Happy Friday.

The Real vs. The Imagined

2007-01-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

There is a war going on in Iraq. No, not the war you read about. Certainly not the war as presented by the neocon idealists (their oxymoronic term) in Washington. And not the Phase 1, "Mission Accomplished" war that lasted a few weeks and sacrificed 140 American lives.

There is a real and escalating war (more than 2,700 Americans lost since Phase 1) which, although it has little impact on our daily lives outside of politics, is possibly the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of our nation. And, in light of the 21st century symmetry between foreign and domestic, global and national, terrorist and ally, is sure to have devastating consequences long after our national focus turns elsewhere and we hope for forgiveness (or at least forgetfulness) from the Iraqis and most of the world.

Mark Danner offers a sobering description of the current catastrophe in IRAQ: The War of the Imagination. The theme of the article is captured by one of the last century's most prescient, and revered, foreign policy analysts, George F. Kennan:

Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.^[1]

And, of course, the plan for reaching an "end" in Iraq remains enigmatically undefined. It signifies the extraordinary failure of a president who has been unable to lead his government when electing to exercise the most grave of all presidential powers: taking the nation to war.

The results of this failure to consider an "end" are striking:

In the first year of the war Iraq saw 109 "terror related bombings"; in the second year 613; in the third year, 1,037; in the last six months, 1,002.^[2]
The number of daily attacks on US forces at each of the Iraq war's purported "turning points":

July 2003: Bremer Appoints Iraqi Governing Council; sixteen attacks per day.

December 2003: Saddam Hussein captured; nineteen attacks per day.

June 2004: Handover of sovereignty to Iraqis; forty-five attacks per day.

January 2005: Elections for Transitional Government; sixty-one attacks per day.

June 2006: Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; ninety attacks per day.^[3]
6,599 Iraqis were murdered in July and August 2006 alone. Estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the war range from a conservative 52,000^[4] to 655,000,^[5] with the Iraqi Health Minister recently announcing a cumulative total of 150,000. The current rate of killing of one hundred Iraqis a day would be the equivalent, adjusting for population, of 1,100 Americans a day, or 33,000 dead a month. (In the decade-long Vietnam War, about 58,000 Americans died.)

Only the week before the November 2006 election, President Bush warned an interviewer about the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq:

The terrorists...have clearly said they want a safe haven from which to launch attacks against America, a safe haven from which to topple moderate governments in the Middle East, a safe haven from which to spread their jihadist point of view, which is that there are no freedoms in the world; we will dictate to you how you think....^[6]

We have given them just that. Today's Iraq is a war torn hell ruled by war lords and their militias; just like Afghanistan today, and in the years leading up to 9/11. Purple fingers do not a democracy make. "Stay the course" and other platitudes do not appease a war weary nation (neither ours nor the Iraqis').

Worse still, the current political landscape focuses on an "exit strategy" reduced to the withdrawal of troops and the establishment of a "sovereign" Iraqi government. But this too is not a plan. It is an escape.

In the end, the problem is not just that the president is locked into an imaginary vision of Iraq far better than the reality. It's that the reality is far worse then he had the capacity to imagine.
_______________________________________________

^[1] See Albert Eisele, "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq," The Hill, September 26, 2002.

^[2] See "The Geography of War," Newsweek, November 6, 2006. These numbers do not include attacks on American troops with improvised explosive devices, of which there were 2,625 in July alone (nearly double the 1,454 IED attacks in January). See Michael R. Gordon, Mark Mazzetti, and Thom Shanker, "Insurgent Bombs Directed at GI's in Iraq Increase," The New York Times, August 17, 2006.

^[3] See Anthony Cordesman, Iraqi Force Development: Summer 2006 Update(CSIS, 2006), p. 7.

^[4] Iraq Body Count.

^[5] The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

^[6] See This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News, October 22, 2006.

Morning in America

2006-11-08T06:37:00.000-05:00

Happy Wednesday.

Finally. The news is all good including the following Senate victories:

Claire McCaskill (Missouri)

Jim Webb (Virginia)

Sherrod Brown (Ohio)

Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island)

Bob Casey, Jr. (Pennslyvania)

Bob Menendez (New Jersey)

Ben Cardin (Maryland)

Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota)

(DS'06 went three for three!) Perhaps more importantly, Democrats captured six new state houses for a total of 28. Included in the mix is Ohio which bodes well for 2008. It will be nice to have the good guys counting the votes.

Voters in 37 states weighed in on 205 ballot measures many of which attempted to promote a radically conservative agenda already ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Most of these efforts failed.

I am still shocked that the races were so close confirming that the Democratic Party has an extraordinary amount of work to do over the next two years. Specifically, the gloves must come off to confront the racism and hatred endemic to the republican party.

Of course, the Dems also now have to govern. Nancy Pelosi is reported to have a Speaker's style akin to that of a majority whip which is necessary to keep an historically rambunctious group in line. Fortunately, as this video montage confirms, they can't do worse...it's morning again in America.

The End

2006-02-17T07:32:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

It has been a year since Happy Friday began. Remember "Extraordinary Rendition" whereby the current administration ships individuals to other countries where they are interrogated through torture?

It is still happening.

A lot has been discussed over the past year: lies about North Korea; the destruction of American families; the truth about the estate tax; lies about the war on terror; the massive corruption within the republican party; and the promise of what lies ahead, among much else.

But, alas, it is time to move on. The midterms are on the horizon and I am focusing my attention there--among other places.

Of course the ugly will continue for another two years. "This administration will go down as the worst in history." Accordingly, I anticipate some egregious conduct that will mandate a reappearance by HF. I also welcome your contributions.

Please continue to pay attention, talk about the issues, and vote.

Take America back.

The Big Question

2006-02-10T07:27:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Last week we learned that socially liberal and fiscally conservative supporters of the republican party obtained neither for their vote.

The GOP imposes its conservative dogma on our heretofore democratic society attacking those who refuse to compromise their identities or sacrifice their individual rights to conform to an anachronistic doctrine. It is not socially liberal.

The GOP's so-called conservative economic policies have generated a massive deficit totaling $929 billion, unprecedented debt, a 30% increase in spending, and tremendous wealth disparity. It is not fiscally conservative.

While these facts speak for themselves, there is another problem with the false construct of a socially liberal, fiscally conservative republican. It is a paradox. Economics impacts upon the social landscape, and vice-versa. The desire for a "conservative" laissez-faire economy clashes with socially "liberal" concerns like the ability to find a decent paying job, a good school, and affordable healthcare.

The GOP does not stand for a socially liberal, fiscally conservative America because it can't. A socially liberal and fiscally conservative vote is a myth.

As the below statistics from the Economic Policy Institute reveal, the average American is far worse off today than five years ago. Because social and economic issues are intertwined, Americans suffer in both arenas.

If the number one reason people voted for Dubya is national security, it's time to ask: At what cost is it worth protecting our nation from a foreign threat when the real threat to our lives, our values, and our families is at home?
______________________________________________

1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.

Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 13.5%.^[1]
Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.^[2]
Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.^[3]

2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.

The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.^[4]
The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.^[5]
The debt-service ratio (the percent of after-tax income that goes to pay off debts) is at an all-time high of 13.6%.^[6]
The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since WWII.^[7]

3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.

The United States has only 1.3% more jobs today (excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina) than in March 2001 (the start of the recession). Private sector jobs are up only 0.8%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.^[8]
The unemployment rate is relatively low at 5%, but still higher than the 4% in 2000. Plus, the percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3% lower than in March 2001. If the employment rate had returned to pre-recession levels, 3 million more people would be employed.^[9]
More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2000.^[10]

4. Poverty is on the rise, and so is wealth concentration.

The poverty rate rose from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004.^[11]
The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000.^[12]
More children are living in poverty: the child poverty rate increased from 16.2% in 2000 to 17.8% in 2004.^[13]
At the same time, the richest one percent's share of taxes (those earning $400,000 or more) is less than that of the 56 million Americans commonly refered to as the middle class (those earning between $45,000 and $400,000).^[14]

5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.

Households are spending more on health care. Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003.^[15]
Employers are cutting back on health insurance. Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. Taking population growth into account, 11 million more people would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2004 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.^[16]

SOURCES

^[1] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. BLS, Labor Productivity and Costs. Productivity is non-farm business output per hour.

^[2] Bureau of Economic Analysis. NIPA Table 1.14.

^[3] Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004.

^[4] Flow of Funds Accounts in the United States. Total household liabilities, Federal Reserve Flow of Fund's Balance Sheet tables. Deflated using CPI-U from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

^[5] Flow of Funds Accounts in the United States. For Disposable Income, Bureau of Economic Analysis Table 2.1. Mortgage and consumer debt from the Federal Reserve Flow of Fund's Balance Sheet tables.

^[6] Federal Reserve: Household Debt Service and Financial Obligations Ratios.

^[7] Flow of Funds Accounts in the United States. NIPA Table 2.1, adjusted using the price index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (Table 2.3.4).

^[8] Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. For methodology see Price, Lee (2005) The Boom That Wasn't, EPI Briefing Paper #168.

^[9] Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. For methodology see Bernstein, Jared and Lee Price (2005) An Off-Kilter Expansion, EPI Briefing Paper #164.

^[10] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. See also Bivens, Josh (2005) "Trade deficits and manufacturing employment," Economic Snapshot, November 20, 2005.

^[11] Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004.

^[12] Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004.

^[13] Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004.

^[14] New York Times. The Wealthiest Benefit More from the Recent Tax Cuts: June 2005.

^[15] See Mishel, Lawrence et al. (2004) Less Cash in Their Pockets, Briefing Paper #154.

^[16] See Mishel, Lawrence et al. (2004) Less Cash in Their Pockets, Briefing Paper #154.

See the Light

2006-02-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Some of my favorite people are those who vote republican because they claim to be "fiscally conservative" although "socially liberal." It's a great excuse for what can only amount to one of two things: greed or bigotry (maybe both, in same cases).

The election of the new House Majority Leader, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), by the GOP caucus eviscerates such thinking. Rep. Boehner consistently has voted in favor of a socially conservative agenda imposing, for example, his personal religion on the nation (see below). There goes that argument.

How about fiscal conservatism, the hallmark of which is controlled spending and budget surpluses? Spending has increased 30% over the five years of Dubbya's tyrannical reign. The current national debt totals $8,202,381,905,119.75 , or $27,485.59 for every man, woman, and child. For those who could stomach the State of the Union, the L.A. Times presents the actual facts underlying Tuesday night's spin (lies?) that the economy is "robust." There goes that argument.

The GOP agenda is not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. It is fiscally classist and socially draconian. These are the facts. It's time to see the light.
____________________________________________________________

For School Prayer and Amending the Constitution: Rep. Boehner supported a school prayer amendment to the United States Constitution in 1997 (H.J.Res. 78), 1999 (H.J.Res 66), and 2001 (H.J.Res. 52); voted to permit school prayer "during this time of struggle against the forces of international terrorism" (House Roll Call Vote 445, Nov. 15, 2001); and voted to only allow federal aid to schools that allow prayer (House Roll Call Vote 85, March 23, 1994).
For Forced Religion in Anti-Poverty Programs: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs to require aid recipients to join in religious activities. (House Roll Call Votes 16 and 17, Feb. 4, 2004)
100% Against a Woman's Right to Choose: Rep. Boehner received a "0%" pro-choice score from NARAL Pro-Choice America in 2005.
For Religious Employment Discrimination: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs to engage in federally-funded employment discrimination. (House Roll Call Votes 15 and 17, Feb. 4, 2004)
Against the Rule of Law in Ten Commandments Case: Rep. Boehner voted to prevent the Justice Department from enforcing a court order to remove a 5,000 pound Ten Commandments monument from Alabama's state supreme court. (House Roll Call Vote 419, July 23, 2003)
Against Common-Sense Environmental Safeguards: Rep. Boehner voted for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (House Roll Call Vote 122, April 20, 2005); voted to gut the Endangered Species Act (House Roll Call Vote 506, September 29, 2005); and voted to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (House Roll Call Vote 242, June 15, 2004).
For More Religious Employment Discrimination: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded job training programs to engage in religious discrimination when hiring and firing employees with federal funds. (House Roll Call Vote 46, March 2, 2005)
Against Confronting Proselytizing at the Air Force Academy: Rep. Boehner voted against an amendment to squarely address religious coercion and proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. The amendment criticized "coercive and abusive religious proselytizing" of cadets at the Academy while observing that "_expression of personal religious faith is welcome" throughout the military. (House Roll Call Vote 283, June 20, 2005)
Led the Effort to Inject Religious Employment Discrimination into Head Start: Rep. Boehner added a controversial amendment in September to a previously bipartisan School Readiness Act which would "allow federally funded early-child-care providers to discriminate on religious grounds."
Pushed Ohio Schools to Embrace "Intelligent Design:" People For the American Way reports that Rep. Boehner and fellow Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Chabot wrote to the Ohio school board claiming that legislative language required that references to "Intelligent Design" be included in Ohio's science standards. In fact, such language was removed from the relevant education bill before it became final.

Fighting the War at Home

2006-01-27T07:32:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

In 1971, after years entrenched in Vietnam, more than 72 percent of Congress had served in the military. World War II generated seven presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush). Today, less than 20 percent of Congress is composed of war veterans.

Of course, Dubbya was AWOL during Vietnam and Cheney "had other priorities than military service." Other notable administration officials Andrew Card, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, and Karl Rove all came of age during the Vietnam war. As did prominent republicans Trent Lott, Dennis Hastert, Dick Armey, Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, Bill Frist, and Rick Santorum. Each and every single one of them found a way to avoid service. Each of these men have gone out of their way to push hard for military solutions to political problems.

Today, a new breed of "veteran" politicians is emerging from the Iraqi quagmire. Notably, these men and women are running as Democrats.

A common theme of their campaigns is a frustration with the current administration, its lies about Iraq, and their courage and determination to lead America in a new direction. Their convictions are strengthened in the face of the ongoing illegal and unethical misconduct plaguing the GOP.

Unfortunately, their service does not inoculate them from attack by the republicans; as the vicious smear campaign against Max Cleland in 2002 made clear. Cleland, who lost both legs and part of one arm in Vietnam, was called a coward by the GOP which ran ads equating him to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Of course, the current administration will be hard pressed to challenge veterans of a war it started. Especially as it continues to pretend that all is well "over there." (2,238 Americans have died in Iraq and 16,548 have been wounded there as of yesterday.)

As the mid-term elections approach, it's time to recognize these men and women and their continued resolve to fight for our country--at home and abroad:

Chris Carney, 46, is a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve and was called up in late 2003 to serve as a special Pentagon adviser on intelligence and terrorism. The Democrat is running unopposed for his party's nomination in a northeast Pennsylvania district. He will face Republican Rep. Don Sherwood, whose recent settlement of a lawsuit by his mistress could prove a factor in the race.

Andrew Duck, 43, is a former Army intelligence officer in Iraq who currently works as a Pentagon contractor. The Democrat is running in rural Maryland for the seat held by Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a House Armed Services Committee member. The district voted 65% for President Bush in 2004.

Tammy Duckworth, 37, is a former lieutenant in the Army National Guard who lost both her legs and had her arm crushed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her aircraft and exploded over Baghdad.

Tim Dunn, 45, is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who served in Baghdad in 2004 as a legal adviser to the Iraqi Special Tribunal trying Saddam Hussein. If the Democrat wins a party primary, he would face GOP Rep. Robin Hayes in a North Carolina district with a strong military presence that leans Republican.

Patrick Murphy, 32, is a former West Point professor who deployed to Iraq as an Army lawyer in 2003. If he wins a Democratic primary in suburban Philadelphia, Murphy would face GOP freshman Michael Fitzpatrick in the fall. The district backed Democrat John Kerry for president in 2004.

Tim Walz, 51, is a former command sergeant major in the Army National Guard who was depolyed to Iraq in 2003. If he wins the Democratic primary in southern Minnesota, Walz will face republican Gil Gutknecht.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

2006-01-20T06:37:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

I recently finished George F. Kennan's memoirs. As many know, in his capacity as a career member of the Foreign Service, Kennan authored two of the most famous documents in modern-day diplomacy: the Long Telegram and the X-Article. He also participated peripherally in the development of the Truman Doctrine (with which he disagreed) and substantively in the development of the Marshall Plan (he chaired the Policy Planning Staff which developed the initiative).

A prolific writer and perspicacious observer, Kennan rarely failed to share his thinking with his superiors. In reading his thoughts on the post-hostilities treatment of Germany after the Second World War, I was struck by how they resonated sixty years later.

Kennan was concerned about the Allies' policy:

that, assuming it to be our duty to insure that Germans employed in administrative capacities are not enemies of democratic reconstruction, we should endeavor to eliminate from the administrative machinery of the German state all persons belonging to certain broad categories which comprise at least three million individuals.

Kennan's objections to this view are below (the emphasis is my own). Generally, Kennan feared that the political and cultural destruction of Germany by an occupying foreign power would incite a violent nationalist insurgency. He suggested, in the alternative, an approach by which the ruling elite was forced to recognize the futility of their aggression. Having already been defeated militarily, the "logic of history" and "organic development of German political life" would lead to their ultimate demise in the face of democratic ideals as determined and adopted by Germans' own "national experiences"; not as imposed by a foreign occupier.

Please feel free to substitute “Iraq” for “Germany” at every opportunity.

___________________________________________________________

Memoirs: 1925-1950
by George F. Kennan

[First] there is no thornier or more thankless task in the field of foreign affairs than that of trying to probe into the political records and motives of masses of individuals in a foreign country. It is impossible to avoid injustices, errors, and resentment. It involves the maintenance of a huge, and necessarily unpopular, investigative apparatus. I should place the proposed program for Germany clearly beyond the capacity of our own intelligence agencies. ...

If we attempt to carry out the program indicated, we will not succeed. People will either escape notice entirely; or they will prove their indispensability on technical grounds; or they will disappear and pop up elsewhere under other names; or they will see that records are destroyed ... We will eventually get caught up in a round of denunciation, confusion, and disunity from which none but the Germans would stand to profit.

Second, the project, even if it could be successfully carried out, would not serve the purpose for which it is designed. We would not find any other class of people competent to assume the burdens of those we had eliminated. Whether we like it or not, nine-tenths of what is strong, able, and respected in Germany has been poured into those very categories we have in mind. To remove these categories would mean to saddle some alternative regime – presumably composed of our occupying forces and such liberal Germans as could be found and commonly accepted by the [occupiers] -- with a task far beyond its power, and simultaneously with an embittered, irresponsible opposition of unparalleled strength and prestige. The only result would be the final discrediting in Germany of all that the Western powers stand for, the assumption of the cloak of martyrdom by the nationalist elements, and the eventual triumphant return of the latter in the role of the liberators of Germany from a bungling, pseudodemocratic puppet regime. We must never forget that the forces of liberalism in Germany are pitifully weak. To place upon them the strain of major responsibility before their shoulders are broad enough to bear it may easily lead to their final destruction.

Finally, I should like to plead that the elimination of nationalist elements by action on our part is not only impracticable and inefficacious, but also unnecessary. The main purpose of our post-hostilities action on Germany is, as I take it, to assure that that country will not again become the seat of a program of military aggression which might threaten our security. For this, we all agree, it must be demonstrated to Germany that aggression does not pay. But I do not see that this involves the artificial removal of any given class in Germany from its position in public life. Let us rather assume – for there is ample justification for doing so – that nationalist Germany is Germany; and let us then set about to not to relieve that nationalist Germany of the very responsibilities it might justly be required to bear, but to hold it strictly to its tasks and to teach it the lessons we wish it to learn. The best treatment of the present ruling class in Germany is not an obliging removal from office at the very moment when the exercise has become an ugly burden, but a firm demonstration that Germany is not strong enough to threaten the interests of other great powers with impunity and that any unsuccessful attempt in this direction will inevitably lead to catastrophe. It is precisely the strong nationalistic ruling caste which must become convinced of this. Once they realize it, the realization will soon take the guts out of their own nationalism. It will probably eventually lead to their own political demise, for they have no program, in reality, but the greatness and power of Germany. But if they then go, it will be through the logic of history and through organic development of German political life, not through the premature, and unavoidably inept, interference of foreign powers. The political development of great peoples is conditioned and determined by their national experiences, but never by the manipulations of foreign powers in their internal affairs.

Our Turn

2006-01-13T07:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

In 1995, after the republican's success in the mid-term elections, Senator Rick Santorum, Rep. Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, launched the "K Street Project." The Project's goal is to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials. K Street, in Washington DC, is where the big lobbying firms have their headquarters and is sometimes refered to as the "fourth branch of government."

Their intention is not to ensure parity on K Street; an equal number of democrats and republicans. Rather, as Norquist explained, the focus is not just to place republicans in the top jobs in K Street firms, but in "all of them—-including secretaries."

The Project has been a success. "According to a report in The Washington Post in 2003, an official of the Republican National Committee told a group of Republican lobbyists that thirty-three of the top thirty-six top-level K Street positions had gone to Republicans."

Now, of course, it's blowback time. As the Abramhoff scandal continues to unfold, the incestuous nature of the K Street Project ensures that few republicans can escape the effects of their decade-long abuse of power.

Worse, however, is the chilling effect the Project has on democratic government (small "d"). As the below article, Selling Washington reveals, the K Street Project's blatant bastardization of representative government sacrifices individual rights in favor of corporate, monied interests.

In the end, however, businesses don't vote -- people do. Ten years later, as the 2006 mid-term elections approach, it's time to reclaim our government.

_____________________________________________________

Selling Washington
By Elizabeth Drew

1.
As the criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was underway this spring, a spokesman for the law firm representing him issued a statement saying that Abramoff was "being singled out by the media for actions that are commonplace in Washington and are totally proper." Abramoff has since said much the same thing. The lawyer was half right. Like many other lobbyists, Abramoff often arranged for private organizations, particularly nonprofit groups, to sponsor pleasant, even luxurious, trips for members of Congress, with lobbyists like himself tagging along and enjoying the unparalleled "access" that such a setting provides; i.e., they get to know congressmen and sell them on legislation. They take over skyboxes at sporting events, inviting members of Congress and their staffs.

But Abramoff has differed from other lobbyists in his flamboyance (he owned two Washington restaurants, at which he entertained), and in the egregiously high fees he charged clients, in particular, Indian tribes in the casino business. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, headed by John McCain, found last year that Abramoff and an associate, Michael Scanlon, a political consultant and former communications director for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, received at least $66 million from six tribes over three years. Abramoff also instructed the tribes to make donations to certain members of Congress and conservative causes he was allied with. And he was careless—for example in putting on his credit card charges for DeLay's golfing trip to the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland in 2000, with a stop in London for a bit of semi-serious business to make the trip seem legitimate. It's illegal for a lobbyist to pay for congressional travel, but Abramoff is reported to have paid for three of DeLay's trips abroad. A prominent Republican lobbyist told me that the difference between what Abramoff did and what many other lobbyists do was simply "a matter of degree and blatancy."

Abramoff's behavior is symptomatic of the unprecedented corruption—the intensified buying and selling of influence over legislation and federal policy —that has become endemic in Washington under a Republican Congress and White House. Corruption has always been present in Washington, but in recent years it has become more sophisticated, pervasive, and blatant than ever. A friend of mine who works closely with lobbyists says, "There are no restraints now; business groups and lobbyists are going crazy—they're in every room on Capitol Hill writing the legislation. You can't move on the Hill without giving money."

This remark is only slightly exaggerated. For over ten years, but particularly since George W. Bush took office, powerful Republicans, among them Tom DeLay and Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, have been carrying out what they call the "K Street Project," an effort to place more Republicans and get rid of Democrats in the trade associations and major national lobbying organizations that have offices on K Street in downtown Washington (although, of course, some have offices elsewhere).

***
The Republican purge of K Street is a more thorough, ruthless, vindictive, and effective attack on Democratic lobbyists and other Democrats who represent businesses and other organizations than anything Washington has seen before. The Republicans don't simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs: they want the lobbyists they helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives; to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions. The former aides become part of their previous employers' power networks. Republican leaders also want to have like-minded people on K Street who can further their ideological goals by helping to formulate their legislative programs, get them passed, and generally circulate their ideas. When I suggested to Grover Norquist, the influential right-wing leader and the leading enforcer of the K Street Project outside Congress, that numerous Democrats on K Street were not particularly ideological and were happy to serve corporate interests, he replied, "We don't want nonideological people on K Street, we want conservative activist Republicans on K Street."

The K Street Project has become critical to the Republicans' efforts to control all the power centers in Washington: the White House, Congress, the courts—and now, at least, an influential part of the corporate world, the one that raises most of the political money. It's another way for Republicans to try to impose their programs on the country. The Washington Post reported recently that House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, has established "a formal, institutionalized alliance" with K Street lobbyists. They have become an integral part of the legislative process by helping to get bills written and passed—and they are rewarded for their help by the fees paid by their clients. Among the results are legislation that serves powerful private interests all the more openly—as will be seen, the energy bill recently passed by the House is a prime example —and a climate of fear that is new. The conservative commentator David Brooks said on PBS's NewsHour earlier this year, "The biggest threat to the Republican majority is the relationship on K Street with corporate lobbyists and the corruption that is entailed in that." But if the Republicans are running a risk of being seen as overreaching in their takeover of K Street, there are few signs that they are concerned about it.

When the Republicans first announced the K Street Project after they won a majority in Congress in the 1994 election, they warned Washington lobbying and law firms that if they wanted to have appointments with Republican legislators they had better hire more Republicans. This was seen as unprecedentedly heavy-handed, but their deeper purposes weren't yet understood. Since the Democrats had been in power on Capitol Hill for a long time, many of the K Street firms then had more Democrats than Republicans or else they were evenly balanced. But the Democrats had been hired because they were well connected with prominent Democrats on Capitol Hill, not because Democratic Congresses demanded it. Moreover, it makes sense for lobbying firms that want access to members of Congress to hire people with good contacts in the majority party—especially former members or aides of the current leaders. But the bullying tactics of Republicans in the late 1990s were new.

DeLay, Santorum, and their associates organized a systematic campaign, closely monitored by Republicans on Capitol Hill and by Grover Norquist and the Republican National Committee, to put pressure on firms not just to hire Republicans but also to fire Democrats. With the election of Bush, this pressure became stronger. A Republican lobbyist told me, "Having the White House" has made it more possible for DeLay and Santorum "to enforce the K Street Project." Several Democratic lobbyists have been pushed out of their jobs as a result; business associations who hire Democrats for prominent positions have been subject to retribution. They are told that they won't be able to see the people on Capitol Hill they want to see. Sometimes the retribution is more tangible. The Republican lobbyist I spoke to said, "There's a high state of sensitivity to the partisanship of the person you hire for these jobs that did not exist five, six years ago—you hire a Democrat at your peril."

***
In one instance well known among lobbyists, the Ohio Republican Michael Oxley, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, put pressure on the Investment Company Institute, a consortium of mutual fund companies, to fire its top lobbyist, a Democrat, and hire a Republican to replace her. According to a Washington Post story on February 15, 2003, six sources, both Democratic and Republican, said that members of Oxley's staff told the institute that a pending congressional investigation of mutual fund companies "might ease up if the mutual fund trade group complies with their wishes." It apparently didn't matter to them that House ethics rules prohibit congressmen or their staff "from bestowing benefits on the basis of the recipient's status as a supporter or contributor, or partisan affiliation." A Republican now holds the top job at the Investment Company Institute.

Last year retribution was taken against the Motion Picture Association of America, which—after first approaching without success a Republican congressman about to retire— hired as its new head Dan Glickman, a former Democratic representative from Kansas and secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration. Republicans had warned the MPAA not to hire a Democrat for the job. After Glickman was hired, House Republicans removed from a pending bill some $1.5 billion in tax relief for the motion picture industry. Norquist told me, "No other industry is interested in taking a $1.5 billion hit to hire a Clinton friend." After Glickman was selected, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported last year, "Santorum has begun discussing what the consequences are for the movie industry." Norquist said publicly that the appointment of Glickman was "a studied insult" and the motion picture industry's "ability to work with the House and the Senate is greatly reduced." Glickman responded by hiring prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert's former spokesman, for major MPAA jobs.

Norquist's organization, Americans for Tax Reform, keeps watch on other K Street firms and calls attention on its Web site to the ones that are out of line.^[1] According to a report in The Washington Post in 2003, an official of the Republican National Committee told a group of Republican lobbyists that thirty-three of the top thirty-six top-level K Street positions had gone to Republicans.

Despite its effectiveness, "the K Street Project is far from complete," according to Norquist, who says, "There should be as many Democrats working on K Street representing corporate America as there are Republicans working in organized labor—and that number is close to zero." He wants the project to include not just the top jobs in K Street firms, but "all of them—including secretaries."

***
A prominent Democratic Party fund-raiser believes that in 2001, after nineteen years as head of a trade association, he was fired because he was not a Republican. Another Democratic lobbyist told me that one of his major clients was put under pressure to drop him because he was a Democrat. A staff member in DeLay's office called the second of the two men and told him that he was "in DeLay's crosshairs," and warned him that if he attempted to work with any committees on Capitol Hill, he would get nowhere because of his political leanings.

Episodes of this kind have created a new atmosphere of fear in Washington. (Because of that atmosphere, these people as well as several others insisted on talking "on background," to protect themselves against retribution.) The Democratic lobbyist whose client was pressured by Republicans to drop him remarked, "It's a dangerous world out there," a world where, he said, "You'd better watch what you say. People in the Republican party, in the agencies, will say, 'I hear you were badmouthing X.' You know that you're being watched; you know that it's taken into account in your ability to do public policy things—[like] get a meeting with a government agency." Another lobbyist says, "It's scary now. People are afraid to say what they feel. It's had a chilling effect on debate." According to the head of a public policy group who frequently deals with lobbyists and corporations, "They don't have to say it," but he finds them now "intimidated by the atmosphere in this town—you hire Republicans."

Business groups are under heightened pressure to support the administration's policies—even those that are of no particular interest to them. A recent article in Business Week told of business organizations, including the Business Roundtable—an association of CEOs of major corporations—being summoned to meetings with Mike Meece, a special assistant to the President, various cabinet officers concerned with business affairs, and Karl Rove. They anticipated a friendly give-and-take about economic legislation but instead they were told to get behind the President's plan to privatize Social Security. As a result, these organizations have spent millions of dollars promoting Bush's new program, particularly through ads. Business groups have been notably reticent about criticizing administration policies—even ones they deeply dislike, such as the huge budget deficit. In the past, when they differed from administration policies, for example on trade or tax issues, they spoke out. An adviser to business groups says, "They're scared of payback, of not getting their own agenda through."

2.
The connections between those who make policy and those who seek to influence it have become much stronger in recent years because of lobbyists' increasing use of nonprofit groups to sponsor trips that give them access to lawmakers, as with DeLay's trip to Scotland and England. Jack Abramoff arranged for the trips of DeLay and other members of Congress to be officially sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, of which he is a member of the board. According to the congressional ethics rules a lobbyist cannot repay the cost of a free trip for a congressman by reimbursing the nonprofit group that organized the trip. But there's nothing to prevent him from giving large contributions to the organization or encouraging his clients to do so. Abramoff urged the Indian tribes he represents to contribute to the National Center, which paid for DeLay's trips. Owing to a major loophole in the ethics rules, nonprofit groups do not have to disclose their contributors. "It's a real abuse," the Republican lobbyist told me. Such trips are also a way of getting around the ban on gifts of more than $50 to members of Congress.

For the Washington lobbyist, the most-sought-after access is to someone who writes the nation's laws and appropriates federal money. Trips offer the best opportunity for the lobbyist to make an impression on a congressman. Since congressmen can no longer make use of soft money under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, they are increasingly using golfing weekends and hunting trips for fund-raising. The politicians in effect charge the lobbyists to play golf or hunt with them. (Members of the middle class and the poor have scant opportunity to play golf with members of Congress.)

Many congressional trips have a serious purpose; some members restrict their travel to hazardous places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Such trips can be paid for out of congressional committees' funds—but they are usually less glamorous, harder to explain to the voters since the public pays for them, and they don't include lobbyists. The rules for privately funded trips, for example that they must be "in connection with official duties," have been interpreted quite loosely. Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that studies money in politics and its influence on public policy, says, "Even where they touch base with the rules, they don't take them seriously."

According to a study of congressional travel over the past five years paid for by nonprofit institutions, the Aspen Institute, a think tank based in Aspen, Colorado, and Washington, has spent the most on congressional travel; but Aspen is a serious organization that conducts seminars in the US and abroad, and lobbying isn't involved.^[2] More interesting is the nonprofit that spends the next highest amount: the Ripon Society, actually the Ripon Educational Fund, an offshoot of the Ripon Society, which was founded in the 1960s by liberal Republicans as a serious organization concerned with public policy. Now that liberal Republicans are virtually extinct, Ripon has become an organization for relatively moderate Republicans.

Like other policy groups that also lobby, Ripon has set up an ostensi-bly separate "educational" group, or 501(c)(3), to which contributors can make tax-deductible donations. The Ripon Educational Fund sponsors a large annual "Transatlantic Conference," held in such pleasant places as Rome, London, and Budapest, to which it invites between 150 and 200 US citizens. These are vaguely described in the filings by the members of Congress who participated in them as "listening tour," or "fact finding."

The Ripon trips are famous among lobbyists for the opportunities they present for pressing their cases with members of Congress. A Republican lobbyist says that a Ripon Fund excursion has "become the trip to go on, because of the luxury and the access." The Washington Post reported that a Ripon Educational Fund trip to London in 2003 was attended by more than a hundred lobbyists, including representatives from American Express, AOL/Time Warner, and General Motors. They pay the Ripon Fund an annual membership fee of $9,500, and in addition finance their own trips abroad to Fund meetings.

Both the Ripon Society and the Ripon Educational Fund are headed by lobbyists. Former Representative Susan Molinari, of Staten Island, New York, a lobbyist whose clients now include Exxon, the Association of American Railroads, and Freddie Mac, is the chair of the Educational Fund. The president of the society itself is Richard Kessler, whose lobbying firm's clients include drug and cigarette companies. According to The Hill, the other Capitol Hill newspaper, Kessler's firm paid for a trip by five members of Congress to Ireland in August 2003, including four days at Ashford Castle, where the elegant grounds include a golf course. Of the members of Congress who went on Ripon Educational Fund trips, almost all took along their wives, an additional perk that contributes to the holiday atmosphere of the excursions. While lobbyists are prohibited from paying directly for congressional trips, trade associations and private corporations are allowed to do so—not much of an ethical distinction, since practically all of them engage in lobbying.

***
A recently released Congressional Quarterly study said that the disclosure forms filed by members of Congress "frequently show a direct correlation between a member's legislative interests and the sponsors of his or her trips." For example, Representative Michael Oxley, who is particularly concerned with corporate finance, took several trips underwritten by companies such as MCI. A political observer who closely studied congressional trips concluded that the Republicans are invited so they can be "worked on" to pass pending legislation, while the Democrats are there largely for "maintenance," in case they take power in the future. Moderate, "swing" Democrats who can affect the outcome of legislation come in for special attention.

The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill in 2002 didn't stop powerful companies and members of Congress from buying and selling influence. Representative Barney Frank, a major backer of the reform bill, says, "It works about the same as it did before." But, he adds, because the new law banned large soft money contributions by individuals, corporations, and labor unions to campaigns for federal office, and maintained overall limits on how much a person can contribute to federal elections—doubling them from $2,000 to $4,000 per election cycle—everyone has to work harder to raise the money.^[3] Still, congressmen are seldom heard to complain that they can't raise enough money and in fact, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics,^[4] both the political par-ties and individual candidates are raising more money than ever. Lobbyists still manage to deliver large amounts to legislators by "bundling" smaller contributions.

They contribute most of the money they raise to incumbents who can be depended on to do favors—a major reason (in addition to gerrymandering) why there is serious competition in only 10 percent of House races, and only about five seats change hands in each congressional election. Members of Congress expect to receive contributions from local industries (and their workers)—say, the coal industry in West Virginia—and they back legislation to help them out as a matter of doing constituent work. It's illegal for a firm to compensate employees for their political contributions, but, a Republican lobbyist says, a job applicant is often told that he or she is expected to make contributions, and salaries are adjusted accordingly.

It's virtually impossible to show that a particular campaign contribution resulted in a specific vote—such quid pro quo is illegal. Fred Wertheimer, of the public advocacy group Democracy 21, told me, "The system's designed so that you don't see who gets what for their money. It's designed for me to give money to you and you do something for me in the Congress—without either of us saying a word about it. But if I give money, I know it and the candidate knows it. It's an investment, and down the road you collect on it." While much of the money buys access to a member of Congress, or key staff members, that is only the entry point to making one's case. As John McCain puts it, "You give money, you get an ear." Still, one can sometimes even trace what Larry Noble carefully calls "correlations" between contributions and legislative successes.

***
The energy bill passed by the House in April is a striking case in point. The oil-and-gas industry, a top contributor of campaign money—80 percent of it to Republicans—benefited from several of its new provisions. A study by the staff of Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, shows that perhaps the most indefensible provision gave a waiver against lawsuits to manufacturers of MTBE, or methyl tertiary-butyl ether, a gasoline additive that's a pollutant and suspected carcinogen. According to Waxman's staff, this waiver is worth billions to energy companies; the major beneficiaries would be Exxon, which, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, contributed $942,717 to candidates in the last election cycle; Valero Energy, $841,375; Lyondell Chemical, $342,775; and Halliburton, $243,946. The bill also exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act the practice of hydraulic fracturing, which is used to make natural gas wells more productive and can also have an adverse effect on drinking water. Halliburton would benefit from this provision as well.

Another provision provided compensation to oil companies that bought leases, supposedly a speculative venture, on offshore sites where there is a moratorium on drilling. The compensation is worth billions of dollars to the oil industry. The bill also provided for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) to oil drilling—an invasion of the refuge that environmental groups have long tried to prevent. (Now that it contains more Republicans, the Senate passed a similar provision as part of its budget bill earlier this year.) The Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee were effectively shut out of the drafting of the energy bill. House Democrat Edward Markey, a member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, told me, "The energy companies got everything they wanted. Eight billion dollars in subsidies go to the energy companies, but to say that the conservation measures in it are modest would be a generous description."

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that pharmaceutical manufacturers, who received a windfall from the new prescription drug program in the 2003 Medicare bill—including a provision prohibiting the federal government from negotiating with drug companies on prices— contributed more than three times as much to those who voted for the legislation as those who voted against it. A bill passed this year in the Senate and the House to tighten the rules for filing bankruptcy had long been sought by finance, insurance, and real estate interests, and particularly by credit card companies. Taken together, they all contributed $306 million to congressional campaigns, 60 percent of it to Republicans, during 2003 and 2004. The richest interests also spend the largest amounts of money on lobbying. According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity,^[5] the makers of pharmaceuticals and health products spent the most—$759 million —on lobbying between 1998 and mid-2004, when the last lobbying reports were filed. Next came insurance companies. Oil and gas companies were seventh on the list.

***
The effects of the new, higher level of corruption on the way the country is governed are profound. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, "It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up— like war—they can't deal with it." The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that "the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way."

Two House Democrats, Rahm Emanuel, of Illinois, and Martin Meehan, of Massachusetts, have introduced legislation to tighten the rules on privately funded travel, strengthen the lobbying disclosure rules, and slow down the revolving door by which former members of Congress take jobs with the trade associations and, after a year, can lobby their former colleagues. Some Republicans are talking about placing more restrictive rules on trips. But the record shows that new regulations can often be evaded.

Perhaps the greatest deterrent to ethical transgression is that members of Congress don't want to read unfavorable stories about themselves. A Republican lobbyist says that the biggest factor in the growth of corruption has been "the expectation that all this goes undetected and unenforced." He added, "If Jack Abramoff goes to jail, that will be a big message to this town." Since the scandal broke over Abramoff's payments on behalf of DeLay, members of Congress have been scrambling to amend their travel reports, in some cases listing previously unreported trips, or filling in missing details. Public outrage can also have an inhibiting effect: after the Republicans changed the ethics rules earlier this year to protect DeLay, the adverse reaction in the press and from constituents was strong enough to make the Republican leadership back down.

But the public can't become outraged about something that isn't brought to its attention. The press tends to pounce on the big scandals but usually fails to cover the more common ones that take place every day. Some of the politicians I talked to hoped that the scandal over DeLay and Abramoff might lead to real changes, including more prosecutions and stricter disclosure requirements. But even they admit that, like so many other scandals, it may simply blow over.

Notes
^[1] See www.atr.org/national/kstreet.

^[2] See www.politicalmoneyline.com.

^[3] In the 2004 presidential election such money was paid to so-called "527 groups," which spent $500 million in the 2003–2004 election cycle. This wasn't, as widely thought, the result of a loophole in the McCain-Feingold bill but of the failure of the feckless Federal Election Committee to enforce a section of a 1974 campaign finance law.

^[4] See www.opensecrets.org.

^[5] See www.publicintegrity.org.

Finally...

2006-01-06T13:51:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

With the “holidays” now behind us, the media again can attempt to focus on scandal-ridden Washington D.C. and, in particular, the GOP. The litany of republicans caught up in the Abramoff web of deceit grows by the day: House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, Robert Ney of Ohio, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana and, of course, L’il Tommy DeLay.

Not surprisingly, while the top dogs keep denying their apparent culpability, their lackeys have not been so fortunate at keeping the inevitable at bay: Delay’s press aide Michael Scanlon, who later became Abramoff’s closest business associate, also has pled to federal charges and David Safavian, the Bush administration’s former top procurement official, was indicted last year on charges of lying to federal investigators about his dealings with Abramoff. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, both have close ties to Abramoff and have their backs to the wall.

Of course, the real hot-button issue centers on the republicans illegally spying on American citizens and lying about it. Fortunately, Dubbya has admitted to the illegality so there’s no way he can later deny and exonerate himself--only defend.

The holiday recess permitted a reprieve but the scandal is sure to mount as the victims of the crime are revealed. House Democrats have asked for copies of all legal opinions on the spying program; the numbers of Americans singled out; and the names of agencies getting the information the agency collected.

Also, the DNC is finally living up to its obligation to help expose the fraud that is the Bush presidency. In a charming, if frightening, video Bush’s lies and their historical predicate are revealed.

Finally, the republican treachery is exposed ... and people are paying attention.

Thank God

2005-12-23T07:34:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

As last week’s posting detailed, there is no doubt that the current administration is not having a “Happy Holiday” season. Neither is its devoted, brainwashed constituency. The religious zealotry upon which the current administration relies to seduce its otherwise desperate supporters took a severe hit this week when the theory of intelligent design was determined to be neither a theory, nor intelligent, nor well designed.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., Case No. 04-cv-2628 (M.D. Pa. Dec. 20, 2005), Judge John E. Jones, III, a republican Bush appointee, lambasted the defendants and their attempt to impose intelligent design on the school curriculum.

At issue was this exerpted statement, adopted by the outcasted school board, to be read to ninth grade biology students before the teaching of evolution:

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

The defendant school board contended that this "disclaimer" did not endorse religion but merely encouraged students to "keep an open mind." After a lengthy, detailed review of the lay and legal history concerning failed attempts to incorporate a specific religious doctrine into public schools under the guise of science, the Court concluded that:

After a careful review of the record and for the reasons that follow, we find that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion.

Id. at 38. The Court when on to explain that:

In summary, the disclaimer singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource, and instructs students to forego scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere.

Id. at 49. Judge Jones could have stopped there. Instead, he continued by reviewing the legitimacy of intelligent design concluding that it was not a science:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three ifferent levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on volution have been refuted by the scientific community.

Id. at 64. Intelligent design has now been rejected by a court of law. While it is certainly not the last word on the issue, future proponents of the "idea" (having been downgraded from a "scientific theory") will have to contend with the reaility that an objective, third-party, republican jurist has "seen the light." Survival of the fittest indeed.

What A Mess

2005-12-16T07:11:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Karl Rove look out; Sybil is now dictating the current administration's policy choices.

Late last week it was revealed that the detainee who fabricated the current administration's pre-war claims linking al-Qaeda to Iraq did so while being tortured in Egyptian custody; having been delivered there through extraordinary rendition. (Bad.)

Yesterday, Dubbya finally acknowledged that torture is wrong submitting to Senator McCain's determined effort to outlaw the practice. (Good.)

Today, the current administration admitted that for the past three years the National Security Agency has been spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant. (Bad.)

Yesterday, the current administration agreed to double spending on flood protection for New Orleans promising a system that it said would make the city safe from catastrophic flooding from a storm as powerful as Hurricane Katrina. (Good.)

Also yesterday, Congress issued a report concluding that the current administration had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress when it gave Dubbya the authority to wage war against Iraq--contradicting the president's lie that Congress had access to the same intelligence as he did. (Bad.)

I'm not even going to mention any of the fiascos resulting from the White House's "Holiday Card." Oops.

Obviously, all this evidences a very weak administration. The stalwart, dismissive, stick-to-their guns-right-or-wrong approach is being forced to make way for (gulp) compromise. Significantly, as McCain's success illustrates, much of the assault on the current administration is internal to the party (see, e.g., Senators Craig, Hagel, and Sununu's objections to extending the Patriot Act).

In short, people are starting to pay attention ... and those people are voters ... and the mid-terms are in eleven short months.

So, good news this holiday season: As the below editorial explains, "the Republican Party is fracturing before our eyes."
________________________________________________________

The New Worn-Out Ideas
By E. J. Dionne Jr.Friday, December 16, 2005

Who is running out of ideas now?

It has been a cliche of American politics for more than two decades that those poor, tired liberals were bereft of big thoughts and wallowing in a swamp of old commitments, old ideas and old promises. Their allies in the Democratic Party were thought to be similarly geriatric.

In 1989 a headline in the Outlook section of The Post confidently rendered this diagnosis on the liberals: "Tired and Defensive, They're Out of Ideas." In 1997 Charles Bray, who was then president of the Johnson Foundation, argued that liberal anemia had created the opening for a conservative jolt. "[T]he entry of new ways of thinking into the American intellectual bloodstream after two generations of liberals' monopolizing the public-policy debate has been good for the country," Bray declared.

Let's accept -- for the sake of argument, but also because the critique contained some truth -- that at some point during the 1970s, liberalism became tiresome, arrogant, unreflective and hidebound. Let's further stipulate that this image gave conservatives their opening to seem fresh, creative, exciting and all those other virtues that marketers love to claim for their products.

It can be asserted beyond a reasonable doubt that each of the disapproving words about liberalism in the previous paragraph now applies to conservatism. The most compelling evidence for this is the contorted, contentious and incoherent struggle by Republicans in Congress to produce a budget.

The Republican leaders may or may not pass their cut-from-the-poor, give-to-the-rich budget. It takes a degree of political incompetence usually associated with Democrats for the side that wants to preserve the true spirit of Christmas to invite so many coal-in-the-stocking metaphors at this time of year.

But there is something more important about this failure. It marks the dead end of a worn, haggard argument that conservatives have been peddling for 30 years, ever since that energetic guru of supply-side economics, Jude Wanniski, published his first articles on the subject and his exciting 1978 manifesto, "The Way the World Works."

Supply-siders asserted that cutting taxes on the wealthy -- and especially on savings and investment -- would help everyone, including the poor, by promoting economic growth. Tax cuts would produce so much growth that they would pay for themselves. Since government programs were flawed, private investment was always more productive than government spending. And deficits, if they did come, need not worry us very much.

For many of us, this whole argument was always a highfalutin rationalization for giving the rich what they wanted, and often even more. Bill Clinton's economic policies should have definitively destroyed supply-side claims: Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy and cut the deficit, and an exceptional period of economic growth followed.

But it took until this moment in 2005 for Republicans themselves to realize (even if many won't acknowledge it yet) that the help-the-wealthy, damn-the-deficits approach doesn't hold together, either as policy or politics. They are learning that the public doesn't buy the idea that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains should take priority over providing health coverage and child care for struggling Americans. The tax cuts, it turns out, don't pay for themselves. The poor have not fared well since the big supply-side tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

And given how much Republicans want to spend on defense, farm subsidies, homeland security, roads, bridges, subsidies for energy companies, a flawed drug program for seniors and lots of other stuff, there's no way they can cut enough from programs for the poor to offset the costs of their tax giveaways.

As a result, the Republican Party is fracturing before our eyes. Moderate Republicans know these cuts in programs for the poor are unsustainable. Very conservative Republicans want to cut spending far more than the rest of the party (or its voters) will allow. Republican leaders tilt this way and that, juggling this tax cut with that spending cut. In the process, they alienate just about everybody. The old faith is dying.

It took liberals a long time -- too long -- to adjust to the popular sense all those years ago that they were just trying to sell the same old nostrums. I'd like to hope that today's graying of conservatism will invite liberals to a new era of innovation. What's clear is that if Republicans and conservatives keep trying to sell their long-playing supply-side records in the age of the iPod, they'll confine their audience to antiquarians and ideological hobbyists. It's the way the world works.

Regicide

2005-12-09T08:04:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

This week the House of Representatives passed regressive, oh-so-republican tax cuts. One of the Bills, (colloquially know as the “Help the Rich Get Richer Bill”) drains “the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years” supporting the current administration’s predilection for deficit spending. Nearly half that amount is intended to extend “special low tax rates for investors’ dividends and capital gains.” The target audience: People who make a million dollars or more a year.

At the same time, republicans “in the House and Senate are moving toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement.” As the below editorial from the Paper of Record concludes: “Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.”

After dinner and conversation last night with a good friend who is equally interested in political issues (although sometimes from the wrong side--I’m working on it), I realized that a theory I’ve been kicking around has legs. It’s Medieval, literally.

There has been much inquiry into why the poor and middle classes support an administration that so overtly disregards their interests in favor of the most wealthy in society. Here’s my theory: By denying people the basic resources to survive, the education to achieve, and the opportunity to excel, the current administration forces them into a desperate position wherein their only source of hope is found in religion. Then, the current administration presents itself as a bastion and protector of religious ideals seducing the desperate to align themselves with a self-indulgent oligarchy working against their interests.

A thousand years ago, we called this the feudal system. Today, it is called republican party politics.

_____________________________________________________

Tax Cut Showdown
Published: December 9, 2005

The House of Representatives passed two major tax-cut bills this week. One deserves to become law; the other deserves to die. It will be up to the Senate to make sure that happens.
On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would shield millions of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax next year. The relief is expensive - costing nearly $30 billion - but it's critical. Without it, many middle-class Americans, who were never the intended target for the alternative tax, would be suddenly forced to pay higher taxes when they filed their 2005 tax returns. (The alternative tax was intended to stop rich people with lots of shelters from escaping their tax burden entirely, but it has not been changed to reflect inflation or the tax cuts passed under President Bush.)

The good news ended there. The House irresponsibly neglected to include any offsetting tax increases to help pay for the tax relief. (The Senate's tax bill includes $19 billion in offsetting tax increases.) Even more egregious, the House passed yet another tax bill a day later that would drain the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years. Of that total, $21 billion would be used to extend, through 2010, special low tax rates for investors' dividends and capital gains. Those rates are set to expire at the end of 2008.

The extension is both unaffordable and gratuitous. Most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. That's morally reprehensible at a time when the House and the Senate are moving toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement. And it comes at a time when the government is already borrowing extensively for all manner of undertakings, like the war in Iraq and the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare.

The Republican House leaders are also plotting to make it easier to get the unnecessary tax cuts for investors through the somewhat more responsible Senate. To date, moderate Senate Republicans have blocked the budget-busting investor tax breaks. The Senate tax bill, passed last month, includes alternative tax relief, but does not extend the preferential rates for investment income.

In a cagey maneuver, the House leaders have organized their legislation so the popular measure on the alternative minimum tax can stand on its own when it gets to the Senate, while the unwise tax reductions for investors can be inserted into a fast-track tax bill, which will, under special rules, be protected against any filibusters when it comes up for a final vote in the Senate. That will make it far easier for senators to abandon all restraint and vote for the House agenda.

It's not certain that the Senate will go along with this plan. The right course is clear: responsible senators should approve alternative minimum tax relief, but stand firm against machinations that would tart up the tax code with additional giveaways for the wealthiest Americans. Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

2005-12-02T07:25:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

When people are brave enough to identify themselves as republican to me, I reasonably ask how they can continue to support a failed administration.

The answer is always, "I don't necessarily agree with Bush, I just support the economic ideals of the party." Of course, I note in response that Dubbya is the leader of the party and if they support it, they necessarily support him. Nice try.

I also ask what "economic ideals" they believe the party represents. Inevitably, it is something to the effect of "people working to make it on their own" (again, an odd thing considering the president's silver spoon and the party's position against the estate tax) and fiscal responsibility.

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. Fiscal responsibility: small government, controlled spending, budget surpluses, and a long-term outlook.

In fact, however, the current administration’s (voodoo) economics requires the country to borrow $782 billion a year--more than six percent of GDP--mostly from foreign governments and central banks (e.g. China). It is estimated that by the end of the year America’s indebtedness to other countries will reach 28% of GDP.

Of all the scandals plaguing the current administration, perhaps none is more severe than its mismanagement of the economy and the resulting threat to the nation’s future economic viability and security.

As the below article explains, the president's "faith-based initiatives" have no role in fiscally responsible government.

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Our Faith-Based Future
The White House remains unperturbed by the growing prospect of economic calamity
by Clive Crook

Once upon a time Democrats were big spenders and Republicans were fiscal conservatives. That was a while ago. Ronald Reagan's defense buildup and tax cuts caused deficits to soar in the 1980s, and it was Bill Clinton who brought the budget back into surplus in the 1990s, partly by curbing spending. But those fiscal role reversals were timid by today's standards. Since 2000 the Democratic Party has been left in the dust when it comes to spending.

The Republican Party is the new, undisputed champion of big government. The Bush administration has presided over an explosion of public borrowing, fueled partly by tax cuts but also by huge new outlays. Both sides of the public accounts were out of control even before the enormous increases in spending to cope with Hurricane Katrina and the persistently dire situation in Iraq (see "Disasters and the Deficit," next page). The administration's incompetent handling of the hurricane will exact its own price over and above disaster relief, as the White House tries to buy its way back up in the polls. The Republican Party's former reputation for prudent fiscal management is no longer merely compromised; it is ruined, perhaps for good.

Among Republicans in Congress squeaks of complaint are heard here and there. But the White House has drowned them out. Before Katrina, at any rate, the administration was still insisting that the budget deficit would fall over the next few years. That prediction might have been right if Katrina and Rita had not happened and if Iraq had come good—at least if one further assumed that no other emergencies would arise, that most of the administration's tax cuts would be reversed by the end of the decade (which the administration itself, of course, is determined to block), and that demographic pressures (which are causing the government to pile up vast liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) would magically abate. On this side of the looking glass the deficit will not shrink unless something bold is done.

For those who find its budget forecasts unconvincing the White House has another line—one that slightly undercuts its assurances of fiscal responsibility. It is that the deficit does not matter. Economists have been predicting fiscal meltdown for years, officials point out. It has not happened and it won't, they say, even if the deficit sticks. The reason is that foreign investors just love this country's assets.

The resulting flow of funds—a global vote of confidence in American capitalism—means that the government can borrow without strain. Spend more, tax less, be happy.

It sounds like a confidence trick, and in the end it is—though, like all the best scams, it contains particles of truth. For much of the past decade private foreign investors have poured funds into the United States because they saw faster economic growth and better returns than were available elsewhere. As long as that kind of investment keeps flowing in, the deficit can be financed painlessly. Government spending still has to be paid for eventually, mind you—it is only a question of taxes today or taxes tomorrow. But a willing inflow of capital means that the eventual, inescapable cost to American taxpayers can be postponed at little risk.

Another thing helps. America enjoys the rare privilege of being able to borrow what it needs—currently on the order of $782 billion a year—mostly in its own currency. Countries heavily in debt usually have to borrow in a foreign currency. If they later get into trouble and the foreign-exchange market drives their currency down, the burden of their debt, measured in local money, weighs heavier, pressing them into an even deeper hole. But if the United States got into that kind of fix and the dollar fell abruptly, the value of America's debt would not rise. Instead the countries that had lent the dollars would see the value of their investments (measured in yen, say, or euros) fall.

As far as the United States is concerned, this is an excellent arrangement. With foreign lenders choosing to carry more of the risk, a credit-hungry America can afford to be less cautious.

But not this much less. If America were borrowing at half the present rate, it could probably relax. But $782 billion a year—more than six percent of GDP—is outlandish. Such reckless behavior has made America's privileged place in the world economy as much a curse as a blessing. Foreign capital is no longer voting as confidently for America. Private investors are spending less than before on American assets. Lately the slack has been taken up by foreign governments and central banks, which are pursuing not profit but doubtful policy goals of their own. (China's holdings of dollar reserves are already far greater than makes sense for China.) At some point these lenders are going to curb investment in American assets. Should this happen suddenly, here are some of the likely consequences: a spike in interest rates as the government is forced to find new takers of its debt, at dearer terms; a surge in personal bankruptcies and a sharp curtailment of spending among America's heavily indebted households; a stock-market crash; an increase in inflation; and a slide back into recession.

The present course of fiscal policy is not certain to end badly, but the risks are increasing. This summer, before Katrina, the economist Brad DeLong put the chance of a major U.S. financial crisis at 20 percent. The former Fed chairman Paul Volcker puts it at 75 percent within the next few years if we don't change our policies. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley (and a notorious pessimist), thinks it's about 90 percent. Whether any of these predictions is close to the mark is anyone's guess, but that's not the point. The point is that the chance of a bad outcome is substantial—and much higher than it needs to be.

Changing course now—before circumstances leave no choice—would be hard even if the administration believed it had to act. Starting from here, the combination of higher taxes and lower public spending required to bring the deficit down to manageable levels is politically daunting. Yet at the same time, Katrina has perhaps created a political opportunity to undo some of the fiscal damage this administration has wrought—by, say, curbing tax cuts and scaling back the Medicare prescription-drug bill.

Unfortunately, big-government Republicans see no need for such measures; they look at deficit hawks and see Chicken Littles. But this fiscal environment is more dangerous than any other America has faced in its modern history. Without corrective action the sky may fall.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

2005-11-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Hope is on the rise. No, I am not just referring to the fact that six out of ten people think the current administration is unethical. (What are the other four possibly thinking? It's like that fifth dentist who just won't come around to recommend Trident as opposed to other chewing gums.)

As Kansas rejects evolution in favor of scientific devolution, the inane "debate" about intelligent design has come to a head in a small town in Pennsylvania where residents -- 70% of whom are registered republicans -- ousted all eight members of the school board for promoting the "theory."

Intelligent design should not be taught as an alternative to evolution 200 years after publication of The Age of Reason and 150 years after publication of The Origin of the Species.

Reactionary thinking and the desire to regress rather than progress is a hallmark of the republican party as it continues to coddle and cave to its "base." There is another organization that seeks a retreat to the Dark Ages--its leader is a tall, thin, bearded, 48 year old man who walks with a cane. If you see him, please let someone know.
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A Decisive Election in a Town Roiled Over Intelligent Design
By Laurie Goodstein

DOVER, Pa., Nov. 9 - In the end, voters here said they were tired of being portrayed as a northern version of Dayton, Tenn., a Bible Belt hamlet where 80 years ago a biology teacher named John Scopes was tried for illegally teaching evolution.

On Tuesday, the residents of Dover ousted all eight school board members running for re-election who had put their town in a global spotlight and their school district on trial for being the first in the nation to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science class. In swept the full Dover Cares slate of eight candidates, which had coalesced to oppose the change in the science curriculum.

"I think the people of Dover are tired of the attention over such a minuscule thing and they want a change," said Lonny Langione, who had served on the board in years past and supported the challengers. "A lot of the people I talked to were upset because the school board came to using taxpayer money to advance their own agenda."

Before it took up intelligent design, Dover was a typical American town experiencing typical growing pains: family farmers selling out to developers, fields sprouting McMansions, crowded classrooms, S.U.V.'s speeding down roads built for tractors.

By wading into the great reawakening of a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the town of Dover was diverted from bread-and-butter issues, and found itself divided in surprising ways.

The lines were not neatly drawn. Christians who belonged to the same church found themselves on opposite sides. Fathers quarreled with sons. Next-door neighbors posted dueling lawn signs. Registered Republicans cast their party affiliations aside to run with the victorious Dover Cares slate when election rules forced all eight of its candidates to run on the Democratic line.

Voters themselves crossed party lines to vote for the candidates they favored. If they had not, the school board incumbents, all of whom ran on the Republican line, would probably have prevailed in a district where 70 percent of voters are registered Republicans.

In the end, the election was close. Only 26 votes separated the winner of one seat from his rival.

"I'm surprised that we won all eight seats," said the Rev. Warren Eshbach, the spokesman for Dover Cares, whose son, Robert, was among the winners. "It shows what good bipartisanship can do."

The incumbents did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The election came only four days after closing arguments in a six-week trial of the Dover school board and administrators in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, about 25 miles to the northeast. Eleven parents had sued the Dover board on constitutional grounds, saying that intelligent design was an outgrowth of religious creationism. The case will be decided by Judge John E. Jones III, who said he expected to rule by early January.

The majority of voters rejected the board's argument that it was only trying to expose students to a variety of theories about the development of organisms. The policy did not tell teachers to teach intelligent design, just to mention it in a statement to be read to students.

The statement said that evolution is "not a fact" and that students can explore intelligent design by reading "Of Pandas and People" in the school library.

The debate over Darwin versus intelligent design has played out in places like Myers Barbershop, where the owner, Barry Myers, has been trimming the hair of Dover residents for 37 years.

"I just don't think we got here by some Big Bang," said Mr. Myers, who said he voted for the incumbents. "I think if they have the right people to teach it, it should be taught."

Teaching intelligent design, he said, would help bring a "moral compass" to the classroom.

His son, Matt Myers, 34, expressed a decidedly different view, saying: "I'm glad the board's been voted out. I don't think science teachers are qualified to teach intelligent design."

Matt Myers said intelligent design should be offered as an elective, a position advocated by several Dover Cares candidates.

The campaign was hard fought and at times nasty. Board members sent out a mass mailing accusing the Dover Cares slate of allying with the American Civil Liberties Union, a group, it said in the mailing, that had also defended terrorists and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. The A.C.L.U. is representing the plaintiffs against the board.

Bryan Rehm, a member of the Dover Cares slate and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, "That's the level they were willing to sink to."

The suit will not be affected by the election in the short term, lawyers involved in it said. The judge must still issue a ruling on the intelligent design policy as it stands. But the new school board, which takes office in early December, could decide to revoke the current policy.

DeLay-ing the Inevitable

2005-11-04T07:28:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

After the elections of 2000 and 2004 there was much talk about secession; the blue coastal states breaking away from the red fly-over states and taking their tax base with them. I've got a better idea, just secede from Texas. Perhaps that long forgotten war over the territory was better lost...

Exhibit A: The ironic absurdity behind the "selection" of a judge to preside over Rep. Tom DeLay's campaign finance trial. In Texas, judges are elected requiring them to choose a political party and play the campaign game. So, DeLay complained when he got a democrat for a judge. A republican judge was then asked to make a new appointment, but he was removed at the request of the prosecutor, Ronnie Earl. Then a democrat was appointed, but the appointer, Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, was asked to withdraw from the process after it was revealed that:

His 2002 campaign treasurer, Bill Ceverha, was treasurer of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee;
The PAC is a co-defendant in DeLay's case;
Ceverha was a defendant this spring in a civil trial brought by Democrats who lost state legislative races to Republicans in 2002;
Jefferson was elected to his seat with the help of a $25,000 donation from the Republican National State Elections Committee, a group at the heart of the money laundering charge against DeLay; and
He also received $2,000 from a DeLay-run PAC whose executive director is a co-defendant.

Incest is best in Texas.

Could it happen anywhere else? A trial charging Delay with illegally funneling corporate campaign contributions to Republican candidates during the 2002 legislative races can't get off the ground because all of the republican judges are somehow connected to the defendant.

Of course, while Texas state judges are elected, other states have their judges appointed by elected politicians; as does the federal system. Based on the "logic" of the DeLay case, any judge, anywhere, has some partisan affiliation and can't be trusted to be neutral.

Extreme partisanship long has infected the legislature and over the past fifty years the executive as well. But, now, the last hope for neutrality and integrity, the judiciary, too has fallen prey. Bush v. Gore should have been a clarion call for reform. Instead, the ever persistent status quo has allowed the infection to spread, with no cure in sight. Students of history know what's inevitable when a government becomes so corrupted the corruption becomes acceptable...anyone watching Rome?

Elephants Never Forget

2005-10-28T07:57:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Who honestly can be surprised? It's Halloween, and the skeletons are coming out of the closets. The concern is whether the voting public will remember the current scandals a year from now in November of 2006--when it matters. Sadly, Americans seem to have short memories.

Fortunately, the so-called "conservative base" seems to be as outraged as anyone; and with good reason. The recently passed transportation bill contains 6,371 "earmarks" -- a.k.a. pork -- at a cost of $24 billion. The total cost of the bill is $286 billion which is more, in inflation adjusted dollars, than the costs of the Marshall Plan and the entire interstate highway system, combined. Small government indeed.

Plus, this time volume is in our favor. All of the scandals and lies can't go away by next year. To be sure, here are just a few:

Jack Abramoff, republican lobbyist indicted for bank fraud, under investigation by the Justice Department for influence peddling among House members (see below), and his swindling of Indian tribes.
Rep. Tom DeLay, indicted for his complicity in the same (see above).
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, under investigation for insider trading of shares in his family's company and the revelation that he was not "blind" to the affairs of his blind trust.
Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist sued by the SEC for illicitly looting Hollinger Inc., the Republican-friendly media conglomerate he controlled until his ouster by shareholders.
Richard Perle, right-wing publisher and former Bush advisor also sued by the SEC for illicitly looting Hollinger Inc.
Former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges began last week.
Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.
Thomas Noe, a Bush "Pioneer" responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president last year, who is accused of stealing $12 million from the Ohio Workers Compensation Fund and then laundering the money to various Republican politicians, including the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, who is under investigation for taking bribes from a defense contractor.
Robert Kjellander, the Republican National Committee's new treasurer, under investigation for his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the huge private equity fund.
James Tobin, Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign chairman for New England, indicted for four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.
Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, ______, ______, and ______, [stay tuned].

If there is such a thing as an honest conservative, or at least some remnant of sincerity for the conservative ideology, for how long can the right-wing look the other way? If elephants never forget, does that mean they'll look beyond partisanship next year and actually stand on the principles they so arrogantly espouse? In comparison to the above, a blowjob really can't be all that bad...

The Best They Can Do?

2005-10-14T07:24:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Harriet Miers's nomination to the United States Supreme Court is a debacle. For starters, contrary to the current administration's belief, her religion is not a sufficient basis for her nomination to the Court. At the very least, such a litmus test violates the Constitution ("no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." Art. 6).

More importantly, however, the woman just ain't that bright.

Of all the words recently written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. David Brooks, of the New York Times, upon reviewing her opinions in the Texas Bar Journal, explains that:

"I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose and throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers's columns provide no evidence of that."

In fact, members of the haughty, conservative Federalist Society are reportedly ready to "launch a coup" at the prospect of Miers joining the Court. As one Happy Friday victim reported, even Ann Coulter -- none too bright herself but capable of at least constructing a sentence in between make-overs -- is outraged at the current administration's attempt to "dumb down America" all the way to the Supreme Court. Apparently, liberal elitism (defined as the desire to have smart people doing important jobs like running the nation and protecting the free world) has its merits when the third branch of government is threatened.

Obviously, the current administration wants to nominate a woman after they failed to do so to replace Justice O'Connor; the first woman ever appointed to the Court. And, again obviously, the current administration wants a nominee who subscribes to their reactionary ideology (anti-evolution, anti-abortion, anti-education, anti-environment, anti-separation of church and state, and oh yeah, pro-guns). But, is Harriet Miers the best they can do?

Surely, there exists somewhere a highly intelligent, female legal scholar deserving of a seat on the nation's highest court who also shares such ideals. Then again, perhaps the problem is no highly intelligent, female legal scholar deserving of a seat on the nation's highest court could share in such thinking.

Perhaps, in that regard, Miers is the best they can do...

Their Own Worst Enemy

2005-10-07T08:05:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

How did republicans capture America? Is it all the fault of Kansas? What can be done?

America has been blind, ignorant or indifferent for five years. Now, the ugly underbelly of republicanism is being exposed before grand juries resulting in indictments of the inner circle. In his excellent essay, "Fall of the Rovean empire," Sidney Blumenthal unravels an oligarchy founded on corruption, bribes, cronyism and worse.

While the democrats impotently stand by, the current administration is destroying itself. Whatever it takes...
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Fall of the Rovean empire?
Drunk on power, the Republican oligarchs overreached. Now their entire project could be doomed.
By Sidney Blumenthal

Oct. 07, 2005 For 30 years, beginning with the Nixon presidency, advanced under Reagan, stalled with the elder Bush, a new political economy struggled to be born. The idea was pure and simple: centralization of power in the hands of the Republican Party would ensure that it never lost it again. Under George W. Bush, this new system reached its apotheosis. It is a radically novel social, political and economic formation that deserves study alongside capitalism and socialism. Neither Adam Smith nor Vladimir Lenin captures its essence, though it has far more elements of Leninist democratic-centralism than Smithian free markets. Some have referred to this model as crony capitalism; others compare the waste, extravagance and greed to the Gilded Age. Call it 21st century Republicanism.

At its heart the system is plagued by corruption, an often unpleasant peripheral expense that greases its wheels. But now multiple scandals engulfing Republicans -- from suspended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to White House political overlord Karl Rove -- threaten to upend the system. Because it is organized by politics it can be undone by politics. Politics has been the greatest strength of Republicanism, but it has become its greatest vulnerability.

The party runs the state. Politics drives economics. Important party officials are also economic operators. They thrive off their connections and rise in the party apparatus as a result of their self-enrichment. The past three chairmen of the Republican National Committee have all been Washington lobbyists.

An oligarchy atop the party allocates favors. Behind the ideological slogans about the "free market" and "liberty," the oligarchy creates oligopolies. Businesses must pay to play. They must kick back contributions to the party, hire its key people and support its program. Only if they give do they receive tax breaks, loosening of regulations and helpful treatment from government professionals.

Those professionals in the agencies and departments who insist on adhering to standards other than those imposed by the party are fired, demoted and blackballed. The oligarchy wars against these professionals to bend government purely into an instrument of oligopolies.

Corporations pay fixed costs in the form of legal graft to the party in order to suppress the market, drastically limiting competitive pressure. Then they collude to control prices, create cartels and reduce planning primarily to the political game. The larger consequences are of no concern whatsoever to the corporate players so long as they maintain access to the political players.

The sums every industry, from financial services to computers, spends on lobbying are staggering. Broadcast media firms spent $35.88 million in 2004 alone on lobbyists in Washington, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Telephone companies spent $71.97 million; cable and satellite TV corporations, $20.22 million. The drug industry during the same period shelled out $123 million to pay 1,291 lobbyists, 52 percent of them former government officials. The results have been direct: The Food and Drug Administration has been reduced to a hollow shell, and Medicare can't negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical companies. In the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry paid out $87 million in campaign contributions for federal officials, 69 percent of them flowing to Republicans.

Whereas almost all lobbying before the Bush era was confined to Capitol Hill, now one in five lobbyists approaches the White House directly. Consider the success story of one Kirk Blalock, a former aide to Karl Rove as deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, where he coordinated political links to the business community. Now, one year out of the White House, he's a senior partner in the lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock, boasting 33 major clients, 22 for whom he lobbies his former colleagues in the White House. Indeed, the Bush White House boasts 12 former lobbyists in responsible positions, from chief of staff Andrew Card (American Automobile Association Manufacturers) on down.

"The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750," reports the Washington Post, "while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent."

Macro- and microeconomic policies are subordinate to the circular alliance of oligarchy and oligopoly. Government expenditures have raced to the fastest pace of increase under Bush since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But the spending is not intended to prime the economic pump. Nor is it invested mainly in public goods such as infrastructure or schools; nor is it used to expand the standard of living of the middle and working classes, whose incomes and real wages are rapidly shrinking. Instead it is poured into military contracts and tax cuts heavily weighted to the very wealthiest, who do not in turn invest in productive capital. As a result, the largest budget surplus in U.S. history has been transformed into the largest deficit, whose bonds are principally held by Asian banks, a shift that presages a strategic tilt of global power and long-term threat to national security. The illusion that as the post-Cold War unipolar power the U.S. faces no countervailing forces is undermined by the administration's constantly draining deficits. Thus 21st century Republicanism reverses the policies that brought about the American century.

Under Ronald Reagan, the unanticipated consequences of supply-side economics -- instead of tax cuts fostering increased government revenues, they blew a black hole in the budget -- has under Bush been a conscious policy following the Reagan lesson. The reason is to apply fiscal pressure on government, making its regulations more pliable for manipulation in the interest of oligopoly and therefore the Republican political class. Just as macroeconomic policy is the plaything of politics, so is microeconomic policy. Environmental degradation, lowered public health and urban neglect are indifferent byproducts.

The Republican system is fundamentally unstable. Bush has no economic policy other than Republicanism. As the economic currents run toward an indefinable reckoning, the ship of state drifts downstream.

In stable systems, individuals are replaceable parts. Republicanism as constructed under Bush is a juggernaut that cannot afford to scrape an iceberg.

The Republican scandals converge on operators who are the center of the oligarchy. Their own relationships are complicated and tangled. But the outcome of the scandals affecting these major actors will inevitably unravel the Republican project.

On Monday, Tom DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury for money laundering of corporate contributions through his political action committee, a crime that carries a life sentence. DeLay had resigned on Sept. 28 as House majority leader after being handed his first indictment for felony conspiracy. Even as DeLay proclaimed himself a victim of injustice -- "I am indicted just for the reason to make me step aside as majority leader" -- he proclaimed that he would rule "with or without the title."

As DeLay shouts defiance, federal prosecutors close in on one of DeLay's "closest and dearest friends," Jack Abramoff, whose largess to DeLay over the years, including lavish trips to Korea and Britain, are part of the investigation. Abramoff's bilking of millions from Indian tribes has brought other Republican figures, including lobbyist Grover Norquist, a key DeLay advisor, and Ralph Reed, a central character in the religious right, under legal scrutiny.

At the same time, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, investigating the exposure by senior administration officials of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, has completed his inquiry by receiving the testimony of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and must issue any indictments before his grand jury expires on Oct. 28. Within the White House, Karl Rove, feverishly mustering wavering conservative support for Bush's nomination of his personal lawyer and White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court, awaits.

Bush never much liked DeLay. DeLay criticized Bush's father, for which there can be no forgiveness, and he criticized him, too. When DeLay wanted to slash the earned-income tax credit, Gov. Bush, beginning his presidential campaign in 1999 and seeking to establish his bona fides as a "compassionate conservative," said DeLay wanted to balance the budget "on the backs of the poor."

DeLay, the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, a suburb of Houston, who had called the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo," had risen from the Texas Legislature to the U.S. Congress. Once known for his boisterous reveling as "Hot Tub" Tom, he became born again, and his right-wing politics always had a forbidding punitive undercurrent. When he became Republican whip, he hung a whip on his office wall. He relished his nickname, "the Hammer." Asked to put out his cigar in a restaurant because it violated the nonsmoking rule, he bellowed, "I am the federal government."

DeLay never really respected Newt Gingrich, who had led the Republicans out of their 40-year wilderness to control of Congress and become speaker of the House. Despite Gingrich's penchant for vituperative personal attacks on Democrats, DeLay thought he was soft. There was something of the lost boy about Gingrich, who collected dinosaur bones, loved to visit zoos and speculated about outer space. DeLay also felt that Gingrich had fallen under the seductive spell of President Clinton and conceded too much to him. DeLay plotted coups against Gingrich and finally succeeded after the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. DeLay worried that Gingrich would weaken in the struggle to impeach and remove Clinton, and because of Gingrich's mistress on the House payroll, which made him doubly vulnerable. DeLay coerced House Republicans to impeach Clinton, threatening moderates that he would fund primary opponents and deny them advantageous committee assignments. Without DeLay, there would have been no impeachment. After the Senate acquitted Clinton, DeLay preached at his local church that Clinton had been impeached because he had "the wrong worldview."

The center of DeLay's operation was the K Street Project, the pay-for-play system by which businesses and lobbyists kicked back to the Republican Party in exchange for legislation. He kept a little black book noting which lobbyists were good and which were bad, who deserved favors and who punishment. One reporter, believing that the story about the black book was apocryphal, asked DeLay, who proudly showed it to him.

Of all the lobbyists on the good list, Jack Abramoff ranked at the top. Abramoff's provenance as a scion of Beverly Hills, Calif., could not have been more fortuitous for a career in the Republican Party. His father was president of the Diners Club franchises, owned by Alfred Bloomingdale, a member of Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet. Abramoff parlayed his connections and money into a campaign that gained him the chairmanship of the College Republicans in 1981, Year 1 of the Reagan era.

Abramoff's campaign manager was a radical right-winger named Grover Norquist, and the two of them recruited a zealous younger activist to carry out their orders, Ralph Reed. Reed required College Republicans to recite a speech from the movie "Patton," replacing the word "Nazis" with "Democrats": "The Democrats are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!"

Norquist was the first to point out the political potential of evangelical churches to Reed, imagining that they could be turned into Republican clubhouses. During the week of George H.W. Bush's inauguration, Reed encountered Pat Robertson, the right-wing televangelist, who recruited him on the spot to run the Christian Coalition. "I want to be invisible," Reed explained. "I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

Norquist himself underwent a metamorphosis from gadfly to player with the Republican takeover of Congress. His Wednesday meeting became a place where conservative groups from the National Rifle Association to the Christian Coalition plotted strategy. Norquist opened it up to lobbyists, who paid exorbitant fees to be part of the action. They, too, were then coordinated. Norquist was especially close to Gingrich, a relationship he used to build up his own lobbying business behind front groups such as Americans for Tax Reform. Once Gingrich was toppled, Norquist used Abramoff to link him tightly to DeLay.

Karl Rove, whose political career began as chairman of the College Republicans in 1971, was well acquainted with the Abramoff circle for years by the time he began planning George W. Bush's presidential campaign. He was not enamored of anti-tax crusader Norquist, who had made a grandstand gesture of assailing Gov. Bush in the mid-1990s for suggesting raising taxes to support schools. But, for the campaign, Rove made peace with him.

In 1997, Reed left the Christian Coalition to found his own lobbying firm, Century Strategies. He sent Abramoff an e-mail: "Hey, now that I'm done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts." Rove soon recruited Reed for the upcoming Bush campaign, setting him up as a consultant for Enron.
When Sen. John McCain defeated Bush in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, Reed came into play. South Carolina was Armageddon. Suddenly, McCain was beset by a series of vicious accusations, including racial slurs about an adopted daughter and dirty tricks.

Marshall Wittman, who had worked as director of the Christian Coalition under Reed, had joined McCain's staff, though Reed had attempted to bring him along to the Bush campaign. "Ralph was very, very, very close to Rove," Wittman told me. "Ralph asked me in 1997 if I wanted to work on the Bush campaign. Rove was operating everything. Rove parked Ralph at Enron. Ralph told me before the New Hampshire primary that he would do what it took to eliminate McCain as an opponent if he posed a challenge to Bush. He would do whatever it took, that means below the radar, paint his face. Ralph has a dual personality, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, charming in public and then ruthless and vicious."

Abramoff grew ever closer to DeLay, helping DeLay's former aides who had become lobbyists, who also assisted his business. Abramoff took millions from various Indian tribes and then lobbied against them so they would pay him more. Norquist complained to Abramoff about a "$75K hole in my budget from last year," and his pal put him in the deal. Reed was hired to use the religious right to campaign against the casino that the Tigua tribe had contracted Abramoff to help them open. Meanwhile, Abramoff forced the Choctaw tribe, another client, to kick back $1.5 million to the Alabama Christian Coalition. Norquist acted as the go-between for the money, funneling it ultimately to Reed's efforts.

Eventually, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee exposed the various scams; it does not seem ironic that the committee's chairman is McCain. Soon, the Justice Department was investigating. Norquist and Reed have both appeared in front of the grand jury. Reed is running for lieutenant governor of Georgia. "Ralph has notions he'll be president of the United States," said Wittman.
Abramoff is under investigation by a grand jury in Guam for illegal contracts and money laundering and another grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In that case, a former business partner in the SunCruz casino boat company with whom Abramoff had had a dispute was allegedly murdered by three hit men, who have been indicted for the crime. Abramoffï¿½s business partner Adam Kidan made payments from company funds of $30,000 to one of the killers' daughters, who performed no services for the company, and $115,000 to a firm the hit man owned. Reportedly, Abramoff is not under suspicion for the murder, but he was indicted in August for bank fraud in the case.

Last month, another player in the ring was arrested -- David Safavian, a Bush White House official, director of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, in charge of overseeing $300 billion in federal contracts. Safavian had been Abramoff's lobbying partner in the mid-1990s before he became Norquist's lobbying partner. Before he was elevated to his sensitive post in the White House, he had been chief of staff at the General Services Administration, where he tried to help Abramoff grab two federal properties in Washington. On Wednesday, Safavian was indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. (Safavian's wife, Jennifer, is chief counsel on the House Government Operations Committee, overseeing the investigation into the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.)

Meanwhile, the grand jury in the Valerie Plame case prepares to conclude its work. In August, it called Rove's assistant Susan Ralston to testify. As it happens, she had formerly been Abramoff's assistant. And it was revealed that before she allowed people to meet with Rove, she cleared them with Norquist. Rove, for his part, often used Abramoff and Norquist as his conduits to DeLay.

Now all the investigations are coming to a climax. Will it mean the decline and fall of the Rovean empire? "Rove is the ultimate center of everything," said Wittman. "All roads lead to Rove. If it's Rove, everything collapses. People say there is no indispensable man. That's not true."

But more than the fate of one man or even a ring around him is at stake. For decades, conservatives created a movement to capture the Republican Party and remake it in their image. Under Bush, Republicanism as a system dominates.

With astonishing arrogance and bravado, the Republican oligarchy wired politics and business so that they would always win. But in believing that they actually possessed absolute power they have overreached. Now their project teeters on the brink.

Ministry of Propaganda

2005-09-30T06:30:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

On April 22, 2004, Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Tillman was a football star at Arizona State University, chosen Pac-10 defensive player of the year in 1997, and selected by the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft. He rejected the Cardinals’ offer of a three year, $3.6 million contract extension to join the Army in June 2002, hoping to fight Al Queda.

After his death, the current administration regaled him as a hero capitalizing on the loss to propagandize its campaigns in Afghanistan -- and Iraq.

It was a lie.

In "Family Demands the Truth, New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat Tillman’s death," investigative journalist Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle exposes a military campaign on American soil to preserve Tillman's status as an American hero -- while denying Tillman's opposition to the current administration and his family's desperate efforts to learn the truth.

Originally stationed in Iraq, Tillman let his true feelings be known: "'I can see it like a movie screen,' [Spc. Russell] Baer said. 'We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin [Tillman's brother] and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so f— illegal.' And we all said, 'Yeah.' That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.'"

Frustrated and despondent, Tillman's family continues to seek answers:

"'There have been so many discrepancies so far that it’s hard to know what to believe,' Mary Tillman said. 'There are too many murky details.' ... On her copies [of military reports], Mary Tillman has added competing marks and scrawls — countless color-coded tabs and angry notes such as 'Contradiction!' 'Wrong!' and '????'"

"'The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons,' said the father, Patrick Tillman. 'This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that (lower-ranking) people in the field do,' he said."

Journalist Collier exposes the lies:

Conflicting testimony. In his Nov. 14, 2004, interrogation, the first investigator expressed frustration with “watching some of these guys getting off, what I thought … was a lesser of a punishment than what they should’ve received. And I will tell you, over a period of time … the stories have changed. They have changed to, I think, help some individuals.”

Commanders’ accountability. According to the documents and interviews, Capt. William Saunders, to whom platoon leader Uthlaut had protested splitting his troops, was allowed to change his testimony over a crucial detail — whether he had reported Uthlaut’s dissent to a higher ranking commander. In initial questioning, Saunders said he had done so, but when that apparently was contradicted by that commander’s testimony, Saunders was threatened with perjury charges. He was given immunity and allowed to change his prior testimony.

Inaccurate information. While the military code gives clear guidance for informing family members upon a soldier’s death when cases are suspected of being a result of friendly fire, that procedure was not followed in the Tillman case. After Tillman’s death, the Army gave conflicting and incorrect descriptions of the events.

Legal liability. In testimony on Nov. 14, the officer who conducted the first investigation said that he thought some Rangers could have been charged with “criminal intent,” and that some Rangers committed “gross negligence.” The legal difference between the two terms is roughly similar to the distinction between murder and involuntary manslaughter.

As a result of his family's persistence, the military has now launched a fourth probe into Tillman's death, nearly 18 months later. They may never learn the truth. To the current administration's relief, the American public won't either, and sadly doesn't care.

Me, First

2005-09-22T07:04:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

The current administration -- belatedly awaking to the reality that the government has obligations to Americans, too -- is seeking $200 billion in budget cuts to contribute to the Katrina relief effort. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) already has rejected the repeal of 6,000 pet projects (e.g. pork) worth $24 billion. Included among them is a $500 million Hastert-sponsored transportation project to widen roads in his suburban Chicago district and to fund a bicycle path and a sidewalk.

Such misplaced priorities are not surprising. For the current administration, the real tragedy of Katrina was not the staggering loss of life or the creation of tens of thousands of American "refugees" -- it was the interference with the Congressional agenda. The week Katrina hit, the Senate was to consider legislation to make repeal of the estate tax permanent. The measure (H.R. 8) already passed the House on April 13, 2005.

Remarkably, however, "[c]omplete repeal of the estate tax would reduce federal revenues by $290 billion over the first five years, according to one of Congress's most conservative estimates."

"The estate tax, the most progressive American tax, is paid only by the very wealthy. The top 5% of taxpayers pay almost 99% of estate taxes, and the top tenth of 1% of taxpayers pay more than 33%. The vast majority of Americans are already exempt from the estate tax. As a result, they will receive no benefit at all from making the repeal permanent."

So why do republicans continue to insist on the repeal of a tax that affects just 5% of the most wealthy members of society and generates 33% more revenue than is being sought for the Katrina relief effort?

Greed.

According to the Fact Sheet issued by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca), the President, Vice President, and the Cabinet are estimated to receive a total tax benefit of between $91 million and $344 million if the estate tax repeal is made permanent.

W, whose estimated worth is between $3 million and $12.9 million, will save between $787,193 and $6.2 million. Cheney, whose estimated worth is between $23.9 million and $111.3 million (ticker symbol: HAL), will save between $12.6 million and $60.7 million.

To be fair, the current administration is showing some concern for those whose lives were destroyed by Katrina. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which has been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, wants to exempt from the estate tax anyone killed by Katrina with a net worth of $1.5 million or more. Not surprisingly, so far they haven't been able to find anyone who fits that description...

A Presidency Defined

2005-09-16T07:27:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

From Rueters: U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005.

World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war.

W has other priorities in mind.

Death by Arrogance

2005-09-09T07:09:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

George W. Bush, a president who campaigned (based on his own vice-president’s representation) on the premise that electing John Kerry would threaten our nation’s security. George W. Bush, a president who campaigned on the promise that he could better protect America. George W. Bush, a president who insisted during the debates that he had not made a single mistake his first term in office. (Perhaps, just for the sake of humility and respect for those lost, he could have at least said, “I wish I had done more to prevent 9/11.”)

The current administration is so arrogant that it actually blamed people for not leaving New Orleans before the hurricane -- without any appreciation for the fact that many had nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Death by Arrogance: 9/11. Afghanistan. Iraq. Madrid. London. New Orleans.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, disgusted by events, shared this:

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defy its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. … And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection; or at least amelioration against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. … It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

My friend Mike Rogers drafted an email as an outlet for his rage, from which I excerpt:

Various images -- many of which mean nothing out of context -- are haunting me. Crying children missing only pot bellies and flies around their heads; seas of poor black people stranded and abandoned in a city of the old south; police with fear on the faces; Bush looking and sounding scared, drunk or on the verge of mental collapse as he stood next to his dad and Clinton -- each of whom looked very “presidential” -- in the Oval Office yesterday; a dead woman in a wheelchair with a blanket tossed over her; gas lines straight out of 1974; the head of FEMA lying like a criminal on CNN last night. I can’t take it.

And it gets worse. The timeline of events surrounding the destruction defines an administration replete with arrogance leading to incompetence. Some lowlights:

Sunday, August 28 -- Katrina is upgraded to a category 5 hurricane.

AFTERNOON — BUSH, BROWN, CHERTOFF WARNED OF LEVEE FAILURE BY NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DIRECTOR: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center: “‘We were briefing them way before landfall. … It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.’” [Times-Picayune; St. Petersburg Times]

Monday, August 29 -- New Orleans Mayor Nagin reports water is flowing over the levee.

MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]

MORNING – BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]

10AM — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]

2PM — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]

9PM — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]

Tuesday, August 30 -- New Orleans and its environs are destroyed. Tens of thousands are suffering.

9AM – BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO [White House]

3PM – PRESIDENT BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WITH COUNTRY SINGER MARK WILLIS [AP]

EVENING - BUSH RETURNS TO CRAWFORD FOR FINAL NIGHT OF VACATION [AP]

Wednesday, August 31 -- Tens of thousands are trapped in the Superdome; 80,000 are reported stranded.

PRESIDENT BUSH FINALLY ORGANIZES TASK FORCE TO COORDINATE FEDERAL RESPONSE: Bush says on Tuesday he will “fly to Washington to begin work…with a task force that will coordinate the work of 14 federal agencies involved in the relief effort.” [New York Times, 8/31/05]

8:00PM – CONDOLEEZZA RICE TAKES IN A BROADWAY SHOW: “On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at ‘Spamalot!, the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.” [New York Post, 9/2/05]

9PM — FEMA DIRECTOR BROWN CLAIMS SURPRISE OVER SIZE OF STORM: “I must say, this storm is much much bigger than anyone expected.” [CNN]
* * * *The outrage over our nation’s current leadership has been slow to reveal itself; often easily dismissed by the right as partisan criticism. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that even recent events are sufficient to convince the nation of the horrors that still lie ahead, if left unchecked.

Report From Crawford

2005-09-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

This is as real as it gets. My ex-cousin-in-law, Elizabeth, (she's very cool and I'm honored to know her and thrilled to share this) is a freelance writer who recently returned from the protest in Crawford; which she attended with her three children. The following email has been circulated among the family. It is touching, poignant, and honest.

For most of us, the war is nothing more than a distant thought. For those protesting in Crawford, and elsewhere around the world, it is an unexplained, inexcusable travesty that inflicts daily suffering.

Her email tells a story few of us know, and all of us need to hear. Thanks, Elizabeth.
-----------------------
Hello Everyone,

I know this is long--feel free to skip it if it doesn't interest you!

Peace, Elizabeth

I returned early this morning from Crawford, Texas, where I brought my kids to protest Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strike and this war of aggression he is waging in Iraq. We camped at the Crawford Peace House(http://crawfordpeace.nfshost.com/), a house bought by two men in 2003 with enough foresight to see that Crawford--Bush's hometown-- needed a home devoted to peace. By the time we arrived, on Saturday, August 27 and the 20th or so day of Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside the Bush ranch, the peace house was filled with volunteers, staff, and visitors from around the world.

And what did I learn from my summer vacation? That our peace movement is HUGE, folks. We are huge. Bush has less and less support for his illegal war. There were THOUSANDS of us in Crawford, and a few dozen Bush supporters. Remember this as you make your plans to protest in DC in September!

Like us, people had arrived to protest the Bush regime. By that time, I had realized that Bush was not going to meet with Cindy and explain why her son had to die. Bush had told her in the past that her son died for a noble cause, and people were wearing t-shirts that read, "What noble cause did my son die for?" By the time we arrived, I knew Bush wouldn't meet with her or bother trying to explain the noble cause for which Cindy's son--and over 1600 other American troops--have died for. Most of us know by now that it was all a pack of lies--fixed intelligence reports and faulty "evidence" skewed to meet Bush's agenda of ousting Saddam and taking over an oil-rich country in the Middle East.

So, I didn't go in the hopes that a larger presence of supporters would "encourage" Bush to meet with Cindy. I went because it was the last weekend in Crawford, and there was a big protest planned. I went because I am sick and tired of Bush's rhetoric and pissed off as hell that he's on vacation while thousands of people in Iraq are dying. I went because Karl Rove continues to do God knows what in the Oval Office while the Saint Patrick's Four are facing prison time. And I went because I wanted to support Cindy when her detractors showed up, which they did--small in number though they were.

Some of her detractors were lined up outside a general store in Crawford called the Yellow Rose--a store with two large stone monuments out front with the ten commandments carved in them. Others were lined up alongside Camp Casey I, the place where Cindy first plunked down her lawn chair and said she wanted to meet with Bush. Camp Casey I sat alongside the road down from Bush's ranch. By the time we got there, on one side were Cindy's supporters with tables, information, tents and a small food prep area. The other side of the road were Bush supporters. It was pretty surreal driving through it. On one side rainbow and earth flags mixed in with American flags, a memorial of white crosses, and an eclectic mix of activists mobilizing against the war. On the other side, neat rows of American flags, mixed in with "W" signs and "Bush Country" signs. Okay, so maybe they were a bit tidier, but they couldn't bother spelling Cindy's name right. One big sign said "Cindi Doesn't Speak for Me." Cops had come and negotiated a "truce" of sorts with the two groups--in exchange for "peace" they weren't allowed to interact with each other. At least that's what I heard. That's really too bad, as open communication can always enhance understanding. But I imagine that emotions were also flaring and the cops wanted to avoid a scene or possible violence.

Many of Cindy's detractors called themselves the "Cindy Doesn't Speak for Me" caravan. They were also parents who have lost sons or daughters in Iraq, but they support the war. I chose not to interact with these people. They also brought their kids and sat outside in the Texas heat to exercise their first amendment rights, and I just didn't have the energy or desire to speak with them. They want so badly to feel that their children's lives were not wasted, and it's so emotionally charged that I didn't think I could get into a conversation with any of them without inadvertently causing more pain. The truth is, their children's lives were NOT wasted. We were all there to honor them. But what they died for is not a noble cause; they died for a lie. So I just waved and held up the peace sign. I did have to laugh at one of their banners--We Will Prevail, We Will Not Fail, We Will Fight Evil. It's at best a bit optimistic. I mean, yeah, we'll win this war against evil right after President Bush invites me over for birthday cake. So, I avoided them in order to avoid asking, "how many of "them" do we have to kill before "evil" is gone from this earth and all that's left are God-fearing Americans sucking up oil for their Hummers?"

So we moved on to Camp Casey II, where we spent the majority of our time. CCII was a huge tent set up about a mile or so away from Bush's ranch. The tent was industrial sized and large enough for a stage, chairs in front of the stage, a circle of chairs behind that, and a couple dozen round tables for eating and relaxing. Banners hung from all the sides, and there were more tables on the sides with info from the various groups there. Groups represented included Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families For Peace (co-founded by Cindy), Code Pink, Iraq Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans For Peace, and many others. An industrial sized kitchen was set up and volunteers cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for thousands of people every day.

While I was there, visitors to CCII included Al Sharpton and Martin Sheen. They were both great speakers with a lot to say for the cause of peace. The Burns Sisters from Ithaca sang some songs, and many others played music, or spoke about why they were there. I attended a press conference with Cindy and asked her about mothers getting involved in the peace and justice movement. She expressed regret at not having told Casey that his government could misuse and abuse him, and that it was crucial that all mothers tell their children these things.

On Sunday, Working Assets had organized a rose drive, and 4500 roses were trucked in for a memorial ceremony. After the interfaith mass on Sunday morning, family member of the fallen, as well as activists present, placed roses on all the white crosses outside of the tent. It was a rather solemn event with many people shedding tears for the immense loss of human life--loss compounded by the realization that these people were sent to kill and die for a bunch of lies.

I met a man, Juan, whose son was killed in Afghanistan. His son was a CPA and on the reserves when he was called to Afghanistan. They gave him an office job but the office was raided and all 8 military personnel on duty were shot in the head. The Pentagon is refusing to investigate what happened. That is all Juan knows about the situation.

Another woman I spoke to, Beatrice, lost her nephew in Iraq. She held her sister's arm as they viewed her nephew's body. She said they were lucky; the coroners had managed to clean him up enough so that they could see him. Other families weren't allowed because their soldiers were too mangled. Beatrice said despite the efforts they had made to clean up her nephew you could see the pain he had suffered from the car bomb that killed him. He was 23--also a reservist.

Despite Juan and Beatrice's pain and grief, they were remarkably strong and determined, and extremely friendly and kind to my children. They gave us a ride to CCII on Sunday and kept the kids entertained by telling them jokes. Beatrice held Lily, 4, on her lap and kept telling her how beautiful she is. Juan asked Lily if she knew what cows in Texas say, and Lily answered "Moo!" "No," Juan said, "Here in Texas, they say, 'Buuuussh.'" The kids thought that was hilarious and it became the joke of the weekend.

The kids got a little loopy at the end due to extreme lack of sleep. However, I've got to hand it to them, given the intense heat, the fire ants, the tent on a bed of rocks, the hourly or so train whistles at night, trains running about 100 feet from where we were camped, the unfamiliarity of the situation, and thousands of people they've never seen before, they had a blast. Lily was going up to everyone and saying "Hi, I'm Lily. I'm 4. What's your name?" She asked everyone with a dog if she could pet their dog, and made friends with every dog owner on site. She asked a 60 year old Vietnam Vet what school he goes to. He later told me how precious she is. When she woke up from a nap on Sunday, she said to me, "Mom, we have to just think and think, even in our sleep when we dream, we have to just think and think of all those boys who died."

My son, Adrian, 7, spent a lot of time drawing and listening in to people's conversations. He placed roses on crosses and made friends with Mia--an eccentric lady from Northern California who did yoga with the kids and gave them organic chocolate drops. She sang songs with them and danced. She was right on their level. Zany and fun and free-spirited. They followed her everywhere, and Adrian adored her.

My daughter Briana, 14, mainly just absorbed the atmosphere. She helped me with the younger kids and talked to lots of people. She met some vets and was impressed with the things they had to say. She bought a Code Pink shirt and asked me to please take her to the peace march in DC in September. She had also made earrings for me as my b-day was Monday. The kids wanted to have cake, but I told them I was so happy to be in Crawford with them, doing something for the peace movement, that even without cake it was the best birthday ever. Early in the morning, as I stood in the kitchen at the Peace House, a Mexican woman named Sylvia sang a song to me in Spanish for my birthday as she made frittatas. Yummy.

We met Cindy on Monday morning. Cindy spoke mainly to Adrian. She asked him why were there and he said, "We came here to support you." He had been the most interested in meeting her; she was like a celebrity to him. She hugged him and when he told her we came all the way from Ithaca, she said, "There are so many Ithacans here, you'll have to invite me up sometime."

I met so many people and heard so many stories--too many to relate here. An Iraq vet who is now paralyzed is going on the bus tour, and also wants to ask Bush what noble cause made him paralyzed from the waist down. Other vets bravely talked about what they did in Iraq and how they came to the realization that this war is wrong. Very moving people. I wanted to hug each and every one of them.

The trip ended in a hard way for me--I woke up before dawn on Tuesday with nausea, vertigo and an intense splitting headache. After vomiting several times, I got to pack up my tent and all our things in the intense heat, drive 2 hours to Austin, fly 3 hours to Chicago, lose my cell phone in the O'Hare airport (but find it after running about two miles back to where I'd lost it), fly 2 hours to Rochester, and then drive two hours home in the pouring rain at 10:00 at night, all with a chatty 4 year old who kept asking me what cows say in Texas. I was pretty damn tired. But we did it, we made it, and I don't think any of my kids will ever forget it.

Peace to you all,
Elizabeth

P.S. I was able to go thanks to Back to Democracy in Ithaca, and support from my ex-husband, Adam, and his dad, Burt. Thanks guys!

The St. Patrick's Four

2005-08-26T07:02:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

The nation’s first federal criminal trial arising out of civil disobedience in protest of the War in Iraq begins on September 19, 2005, in Binghamton, New York.

On March 17, 2003, two days before the invasion of Iraq, four Catholic Workers from Ithaca, New York, entered a military recruiting center in an act of non-violent civil resistance. They read a statement and scattered some of their own blood around the vestibule to signify the loss of life in Iraq. The four, all of whom are parents and one of whom is a former Marine and Vietnam Veteran, were tried in Tompkins County Court in April 2004 on charges of criminal mischief. Nine of twelve jurors voted to acquit

Nearly two years later, on March 11, 2005, the federal government charged them with conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States, “by force, intimidation, or threat.” 18 U.S.C. § 372. However, the police report does not reflect the making of any threats -- never mind the use of force or intimidation -- against any of the military personnel present at the recruiting facility; nor do the statements taken from the personnel on duty. The police report also states that the four protesters were removed peacefully from the site and charged with criminal mischief in the fourth degree for destruction of property, and the lesser included offense of criminal trespass. None were charged with assault or any other type of threatening behavior.

The federal government’s prosecution of citizens involved in a peaceful protest against its actions resonates back to the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. These four individuals were arrested, charged, and acquitted by a jury once already. They are now being targeted by the government, two years after the fact, and charged again, with another crime, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. These individuals did not then, and do not now, represent a threat. Quite simply, they are being prosecuted to silence their dissonant voice.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove’s potentially criminal misconduct has fallen from the headlines…

The Mother of All Battles

2005-08-19T07:25:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

"I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life ... I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy. And part of my being is to be outside exercising. So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."

Ah, Mr. President, how you charm the ladies. Especially the grieving mothers who lost a child in a war that is without legitimate basis or explanation.

As the Cindy Sheehan saga wages on, the current administration continues to deny the legitimacy of her concerns, her questions, and her frustration. Instead, the right-wing propaganda machine has resorted to personal attacks and distortions of the record.

Whether one agrees with Ms. Sheehan's personal views or not, she is nevertheless asking important questions that have remained unanswered for more than two years and is calling the current administration to task about a war without any defined purpose, or end.

The following article from Salon details the current battle between a mother with nothing left to lose, and a president with nothing to offer.

The Mother of All Battles
Cindy Sheehan has almost single-handedly launched an American antiwar movement. And in the process, she's exposed a president's feet of clay.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joan Walsh

Aug. 16, 2005 The smearing will continue, but it's already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement. Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she's said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will chase her for tax evasion, since she's reportedly announced that she won't pay taxes for 2004, the year her son Casey died in Iraq. Maybe her family has been shaken by her activism. Maybe the smears will even work, and cost Sheehan some of her mainstream political credibility. It doesn't matter: Someone else will take her place.

Sheehan's central demand -- that the president meet with her and explain why her son died -- has immense power in a country that's beginning to understand it was lied to about the reasons for the Iraq war, at a time when the carnage seems not only endless but futile. To build on that power, the antiwar movement being born at Camp Casey must understand and hold onto the source of Sheehan's moral authority: her authentic grief over her son's death and her fearless demand to talk honestly about it, even with supporters of the war.

Bush backers are clearly spooked by Sheehan, and they're shifting their stories as fast as they can get away with it. Early last week, you'll remember, she was a naive flip-flopper who supposedly changed her mind about the war and President Bush, because she'd had some mild words of praise for the president after they met last June. That line of attack didn't work, so this week she's a hardened left-wing agitator, plotting alongside the likes of Michael Moore, Medea Benjamin and Viggo Mortensen to help America's enemies. Need some proof? She's got Fenton Communications doing her media, for God's sake!

There's actually a tiny shard of truth in the latest right-wing attack on Sheehan, but it serves to underscore how dangerous she is to their cause. Sheehan has in fact been active in opposing the war since just after Casey died -- she starred in anti-Bush ads last year. (She was the lead in Michelle Goldberg's Salon feature on the ads last September.) Almost a year later, Sheehan has managed to break through to the American public, in a way that she obviously didn't in the Real Voices ads. But it's not because of the help of Code Pink and Fenton (which joined her after she was already in Crawford, by the way). It's because Americans are souring on the war and ready to hear what she has to say.

After more than two years of denial, the war is coming home to the American people. It's a journalistic cliche to talk about what you learned on summer vacation, but indulge me: With mostly network news and USA Today to provide my news-junkie fix, I learned this August that the war is finally a mainstream news story. I'm just old enough to remember grim footage from Vietnam on the nightly news, and it's starting to look familiar -- maps of the latest attacks, the dead and wounded soldiers, the grieving families and, now, Cindy Sheehan and antiwar protesters. If there's anybody still eating dinner watching the "CBS Evening News," now with Bob Schieffer and not Walter Cronkite, it's unsettling suppertime fare.

But the news is following public opinion, not leading it. The percentage of people who support the president's handling of the war has been sinking, as the number of casualties, and the apparent power of the insurgency, continue to rise. The other thing that's starting to break through is the president's cluelessness and callousness, his tin ear when it comes to the war and to Cindy Sheehan's appeal. Bush is such a polarizing force in American politics that it's hard to objectively describe either his personal political assets or his flaws. Most of his opponents can't even imagine his appeal to his supporters -- the regular Texan, the man's man, the guy you'd prefer to have a beer with over John Kerry -- and of course his admirers can't see what enrages his detractors, the smirking shiftless bully behind the regular-guy veneer.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but it felt to me as if with Bush's latest remarks about Sheehan over the weekend, the clownish lightweight his critics know and despise was beginning to shine through for all to see. If you haven't already, take a moment to ponder what he told Cox News about why he could find time for a bike ride on Saturday but not to meet with Sheehan:

"I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life ... I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy. And part of my being is to be outside exercising. So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."

You don't have to be Cindy Sheehan to think that yammering on about "staying healthy" and living a "balanced life" while so many are suffering and dying in Iraq is unthinkably cruel, as well as unbelievably politically tone deaf. When I read Bush's quote -- I read it over and over -- I found myself wondering not just about his character but about his fundamental emotional health. It's as if he's confessing he couldn't stay "balanced" if he had to confront Sheehan's grief, and even worse, her questions about why her son died.

And yet, even as Sheehan's public relations victories give people reason to be optimistic about the administration's unraveling in Iraq, liberals and war opponents have to be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's important to understand why Sheehan matters, and how she's gained traction on the war. Yes, it's the uptick in violence in Iraq, and the decided downturn in optimism, even among war supporters, who are continually defining success downward. Sunday's Washington Post had a great account of how the war architects are ready to declare victory -- not a Democratic Iraq but "some form of Islamic republic" -- and get out of Vietnam, I mean, Iraq. And yes, it's also true that August is a slow news month, giving Sheehan more room to tell her story. (I'd add that karma required that the president's stubborn monthlong vacation in Texas -- whether it's after he got a warning about terrorists using airplanes as weapons in 2001, on the eve of 9/11, or during one of the bloodiest months yet in Iraq -- would come back to bite him.)

But mainly it's the sincerity and humanity of Sheehan's core message. The anecdotes coming out of Camp Casey tell the story: Sheehan's quiet discussion with a soldier who opposes her views, which ended in a hug. Another Camp Casey activist had a respectful talk with a trucker who supports the war but stopped by to see if his dead son was listed among the casualties there. (He was, and the visit reportedly ended with him declaring his love for Sheehan.) Against the backdrop of an administration that refuses to acknowledge the dead, that prohibits photos of coffins and flies the wounded home under cover of darkness, that lets the president vacation and "stay healthy" instead of talking to the mother of a dead veteran, Sheehan and Camp Casey can get attention and win converts just by bearing witness to the violence and despair of a war whose goal nobody really understands anymore, in which victory seems less and less likely.

To build on her success it's important that organizers understand her appeal. Sheehan doesn't have all the answers -- she's smart enough to know she doesn't need to provide them. By simply asking why her son died, she's starting a dialogue about a war in which we've been lied to from the outset.

Moving forward and coming up with a broader message that can unify an antiwar movement will be tougher. Even war opponents aren't sure whether the message should be "Out now," or "Out soon," or "A lot of us out now and the rest asap." But if the goal is to build a big-tent antiwar movement, the messages must be simple, inclusive and from the heart.

The right will continue to use Sheehan's more controversial statements against her, of course. And it could, conceivably, hurt her appeal with the American people -- especially if antiwar allies choose to play up those positions. While I think there's plenty of room to blame the pro-Israel Project for a New American Century for helping lead us to war on false pretenses, as Sheehan does, let's remember that we won't end the war by requiring a litmus test on Israel and Palestine. Too often antiwar organizers have driven away supporters by leading with their most divisive views -- and by failing to communicate with those who hold different views.

Sheehan is outspoken -- and like all Americans, she has the right to be outspoken -- but she hasn't made that mistake. Camp Casey has become an outpost of grief and dialogue, and that's what gives it worldwide recruiting power. In Kentucky, the Republican grandmother of Marine Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley, killed in Amiriyah, Iraq, earlier this month, told local media she wished she could join Sheehan in Crawford because she's "on a rampage" against Bush and the war. "When someone gets up and says, 'My son died for our freedom,' or I get a sympathy card that says that, I can hardly bear it," 80-year-old Geraldine Comley told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "And it irritates me no small amount that Dick Cheney, in the Vietnam War, said he had 'other priorities.' He didn't mind sending my grandson over there" to Iraq.

Michael Moore couldn't have put it any more harshly. Smart organizers will make sure the Geraldine Comleys of the world are always welcome at Camp Casey. Because, sadly, their ranks are growing by the day.

Another Fixed Election

2005-08-12T06:20:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Bush's 2004 campaign chairman for New England has been indicted in federal court for conspiring to fix the results of the 2002 election for Senator from New Hampshire. As if the 2000 election fix weren't bad enough.

From The New Hampshire Union Leader:

RNC now admits paying lawyers
for alleged conspirator in NH case

WASHINGTON — Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party this week admitted that it has paid more than $700,000 to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the President’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

Republican Party officials said they don’t ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin’s defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.

“Jim is a longtime friend who has served as both an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC,” a spokeswoman for the RNC, Tracey Schmitt, said Wednesday. “This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing.”

RNC HAD DUCKED QUESTION

Last month, RNC spokesman Aaron McLear refused to say whether the RNC was paying Tobin’s legal bills when the New Hampshire Union Leader presented evidence that it was and asked the same question.

The Union Leader had reported on July 21 that a document dated October 2003, which had been recently filed in federal court in Concord in the Tobin criminal case, shows that former RNC Deputy Counsel Charles Spies represented Tobin “in his capacity as an employee of the Republican National Committee.”

The Union Leader also reported that RNC financial disclosures filed in July of this year showed payments of more than $500,000 to the high-powered Washington law firm Williams and Connolly for “legal services.”

McLear, after checking with RNC lawyers, refused to answer any questions about Tobin.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire’s newest senator.

At the time, Tobin was the RNC’s New England regional director, before moving to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant already have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors.

“The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters ... of their federally secured right to vote,” states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS IN LEGAL DEFENSE

Since charges were first filed in December, the RNC has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from Williams and Connolly. The firm’s other clients include Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.

The GOP’s filings with the FEC list the payments to Williams and Connolly without specifying they were for Tobin’s defense. Political parties have wide latitude on how they spend their money, including on lawyers.

The Republican Party has repeatedly and pointedly disavowed any tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in 2000 that tipped the presidential race to Bush.

Earlier this week, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director, reiterated a “zero-tolerance policy” for any GOP official caught trying to block legitimate votes.

“The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position,” Mehlman wrote Monday to a group that studied voter suppression tactics.

Dennis Black and Dane Butswinkas, two Williams and Connolly lawyers for Tobin, did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment. Brian Tucker, a New Hampshire lawyer on the team, declined comment.

Tobin’s lawyers have attacked the prosecution, suggesting evidence was improperly introduced to the grand jury, that their client originally had been promised he wouldn’t be indicted and that he was improperly charged under one of the statutes.

Tobin stepped down from his Bush-Cheney post a couple of weeks before the November 2004 election after Democrats suggested he was involved in the phone bank scheme. He was charged a month after the election.

"HOW HIGH DOES THIS GO?"

Paul Twomey, a volunteer lawyer for New Hampshire Democrats who are pursuing a separate lawsuit involving the phone scheme, said he was surprised the RNC was willing to pay Tobin’s legal bills and that it suggested more people may be involved.

“It originally appeared to us that there were just certain rogue elements of the Republican Party who were willing to do anything to win control of the U.S. Senate, including depriving Americans of their ability to vote,” Twomey said.

“But now that the RNC actually is bankrolling Mr. Tobin’s defense, coupled with the fact that it has refused some discovery in the civil case, really raises the questions of who are they protecting, how high does this go and who was in on this,” Twomey said.

Federal prosecutors have secured testimony from the two convicted conspirators in the scheme directly implicating Tobin.

Charles McGee, the New Hampshire GOP official who pleaded guilty, told prosecutors he informed Tobin of the plan and asked for Tobin’s help in finding a vendor who could make the calls that would flood the phone banks.

Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin who operated a Virginia-based telephone services firm, told prosecutors Tobin called him in October 2002, explained the telephone plan and asked Raymond’s company to help McGee implement it.

Raymond’s lawyer told the court that Tobin made the request for help in his official capacity as the top RNC official for New England and his client believed the RNC had sanctioned the activity.
———

The indictment in this is available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/tobinindictment.pdf

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman’s recent letter on voter suppression is available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/rncletter.pdf

Baghdad Bob in the White House

2005-08-05T07:07:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Baghdad Bob was the Iraqi spokesman who, as televised reports showed U.S. forces approaching the outskirts of Baghdad, famously denied reality, exclaiming: "They are not any place. They are on the move everywhere. They are a snake moving in the desert. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion."

The one lesson the current administration has taken from Iraq is, when all else fails, lie like Baghdad Bob:

LIE: The Bush administration claims you’ll be able to pass along the money that accumulates in a private account, to replace Social Security, to your children or grandchildren. (White House website.)

FACT: “Most lower-income workers will be required to purchase government lifetime annuities, financial instruments that provide a guaranteed monthly payment for life but that expire at death. Money in these annuities cannot be passed on to heirs.” (NY Times 2/3/05.)

LIE: In signing the No Child Left Behind Act, Bush declared “We’re going to spend more on our schools and we’re going to spend it more wisely.” In his 2004 State of the Union speech, he claimed “I refuse to give up on any child and the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of America’s children.”

FACT: Bush’s FY2005 budget under funds the No Child Left Behind (“NCLB”) program by $9.4 billion – or 27 percent less than authorized by Congress. Bush under funded the NCLB program by $15 billion during his first three years in office. Most of the under funding is in the area of Title I of the Act which provides funds to schools with low income or disadvantaged students. (The Daily Distortion 10/24/03; New Democratic Network 12/02/03; Center for American Progress 02/03/04.)

LIE: The Bush administration claims it has imposed “stringent new rules on power plant emissions.”

FACT: The new Bush rules gutted Clean Air Act restrictions to allow utilities to avoid having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when they modernize their plants. The EPA’s civil enforcement chief resigned in protest, while another senior EPA lawyer wrote to former director Christine Todd Whitman complaining that the administration “seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce.” A study commissioned by the administration demonstrated that current, weakened policies on power plant emissions have led to the death of 24,000 people a year. (Center for American Progress 12/13/03; NY Times 06/10/04.)

LIE: President Bush claimed there is insufficient scientific evidence of global warming as part of his justification for withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty.

FACT: The National Academy of Science’s 2001 report stated that there is “general agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20 years” and that most of the warming “observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” Similarly, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global temperatures were rising dramatically due in part to human-induced emissions. A Pentagon study stated that the threat posed by global warming “vastly eclipses that of terrorism.” The study said that climate change should be considered immediately as a top political and military issue and warned of catastrophic results between 2007 and 2020. (NY Times 01/12/03; The Nation 10/13/03.)

LIE: Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that “Veterans are a priority of this administration . . . and that priority is reflected in my budget.”

FACT: In 2003, Bush killed an emergency funding request that included $275 million for Veterans’ medical care, while his 2004 budget request fell $1.9 billion short of maintaining what the American Legion called “an inadequate status quo.” Bush’s 2005 budget cuts Veteran funding by $13.5 billion over 5 years. (The Daily Mis-Lead 10/21/03; The Center for American Progress 02/04/03.)

LIE: The Bush administration claimed its Medicare prescription drug cards would provide “significant price reductions off typical retail prices” for seniors.

FACT: A Congressional report found that the drug prices available to beneficiaries using the “discount cards” are no lower than existing prices and even higher than prices available in Canada, under the U.S. Federal Supply Schedule, and through discount pharmacies such as Drugstore.com. Moreover drug companies raised their prices by 3 times the rate of inflation immediately prior to the release of the “discount cards.” (Daily Mis-Lead 05/04/04; “New Medicare Drug Cards Offer Few Discounts,” House Committee on Government Reform, Minority Staff April 2004, AP 07/01/04.)

LIE: During the debates, Bush claimed he would not seek to overturn the FDA’s approval of RU-486.

FACT: Bush later insisted he would not accept the FDA’s approval decision and would seek to appoint an FDA commissioner who would “make sure the FDA considered the risk”. (ABC News.com 10/4/02.)

It's Worse Than We Thought

2005-07-29T06:41:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Last week I expressed the opinion that the Roberts confirmation was a foregone conclusion. I still believe it is. Remarkably, however, the White House's unwillingness to release documents relating to the candidate has placed his nomination in jeopardy--or at least created headlines (perhaps, just to distract from the Rove debacle).

This latest controversy is forcing people to question what the White House is hiding. No one doubts that Roberts is a conservative jurist. However, the Senate and the media are now methodically scanning every scrap of paper to see if it’s even worse.

Notably, one useful incongruity has come to light. Roberts repeatedly has insisted that his work as an attorney should not be considered representative of his own views. He claims that, as an advocate, he is representing his clients’ interests, not his own, and is arguing positions on their behalf without regard to his personal beliefs.

Nevertheless, the few documents that have been disclosed (by the National Archives, not the executive branch) reveal Roberts himself to be an arch-conservative. For example:

Roberts opposes the right of courts to uphold the First Amendment to preclude prayer in public schools.
Roberts opposes affirmative action.
Roberts opposes the right of habeas corpus (due process rights accorded prisoners).
Roberts opposes the intervention of courts to ensure equal educational opportunity.
Roberts opposes Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding.
Roberts opposes busing to desegregate schools.

Amazingly, these are not contemporary “hot button” issues like gay marriage or abortion. They are established constitutional principles that form the bedrock of our nation--a bedrock that is crumbling under the reactionary zeal of the “majority” party.

There is much Roberts opposes. It is time to oppose Roberts.

Fighting the Wrong War

2005-07-22T06:26:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

The Roberts nomination is a foregone conclusion. There is little to say: it is a smart, Machiavellian choice that presents itself as a reasonable compromise putting a staunch "conservative pragmatist" on the Court thereby paving the way to put a staunch "conservative ideologue" on the Court when Rehnquist vacates.

There is other, perhaps more severe, news from Washington. Last week every Republican Senator voted against a Democratic amendment to allocate $1 billion for mass-transit security. During that same time period, the current administration spent a $1 billion in Iraq fighting a war that fails to combat terrorism (it promotes it), fails to advance our national interest (it weakens it), and fails to protect our citizenry (it increases the threat).

This rate of spending will total a trillion dollars by the time the troops are allowed to return home, in 2010 or 2012 (Rumsfield's estimate).

In Bush's Folly, the author imagines the impact of spending a trillion dollars fighting a real war on terrorism by: implementing security measures at home, developing technologies to escape reliance on foreign oil, purchasing "loose" nuclear weapons being sold on the black market, and campaigning to win the "ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it." (Tony Blair's pragmatic, thoughtful reaction to the first London bombings.)

There is a forgotten war going on. Tens of thousands have died and many more will perish before it is "over," five to seven years from now. Unfortunately, it is the wrong war.

The Underlying Issue

2005-07-15T08:04:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Karl Rove identified a CIA analyst (if not by name, by marital association--a difference?) to a reporter in an effort to undermine criticism of the current administration’s bases for going to war in Iraq. Newseek, fresh off its own scandal regarding erroneous reporting about conditions at the prison camp in Gitmo, went in for the kill on this one. Finally.

Rove’s reported misconduct does not constitute a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which requires that: (1) the disclosure by a government official have been deliberate, (2) the person doing it to have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and (3) he or she to have known that the government was actively concealing the covert agent’s identity. (50 U.S.C. § 421.) There is no evidence, to date, which indicates that Rove knew the CIA analyst was a covert agent or that the government was actively concealing her identity.

Regardless, whether Rove’s misconduct was “criminal” or not is beside the point. Rove committed a severe breach of national security. As the president’s deputy chief of staff he has top-level security clearance. Prior to making this disclosure, he should have confirmed that the analyst was not a covert agent. Anything less represents an egregious error of judgment worthy of termination; regardless of position. As promised by the president, Rove has got to go.

More significant, however, is the underlying issue: Did the current administration lie about its motivation for going to war in Iraq? The scandal erupted over the president’s claim, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Nigeria for the purpose of making WMD. Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, the husband of the CIA analyst whom Rove desperately was trying to discredit, insisted this claim was false. He was right. Yet, to war we went.

The focus of the investigation, and the media, should be extended to ascertain whether the purpose of the disclosure was to conceal the fact that the current administration intentionally relied on false, discredited evidence to deceive the nation into supporting the war in Iraq.

Watergate was political. Monicagate was sexual. This scandal goes to fundamental issues concerning our nation’s security, the trust we place in our elected (and unelected) government officials, and the (accurate?) perception of the United States as the world’s policeman turned self-interested, manipulative, hegemonic bully.

Lies About the War on Terror

2005-07-08T06:11:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

The current administration loves to bandy about two bits of propaganda concerning the war on terror:

(1) The assertion that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.
(2) The participation of our "allies" in the war on terror especially those participating in the "coalition of forces" in Iraq; for example, Spain (now withdrawn) and Britain.

But, if our wartime allies are under attack aren't we, by definition, under attack as well? Was the Battle of Britain, in World War II, of no consequence to the United States because it happened on British soil and not here?

In truth, there have been more terrorist attacks since 9/11 than before, regardless of location. The current administration is losing their war. Last year the State Department's report Patterns of Global Terrorism was harshly criticized by a professor of economics at Princeton University and a professor of political science at Stanford University. In their article, Faulty Terror Report Card they revealed that, contrary to the current administration's claims of success:

The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003 --36 percent -- even using the State Department's official standards. The data that the report highlights are ill-defined and subject to manipulation -- and give disproportionate weight to the least important terrorist acts. The only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 reached its highest level in more than 20 years.

In stark contrast, relying on the same report, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage contended: "You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight [against terrorism]."

As the professors explained, the report's attempt to "spin" the war on terror was accomplished:

... by combining significant and nonsignificant acts of terrorism. Significant acts are clearly defined and each event is listed in an appendix, so readers can verify the data. By contrast, no explanation is given for how nonsignificant acts are identified or whether a consistent process is used over time -- and no list is provided describing each event. The data cannot be verified.

As a result of these criticisms, the current administration was forced to acknowledge it had "undercounted" and issued an amended report. This year, however, although publication of the report is required by law (22 U.S.C. § 2656f), the current administration determined to eliminate the report. This blatant failure of governmental transparency and honesty is exacerbated by the fact that:

"statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004. That compared with 175 [as amended] such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades."

In short, it's getting a lot worse. And yesterday was just one more example. Oh wait, the attacks on London don't count ... they didn't happen "here".

Downing Street Memo

2005-07-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

It has been more than two years since Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." It has been a year since the United States "handed over sovereignty to Iraq." (Hobbes is spinning.)

In the past year, 886 members of the U.S. military have lost their lives (1,774 since 3/21/03)and another 6,725 have been wounded (12,855 since 3/21/03). Estimates indicate that between 22,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. Every day there are approximately 70 insurgent attacks. No WMD have been found.

The current administration calls this "progress."

The not-so-secret Downing Street memo reveals the true motivations behind the current administration's "Iraqi policy." Matthew Rycroft, the British foreign policy aide who drafted the memo, summarized a discussion of Iraq between British and U.S. officials:

Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

(emphasis added.) The meeting took place eight months before the invasion in the midst of UN efforts to achieve the resumption of weapons inspections. Nevertheless, the current administration already had determined to reject UN efforts and, in the absence of any compelling justification -- except for "fixed" policy -- proceed with the military effort:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

The current administration has failed to offer a response to the revelations contained in the memo. The media remains afraid to pursue it (Newsweek still bleeds).

But, some are demanding action: http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/.

Returning to Our Priorities

2005-06-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

The other night I bumped into former Mayor Ed Koch while I was out to dinner with some friends. As he left the restaurant, so did I--in pursuit. I called out after him and he graciously turned to greet me. I explained that I always respected and admired him but that he broke my heart last year (when he supported Bush). He immediately asked if I knew his rationale. I answered that it was my understanding that he supported Bush's foreign policy even though he didn't agree with anything on the domestic agenda. He agreed. I retorted that the current administration's foreign policy was a failure. He agreed. I further commented that they were killing us on the domestic front. He agreed.

His departing words were "Ok, but Hillary in 2008."

There is hope in this. In response to last week's missive, a Happy Friday victim kindly forwarded the provocative article "Just Say No". The article analogizes the upcoming mid-term elections to those of 1994 when the obstructionist republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress. The premise of the article is that "Democrats are [succeeding by] finally rejecting craven compromises and redefining the party in opposition to right wing Republicans."

Looking deeper, however, the article also points out that in doing so, the Dems are focusing on core domestic issues: healthcare, the economy, education, poverty, and jobs.

Getting back to Ed, while he once was willing to support Bush placing foreign policy concerns (read: the amorphous "war on terrorism") above all else, he is now returning his focus toward domestic issues. Similarly, the focus of the 2004 electorate was on foreign policy; 41 percent thought war/foreign policy/terrorism was the most important problem facing the nation, with just 26 percent choosing the economy.

In 2006, and hopefully again in 2008, the electorate will join Ed in ranking domestic issues as the priority. These issues are where the votes are, and where the Dems can lead.

Party of the People

2005-06-17T10:16:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

I called an audible this morning upon reading about new polling data finding that Bush's approval rating had dropped to 42%. By comparison, Clinton's approval rating in June of the first year of his second term stood at 60%; Reagan's was 59%.

Good news? Not yet. Beyond the empirical data, a few concepts serve as a calling card to the dems--to date unanswered. First, is this telling anecdote:

Christine Weisman, a 54-year-old Republican homemaker in Reading, Pa., said in a follow-up interview, "They're not getting anything done. They don't seem to be able to come together on anything." She added, "It's all a political thing and they're forgetting the basic needs of the people."

Second, a majority of respondents cited the economy and jobs, and war and terrorism, as top concerns "[w]hen asked an open-ended question about the most important problems facing the nation." "Social Security, which has consumed an enormous amount of political energy this spring, did not make the top six, suggesting voters have a different view of political priorities than the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House."

Finally, as is too often the case these days:

Americans also recognized that Mr. Bush has a Social Security plan and the Democrats in Congress do not. A majority said they would like to see the Democrats offer a plan and not simply oppose Mr. Bush's.

I appreciate the desire to the let the current administration fall on its own sword when it comes to social security. But, in anticipation of the mid-term elections, it's time for the dems to come out of the wilderness and focus on the long standing core issue of the party: people.

With the economy and jobs back on the radar (having been surprisingly absent from the 2004 election as an issue for either the candidates or the electorate), the dems have a terrific opportunity to redirect the nation's focus toward their ideology: the economy, jobs, education, and gulp, other social issues. Ms. Weisman's comment (see above) is telling. People are not interested in the current administration's attempt to remake the globe or escape the Iraqi quagmire. Rather, they are looking for a little love back home.

The dems should give it to them, rather than just being the "party of opposition." It's time to lead again.

Lessons from the Right

2005-06-10T09:39:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

We are back. Maui doesn't suck.

Many of us have wondered how "we lost" last November. Some of us have wondered how "they won". There has been some scholarship on these questions and much frustration. Sadly, I have seen few suggestions and fewer solutions.

Attached is a terrific paper entitled "Lessons from the Right" that attempts to offer both, within the environmental context. Generally, the authors' thesis is as follows:

The[ right's] success has largely resulted from their utilization of a set of ingenious institutional techniques - primarily, a strategic framing of their message coupled with the construction of a holistic metastructure for delivering it - rather than their engagement in democratic discourse over the true content of their policies. Our movement can learn something by studying the methods that have allowed the Right to become so powerful, and if we are smart, we will figure out how to apply these lessons to our own national aspirations.

The authors dissect the right's political approach into ten strategic lessons (thereafter rejecting some as inapposite to democracy and ethics.) They then offer a proposal for the utilization of these lessons by the left.

Perhaps, all hope is not lost...yet.

Hypocrisy

2005-05-20T09:28:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Hypocrisy seems to be the theme of the current administration. A "do as we say not as we do" mentality pervades throughout. Perhaps nowhere is this approach more pronounced -- and more despicable -- than in the right's treatment of gays and lesbians:

The right believes in states' rights except a state's right to condone homosexual marriage.
The right believes courts should not legislate but insists on only appointing judges who subscribe to their social agenda.
The right believes in the freedom not to associate to keep leaders out of the Boy Scouts except when schools use the same freedom to keep the military off their campus.
The right believes in individual choices except when those choices take place in the privacy of one's bedroom.
The right believes in families except when it comes to acknowledging gays and lesbians in their own family.
The right believes in limited government except when it comes to legislating morals.

"Just How Gay Is The Right?" details the brutal, incessant attack against the gay and lesbian community in America. An attack that manifests itself in the denial of AIDS prevention education in our schools, in the appointment of extremists to the federal bench, in the equating of homosexuality to terrorism, and in an aggressive campaign of lies and slander.

The right's approach to the war in Iraq, deficit spending, social security, Medicare and the rest are policy choices subject to reasonable debate. The right's vilification of a class of Americans is without any legitimate defense.

Going on vacation. Many Happy Fridays until my return.

The Truth About the Estate Tax

2005-05-13T09:29:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Although not a hot ticket item these days (at least not compared to "Runaway Brides") the Estate Tax remains under assault by the current administration. Their spin mischaracterizes it as the "death tax" and disingenuously claims that it hurts small businesses and farms.

In truth, the estate tax is highly progressive--almost 99% of the tax is paid by the wealthiest 5% of the population. Only estates valued at over $1.5 million dollars are subject to the tax. And, contrary to the spin, only about 0.5% of small businesses and farms face estate tax liability. Simply put, it is a tax on the very wealthy who place less value on their last marginal dollar than the average American earner.

Remarkably, moreover, lowering the estate tax risks reducing philanthropic giving by as much as $15 billion a year!

Of course, in light of all this, the current administration plans to eliminate the estate tax to protect its wealthy base.

In "Options for Reforming the Estate Tax," the authors provide sensible reforms for the estate tax to maintain its progressive impact, protect the revenue stream it generates (in the face of an historic deficit), and promote charitable giving. Especially important considerations in the face of tax and spend republicans.

Another Boon for Big Pharma

2005-05-06T09:53:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Hypocrites. It seems the "free market" ideal so often praised by republicans is uniquely employed when it benefits businesses, not consumers. I know, no one is surprised.

But, it's twice as bad when the government is not only sacrificing consumers' interests, but also its own leveling a double blow against the average American Jane and Joe whom it's supposed to be representing.

By example, the 2003 Medicare legislation prohibits the government from negotiating for the best price with Big Pharma. That's right, Medicare cannot leverage its purchasing power to provide less expensive drugs to the elderly. Congress wouldn't allow it. The cost: $8.7 trillion.

And it gets worse:

A Serious Drug Problem.

Here's to your health....

Destroying Families

2005-04-29T06:29:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Perhaps the republicans are smarter than I thought. Perhaps their focus on Schiavo, attacking judges, and defending Tom DeLay was intended to distract America from what they were really up to: denying millions of families basic protections in the face of usurious corporate creditors.

The new pro-creditor bankruptcy legislation is another republican assault on the American family. Contrary to the right-wing media's portrayal of bankrupt families as those that overspend on cars, T.V.s, and footwear, in truth, nearly 90 percent of all personal bankruptcies result from job loss, medical costs (having denied families universal health care), a family breakup, or some combination of all three.

In this excerpt from Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi's 2003 book, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, the authors discuss the "predatory" lending practices of mortgage and credit card industries and their effect on American families. Of course, it's the mortgage and credit card industries who wrote the new republican legislation that allows them to drain every last drop of blood from already desperate families.

Cut up your credit cards.

Proposal for A Democratic Agenda

2005-04-22T06:11:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Attached is the agenda for the Democratic Party for 2006, 2008, and beyond. The authors comment upon the republicans' narrow focus on Schiavo, the "nuclear option", Schiavo, attacking judges, and Schiavo, while ignoring the economy, jobs, the economy, the deficit, and the economy.

The result: d-dubya's approval ratings have plummeted.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7577884/

Paging Howard.

War of Religion

2005-04-15T18:13:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Religious war is nothing new. Religious war here, at home, in America, as a substitute for political debate, is.

Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judge Issue.

Now it gets real.

Medicine's Money Problem

2005-04-08T18:28:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday.

Well, you no longer have to take my word for it. I always have contended that astronomical health care costs result from insurance companies' desire to bolster their bottom line; not from the "million dollar jury awards" representing less than 1% of all verdicts. Tort reform would just further line the pockets of big business. (Ever heard of an insurance company going broke?)

Below is a link to an article by a doctor explaining the process by which he gets paid for his services. He grieves that the practice of medicine is no longer focused upon the altruistic ideal of helping others, but on the need for doctors to be good businesspeople.

Medical Dispatch.

Good health.

Real Perspectives - A Rarity in Washington

2005-04-01T18:40:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Below are links to two recent, related editorials in the New York Times. The first is by former Senator John Danforth (yes, a republican) in which he serendipitously longs for his party to return to its roots and away from religious fanaticism. The second is by former Senator Bill Bradley in which he explains why the Dems have it so tough - one of the more cogent explanations I have seen.

Perhaps most interesting is how these two seasoned, intelligent, former pols have few, if any, peers in Washington today ...

In the Name of Politics, by John C. Danforth.

A Party Inverted, by Bill Bradley.

Happy April Fool's Day -- How sad it's every day in the Beltway.

Outsourcing War

2005-03-25T18:50:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Halliburton's Kellog, Brown & Root division, the largest private military firm ("PMF") in Iraq, is under a contract thought to be worth as much as $13 billion. This figure, in current dollars, is roughly the same as what the United States spent to fight the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War combined! Of course, this division of Halliburton is just one PMF among many hired to, allegedly, protect our national security interests. As the author of the the attached article notes, "President George W. Bush's 'coalition of the willing' might thus be more aptly described as the 'coalition of the billing.'"

Your tax dollars at work.

Welcome to Doomsday

2005-03-18T18:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

I considered sending updates regarding (1) the current administration's denial turned admission turned denial turned "we'll get back to you on that" approach to sending people overseas to be tortured and (2) Tom DeLay's denial turned attack turned lie approach to his felonious conduct, but I figured one little article a week is enough. Also, I didn't want to distract anyone from Congress's important work on steroids and feeding tubes.

Anyway, one of my (many) grievances has been the "liberal media's" refusal to acknowledge the idiocy of the current administration in an effort to maintain "objectivity". So, while Brokaw can tear up on election night, he's not actually able to say why.

Finally, someone has. Attached is an article by Bill Moyers in which he pulls no punches explaining the religious fanatacism motivating the Republican's core constituency. This makes it hard for the good guys. Reason and logic fail in the face of faith-based zealotry.

Welcome to Doomsday.

Much thanks to Miami.

Sound Familiar?

2005-03-11T18:41:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

First, while most folks have responded enthusiastically to this little endeavor, a few have (equally as enthusiastically) suggested that I have become a bit of a “conspiracy theorist” and deny the veracity of the articles. Alas, I am redeemed. The “Outsourcing Torture” article which discussed the policy of extraordinary rendition has been confirmed as accurate by the current administration:

Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad.

What’s worse, a government that covertly promotes torture for fear of the consequences or one that lacks the moral rectitude to know it's wrong and openly endorses it as a official policy?

Second, this week’s bathroom reading is “Did North Korea Cheat?” which suggests that the current administration’s “evidence” in support of its claim that North Korea violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty justifying North Korea's inclusion in the “axis of evil” was exaggerated, if not blatantly wrong. Consequently, the threats of sanctions and even possible invasion by the United States are based on bad and/or contorted intelligence. Sound familiar?

Enjoy the truth, for once.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2005-03-04T18:04:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Today I offer a book recommendation, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. While it reads like a John le Carre novel, this biographical tale reveals the true story behind the United States' "aid" to developing countries. It is a quick, intriguing read that sheds some more light on the question of the century, "Why do they hate us?"An excerpt of the prologue is below.

____________________________________________________

That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy that runs our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, we provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure—electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. One condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditors), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, like the Mafia, we demand our pound of flesh, which often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installations of military bases, or access to precious resources, like oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.

Fighting the Devil

2005-02-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

Ronnie Earle is a prosecutor in Austin, Texas. For years, Earle was praised for his diligent, determined efforts to reduce crime, seek out justice (not just a conviction), and maintain the integrity of his office. That was, until he challenged the illegal practices of certain Texas politicians--and came up against Karl Rove.

More recently, Earle began investigating the illegal acts of Political Action Committees supporting House Majority Leader Tom Delay. He revealed a massive, unlawful conspiracy among the PACs to raise and spend funds in support of Republican candidates for state, and later national, office. (To be sure, of the public officials he's prosecuted, 12 have been Democrats, three of have been Republicans--so far.)

If you're wondering how November 2d could have happened, here's a clue. Surely, this illegality is not limited to Texas.

Who the Hell is Ronnie Earle?

Think your vote counts? Think again.

It Has Come to This

2005-02-18T08:07:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday.

In the February 14th issue of the New Yorker is a rather intriguing article entitled Outsourcing Torture about a practice known as “extraordinary rendition” whereby the United States government ships individuals to other countries where they are interrogated through torture. While some of you may claim the practice is necessary in a post-9/11 world, the realization that our government seizes people from their homes in the middle of the night to subject them to such extreme cruelty that they must be taken overseas is more than a little disturbing--especially considering that the historical precedent for such conduct was limited to places like Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Amin’s Uganda.

What’s most disturbing, perhaps, is that the practice no longer needs to be kept secret--somehow we have come to accept such things.