Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
18 / 19, 2003
Davis Was the Most Corrupt Governor in Cali
History
The
California Recall
By
BRUCE ANDERSON
As predicted, the duopoly and their media stenographers
at corporate headquarters are demanding that recall elections
a lot harder to qualify for the ballot. "We just can't allow
voters to monkeywrench things like this," wail the media
and the big black limos of the two-party dictatorship. "It's
bad enough that they ignore us, the cringing editorial writers
of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, but what if the mob goes after
Wes or Patti or Mike or Rohnert Park and WalMart? It's all too
terrible to contemplate."
THE RECALL UPRISING has all the right
people choking on their imported brie. But left out of the argu-ments
by the bended knees at journalo-brothels like the PD's, is that
the Democrats and Davis made the recall election easily doable.
Davis's sub-Nixon persona and practices came to represent to
most people outside the elites everything wrong with contemporary
politics. Even hardcore Democrats needed both hands to hold their
noses when they voted to re-elect Davis governor. Nobody else
bothered to vote because there was literally no one to vote for
if the choice was Davis or Simon. And so it came to pass that
a mere 600,000 valid signatures were needed to put Davis up for
popular reconsideration, and the people leaped at a rare opportunity
to get a little revenge.
DAVIS AND THE DEMOCRATS, we will recall,
put a lot of money and effort into the Republican primary in
the 2001 elections libeling candidate Riordan as a pro-choicer
and closet lib because Davis and the Democrats knew that candidate
Simon was the only Republican that Davis might be able to beat.
THE BI-PARTISAN re-write of California's
recall law 20 years ago did away with the pro and con ballot
argu-ments the original legislation had required. Each side got
200 words to explain themselves. The original 1911 recall legislation,
by the way, also targeted Democrats who, then and now, were running
errands for special interests. In 1911 the Democratic Party's
special interests were the robber barons and their railroads;
today, the party serves public employee unions, the public ed
bloc, prison guards, the wine industry, and whatever other cash
and carry group will keep the party's army of career officeholders
permanently on the public payroll.
LOCALLY, our vapid State Senator Wes
Chesbro is another Gray Davis-like example of a political system
gone way, way wrong. This guy has never held a non-public job.
He went straight from doobies in the Arcata Plaza to the public
trough. He began his permanent stay in office at that perennial
incubator of electoral mediocrity called the Arcata City Council
as age 22. Then he was a Humboldt County supervisor, then on
to the phony baloney state garbage board where, as he pulled
down a hundred grand a year for attending one free lunch meeting
a week, Chesbro waited for the electoral green light from the
Bosco-Binah-Thompson-Hauser Gang. From the garbage board Chesbro
oozed into his present sinecure as the Northcoast's state senator,
having parlayed the feyest of effete liberalism into a permanent
public pay day. This state doesn't need a garbage board, and
it doesn't need a bi-cameral legislature with a house and a senate,
but the Republicrats have come to need an ever larger jobs pro-gram
for the Chesbro types of both parties who loyally serve the political
entropy that strangles the state but are otherwise unemployable.
Fastened like Borneo bog bee-tles to the public purse from their
calculated youths on, but without the state handing them a big
check every month to either stay in public office or sit on some
politi-cal payoff of a state commission, the Chesbros would be
shuffling up and down a Sacramento side streets behind Safeway
carts, pleading with passersby, "Hey! Look at this picture
of Mike Thompson and me at the Boonville Hotel!"
ANOTHER CASE in point is Virginia Strom-Martin:
term-limited out of her 1st District Assembly seat, she now sits
in some nebulous, unneeded position at the big pay specially
created for her in the state's education bureaucracy because
she loyally voted for more money for it.
FORMER 1st District assemblyman and state
senator Barry Keene is still in Sacramento as a highly paid func-tionary.
DAN HAUSER, invisible except at election
time, and visible then with a truly frightening death's head
smile plastered perpetually on his otherwise blandly insincere
puss, lingered for many undistinguished years as our alleged
assemblyperson before term limits finally (and mercifully) turned
him out of elected office. To take care of the loyal Hauser,
the Democrats installed him as boss of the old Northwestern Pacific
Railroad, thereby ensuring that trains would never run again
between Marin and Eureka. Hauser retreated to Arcata as the railroad
sank into a permanent paralysis of disappeared and non-exist-ent
account books, unmet bills, and accusations, many of them well-documented
of wholesale fraud, as the feds discovered that the repair work
they'd paid top dollar for hadn't been done. Having established
beyond all doubt that he was incompetent and dishonest, Hauser
was hired as Arcata's City Manager.
THE DEMOCRATS have now inserted another
party old boy, Mitch Stogner, in the doomed rail line's top job.
A former aide to former Congressman Bosco and various other Democrats
is Stogner's sole qualification for run-ning a railroad, especially
one that hasn't had an engine on the tracks for a decade now
and isn't likely to have one on the tracks anywhere north of
Santa Rosa in the life times of all Americans now living.
HAUSER, like Chesbro, began political
life as an Arcata City councilman. For years Arcata's fecund
political bestiary seemed permanently confined to the oppres-sively
PC little town's city limits, but at least one mating pair in
the post-Hauser-Chesbro period escaped north to Eureka where
Patti "Vote For Me Because I'm A Girl And The Other Candidates
Aren't" Berg has succeeded Strom-Martin as 1st District
assemblycipher. Berg's qualifications? Beyond gender? None beyond
her appar-ent connections to the twenty or so people who secretly
anoint Democratic candidates.
SOME 2700 railroad and garbage board
type sinecures -- all of them in the hundred grand pay range
for little or no work beyond showing up for an occasional meeting
and a tax-paid lunch -- have been occupied by Gray Davis appointees.
The Terminator might eliminate these pork barrel positions as
his first order of business to demonstrate he's serious about
cutting budget fat. He might also put his governor's salary back
into the general fund, junk his fleet of Hummers, draft emergency
legisla-tion to keep the soporific Gray Davis permanently out
of all classrooms, and keep his own hands off the interns. The
Russian River might also begin to flow backwards and a Press
Democrat editorial might be readable, but the odds against any
and all of it happening are the same -- so great as to be non-existent.
DAVIS and the Democrats tried mightily
to wreck Schwarzenneger via the groper stories. So who did they
bring in to campaign against the recall? Mr. G. himself, Clinton.
OR DID THEY? If the groper revelations
had been pub-lished a month before the election instead of a
week before, and revealed well after thousands of people had
voted absentee, they might have caused Term some anxi-ety. But
he was a shoo-in the whole way, right from his announcement on
the Leno show. If he'd fondled Arian-na and McClintock on camera
during the one "debate" he showed up for his margin
of victory probably would have been even greater. In a country
as kinked out as this one, a groper is widely regarded as harmless,
and way south of the registered sex offender roster where he
ought to be.
SUB-HED from the Ukiah Daily Journal
of Wednesday, 8 October: "Berg and Chesbro say they're ready
to work with Schwarzenegger, but that budget deficit still needs
solving." Whew! Bet that's a big load off Arnie's weight
pile.
REPUBLICAN BILL SIMON, probably the only
Republican in the state who could lose an election to Gray Davis,
Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, the Greens, and a bimbo, finished
12th in the recall behind all of them with a mere 7,904 votes.
Flynt, racked up 15,454 votes, nearly twice Simon's vote, while
finishing 7th overall. He was only a couple of thousand votes
behind 6th place Peter Ueberroth, another Gray Davis-like Republican.
Gary Coleman, midget actor and comedian, came in 8th with 12,683
votes. The bimbo got 10,110 votes, 60 of them from Mendocino
County.
BECAUSE THE RECALL was characterized
as "a circus" by much of the media, especially television
media where life under the big top is presented as news every
day all day, many of us dutifully characterized the un-election
of Davis as a clown show. But the voter's handbook was replete
with serious statements from many serious candidates, and very
few clowns among them.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON went from conservative
political pundit to liberal pundit and candidate in less time
than it took her to extract several million dollars from her
"bisexual" former husband. Huffington's politi-cal
trajectory would be called opportunism if it weren't sexist to
call it by its name. And it's perhaps homophobic and sexist to
suggest that it was the tortuous, table saw timbre of her uniquely
epiglottal, unrelenting monotone that drove her husband from
women altogether.
AT LEAST Arianna can talk, as can Peter
Camejo. The Terminator, McClintock, Bustamante, and Davis are
not only inarticulate, they stay that way even when they're reading
their remarks. Term's victory speech was embar-rassing, as was
Davis's concession address. Both were rhetorically below sixth
grade graduation addresses.
SCHWARZENEGGER spent $22.8 million on
the elec-tion; Davis $20.2 million; Bustamante $17 million; Ueberroth
$3.9 million; McClintock $4.1 million; Huff-ington $800,000;
Camejo "raised about $50,000" which, presumably, he
spent traveling up and down the state as the sole principled
candidate among the major candidates.
ONE IN FOUR voters voted absentee, many
of them before they got their sample ballots containing the initia-tive
arguments, and many more voting absentee before the LA Times
published their "investigative" report by a "Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter" that Schwarzenegger was a serial
sexual batterer, presumably reformed. According to subsequent
reports, everyone in LA media had known for years that Schwarzenegger
and sexual harassment were synonymous, but it was apparently
news to the second biggest newspaper in the country.
THE LA TIMES, like every other large-circulation
newspaper in the state, was opposed to the recall and against
Bustamante, not that enough anybodys cared enough to be influenced
by them to steer clear of Arnold. It was the 2003 LA Times that
was electorally so scrupulous; the 2001 LA Times had refused
to allow Ralph Nader to participate in the presidential debate
sponsored by the paper. Nader, we will recall, was escorted off
the premises by security guards. The Times was for Gore that
year so they offed Ralph. This year they were for Davis so they
attempted to off the weight lifter. The paper's 0 for 2 so far
this century.
DEFENDERS of the LA Times' last minute
attempt to save Davis naturally include America's journalism
schools. From the AP came this representative faculty lounge
opinion: "Gregory Favre, distinguished fellow in journalism
values (sic) at the Poynter Institute (What the hell's the Poynter
Institute?) dismissed criticism that the article was timed to
inflict the most damage to Schwarzenegger's campaign. 'This was
not an easy story to report, obviously,' Favre said. 'I think
in this case, the Los Angeles Times worked very hard over seven
weeks to nail down this piece. It just so happened that when
they got it finished, it was five days before the election."
THANK YOU, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, for
the surmise, and here's a case of lip gloss and a pair of Can't
Bust'Em knee pads for your trouble.
THE TIMES didn't mention the asexual
Davis's docu-mented crimes against women, grabbing one and shaking
her while he shouted obscenities in her face, merely screaming
obscenities at another. Neither candidate, in an age that celebrates
slob behavior, is what is now quaintly remembered as a "gentleman,"
but up until 1950 or so both of these pigs might have been made
to pay for their swinishness by the violated woman's father,
her brother, her husband -- or even a passing gentleman.
DAVIS, the most corrupt governor in the
history of the state, got a virtual free pass from the "investigative"
posses, while they falsely reported that The Terminator had once
said he admired Hitler. That one's still circulating, but here's
what muscle boy said in 1975 when he was 28: "I admired
Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man
with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him
for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting
to the people and so on. But I didn't admire him for what he
did with it."
THE DUMMY could have said the same thing
using Honest Abe as his role model without going to the trou-ble
of a disclaimer. Given the land of Arnold's birth, his father's
active Nazi-ism and Arnold's accent, Hitler as reportorial reference
point was inevitable. But the guy did issue that final disclaimer.
I'd say it's still a real dumb thing to say, and I'd also guess
that the big guy really does admire Hitler because Hitler's the
guy he thought of first when he was asked about inspirational
figures, apparently not knowing that fanatics do tend to bring
a lot of emotional pizzazz to their podiums.
HERE ON THE "PROGRESSIVE" NORTHCOAST,
the dominant media -- the Colorado-based MediaGroup papers of
Eureka, Willits, Lakeport and Clearlake, Ukiah, Fort Bragg, and
Mendocino, and the New York Times-owned Press Democrat -- were
opposed to the recall. Consequently, our large pwog plurality,
uncon-sciously but as always obediently taking their lead from
the Democrats dominant at the area's print media and our pseudo-progressive,
semi-public radio stations, opposed the recall voted for Bustamante.
ASSUMING that most people want game wardens,
community colleges, parks, prisons for the truly danger-ous,
and Caltrans, there are lots of other state entities that could
be tossed overboard tomorrow without anybody noticing, the tax
money saved by dumping them funding the services people really
want. The Department of Edu-cation and the State Senate, to name
two expensive bureaucratic redundancies, could go immediately
with no detrimental effect to state functioning. Ditto for all
the state commissions, beginning with the utterly ineffective
pork barrel called the Commission On Judicial Perfor-mance. (If
you want a look at the egregious opulence your state taxes support,
check out the San Francisco offices of the state's appellate
courts and the unperform-ing offices of the judicial performance
gang next time you're in The City.)
CALIFORNIA'S innumerable appointed commissions
are simply payoffs to the big donors of both parties, and either
do nothing at all or serve as a rubber stamp for whatever state
agency they theoretically oversee. Think 3000 Boonville school
boards, all of them with offices and staffs, with each member
of the board pulling down a hundred g's plus fringes, and you'll
begin to under-stand the true function of state commissions.
AND THERE'S PROP 13, the biggest swindle
in state history. What Prop 13 did back in 1978 was to lock in
property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value for both corporations
and home owners while simultaneously freezing annual property
valuations at increases of no more than 2 percent. Best of all
for big and small prop-erty owners, especially big property owners,
assessments were freezed-dried in place in 1978. Local government
could only raise money based on this 1978 formula. Although Prop
13 was sold as homeowner relief, in liv-ing fact it was a huge
give away to corporate and private wealth at the cost of public
services. As both Camejo and Huffington pointed out during the
debates, California's tax structure is way, way out of whack
because the rich, corporate and private, don't tote their share
of the load. Davis and the state legislature "solved"
this year's bud-get crisis by borrowing at exorbitant interest
rates to pay certain bills while they rolled over a bunch of
other due bills for next year's legislature to somehow pay. The
state pays exorbitant rates for borrowed money because state
debt is so much greater than the money coming in from sales taxes
and Prop 13's forever frozen rates that lenders fear they won't
get their money back; hence the usurious interest rates. Something
has to give, and what gives ever since Prop 13 is public services
while the Gray Davis types continue piling up public debt by
giving their voting blocs, i.e., special interests, pay raises
and tax exemptions.
THE STATE BUDGET consists of $75.5 billion
in esti-mated revenues, $83.4 billion in spending. It's short
$7.9 billion and shorter still of bankers willing to lend the
state money at less than extortionate interest rates.
DAVIS, even as he talked about belt-tightening
to make up the budget deficit, gave prison guards retirement
at age 50 at 90% their highest rate of pay, a big budget buster
all by itself.
PRISON GUARDS, despite Davis's great
gift to them, were silent during the recall. They're angry at
their long-time Demo padrone because the great protector of grope
victims unfunded visitors services in women's prisons and other
inmate amenities that help to prevent inmates from killing each
other and the guards.
SPEAKING of prisons, given that about
a third of the one million (!) California persons locked away
for non-violent crimes, a huge savings could be accomplished
by releasing those prison admin deems harmless. It costs the
state between $30,000 and $40,000 per inmate per year to keep
non-violent offenders behind the walls.
NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAKE CONCERN of the
ACLU and their pals among Democratic Party's bigwigs that the
alleged deficiencies of punch card balloting might cost Davis
his job, the election went off as it always has in California
-- with only minor glitches in a few precincts in the five counties
that still use Voto-matics, including LA County and far flung
Mendocino County. The ACLU's bosses revealed themselves as the
professional Democrats they are with their poll driven, hurry-up
court case alleging the perils of punch card vot-ing although
punch card peril is historically non-existent in California.
Invoking the Florida vote prob that helped the disastrous George
W. into the White House neglected to mention that Votomatics
weren't the problem in the Sunshine State, outright electoral
fraud was. Florida sim-ply erased enough voters from Democratic
precincts that George W. squeezed past Al Gore and on into the
presi-dency. Gore also lost his home state of Tennessee and lost
the overall vote, not because Jeb Bush removed black voters from
Florida's voting lists, Gore lost because, like Davis, he stood
for nothing beyond himself and is such an obvious phony there
was zero enthusiasm for him even among most Democrats. Gore and
the Clintonoids lost the election, not Votomatics, not Nader.
(Nadir won.)
HERE IN ECOTOPIA, as some of us lamented
our last punch card vote but clicked out heels at Eraser Head's
looming unemployment, we recalled that the old Voto-matics had
served us well over the years, certainly much better than the
people we punched on into office with them. They were cheap and
reliable. Electronic voting is expensive and, depending on the
machine, an invitation to rig elections.
IT WAS MARSHA WHARFF and her all-female
crew of Mendocino County Clerks who established for all time
the reliability of Votomatic. They presided over the famous one-vote
4th District supervisor's punch card election of 1992 between
Liz Henry and Heather Drum without inspiring so much as a single
beef over so much as a single dangling chad. Liz won by a single
punch in a single card, overcoming by that one tiny tear in that
one little Votomatic-tabulated card both liberal treachery and
conservative nastiness to win a second term in office. (An honest,
intelligent, all-round good person, Liz took such an emotional
beating in and out of office during the eight long years she
occupied the seat that she sold her house and moved away. Her
experience is a textbook example of why we're perennially short
of good people in elected office these days.)
MARSHA and Co. had this election's punches
unoffi-cially totaled and posted by 1am, a mere five hours after
the polls closed.
THE GREEN PARTY doesn't deserve a candidate
as good as Camejo. He's given the Greens their first real visibility
in the state, and was absolutely splendid in the debates as he
represented progressive positions with passion and clarity. But
it's clear from the returns that lots of Greens voted against
the recall and for Busta-mante, not Camejo. Of course if Camejo
and his cadre of old Trots hadn't grabbed the Green Party's top
spots in an end-around the swamp of consensus "process,
stacks, vibe watchers, crazy people with political delusions,
and all the rest of the hippie-cursed baggage the Greens con-tinue
to inflict on themselves that came from the stoned days of big
naked piles and meeting circles during which speakers were "empowered"
to talk only if they had full possession of an asparagus fern,
the Greens would still be invisible. Talk about not getting it.....
THE SF CHRON'S sports writer Scott Ostler
on Greens: "The Green Party insists it was encouraged by
its one percent share of the vote. Now the party hopes to expand
beyond its main demographic -- Marin County hitch-hikers."
75.95% OF MENDOCINO COUNTY'S eligible
popula-tion is registered to vote. Of those registered, 45.54%
are Democrats; 27.18% Republican; 16.43% declined to state; 10.84
"other," mostly Green with a few AIP's, Natural Law
meditators, Peace and Freedom Party dinosaurs up from La Brea
for one more tilt at the polit-ical windmills.
FROM ANN DuBAY'S column in the Press
Democrat of Wednesday, October 8th: ....."No more recalls.
Unless a governor or a legislator is a crook or clearly incompe-tent,
Californians should stay away from recall elections."
DAVIS is both. He's a crook and an incompetent.
He gave blocs of his supporters great gifts of public money and
sweetheart contracts in return for votes. In any other context
but California politics, this is called bribes, and are illegal.
Davis refuses to release prisoners who've served their lawfully
imposed sentences even when his parole board recommends they
be released. That's ille-gal, he does it knowingly, he's a crook.
Knowing there's a huge budget shortfall, he gives prison guards
early retirement at age 50 at 90% of their highest pay rate,
thus tying state taxpayers to huge, ongoing obligations to thousands
of state employees, thus increasing the budget deficit, thus
adding to the great gobs of money the state has to borrow to
meet its bloated payroll, thus requiring the elimination of more
public services to pay off loans, thus making the state's already
precarious financial posi-tion even more precariously costly,
thus meaning the governor is incompetent or a crook or a nut.
He's all three, and he fully qualified as a recall candidate.
DAVIS'S way of reducing the budget deficit
is to triple vehicle registration fees, again placing a disproportionate
share of the public load onto working people already heavily
taxed because the tax burden has been placed unfairly on them
because both political parties are funded by the rich and, therefore,
literally risk removal from office if they demand that the rich
pay their fair share of the common load. The increased license
fees were grounds for recalling Davis all by themselves because,
like the sales tax, these fees weigh heavier, much heavier on
persons of ordinary means than they do on persons of extraordinary
means.
BUT CALIFORNIANS who think they somehow
deserve to own and drive grotesquely oversized gas guzzlers should
pay, and should pay mightily for the privi-lege, especially at
a time when every day two or three American kids are getting
killed in Iraq just so home front slobs can propel their glutinous
selves from one idiot destination to another on artificially
cheap fuel. And am I the only person around picking up an ominous,
Old Testament-quality hubris vibe? That the decadence inci-dence
is now so large among US that we're about to get hit in our ravenous
pusses with coast-to-coast tsunamis of fire and ice? Listen to
me, you fools! I'm trying to save you from yourselves! If God
had wanted primitive people to propel themselves in Sun King
comfort He'd have borned you with an SUV attached to your fat
ass! What we need, though, while the End Times prepare to hurl
themselves at US, is a hundred percent state luxury tax on the
gamut of profane indulgences, beginning with SUV's and cell phones,
moving on through leaf blowers and Cessnas, and ending with triple-max
taxes on boom boxes and old guys who wear Greek seaman's caps
and bell bottoms.
Bruce Anderson
is the editor and publisher of the Mendocino Weekly, The
Anderson Valley Advertiser. He can be reached at ava@pacific.net.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|