasingly incorporating emergency preparedness into technology platforms, such as Internet and social media tools and services.
  • Challenges Assessing the Status of Corrective Actions: While Federal departments and agencies individually assess progress for corrective actions identified during national-level exercises and real-world incidents, challenges remain to comprehensively assess corrective actions with broad implications across the Federal Government.
  • Response Coordination Challenges for Events that Do Not Receive Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act) Declarations: Recent events, including the epidemic of Ebola virus disease, have highlighted challenges with coordinating the response to and recovery from complex incidents that do not receive Stafford Act declarations.

The Nation Continues to Make Progress

The 2015 NPR identifies three new core capabilities – Environmental Response/Health and Safety, Intelligence and Information Sharing, and Operational Coordination – as meeting acceptable levels of performance but requiring sustained effort to maintain capability and meet emerging challenges. These capabilities join five others from the 2014 report that future National Preparedness Reports will revisit to determine if they are still meeting performance goals.

Opportunities for Improvement

The 2015 National Preparedness Report also highlights key preparedness challenges remaining for the Nation. Three core capabilities—Cybersecurity, Housing, and Infrastructure Systems—have persisted as areas for improvement across all four National Preparedness Reports. A fourth core capability, Long-term Vulnerability Reduction, repeats as an area for improvement from last year, due in part to questions surrounding the long-term solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program and nascent national efforts for climate change adaptation and green infrastructure. Preparedness data further revealed that the Federal Government, states, and territories are also struggling to build capacity for the Access Control and Identity Verification and Economic Recovery core capabilities. These areas for improvement are a reminder that preparedness gains are gradual and that solutions to complex challenges will not materialize without sustained support from the whole community.

Key Factors for Future Progress

The 2015 NPR represents the fourth opportunity for the Nation to reflect on progress in strengthening national preparedness and to identify where preparedness gaps remain. Looking across all five mission areas, the NPR provides a national perspective on critical preparedness trends for whole community partners to use to inform program priorities, to allocate resources, and to communicate with stakeholders about issues of shared concern.

Resources

Core Capabilities

Main Content

The National Preparedness Goal identified 31 core capabilities—these are the distinct critical elements needed to achieve the goal.

These capabilities are referenced in many national preparedness efforts, including the National Planning Frameworks. The Goal grouped the capabilities into five mission areas, based on where they most logically fit. Some fall into only one mission area, while some others apply to several mission areas.

Download the capabilities crosswalk to see how the legacy Target Capabilities List compares with the new core capabilities.

Planning

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Conduct a systematic process engaging the whole community as appropriate in the development of executable strategic, operational, and/or community-based approaches to meet defined objectives.

Public Information and Warning

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Deliver coordinated, prompt, reliable, and actionable information to the whole community through the use of clear, consistent, accessible, and culturally and linguistically appropriate methods to effectively relay information regarding any threat or hazard, as well as the actions being taken and the assistance being made available, as appropriate.

Operational Coordination

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Establish and maintain a unified and coordinated operational structure and process that appropriately integrates all critical stakeholders and supports the execution of core capabilities.

Forensics and Attribution

  • Mission Area: Prevention
  • Description: Conduct forensic analysis and attribute terrorist acts (including the means and methods of terrorism) to their source, to include forensic analysis as well as attribution for an attack and for the preparation for an attack in an effort to prevent initial or follow-on acts and/or swiftly develop counter-options.

Intelligence and Information Sharing

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Provide timely, accurate, and actionable information resulting from the planning, direction, collection, exploitation, processing, analysis, production, dissemination, evaluation, and feedback of available information concerning threats to the United States, its people, property, or interests; the development, proliferation, or use of WMDs; or any other matter bearing on U.S. national or homeland security by Federal, state, local, and other stakeholders. Information sharing is the ability to exchange intelligence, information, data, or knowledge among Federal, state, local, or private sector entities, as appropriate.

Interdiction and Disruption

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Delay, divert, intercept, halt, apprehend, or secure threats and/or hazards.

Screening, Search, and Detection

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Identify, discover, or locate threats and/or hazards through active and passive surveillance and search procedures. This may include the use of systematic examinations and assessments, sensor technologies, or physical investigation and intelligence.

Access Control and Identity Verification

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Apply a broad range of physical, technological, and cyber measures to control admittance to critical locations and systems, limiting access to authorized individuals to carry out legitimate activities.

Cybersecurity

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Protect against damage to, the unauthorized use of, and/or the exploitation of (and, if needed, the restoration of) electronic communications systems and services (and the information contained therein).

Physical Protective Measures

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Reduce or mitigate risks, including actions targeted at threats, vulnerabilities, and/or consequences, by controlling movement and protecting borders, critical infrastructure, and the homeland.

Risk Management for Protection Programs and Activities

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Identify, assess, and prioritize risks to inform Protection activities and investments.

Supply Chain Integrity and Security

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Strengthen the security and resilience of the supply chain.

Community Resilience

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Lead the integrated effort to recognize, understand, communicate, plan, and address risks so that the community can develop a set of actions to accomplish Mitigation and improve resilience.

Long-term Vulnerability Reduction

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Build and sustain resilient systems, communities, and critical infrastructure and key resources lifelines so as to reduce their vulnerability to natural, technological, and human-caused incidents by lessening the likelihood, severity, and duration of the adverse consequences related to these incidents.

Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Assess risk and disaster resilience so that decision makers, responders, and community members can take informed action to reduce their entity’s risk and increase their resilience.

Threats and Hazard Identification

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Identify the threats and hazards that occur in the geographic area; determine the frequency and magnitude; and incorporate this into analysis and planning processes so as to clearly understand the needs of a community or entity.

Critical Transportation

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide transportation (including infrastructure access and accessible transportation services) for response priority objectives, including the evacuation of people and animals, and the delivery of vital response personnel, equipment, and services into the affected areas.

Environmental Response/Health and Safety

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure the availability of guidance and resources to address all hazards including hazardous materials, acts of terrorism, and natural disasters in support of the responder operations and the affected communities.

Fatality Management Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide fatality management services, including body recovery and victim identification, working with state and local authorities to provide temporary mortuary solutions, sharing information with mass care services for the purpose of reunifying family members and caregivers with missing persons/remains, and providing counseling to the bereaved.

Infrastructure Systems

  • Mission Area: Response, Recovery
  • Description: Stabilize critical infrastructure functions, minimize health and safety threats, and efficiently restore and revitalize systems and services to support a viable, resilient community.

Mass Care Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide life-sustaining services to the affected population with a focus on hydration, feeding, and sheltering to those who have the most need, as well as support for reunifying families.

Mass Search and Rescue Operations

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Deliver traditional and atypical search and rescue capabilities, including personnel, services, animals, and assets to survivors in need, with the goal of saving the greatest number of endangered lives in the shortest time possible.

On-scene Security and Protection

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure a safe and secure environment through law enforcement and related security and protection operations for people and communities located within affected areas and also for all traditional and atypical response personnel engaged in lifesaving and life-sustaining operations.

Operational Communications

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure the capacity for timely communications in support of security, situational awareness, and operations by any and all means available, among and between affected communities in the impact area and all response forces.

Public and Private Services and Resources

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide essential public and private services and resources to the affected population and surrounding communities, to include emergency power to critical facilities, fuel support for emergency responders, and access to community staples (e.g., grocery stores, pharmacies, and banks) and fire and other first response services.

Public Health and Medical Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide lifesaving medical treatment via emergency medical services and related operations and avoid additional disease and injury by providing targeted public health and medical support and products to all people in need within the affected area.

Situational Assessment

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide all decision makers with decision-relevant information regarding the nature and extent of the hazard, any cascading effects, and the status of the response.

Economic Recovery

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Return economic and business activities (including food and agriculture) to a healthy state and develop new business and employment opportunities that result in a sustainable and economically viable community.

Health and Social Services

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Restore and improve health and social services networks to promote the resilience, independence, health (including behavioral health), and well-being of the whole community.

Housing

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Implement housing solutions that effectively support the needs of the whole community and contribute to its sustainability and resilience.

Natural and Cultural Resources

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Protect natural and cultural resources and historic properties through appropriate planning, mitigation, response, and recovery actions to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, and restore them consistent with post-disaster community priorities and best practices and in compliance with appropriate environmental and historical preservation laws and executive orders.

Adhere to a New Orthodoxy or Go to Jail

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The full court opinion is here:

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Supreme Court Affirms Constitutionality of Gay Marriage

The court’s historic 5-4 ruling cements the legality of same-sex unions nationwide.

In part the opinion of Justice Kennedy:

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times,” Kennedy wrote in a 34-page opinion. “The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”

In part the dissenting opinion of Justice Roberts:

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the issue was not within the court’s realm to decide.

“This Court is not a legislature,” Roberts wrote, calling the majority’s decision “an act of will, not legal judgment.” “Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

Roberts also said he would “begrudge none their celebration” following the ruling, but said the majority’s approach was “deeply disheartening.” All the dissenting judges indicated the decision amounted to overreach on the part of the judiciary, with suggestions that the ruling interrupted the democratic process through which the legality of gay marriage had been extending across the U.S.

Questions remain:

1. How will it work if 2 gay Muslims want to get married in a mosque where Sharia is applied?

2. Will any church lose their tax exempt status for refusing a gay marriage ceremony?

3. Will a bakery be sued for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage?

4. Is the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed by Bill Clinton a law that has been repealed by the Supreme Court decision?

5. Marriage is recognized at the State level and by the Supreme Court decision has now become a Federal law, has this ruling laid the ground for the death of the 10th amendment?

 

Presidential Senator Candidates Take Big Lobby $$

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Hillary was a Senator and just recently a lobby issue could be a problem given the Transpacific Partnership Pact that is so contentious in the country right now.

Per Lee Fang: While Hillary Clinton has demurred over her position on the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, her campaign has partnered with a pro-TPP law and lobby firm to raise money.

At The Intercept, Lee Fang reports that Clinton’s campaign held a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday with the political action committee of a law firm called McGuireWoods. Lobby registration documents reveal that a subsidiary of the group lobbies on behalf of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of pork, to pass both the TPP and “fast track”—a special presidential mandate that nearly eliminates Congress’ role in crafting trade legislation.

The fundraiser occurred as Congress rescheduled a vote on fast track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).

Fang continues:

Despite mounting pressure to take a position, Clinton has only provided [noncommittal] answers regarding her stance on both TPP and TPA. On Sunday, at a rally in Iowa, Clinton said there should be better protections for American workers and called for the president to work with Democrats in Congress — hardly a clarifying statement. Earlier that day, her chief pollster dismissed a call from ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to provide a clear stance on TPA, casting the issue as simply “Washington inside baseball.”

For the event in D.C., billed as a “Conversation with John Podesta, Campaign Chair,” the Clinton campaign website said that I could learn the exact location only after RSVPing through a donation. I gave one dollar to find out. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. Instead of providing the address of the fundraiser as the campaign website had said it would, the campaign directed me to a site where I could volunteer.

Lobby money owns Washington DC, of this there is no dispute. The 10 largest lobby operations include the following industries:

The Technology lobby, the Mining lobby, the Defense lobby, the Agriculture lobby, Big Oil lobby, the Financial lobby, the Big Pharma lobby, the AARP lobby, the Pro-Israel lobby and the National Rifle Association lobby. The primer of these lobby groups is found here.

So what Senators that are running for president are on some lobby dollar hooks?

From Open Secrets:

Three of five senators running for WH have big backing from lobbyists

Three of the five U.S. senators running for president have made super-fans out of a few K Street lobbyists, an analysis of campaign finance data by OpenSecrets Blog shows.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from current or one-time federal lobbyists throughout their careers, the analysis shows. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has raised $82,050 from the same pool and Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ (D-Vt.) total fundraising haul from lobbyists stands at an even more paltry $50,075.

Neither Sanders nor Paul have hidden their disdain for lobbyists, so there’s some logic to their low fundraising totals from those in the profession. Both candidates, in their announcement speeches, railed against those who want to influence politics with money — Sanders referred to “billionaires…and their lobbyists,” Paul called them “special interests” — and struck similar tones.

“Both [Paul and Sanders] have publicly decried the influence of corporations in American public life,” Joshua Rosenstein, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and expert on lobbying, said. “If you are a corporation, is it possible that you view each of them as relative lost cause? Sure.”

For some candidates, it’s not bad politics to keep K Street at arm’s length. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama pledged not to accept donations from lobbyists and refunded money to those who did contribute. After taking office, he barred federally registered lobbyists from joining advisory boards in his administration, before partially rolling back that ban last year.

But no 2016 hopeful has followed that lead, as the Wall Street Journal reports. And setting Paul and Sanders aside, the other senators running for president have already wooed a handful of lobbyists with deep pockets and a willingness to give to anyone who might help their clients.

In all, Graham has taken in $753,841 during his congressional career from current or one-time federally registered lobbyists who contributed more than $200 to him. Rubio and Cruz have received $571,952 and $265,043 from the same group, respectively. Those sums include donations to the senators’ campaign committees and leadership PACs.

Rubio, Cruz and Graham each have at least one lobbyist donor who, along with their spouses in some cases, has given in excess of $20,000 to the candidate’s campaign and PAC. Rubio has Ignacio Sanchez, a presidential bundler for Mitt Romney in 2012 from the firm DLA Piper; he represents Al Jazeera Satellite Network and Diageo PLC. Cruz has lobbying revolver Charles Cooper of Cooper & Kirk and his wife, Debra.

Graham, a senator since 2003, has enjoyed financial support from current or former lobbyists longer than his GOP Senate colleagues running for president. William H. Skipper, Jr. of the American Business Development Group, Reed Scott of Chesapeake Enterprises and his wife, and presidential bundler Van D. Hipp of American Defense International and his wife, have each given Graham more than $20,000 over the years.

The most Paul has received from any one lobbyist barely tops $6,000; that came from Charles Grizzle of Grizzle Co., who currently represents several Kentucky-based clients like the University of Louisville and the Louisville Regional Airport Authority. Sanders topped out at $3,000 from Nancy Zirkin of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and her husband.

The data analysis only covered sitting U.S. senators. Other presidential candidates or potential candidates who have served in federal office, like former Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and one-time House member, now governor, John Kasich (R-Ohio), haven’t run a Senate or House campaign in some time. And for former governors like Rick Perry and Jeb Bush, state data on which of their donors were lobbyists isn’t available. Fundraising reports for candidates’ presidential campaigns won’t be available till mid-July, and the super PACs backing them don’t have to report until the end of that month.

Still, it’s clear that the non-Senate candidates also have their eyes on K Street money. Clinton has already reached out to prominent lobbyists on her side of the aisle, while Jeb Bush started seeking commitments from Washington allies even earlier this year. Lobbyists are reportedly starting to line up behind him.

Despite that fact that making contributions may be good for business, Rosenstein noted, many lobbyists also donate for ideological reasons.

“While they certainly have to be pragmatists about what they’re doing…and that certainly drives some of the giving,” he said, “there might very well be an equal or greater ideological segment of the lobbying community that aren’t driven by pragmatic reasons,” Rosenstein said.

 

Obama’s 1983 Essay vs. Iran Nuclear Today

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From the NYT’s in part:

TEHRAN — With exactly a week left before the deadline for a final agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader appeared to undercut several of the central agreements his negotiators have already reached with the West.

In a speech broadcast live on Iran state television, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanded that most sanctions be lifted before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments. He also ruled out any freeze on Iran’s sensitive nuclear enrichment for as long as a decade, as a preliminary understanding announced in April stipulates, and he repeated his refusal to allow inspections of Iranian military sites.

That self imposed June 30 deadline is no deadline at all.

From the WSJ:

LUXEMBOURG—Iranian and Western officials for the first time publicly said they were willing to go past a June 30 deadline for sealing a final nuclear deal, insisting they could still unblock remaining obstacles in coming days.

The comments, made after talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his counterparts from the U.K., France and Germany on the sidelines of a European Union meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, underscore recent warnings that the nuclear talks have stalled as the deadline approaches.

So, how does this square with the talks going on today versus what Barack Obama wrote in 1983?

 SANE Students Against Nuclear Energy

Obama wrote a 3 page commentary while at Columbia where is assumes expertise on war, history, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and the military. After a reading of this Obama essay, many things become much more clear, yes clear like mud.

Here is a link to read the text in an easier format.

Obamacare has been Renamed to RobertScare

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Call it SCOTUScare or any other name than Constitutional, but there is no mistake the very branch of government that represents the people after today’s Supreme Court decision, the legislative branch is fundamentally inert. Let that sink in. ONLY Democrats voted for this law, let that sink in. Only Congress can approve money for subsidies and they did not approve the money for state exchanges so Treasury finessed law and funded the exchanges anyway. Let that sink in. Can Obamacare be repealed in 2017, sure, but is it likely? Not so much given the handful of SCOTUS decisions.  Everything you need to know leading up to today is found here.

Simply stated are read below:

SUPREME COURT SAVES OBAMACARE

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, handing a major victory to the Obama administration.

The decision was 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts delivering the court’s majority opinion. Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the court’s liberals.

It’s the second time in four terms the court has prevented the law from a major obstruction that would threaten its existence. Instead, the Affordable Care Act again survives as the largest expansion of healthcare in half a century.

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in his opinion.

The key question in the case centered on whether the federal government had the ability to provide subsidies to help low-income Americans buy health insurance.

The challengers in the case argued the way the law was written does not allow for subsidized insurance in states where the federal government had set up insurance exchanges. Instead, the challengers argued, insurance subsidies are allowed only in states that have set up their own exchanges. They pointed to a clause that they argued meant exchanges should be “established by the state,” but members of Congress who were involved in writing the law disputed characterization. Thirty-four states currently rely on the federal marketplace.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In a scathing dissent, he appeared to take a shot at Roberts.

“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Scalia wrote.

obamacare mapWashington Center for Equitable GrowthThe states and counties that will be affected by a ruling against the Obama administration

If the court had invalidated that portion of the law, Obama and Congress would have had to scramble as more than 6 million people could have lost their subsidies — and potentially their coverage. It would have been left to congressional Republicans to come up with either a quick fix or to use the ruling as an opportunity to start moving away from the law known as Obamacare. But Republicans were, overall, disjointed in how they planned to fix the problem.

“Today Democrats, and my guess is Republicans, are breathing one gigantic sigh of relief,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

“The Supreme Court decision ensures 6.4 million people will keep their coverage; it was legally the right decision and substantively the right outcome. Hopefully, our Republicans colleagues will now give up their quest to repeal Obamacare and move on to more productive activities for the middle class.”

With the decision in the Obama administration’s favor, court observers and health watchers said it would cement the Affordable Care Act as a key pillar of the president’s legacy.

“If the Court sides with the government, more people will continue to enroll and the ACA will likely ultimately be seen as a signature domestic achievement of historic proportions,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Business Insider before the ruling was handed down.

“Obamacare will remain controversial and no doubt feature in the election, but it’s hard to see it getting repealed outright at this point.”

Republican presidential candidates were quick to criticize the law, and they continued to pledge they would work toward repealing it.

“I disagree with the Court’s ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing ObamaCare on the American people,” US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) tweeted.

“I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it,” he added.

Three years ago, Roberts joined with the court’s liberals to uphold the heart of the Affordable Care Act — the law’s mandate that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

If you want to read the Roberts decision today on Obamacare:

14-114_qol1

 

Meanwhile the back-up tapes of Lois Lerner’s emails were erased after the subpoena and the two NY prison escapees are happy as they had insider help. A dark day for America.