June 30, 2004
Arianna Huffington Coming to OKC--Tickets On Sale Now
Greetings Fellow Democrats,
Several of you have requested information on how to get tickets to our Medallion Dinner featuring Arianna Huffington on July 10th.
Today, we got about half of the invitations in the snail mail. So we can use some volunteers tomorrow. Many have said that the day time hours don't work for them. So if you can give a bit of your evening, we can probably use you. Call state party HQ if you are coming in the evening at 405-427-3366.
Lynn Green
OK Co. Democratic Party Secretary
Sue Google and Lose: You May Actually Win
When a small Oklahoma company filed suit against Internet magnate Google in October 2003, the wires lit up.
Computer whizzes and law buffs were abuzz--did SearchKing, an Oklahoma City-based software and Web site public relations firm--have a chance against the Web's top search engine? And more importantly, was the suit even valid?
As it happened, the answer to both questions was "no."
After Google filed a rebuttal in late December 2002, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the case.
But Bob Massa, chief executive of SearchKing, couldn't be happier about the results--then and now.
"With us, one of the upsides of that whole thing was the publicity," Massa said, adding that traffic on his Web site increased dramatically as a result and he received tremendous exposure. "We never really intended to win. We wanted to recoup some of the losses for our customers."
Those losses, which are an arguable figure, are at the heart of a case involving the complexities of search engines and their use of links.
In its suit, SearchKing claimed that Google unfairly reduced SearchKing's Web sites' top rankings in search results, resulting in decreased traffic that was harmful to its clients' companies. But the story is rooted in PageRank, an algorithm Google utilizes to determine which Web pages will get top rankings.
In its suit, SearchKing claimed that Google unfairly reduced SearchKing's Web sites' top rankings in search results, resulting in decreased traffic that was harmful to its clients' companies. But the story is rooted in PageRank, an algorithm Google utilizes to determine which Web pages will get top rankings. A PageRank is determined by the number of "quality" links a Web site has. Affiliation with top sites increases a Web site's PageRank.
In August, Massa realized that a PageRank number (ranging from zero to 10, the higher the better) could be altered by selling links from sites with high PageRanks. In fact, using his method, Massa was able to increase SearchKings's PageRank from a seven to a more valuable eight.
Based on his theory, Massa started PR Ad Network in August 2002, a company that specialized in promoting traffic by increasing Web sites' PageRank number. But the ceiling came crashing down when, later that month, the PageRank of SearchKing and all its affiliates plummeted. Google had gotten wind of the plan, apparently, and took quick action.
Despite the questionable basis of PR Ad Network, Massa was infuriated that his affiliates--including some who had nothing to do with PR Ad Network--were penalized. Many small businesses were assigned ranks of zero, which amounts to a death sentence in the world of search engines, Massa claimed in his suit.
These included sites like Our World of Dolls, Eye on Winnipeg and the African American Business Directory, which is operated by Kelvin Brown.
Massa sued for $75,000, but Google fired back in December 2002 with a powerful argument: its PageRank algorithm is commercial speech, protected by the First Amendment. It sought to show that even if Massa's claims of harm were true, Google had been completely justified in its actions. The suit was quickly resolved when the judge dismissed it.
In the year since the dismissal, SearchKing hasn't been struggling. Its client relations, by and large, have been repaired.
Brown, owner of KB Enterprises and operator of the African American Business Directory, remains a satisfied customer and feels he's gotten excellent service from SearchKing.
"It's all been very open," said Brown, a SearchKing customer since 2000. "He shared his knowledge openly and took the criticism that was offered and still came out on top."
With the PR Ad Network no longer in its former function, Massa said SearchKing is preparing to launch its goal products--software that companies can use to develop their own search engines, based on technology other than the currently popular "spider."
The company has grown from six employees to 16 and is hiring several ore software developers this summer. Mass wants to release the software within six months.
Meanwhile, SearchKing also is a site host and promotion firm for companies that sell everything from adult diapers to home refinancing packages. Seventy percent of its clients are outside Oklahoma, and many are international.
Despite the lawsuit's resolution, it's a problem that may well crop up again, albeit with different parties. Companies pay to be positioned well on the Internet, and Google isn't likely to be able to maintain a tight grip on the reins of e-commerce for long.
"I'm one of those people Google is afraid of. Clients hire me to make sure their Web sites come up high," he said. "Google claims they want to make everything fair and equal. Here's a company that did a billion dollars in advertising sales last year ... They want to be fair and equal as long as they get the lion's share of the fair."
New Iraqi Premier Ex-CIA Intelligence Officer
A Pitiful Occasion for the People
So, in the end, America's enemies set the date.
The handover of "full sovereignty" was secretly brought forward so that the ex-CIA intelligence officer who is now premier of Iraq could avoid another bloody offensive by America's enemies.
What was supposed to be the most important date in Iraq's modern history was changed - like a birthday party, because it might rain on Wednesday.
Pitiful is the word that comes to mind.
Here we were, handing "full sovereignty" to the people of Iraq - "full", of course, providing we forget the 160,000 foreign soldiers whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has apparently asked to stay on in Iraq, "full" providing we forget the 3,000 US diplomats in Baghdad who will constitute the largest US embassy in the world.
And we never even told the Iraqi people we had changed the date.
Few, save of course for the Iraqis, understood the cruelest paradox of the event.
For it was the new Iraqi Foreign Minister - should we not put his title, too, into quotation marks? - who chose to leak "bringing forward" of "sovereignty in Iraq" at the NATO summit in Turkey.
Thus was this date in modern Iraqi history announced not in Baghdad but in the capital of the former Ottoman empire which once ruled Iraq.
Alice in Wonderland could not have improved on this. The looking glass reflects all the way from Baghdad to Washington. In its savage irony Ibsen might have done justice to the occasion.
After all, what could have been more familiar than Allawi's appeal to Iraqis to fight "the enemies of the people".
Power was ritually handed over in legal documents. The new government was sworn in on the Qur'an. US pro-consul Paul Bremer formally shook hands with the ex-CIA man who is now prime minister and boarded his C130 home, guarded by Special Forces men in shades.
It was difficult to remember that Bremer was touted for his job more than a year ago because he was a "counter-terrorism" expert - this, definitely should be in inverted commas - and that his "dead-enders" managed to turn almost an entire Iraqi population against the US and Britain in just a few months.
According to Allawi yesterday, the "dead-enders'" and the "remnants" belonged to Saddam Hussein.
It had already been made clear that Allawi was pondering martial law, the sine qua non of every Arab dictatorship - this time to be imposed on an Arab state, heaven spare us, by a Western army led by an avowedly Christian government.
Who was the last man to impose martial law on Iraqis? Wasn't it Saddam?
The Blue Jeans Have Spoken
Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner, Democratic candidate for District 12, said she filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission that Wagoner County Election Board Secretary Jason Rousselot should not be permitted to count the votes.
Jenner thinks Rousselot should step down because his brother, Wade Rousselot, is also a candidate.
"It's a conflict of interest," she said.
A Temporary Breath of Leadership in Oklahoma
Oklahoma's leader wasn't Gov. Brad Henry on Monday or Tuesday. And it wasn't even Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin.
Henry was in Japan, on his way home from a two-week trip to Asia, and Fallin was in Washington, D.C.
Under state law, Senate President Pro Tempore Cal Hobson was the state's top elected official during Henry and Fallin's absence.
The transfer of power is not that unusual.
Fallin took the reins of power again upon her return to Oklahoma late Tuesday.
Flush Rush from Armed Forces Radio
Liberals Want More Antidote for Limbaugh on American Forces Radio
Lawmakers used to wrangling over troop levels and weapons systems find themselves in a dispute over whether military personnel abroad should be given more of a liberal antidote to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.
GAO Says Iraq Worse Off Since U.S. Invasion
Iraq is Worse Off Than Before the War Began, GAO Reports
by Seth Borenstein
WASHINGTON - In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday.
The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:
-In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.
-Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.
-The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.
-The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.
-The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.
The report was released on the same day that the CPA's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects.
Both the GAO report and the CPA report said that the CPA was seriously understaffed for the gargantuan task of rebuilding Iraq. The GAO report suggested the agency needed three times more employees than what it had. The CPA report said the agency believed it had 1,196 employees, when it was authorized to have 2,117. But the inspector general said CPA's records were so disorganized that it couldn't verify its actual number of employees.
GAO Comptroller General David Walker blamed insurgent attacks for many of the problems in Iraq. "The unstable security environment has served to slow down our rebuilding and reconstruction efforts and it's going to be of critical importance to provide more stable security," Walker told Knight Ridder Newspapers in a telephone interview Tuesday.
"There are a number of significant questions that need to be asked and answered dealing with the transition (to self-sovereignty)," Walker said. "A lot has been accomplished and a lot remains to be done."
The GAO report is the first government assessment of conditions in Iraq at the end of the U.S. occupation. It outlined what it called "key challenges that will affect the political transition" in 10 specific areas.
The GAO gave a draft of the report to several different government agencies, but only the CPA offered a major comment: It said the report "was not sufficiently critical of the judicial reconstruction effort."
"The picture it paints of the facts on the ground is one that neither the CPA nor the Bush administration should be all that proud of," said Peter W. Singer, a national security scholar at the centrist Brookings Institution. "It finds a lot of problems and raises a lot of questions."
One of the biggest problems, Singer said, is that while money has been pledged and allocated, not much has been spent. The GAO report shows that very little of the promised international funds - most of which are in loans - has been spent or can't be tracked. The CPA's inspector general found the same thing.
"When we ask why are things not going the way we hoped for," Singer said, "the answer in part of this is that we haven't actually spent what we have in pocket."
He said the figures on electricity "make me want to cry."
Steven Susens, a spokesman for the Program Management Office, which oversees contractors rebuilding Iraq, conceded that many areas of Iraq have fewer hours of electricity now than they did before the war. But he said the report, based on data that's now more than a month old, understates current electrical production. He said some areas may have reduced electricity availability because antiquated distribution systems had been taken out of service so they could be rebuilt.
"It's a slow pace, but it's certainly growing as far as we're concerned," Susens said.
Danielle Pletka, the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said other issues are more important than the provision of services such as electricity. She noted that Iraqis no longer live in fear of Saddam Hussein.
"It's far better to live in the dark than it is to run the risk that your mother, father, brother, sister, husband or wife would be taken away never to be seen again," Pletka said.
Pletka pointed to a Pentagon slide presentation that detailed increases and improvement in telephone subscribers, water service, food, health care and schools in Iraq.
But Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that asked for the GAO report, said the report showed major problems.
"So while we've handed over political sovereignty, we haven't handed over practical capacity - that is, the ability for the Iraqis themselves to provide security, defend their borders, defeat the insurgency, deliver basic services, run a government and set the foundation for economic progress," Biden said in a written statement. "Until Iraqis can do all of that, it will be impossible for us to responsibly disengage from Iraq."
The GAO report can be found at:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04902r.pdf
June 29, 2004
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Limbaugh Has No Place on the Front Line
June 25, 2004
"Do the right thing." These were Secretary of State Colin Powell's words of
advice to the Wake Forest University class of 2004 in his May 17
commencement address. Then Powell issued an incontrovertible condemnation of the actions of U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners: "Our nation is now
going through a period of deep disappointment, a period of deep pain over
some of our soldiers not doing the right thing at a place called Abu
Ghraib.... All Americans deplored what happened there."
Well, perhaps not all Americans. There's at least one American who has
publicly praised, condoned, trivialized and joked about the abuse, torture,
rape and possible murder of Iraqi prisoners. This American does not appear
to be going through "a period of deep pain." This American has instead
called the abuse "a brilliant maneuver" and compared it to a college
fraternity prank: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and
Bones initiation," he said.
He excused the actions of our soldiers this way: "You know, these people are
being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these
people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow
some steam off?"
Who is this American so unlike "all Americans," as Powell described us? Rush
Limbaugh, host of the nationally syndicated radio program, "The Rush
Limbaugh Show."
Limbaugh, of course, is entitled to express his views, however bizarre, ill
considered and offensive. I would never dream of telling him what he should
or shouldn't say. But that doesn't mean that radio stations have to pick him
up. Just as he can speak his mind, they can choose to air his show or not.
That's why I was stunned to learn that one full hour of "The Rush Limbaugh
Show" is broadcast every weekday directly to our soldiers in Iraq and around
the world - to nearly 1 million U.S. troops in more than 175 countries and
U.S. territories. Moreover, it is the only hour long partisan political talk
show broadcast daily to the troops.
Limbaugh's show is broadcast by the Department of Defense's American Forces
Radio and Television Service, or AFRTS. According to its website, "The AFRTS
mission is to communicate Department of Defense policies, priorities,
programs, goals and initiatives. AFRTS provides stateside radio and
television programming, 'a touch of home' to U.S. service men and women, DoD
civilians and their families" outside the continental United States.
Why should American taxpayers pay for the broadcasting of such inexcusable
views to U.S. troops? Why, at a combustible moment like this one, would we
be funneling Limbaugh's trivializations to our men and women at the front?
Does Limbaugh's pro-torture propaganda really qualify as "a touch of home"?
On CNN on June 2, Pentagon official Allison Barber defended the continued
broadcasting of Limbaugh, saying broadcast decisions are "based on
popularity here in the States." But Barber also acknowledged that AFRTS
based its programming decisions not only on ratings but on content too.
Barber explained that AFRTS did not carry Howard Stern's radio show - which
draws more than 8 million listeners a week, but which has also recently been
the target of massive FCC fines for "indecency" - because "his issue is one
of content that is not appropriate." AFRTS carries programming from National
Public Radio, but only news and features. It does not carry any partisan
political talk show other than Limbaugh's.
By choosing the Limbaugh show over any other, even in the wake of Limbaugh's
recent remarks, the Pentagon and indeed Congress, which holds AFRTS' purse
strings, deems his content to be "appropriate." I disagree, and along with
30,000 other Americans I signed a petition at the website mediamatters.org
calling for Limbaugh's removal from AFRTS.
In general, I believe all reasonable views should be aired. Quite aside from
the Abu Ghraib controversy, I'd like to see AFRTS broadcast a fuller range
of political views to our troops rather than giving Limbaugh a monopoly at
the microphone - and I applaud the Senate for approving an amendment to the
defense authorization bill offered by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that calls on
AFRTS to provide political balance in its news and public affairs
programming. But in this case, nothing short of removing Limbaugh will
suffice. The issue goes beyond ideological balance - this is an issue of
national security and national unity.
Limbaugh's comments, and their tacit endorsement by the U.S. government,
send a message to U.S. servicemen and servicewomen that torture is not a
subject to be taken seriously and that these are actions that can be
excused. Nothing could be more wrong than that.
Mike Farrell is an actor, human rights activist and former Marine.
Oh Crap. Not the Christians Again
Better Angels: Christians and Neocons Join Forces to Drag Us Into War with North Korea
Christians and Neocons Join Forces to Drag Us Into War with North Korea
North Korea is one of Bush's points on the "Axis of Evil." I'm not about to argue that Kim Jong Il isn't a nutcase or that North Korea doesn't present issues for the rest of the world, but I do think aggression in this case is a bad move. I'm not an expert on NK by any means, but from my dovish lefty perspective it seems caution would be the operative word in trying to undo the current regime.
Not so the Neocons. They've simply got to stick our ugly American noses in there, despite the potential consequences. And they're doing it with help from our old friends from the "Christian Right."
Sorry Jim...Dumb Law, But Thems the Breaks
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Lawton senator's lawsuit to allow him to serve two more years in the Senate despite reaching the 12-year legislative term limit.
This means that Sen. Jim Maddox's Senate service ends this year when a successor is elected in a special election to fill the remainder of his term.
Bye, George.
President George W. Bush's job approval rating dropped to 42 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, the Times reported.
Krugman: Who Lost Iraq?
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Who Lost Iraq?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.
The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.
Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.
What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.
The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold."
Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.
If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war."
Still, given Mr. Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."
Checks and review? Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion," on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people.
Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.
Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true.
Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.
Letting the Little Guy In
Democrats Urge SEC Chief to Adopt Ballot Access Rule (washingtonpost.com)
Key Democratic lawmakers are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt a controversial rule that would help dissatisfied investors more easily nominate board members at public companies.
Blast Kills More Marines
Top News Article | Reuters.com
A roadside bomb blast killed an unknown number of U.S. marines in Baghdad on Tuesday in the first reported fatal attack on U.S. forces in Iraq since the formal handover of sovereignty to an interim government.
"I don't know how many died here, (they) killed some marines," said a marine at the scene of the early morning attack on a convoy in eastern Baghdad.
June 28, 2004
U.S. Soldier Murdered
Top News Article | Reuters.com
Al Jazeera television broadcast a video tape on Monday showing what militants said was the execution of a U.S. soldier captured in Iraq in April.
A gunman could be seen firing one shot at the soldier, wearing greenish overalls and seen only from the back, in a dark setting. The body fell into a hole.
U.S. defense officials said the family of Private Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, seized by militants in April, had been told about the existence of the video, but that there was no confirmation he had been killed.
The video was aired hours after the United States handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days earlier than expected, aiming to forestall guerrilla attacks with a secretive ceremony formally ending 14 months of occupation.
Al Jazeera quoted a statement from a previously unheard of group as saying the soldier was killed because of U.S. policy in Iraq and in revenge for what it described as their "martyrs" in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
The group was identified as the Implacable Power Against the Enemy of God and the Prophet.
Since April militants in Iraq have seized a number of foreign workers and military personnel. Some have remained captive.
Dick Cheney: Profiteer-Extraordinaire
Dick Cheney: Profiteer-Extraordinaire :: Intervention Magazine :: War, Politics, Culture
VP Dick Cheney has set a standard for War Profiteering that others can only dream about.
By Mick Youther
Vice President Cheney is an angry man. His war isnt going well, the prospect of a second term is slipping away, and now some troublemakers in Congress are even starting to talk about war profiteering.
[Sen. Patrick Leahy kicked] off the Democratic National Committee's "Halliburton Week" focusing on Cheney, the company, and the millions of dollars they've cost taxpayers, --The Washington Post, 6/26/04
Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the "F word" at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday [Cheney] ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran.-- Reuters Jun 24, 2004
I can understand why Cheney is mad. He is getting too old to start a new career, and war profiteering is the only thing he does really well. Dick Cheney has set a standard that other war profiteers can only dream about:
[As Secretary of Defense], Cheney conveniently changed the rules restricting private contractors doing work on U.S. military bases, allowing the Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary of his future employer Halliburton to receive the first of $2.5 billion in contracts over the next decade.-- Robert Scheer, Salon.com, 7/17/02
As secretary of defense, Cheney oversaw one of the largest privatization efforts in the history of the Pentagon, steering millions of military dollars to civilian contractors. Two and a half years after Cheney left his federal job, he began cashing in on the very contracts that he helped initiate.-- Robert Bryce, Mother Jones, 8/2/00
[At Halliburton, Cheney] grew rich on government contracts and taxpayer-supported credits doled out by his old pals in the military-industrial complex. He also hooked up with attractive foreign partners - like Saddam Hussein, the "worse-than-Hitler" dictator who paid Cheney $ 73 million to rebuild the oil fields that had been destroyed by, er, Dick Cheney.-- Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, 3/29/03
Dick Cheney was Halliburton CEO and largest individual shareholder when he left to take charge of George Bush. His business is war, and he will shape U.S. policy to achieve it. Halliburton will get a large chunk of the $200 billion cost of maintaining the troops that invade and occupy Iraq, and the lions share of rebuilding the infrastructure -- Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, People's Weekly World Newspaper, 12/14/02
It is close to unprecedented for the government to have given so much of the solution to one contractor.-- Steven Spooner, a George Washington University professor who specializes in federal contracting, quoted by the AP, 8/4/02
After deciding, following an extensive search, that he would be George W. Bush's best candidate for vice president, Cheney resigned from the energy services company with a $36 million payoff for his final year of corporate service.-- Robert Scheer, Salon.com, 7/17/02
What happens financially [by joining the GOP ticket], obviously, is I take a bath , in one sense.-- Dick Cheney, 7/25/00
A recent rise in Halliburton's stock price -- which is up 50 percent since Bush began talking about war in Iraq 18 months ago -- has pushed the value of Cheney's options to more than $10 million.-- The Modesto Bee, 10/15/03
[Last fall] Republicans stripped the Iraq supplemental bill of an anti-profiteering provision which would have held companies holding contracts with the U.S. government criminally accountable for price gouging .[For months] Democrats in the US Congress, have sought information about Halliburtons pricing techniques and contract procedures. The Bush Administration has failed to respond to multiple requests, and instead have stonewalled the publics right to know, while at the same time extending Halliburtons no-bid sweetheart deal.-- Apollo Alliance Special Report, 11/6/03
Republicans [on June 16, 2004] blocked an effort to create stiffer criminal penalties for war profiteering.[The] bill would have created new penalties -- including up to 20 years in jail -- for government contractors convicted of inflating the cost of goods or services.( The Republicans said,the provisions were simply too vague to be placed into federal law.)-- National Journals CongressDaily, 6/17/04
What an excuse! If the wording in the amendment was too vague, then change the wordingdont block the amendment. Make it absolutely clear that war profiteering is a crime and will be punished as such.
Cheneys privatization of the military has made war profiteering a tempting career for anyone who passes through the ever-revolving door between business and government. If the current members of Congress wont do something about it, we need some new people in Congress.
Mick Youther is retired, but busy working for Regime Change in America. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com
Get John Kerry!
This page records nasty and inaccurate stuff floating around, especially (but not only) about John Kerry. Some of it comes from official Republican sources, some from the commercial media, and some is internet scuttlebutt. It's hard not to suspect organized campaigns, but I don't get into that. I also don't clearly distinguish between lies, smears, insinuations, innuendos, misrepresentations, half-truths, distortions, spins, and slants. It all looks like crap to me.
Cheney Tax Plan From 1986 Would Have Raised Gas Prices
Cheney Tax Plan From β86 Would Have Raised Gas Prices
In October 1986, when Dick Cheney was the lone congressman from energy-rich Wyoming, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year.
"Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation.
A Second Opinion
By BOB HERBERT
In an article a few years ago in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine took a look at the overall health of the American people, and compared conditions here to those in other industrialized countries.
What she found was disturbing.
"The fact is that the U.S. population does not have anywhere near the best health in the world," she wrote. "Of 13 countries in a recent comparison, the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the bottom) for 16 available health indicators."
She said the U.S. came in 13th, dead last, in terms of low birth weight percentages; 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality over all; 13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes); 11th for life expectancy at the age of 1 for females and 12th for males; and 10th for life expectancy at the age of 15 for females and 12th for males.
She noted in the article that more than 40 million Americans lacked health insurance (the figure is about 43 million now) and she described the state of Americans' health as "relatively poor."
"U.S. children are particularly disadvantaged," she said, adding, "But even the relatively advantaged position of elderly persons in the United States is slipping. The U.S. relative position for life expectancy in the oldest age group was better in the 1980's than in the 1990's."
The article was published in the summer of 2000. At the time Japan ranked highest among developed countries in terms of health, and the United States ranked among the lowest.
Last week I talked with Dr. Starfield, an internationally respected physician, professor and researcher, and asked whether the situation had improved over the last four years.
"It's getting worse," she said, noting, "We've done a lot more studies in terms of the international comparisons. We've done them a million different ways. The findings are so robust that I think they're probably incontrovertible."
The U.S. has the most expensive health care system on the planet, but millions of Americans without access to care die from illnesses that could have been successfully treated if diagnosed in time. Poor people line up at emergency rooms for care that should be provided in a doctor's office or clinic. Each year tens of thousands of men, women and children die from medical errors and many more are maimed.
But when you look for leadership on these issues, you find yourself staring into the void. If you want to get physicians' representatives excited, ask them about tort reform, not patient care. Elected officials give lip service to health care issues, but at the end of the campaign day their allegiance goes to the highest bidders, and they are never the people who put patients first.
To get a sense of just how backward we're becoming on these matters, consider that in places like Texas, Florida and Mississippi the politicians are dreaming up new ways to remove the protective cloak of health coverage from children, the elderly and the poor. Texas and Florida have been pulling the plug on coverage for low-income kids. And Mississippi recently approved the deepest cut in Medicaid eligibility for senior citizens and the disabled that has ever been approved anywhere in the U.S.
Even the affluent are finding it more difficult to obtain access to care. For patients with insurance the route to treatment is often a confusing maze of gatekeepers and maddening regulations. The costs of insurance are shifting from employers to employees, and important health decisions are increasingly being made by bureaucrats and pitchmen interested solely in profits.
In the maddening din that passes for a national conversation in this country, distinguished voices like Dr. Starfield's are not easily heard.
Echoing so many other patient advocates, she continues to call for movement on two crucial needs: coverage for the many millions who currently do not have access to care, and the development of a first-rate primary care system, which would bring a sense of coherence to a health care environment that is both chaotic and wildly expensive.
"We don't have any national health policy at all in this country," said Dr. Starfield.
And there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.
Free Calls on Polluters to Clean Up Their Own Mess
Former District Attorney Kalyn Free, Candidate for Oklahoma's Second Congressional District, today called on the polluters to clean up the Tar Creek Superfund Site.
"The people of Tar Creek have been forced to go through a living hell. As taxpayers, why should they be forced to help pay for the cleanup of their own neighborhoods polluted by a few companies more interested in profits then people's lives. Polluters should bear the burden of cleaning it up." said Free. If the government can't force polluters to clean it up then taxpayers must, but let's demand the guilty parties do the right thing."
Free noted that once again Dan Boren is protecting big business in calling for a taxpayer cleanup rather than forcing the polluters to do the job. "This guy is a Republican in a donkey suit," she said.
June 27, 2004
Cheney Gone Nuts?
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Are They Losing It?
"I felt better afterwards," he told Neil Cavuto during a no-bid interview with Fox News. Hey, if it feels good, Dick, do it.
He said he had no regrets about his "little floor debate in the United States Senate." He didn't want to go along with Mr. Leahy's attitude that "everything's peaches and cream" when the Democrat had just been jawing about Halliburton war profiteering. Peaches and cream have never been on the Bush-Cheney menu, only brimstone and gall.
By playing on the insecurities of an inexperienced leader, Mr. Cheney has managed to change W. from a sunny, open, bipartisan, uniter-not-a-divider, non-nation-builder into a crabby, secretive, partisan, divider-not-a-uniter, inept imperialist. Vice is bounding around the country, talking to his usual circumscribed audiences of conservatives, right-wing think tanks and Fox News anchors. No need to burrow in the bunker when you've turned America into one.
As they used to say about the Soviet Union, the defensive Bush imperialists have to keep expanding because they're encircled. Mr. Cheney's gloomy, scary, contentious world view has fueled a more gloomy, scary, contentious world.
SoonerThought's Two Cents on "Fahrenheit 9/11"
I saw the new Michael Moore movie last Friday on its first night in Omaha. There were two full theaters paid in full to see the movie, along with two dimwits outside with home-made signs that read "This movie paid for by terrorists."
Yeah, right.
Anyway, I'll spare you a review. If you want a detailed review, you can google one up pretty easily. I'll just say this: it was incredibly good--both as a film and propaganda. And I mean propaganda in that this is not an attempt to present a neutral view. This is advocacy for the Left and against Bush--which is fine by me. They get Fox "News", we get this movie.
The film truly scared me most in one way: Bush is a simpleton. We are being led by a simpleton and his minions. Scary as hell.
So...Go see it. In a way, it almost feels like you are voting against Smirko when you buy a ticket. And that feels damn good.
Impeach DeLay Without Delay
HoustonChronicle.com - DeLay undermines small 'd' democracy
U.S. Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the most corrupt politician in America.
That will not come as news to those of you who have been paying attention in recent years. But it takes on added relevance this week in the wake of formal charges I have filed against him alleging criminal conspiracy, including bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and abuse of power.
Predictably, to try and deflect attention from those charges, DeLay and his associates have opened fire with personal attacks and threats of political retribution against me and many of my colleagues.
A Letter to Bush/Cheney
To: The Bush/Cheney Campaign
I just saw your ad on your website entitled: "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party. In it you show film footage of Al Gore, Howard Dean, Dick Gephart, and Kerry. You also show photos of Adolf Hitler speaking in German as if to compare and connect the democrats and Nazi policies!
However, if you are going to dare to compare Americans who differ with you to Hitler and the Nazis, as a Cuban-American whose family left an oppressive and murderous regime to come to a free and democratic America, I'm entitled then to compare Bush to Fidel Castro's regime. There are striking similarities given that Castro uses these same tactics to detract attention from the real problems facing Cuba.
Castro blames others for the miserable failures of his regime; he sent thousands of young Cubans to their deaths to fight wars in Angola and Ethiopia when there was no reason to do. Yet he told Cubans that this was the patriotic thing to do and that he was trying to free the Angolans and Ethiopians from oppression and torture. If anyone dared to speak out about these wars he was called unpatriotic and an agent of Yankee imperialism. Doesn't this sound familiar?
Castro sends people to jail and engages in character (and real) assassinations of those who disagree with his views. Didn't your administration out a CIA operative because her husband disagreed with you that Sadaam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Africa. Isn't this type of behavior just as egregious, immoral, and illegal?
Castro resorts to the lowest and crudest forms of personal attacks and shouts obscenities at his opponents because he cannot deal with reality and discuss issues in a rational and respectful way. Didn't Mr. Cheney do the same thing this week to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the US Senate, when he said "f_ _ k off" and "f_ _ k you" to him because he questioned Cheney's dealings and how immensely rich he got with Halliburton. Let's look at that relationship for a moment:
Cheney's 2000 income from Halliburton: $36,086,635
Increase in government contracts while Cheney led Halliburton: 91%
Number of the seven official US "State Sponsors of Terror" that Halliburton contracted with: 2 out of 7
Pages of Energy Plan documents Cheney refused to give congressional investigators: 13,500
Amount energy companies gave the Bush/Cheney presidential campaign: $1,800,000
I should no longer be surprised and outraged by your regime's behavior. I'm just going to turn all of my energies and efforts and work like I've never before to ensure that Bush/Cheney are not elected this time around. I want to live in a country where we can, according to our constitution (or have you forgotten that document) question policies, challenge decisions, and speak up freely without being called unpatriotic or fear censure.
Sincerely,
Miguel A. Milanes
June 26, 2004
White House Tries to Rein In Scientists
The administration orders vetting of experts on panels convened by the U.N.'s health agency.
By Tom Hamburger
LATimes Staff Writer
June 26, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-science26jun26,1,7447273.story
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has ordered that government scientists must be approved by a senior political appointee before they can participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization, the leading international health and science agency.
A top official from the Health and Human Services Department in April asked the WHO to begin routing requests for participation in its meetings to the department's secretary for review, rather than directly invite individual scientists, as has long been the case.
Officials at the WHO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, have refused to implement the request, saying it could compromise the independence of international scientific deliberations. Denis G. Aitken, WHO assistant director-general, said Friday that he had been negotiating with Washington in an effort to reach a compromise.
The request is the latest instance in which the Bush administration has been accused of allowing politics to intrude into once-sacrosanct areas of scientific deliberation. It has been criticized for replacing highly regarded scientists with industry and political allies on advisory panels. A biologist who was at odds with the administration's position on stem-cell research was dismissed from a presidential advisory commission. This year, 60 prominent scientists accused the administration of "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."
The president's science advisor, Dr. John Marburger, has called the accusations "wrong and misleading, inaccurate."
The newest action has drawn fresh criticism, however, as the request has circulated among scientists.
"I do not feel this is an appropriate or constructive thing to do," said Dr. D.A. Henderson, an epidemiologist who ran the Bush administration's Office of Public Health Preparedness and now acts as an official advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "In the scientific world, we have a generally open process. We deal with science as science. I am unaware of such clearance ever having been required before."
Henderson worked for the WHO for 11 years directing its smallpox eradication program. He said he could not recall having to go through government bureaucrats to invite scientists to participate in expert panels, except in the case of small Eastern European countries. In 2002, Henderson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was praised by Bush as "a great general in mankind's war against disease."
A few scientists have been worried about the department's vetting demand since April, but concerns heightened this week when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) complained in a letter to Thompson. "The new policy ... politicizes the process of providing the expert advice of U.S. scientists to the international community," Waxman wrote.
Thompson's spokesman, Tony Jewell, called Waxman's criticism "seriously misguided."
"No one knows better than HHS who the experts are and who can provide the most up-to-date and expert advice," Jewell said. "The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows. If anyone thinks politics will interfere with Secretary Thompson's commitment to improve health in every corner of the world, they are sadly mistaken."
The WHO, founded in 1947, is the United Nations agency dedicated to health. It is governed by 192 member states and conducts forums, recommends international health and safety standards and draws leading scientists from around the world to expert panels that review the latest literature on chemical, biological, industrial and environmental threats.
The organization traditionally insists on picking experts to sit on official scientific review panels.
"It's an important issue for us," Aitken said. "We do need independent science. If we want government positions, we have government meetings. We have many, many of these government assemblies, but they address a separate set of concerns" than the scientific gatherings.
Scientists who attend the meetings are reminded that they are invited to offer their scientific views, not to represent their government or financial interests.
The letter to Aitken declaring the new vetting policy was signed by William R. Steiger, special assistant to Thompson. He came to Washington with Thompson from Wisconsin, and is the son of a congressman and the godson of former President George H.W. Bush.
"Except under very limited circumstances, U.S. government experts do not and cannot participate in WHO consultations in their individual capacity," Steiger wrote. Civil service and other regulations "require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."
The letter asserts that "the current practice in which the WHO invites specific HHS officials by name to serve in these capacities has not always resulted in the most appropriate selections."
The letter provided no specifics. But WHO panels sometimes have disagreed with positions taken by the administration. A WHO panel met in Lyons, France, this month and declared formaldehyde a known carcinogen - relying on studies that Bush administration political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency had rejected as inconclusive.
Voting members of the panel included scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who had been authors of the studies.
Several leading scientists said the new policy would undermine scientific deliberations.
"This is really tampering with a process that has worked very well," said Linda Rosenstock, the dean of the UCLA School of Public Health who directed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health under President Clinton. "To have this micromanaged at the HHS departmental level raises the specter that political considerations rather than scientific considerations will determine who is allowed to go" to the world's most important scientific meetings.
Rosenstock said that some WHO divisions - including the one reviewing cancer threats - have become targets of industry groups. "There is real concern that science could be trumped by politics and vested interests."
For Waxman, a frequent critic of the administration, the department's letter to the WHO is part of a pattern of mixing politics with science - and one he contends diminishes U.S. stature internationally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
OKC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11 was a tremendous success!
Friends:
The OKC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11 was a tremendous success. After overhead, we raised $6,000! Half of that amount will be directed to Oklahoma military families who suffered the loss of a loved-one in Iraq. We are still trying to find the right entity to deliver this money to these families. We will announce that decision next week.
I want to personally thank everyone who came out to support our work, our state's military families, and Michael Moore's very powerful film.
Once you see Fahrenheit 9/11, please visit our RRDP BLOG and share with us your thoughts and reactions to the film. We plan on sending the "highlights" from this blog to Michael Moore's office.
The people who attended the premiere last night heard me read a personal letter from Michael Moore to the guests of last night's OKC premiere.
Click here to read his letter.
Have a good weekend!
All My Best,
Andrew
Andrew M. Rice
Executive Director
PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE FOUNDATION
Project Coordinator
RED RIVER DEMOCRACY PROJECT
tel. 405.488.1462
www.palfound.net
www.rrdp.org
June 25, 2004
Leahy: Cheney cursed on the Senate floor
I wonder if he also added 'Big time,' to that exchange? Ronald Reagan would be so proud, eh?--Editor
By Erin Kelly, Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON It was supposed to be a friendly picture-taking session.
But while gathered for the photo shoot on the Senate floor Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney took his own shot at Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, telling him to "Go (expletive) yourself" during a heated exchange, Leahy's office confirmed Thursday.
"Oh well, I think he may have been having a bad day," Leahy said in a phone interview with Gannett News Service on Thursday.
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems wouldn't confirm or deny that profanity was used.
"That doesn't sound like language the vice president would use, but there clearly was a frank exchange of views between the two," he said.
The Republican vice president confronted the veteran Democrat as the entire Senate gathered to pose for an official photo, according to a news story on CNN's Web site that was confirmed by Leahy spokesman, David Carle. Cheney was included because he serves as president of the Senate.
Cheney confronted Leahy about the senator's recent allegations of war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton Co., where Cheney once served as chief executive officer.
Cheney appeared to take the charges personally, and Leahy responded by saying that Cheney's allies had unfairly attacked the senator for being "a bad Catholic" for failing to support a conservative Catholic judicial nominee.
At that point, according to the CNN story and confirmed by Leahy's staff, Cheney responded with the expletive.
Asked if he was insulted, the 64-year-old senator replied: "I was here before Mr. Cheney and I'll probably be here after he leaves. I'm more interested in how Vermonters feel about me."
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-06-25-cheney-curse_x.htm
File This Under the 'Ick' Docket
Judge Suspected of Masturbating in Court
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma state judge frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, charges a petition by the state's attorney general seeking his removal.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed the petition on Wednesday with state judicial authorities seeking the ouster of Sapulpa District Judge Donald Thompson, 57, for "conduct constituting an offense involving moral turpitude in violation of the Oklahoma Constitution," Edmondson's spokesman said on Thursday.
The judge flatly denies the charges made in the petition, his lawyer, Clark Brewster, said on Thursday. He said the judge received a penis pump for his 50th birthday as a gag gift, which became a source of a running joke in the courthouse.
"The allegations are bizarre and preposterous," Brewster said. "Recently, some members of local law enforcement that are upset with a number of his rulings, used this situation to embarrass and attack him."
The judge, who was first elected to the bench more than 20 years ago in the state's nonpartisan judicial elections, is based about 80 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.
In the petition, the attorney general charged Thompson used a penis pump, a device billed as providing sexual pleasure and promising better erections and larger penis size, during trials and exposed himself to a court reporter several times while masturbating on the bench.
"On one occasion, Ms. (Lisa) Foster (Thompson's court reporter for 15 years), saw Judge Thompson holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench," the petition reads.
Several witnesses, including jurors in Thompson's court and police officers called to testify in trials, said in the petition they heard the "swooshing" sound of a penis pump during trials and saw the judge slumped in his chair, with his elbows on his knees, working the device. The witnesses said the pump sounded like a blood pressure cuff being pumped up.
According to the petition, Thompson admitted he had a penis pump under the bench during a murder trial but he told investigators it was a gag gift from a friend.
The petition also charges Thompson with firing his former court reporter after she cooperated with investigators.
June 24, 2004
Free Hits the TV!
Watch Her Commercial!
On Boren:
Hes never set foot in a union hall except to come here and try to block my endorsement, Free said.
June 23, 2004
Blessed by Suing Google
SearchKing founder Bob Massa thanks Google, in part, for his growth.
A couple of years ago, Massa filed a lawsuit against the Internet giant when his PageRank dropped suddenly. PageRank is a Web page ranking system created by Google. Massa contended his Web page's ranking was purposefully dropped by Google to diminish his ability to sell ads in competition with Google's own ad service. But the lawsuit did not diminish SearchKing's sales, rather it helped them soar.
"The lawsuit with Google in 2002 definitely gave us an awful lot of exposure, and our growth really started going through the roof at that time," Massa said. "We've always been steadily growing, but nothing like what happened after the Google lawsuit."
Tell Cheney: Prove It or Resign
Contributed by Working Assets
Vice President Dick Cheney is at it again. From the earliest moments after the tragedy of 9/11, Mr. Cheney has sought to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was linked to Al Qaida. As the echo chamber of the right wing media picked up the message, the public bought it to the degree that large majorities believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack itself. Second only to the now disproved claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq - Al Qaida story was and still is essential to justifying our invasion of Iraq.
So far, all the evidence goes the other direction, yet Mr. Cheney keeps pushing his tale. And now he indicates that he has evidence not previously revealed to the 9/11 commission. If he does, he should reveal it immediately and let the experts and the public judge it. Frankly, in other times, withholding such evidence would be grounds for impeachment. If he does not have such evidence, he should stop making it up and resign.
Bush Soliciting Contributions as Large as $1 Million
According to a story in Roll Call today, "President Bush's finance team has begun asking wealthy Republicans to cut checks as large as $1 million to GOP state parties in key election battlegrounds." The story further states that "Officials at the Bush-Cheney campaign hope the new fundraising plan will draw in millions of dollars for dozens of 'state victory committees,' which in turn will spend the money on television advertisements, get-out-the-vote and party building efforts for Bush and other Republicans before the November elections."
The Roll Call story quotes Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for the Bush presidential re-election effort as stating, "Because we are going to be outspent by the Democratic 527s, we need to do everything we can to help the state party committees. State party committees are doing some good work in terms of voter registration and get-out-the-vote."
The fact is, however, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) prohibits state parties from spending soft money on federal election activities and prohibits federal candidates, and their campaigns, from soliciting soft money.
Under the BCRA, state parties are prohibited from using any soft money to pay for television ads and other public communications that promote, support, attack or oppose federal candidates.
State parties also are prohibited by the BCRA from using any soft money that exceeds $10,000 per donor to pay for get-out-the-vote and other voter mobilization efforts in connection with any election in which a federal candidate is on the ballot, and to pay for voter registration activities within 120 days of a general election.
In other words, the BCRA prevents the state parties from serving as vehicles for channeling soft money into the 2004 federal elections.
Under the BCRA, furthermore, federal officeholders and candidates, and their agents, are prohibited from soliciting soft money contributions. In other words, the BCRA prevents President Bush and his campaign, and their agents, from soliciting soft money contributions for state parties.
President Bush and his campaign should take all appropriate steps to ensure that the Bush campaign and Republican state parties are fully complying with the requirements of the new campaign finance law.
Capital Bits & Pieces, Vol. IV, No. 30 | Released: Wednesday, June 23, 2004
# # #
For the latest reform news and to access previous reports, releases, and analysis from Democracy 21, visit www.democracy21.org.
Origins of "Make the Pie Higher"
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Make the Pie Higher!)
We certainly didn't need to write a piece to inform the world that, like his father, President George W. Bush is not a strong public speaker. Particularly when speaking extemporaneously, he often uses words similar in sound but different in meaning to what he intends to say (e.g., "vulcanize" for "Balkanize") or uses incorrect forms of words (e.g., "resignate" for "resonate"), garbles familiar phrases by transposing words (e.g., "where wings take dream"), and makes a variety of grammatical mistakes (e.g., "how many hands have I shaked"). The point here was not to rehash the numerous lists of "Bushisms" to be found in a variety of media, but to perform a sort of investigative experiment into the accuracy of information transmission in the Internet age.
Reasons Why Rummy Needs to Go
Bush Administration Documents on Interrogation (washingtonpost.com)
The following is a summary of White House, Pentagon and Justice Department documents about interrogation policies. The documents were released by the Bush administration on June 22.
Great Reviews for 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
USATODAY.com - Put politics aside: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' will entertain
Fahrenheit 9/11 (* * * ½ out of four) is everything you've heard. It also is some things you haven't heard, which is what makes it worth watching.
...
Some of the disparagement seems personal because Moore presents information with his trademark deadpan humor. But is it an attack to point out that the president spent 42% of his first eight months in office on vacation? Or is it useful information for voters?
June 22, 2004
Abuse of power makes U.S. weak
Abuse of power makes U.S. weak
Is America's security grounded in its military strength or its moral strength? Today, America dominates the world's militaries, but has relinquished much of its moral authority. Does that make us safer or more vulnerable?
America is now spending about the same as the rest of the world combined on its military. We have the capability to go anywhere and do pretty much anything. But the way we are going there and doing it is making us less rather than more influential.
What a Dumb Ass
But a president who lies and gets hundreds of American soldiers killed is okay with you, madam? F*ck off, stupid!
More Proof Cheney Caught Lying...Again
CIA: No Iraqi officer link in al-Qaida meeting
White House official denies commissioner's statement that tied Saddam's Fedayeen unit to al-Qaida
The CIA concluded "a long time ago" that an al-Qaida associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army, as alleged Sunday by a Republican member of the 9/11 commission.
Commissioner John Lehman, who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, said "new ... documents" indicated that "at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen," an elite army unit, "was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."
Lehman's remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" lent support to the Bush administration's insistence that there were strong ties between Hussein and al-Qaida.
The administration official said the CIA and U.S. Army obtained the lists of members of the Fedayeen shortly after the invasion of Iraq last year. Some, he said, had names "similar to" Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. But, he said, the CIA had concluded "a long time ago" that none were the al-Qaida associate. He would not say whether the al-Qaida associate is in U.S. custody. Other sources said he was not.
A report last week by the 10-member commission concluded that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had "explored possible cooperation" with Iraq and that there had been contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, but that these did not result in a "collaborative relationship."
Lehman said that, since the report was issued, new intelligence had arrived "from the interrogations in Guantanamo and Iraq and from captured documents. ... Some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."
His comments were made after Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's strongest advocate of an alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida, said in an interview Friday that he, Cheney, "probably" saw intelligence not reviewed by the Sept. 11 commission.
In alleging that a Hussein army officer was an al-Qaida operative, Lehman also acknowledged that the claim "still has not been confirmed" by the commission. But he insisted that Cheney "was right when he said he may have things we [the commission] don't have yet."
An administration official familiar with the CIA intelligence on the matter identified the al-Qaida associate who met with hijackers Khalid al Midhar and Nawar al Hazmi in Kula Lampur, Malaysia, in early 2000 as Ahmad Hikmat Shakir al-Azzawi. Some of the early planning for Sept. 11 allegedly occurred at the meeting.
Lehman could not be reached for comment. Commission spokesman Jonathan Stull said the commission staff was looking into the allegations and, if deemed credible, they would be included in the final report to be released in July.
The claim that the Iraqi officer and al-Qaida figure are the same first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial on May 27. A similar account was then published in the June 7 edition of the Weekly Standard, which reported that the link was discovered by an analyst working for a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.
June 21, 2004
Nader Taps Greenie for Veep
ABCNEWS.com : Nader Taps Green Activist As Running Mate
Presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Monday tapped longtime Green Party activist Peter Camejo to be his running mate, a move certain to boost the independent's chances of winning the Green Party's endorsement this week and its access to ballot lines in nearly two dozen states.
"He is a man who has put his principles in practice, who has fought the struggles of the civil rights movement, the labor rights movement in the '60s and '70s," Nader said as he introduced Camejo at a news conference.
CROOKED REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR RESIGNS
Connecticut Governor John Rowland, facing possible impeachment by the state legislature over corruption charges, will announce his resignation tonight, the Associated Press reported, citing an administration source.
Rowland, a three-term Republican, will announce he is stepping down during a live television address at 6 p.m. New York time, AP said, citing the administration official. Lieutenant Governor M. Jodi Rell will take his place.
Rowland is being investigated by a Connecticut House panel for allegedly accepting gifts and monetary favors from state contractors and employees. His administration also is under federal investigation in the awarding of state contracts. Last year Rowland said he lied about taking the gifts, AP said.
The Connecticut state Supreme Court Wednesday ruled Rowland must testify before the panel, which was considering whether to impeach him.
Put Up or Shut Up
One of the reports released last week said the commission found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had collaborated with al-Qaida. This was a factual conclusion, but it had inherent political overtones because the Bush administration had asserted that information it had received about just such a collaboration was one of the justifications for going to war against Iraq.
In recent days Vice President Dick Cheney has told reporters there were probably things about Iraq's connection to al-Qaida that commission members did not know.
This took a fair amount a cheek, considering how hard the White House has resisted the commission's requests for information. But commission members were typically restrained in their response.
June 20, 2004
Captain Bullshit Speaks in Lincoln
Dick Cheney was in Nebraska last week, lying to those who were eager to pay big bucks to bask in the Veep's charisma-free presence.--Editor
On another topic, Cheney acknowledged that "some things we did not anticipate" have complicated U.S. efforts to secure and stabilize Iraq.
But unforeseen events are to be expected, he said: "After all, it is a war. You make adjustments."
Criticism that the administration failed to adequately plan for the aftermath of the invasion is "overdone," Cheney said.
"A lot we prepared for did not happen because we did good planning," he said.
IT'S NOT TOO HARD TO GET YOUR VOTE LOST -- IF SOME POLITICIANS WANT IT TO BE LOST
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 20, 2004
by Greg Palast
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.
Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."
By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.
In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.
But let's not get smug about Florida's Jim Crow spoilage rate. Civil Rights Commissioner Christopher Edley, recently appointed dean of Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley, took the Florida study nationwide. His team discovered the uncomfortable fact that Florida is typical of the nation.
Philip Klinkner, the statistician working on the Edley investigations, concluded, "It appears that about half of all ballots spoiled in the U.S.A. --about 1 million votes -- were cast by nonwhite voters."
This "no count," as the Civil Rights Commission calls it, is no accident. In Florida, for example, I discovered that technicians had warned Gov. Jeb Bush's office well in advance of November 2000 of the racial bend in the vote- count procedures.
Herein lies the problem. An apartheid vote-counting system is far from politically neutral. Given that more than 90 percent of the black electorate votes Democratic, had all the "spoiled" votes been tallied, Gore would have taken Florida in a walk, not to mention fattening his popular vote total nationwide. It's not surprising that the First Brother's team, informed of impending rejection of black ballots, looked away and whistled.
The ballot-box blackout is not the monopoly of one party. Cook County, Ill., has one of the nation's worst spoilage rates. That's not surprising. Boss Daley's Democratic machine, now his son's, survives by systematic disenfranchisement of Chicago's black vote.
How can we fix it? First, let's shed the convenient excuses for vote spoilage, such as a lack of voter education. One television network stated as fact that Florida's black voters, newly registered and lacking education, had difficulty with their ballots. In other words, blacks are too dumb to vote.
This convenient racist excuse is dead wrong. After that disaster in Gadsden, Fla., public outcry forced the government to change that black county's procedures to match that of white counties. The result: near zero spoilage in the 2002 election. Ballot design, machines and procedure, says statistician Klinkner, control spoilage.
In other words, the vote counters, not the voters, are to blame. Politicians who choose the type of ballot and the method of counting have long fine-tuned the spoilage rate to their liking.
It is about to get worse. The ill-named "Help America Vote Act," signed by President Bush in 2002, is pushing computerization of the ballot box.
California decertified some of Diebold Corp.'s digital ballot boxes in response to fears that hackers could pick our next president. But the known danger of black-box voting is that computers, even with their software secure, are vulnerable to low-tech spoilage games: polls opening late, locked-in votes, votes lost in the ether.
And once again, the history of computer-voting glitches has a decidedly racial bias. Florida's Broward County grandly shifted to touch-screen voting in 2002. In white precincts, all seemed to go well. In black precincts, hundreds of African Americans showed up at polls with machines down and votes that simply disappeared.
Going digital won't fix the problem. Canada and Sweden vote on paper ballots with little spoilage and without suspicious counts.
In America, a simple fix based on paper balloting is resisted because, unfortunately, too many politicians who understand the racial bias in the vote- spoilage game are its beneficiaries, with little incentive to find those missing 1 million black voters' ballots.
Greg Palast is the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - the New Expanded Election Edition," from which this article is taken.
June 19, 2004
Matt Lauer Has Delusions of Impartiality
I just watched the pathetic NBC Dateline show, where chat show host (the Today Show is a talk show, you know) Matt Lauer beat up on Michael Moore about his new film.
Lauer must have thought he looked like a tough, impartial journalist. I think he was just sucking up to his corporate masters. Pathetic.
Moore gave as good as he got, telling Lauer "You know I've been sitting here for like the last 20 minutes thinking, man, if he would have only asked Bush administration officials these kind of hard questions in the weeks leading up to the war, and then when the war started, maybe there wouldn't be a war. Because the American people, once given the truth, you know the old saying from Abraham Lincoln, give the people the facts and the Republic will be safe."
Amen.
Piss off the conservative media. See the movie. And take a friend.
We're a week away from the nationwide opening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and not a day goes by where we don't have some new battle to fight thanks to those who are still working overtime to keep people from seeing this film. What's their problem? Are they worried about something?--Michael Moore
Show Us the Proof
The New York Times > Opinion > Show Us the Proof
When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.
Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.
Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.
Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.
Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda.
When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC.
Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to "tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots."
The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.
June 18, 2004
CNN's Lou Dobbs: Two Faced?
New on CJRΉs CampaignDesk: The Two Faces of Lou Dobbs
The export of U.S. jobs overseas has become a major issue in Campaign '04,
especially in states like Ohio and Michigan, which have been hit hard by
the loss of manufacturing employment. One well known business journalist,
Lou Dobbs, has become a factor in the discussion, turning his CNN program,
Lou Dobbs Tonight, into a one-man campaign -- or "jihad," in the words of
the Business Roundtable -- against outsourcing. And on his Web site, Dobbs
keeps a regularly updated list of U.S. companies "sending American jobs
overseas." But Dobbs wears another hat in his subscription-only
newsletter. There he supplies investment advice, often recommending
companies that -- you guessed it -- appear on his list of outsourcing
outlaws.
Read "The Two Faces of Lou Dobbs"
Sean Inannity's Distortions, Half-Truths and Lies Exposed
The Document Sean Hannity Doesn't Want You To Read - Center for American Progress
Speaking at the Take Back America conference on June 3, American Progress CEO John Podesta said, "I think when you get so distant from the facts as -- as guys like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do, yeah, I think that tends to -- it kind of -- it tends to corrupt the dialogue." Apparently he struck a nerve with Fox News' Sean Hannity. Hannity challenged Podesta to "defend and explain one example where I -- where I said something that was so false." Since choosing just one of Hannity's distortions is too difficult, here are fifteen examples:
All Hannity quotes from HANNITY and colmes unless otherwise noted.
1. WMD
HANNITY: "You're not listening, Susan. You've got to learn something. He had weapons of mass destruction. He promised to disclose them. And he didn't do it. You would have let him go free; we decided to hold him accountable." (4/13/04)
FACT: Hannity's assertion comes more than six months after Bush Administration weapons inspector David Kay testified his inspection team had "not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material" and had not discovered any chemical or biological weapons. (Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03)
MORE:
2. Colin Powell on Iraq
HANNITY: "Colin Powell just had a great piece that he had in the paper today. He was there [in Iraq]. He said things couldn't have been better." (9/19/03)
FACT: "Iraq has come very far, but serious problems remain, starting with security. American commanders and troops told me of the many threats they face--from leftover loyalists who want to return Iraq to the dark days of Saddam, from criminals who were set loose on Iraqi society when Saddam emptied the jails and, increasingly, from outside terrorists who have come to Iraq to open a new front in their campaign against the civilized world." (Colin Powell, 9/19/03)
3. Saddam/Al-Qaeda Connection
HANNITY: "And in northern Iraq today, this very day, al Qaeda is operating camps there, and they are attacking the Kurds in the north, and this has been well-documented and well chronicled. Now, if you're going to go after al Qaeda in every aspect, and obviously they have the support of Saddam, or we're not." (12/9/02)
FACT: David Kay was on the ground for months investigating the activities of Hussein's regime. He concluded "But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all." He called a speech where Cheney made the claim there was a link "evidence free." (Boston Globe, 6/16/04)
4. 9/11 Investigation
HANNITY: "[After 9-11], liberal Democrats at first showed little interest in the investigation of the roots of this massive intelligence failure...[Bush and his team] made it clear that determining the causes of America's security failures and finding and remedying its weak points would be central to their mission." (Let Freedom Ring, by Sean Hannity)
TRUTH: Bush Opposed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of 9/11 for over a year. On 5/23/02 CBS New Reported "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." Bush didn't relent to pressure to create a commission, mostly from those Hannity would consider "liberal" until September 2002. (CBS News, 5/23/02; ABC News, 9/20/02)
5. The Recession
HANNITY: "First of all, this president -- you know and I know and everybody knows -- inherited a recession...it was by every definition a recession" (11/6/02)
HANNITY: "Now here's where we are. The inherited Clinton/Gore recession. That's a fact." (5/6/03)
HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (7/10/03)
HANNITY: "He got us out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (10/23/03)
HANNITY: "They did inherit the recession. They did inherit the recession. We got out of the recession." (12/12/03)
HANNITY: "And this is the whole point behind this ad, because the president did inherit a recession." (1/6/04)
HANNITY: "Historically in every recovery, because the president rightly did inherit a recession. But historically, the lagging indicator always deals with employment." (1/15/04)
HANNITY: "Congressman Deutsch, maybe you forgot but I'll be glad to remind you, the president did inherit that recession." (1/20/04)
HANNITY: "He did inherit a recession, and we're out of the recession." (2/2/04)
HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (2/23/04)
HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (3/3/04)
HANNITY: "Well, you know, we're going to show ads, as a matter of fact, in the next segment, Congressman. Thanks for promoting our next segment. What I like about them is everything I've been saying the president ought to do: is focusing in on his positions, on keeping the nation secure in very difficult times, what he's been able to do to the economy after inheriting a very difficult recession, and of course, the economic impact of 9/11." (3/3/04)
HANNITY: "All right. So this is where I view the economic scenario as we head into this election. The president inherited a recession." (3/16/04)
HANNITY: "First of all, we've got to put it into perspective, is that the president inherited a recession." (3/26/04)
HANNITY: "Clearly, we're out of the recession that President Bush inherited." (4/2/04)
HANNITY: "Stop me where I'm wrong. The president inherited a recession, the economic impact of 9/11 was tremendous on the economy, correct?" (4/6/04)
HANNITY: "[President George W. Bush] did inherit a recession." (5/3/04)
HANNITY: "[W]e got [the weak U.S. economy] out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (5/18/04)
HANNITY: "We got out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (5/27/04)
HANNITY: "We got out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (6/4/04)
FACT: "The recession officially began in March of 2001 -- two months after Bush was sworn in -- according to the universally acknowledged arbiter of such things, the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the president, at other times, has said so himself." (Washington Post, 7/1/03)
6. The Hispanic Vote
HANNITY: "The Hispanic community got to know him in Texas. They went almost overwhelming for him. He more than quadrupled the Hispanic vote that he got in that state." (9/16/03)
FACT: Exit polls varied in 1998 governors race, but under best scenario he increased his Hispanic vote from 24 to 49 percent a doubling not a quadrupling. He lost Texas Hispanics to Gore in 2000, 54-43 percent. (Source: NCLR , NHCSL)
7. White House Vandalism
HANNITY: "Look, we've had these reports, very disturbing reports -- and I have actually spoken to people that have confirmed a lot of the reports -- about the trashing of the White House. Pornographic materials left in the printers. They cut the phone lines. Lewd and crude messages on phone machines. Stripping of anything that was not bolted down on Air Force One. $200,000 in furniture taken out." (1/26/01)
TRUTH: According to statements from the General Services Administration that were reported on May 17, little if anything out of the ordinary occurred during the transition, and "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy." (FAIR)
8. Patriotism
HANNITY: "I never questioned anyone's patriotism." (9/18/03)
FACT:
HANNITY: (to attorney Stanley Cohen) "Is it you hate this president or that you hate America?" (4/30/03)
HANNITY: "Governor, why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?" (6/12/03)
HANNITY: "You could explain something about your magazine, [the Nation]. Lisa Featherstone writing about the hate America march, the [anti-war] march that took place over the weekend..." (1/22/03)
HANNITY: "'I hate America.' This is the extreme left. There is a portion of the left -- not everybody who's left -- that does hate this country and blame this country for the ills of the world..." (1/23/02)
HANNITY: (speaking to Sara Flounders co-director of the International Action Center) "You don't like this country, do you? You don't -- you think this is an evil country. By your description of it right here, you think it's a bad country." (9/25/01)
9. Separation of Church and State
HANNITY: "It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state." (8/25/03)
FACT: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." (1st Amendment)
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Article VI)
10. James Madison
HANNITY: "You want to refer to some liberal activist judge..., that's fine, but I'm going to go directly to the source. The author of the Bill of Rights [James Madison] hired the first chaplain in 1789, and I gotta' tell ya' somethin', I think the author of the Bill of Rights knows more about the original intent--no offense to you and your liberal atheist activism--knows more about it than you do." (9/4/02)
TRUTH: The first congressional chaplains weren't hired by James Madison--they were appointed by a committee of the Senate and House in, respectively, April and May, 1789, before the First Amendment even existed. James Madison's view: "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative." (James Madison)
11. Alabama Constitution
HANNITY: "But the Alabama Constitution, which Chief Justice Roy Moore is sworn to uphold, clearly it says, as a matter of fact that the recognition of God is the foundation of that state's Constitution." (8/21/03)
FACT: While the preamble of the Alabama Constitution does reference "the Almighty," section three provides: "That no religion shall be established by law; that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship; nor to pay any tithes, taxes, or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship, or for maintaining any minister or ministry; that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles." (Alabama Constitution, Section 3)
12. Rent for Public Housing
HANNITY: Betsy, they're not going to lose it [public housing], because if you work less than 30 hours a week -- if you work more than 30 hours a week, you don't have to do it. If you're between the ages of 18 and 62 and you're not legally disabled and you have free housing -- in other words...
BETSY MCCAUGHEY: No. Wait a second, Sean. Let me correct you. Most people in public housing are not receiving free housing. Many of them are paying almost market rates.
HANNITY: Betsy, that is so ridiculous and so false, it's hardly even worth spending the time. (10/23/03)
FACT: Residents of public housing pay rent scaled to their household's anticipated gross annual income, less deductions for dependents and disabilities. The basic formula for rent is 30 percent of this monthly adjusted income. There are exceptions for extremely low incomes, but the minimum rent is $25 per month. No one lives in public housing for free. (Department of Housing and Urban Development)
13. Kerry Tax Plan
HANNITY: "The Kerry campaign wants to cut taxes on people who make two hundred thousand dollars. She [Teresa Heinz Kerry] only paid 14.7 percent of her income in taxes, because their plan doesn't go to dividends, only income. So they don't want to tax themselves." (5/12/04)
FACT: Kerry's plan would "Restore the capital gains and dividend rates for families making over $200,000 on income earned above $200,000 to their levels under President Clinton. (Kerry Press Release, 4/7/04)
14. Kerry and Weapons Systems
HANNITY: "He's [Kerry's] flip-flopped all over the place... on the issue of Iraq. All the munitions that we have built up, most of them wouldn't be there." (1/30/04)
HANNITY: "But he wanted to cancel every major weapons system. Specific votes that he would have canceled the weapons systems we now use." (2/26/04)
FACT: "In 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile." (Slate, 2/25/04)
15. Kerry and the CIA
HANNITY: "If he (Kerry) had his way and the CIA would almost be nonexistent." (1/30/04)
FACT: John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years - a 50 percent increase since 1996.
Kerry votes supporting intelligence funding:
FY03 Intel Authorization $39.3-$41.3 Billion
[2002, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/02]
FY02 Intel Authorization $33 Billion
[2001, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/13/01]
FY01 Intel Authorization $29.5-$31.5 Billion
[2000, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/6/00]
FY00 Intel Authorization $29-$30 Billion
[1999, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 11/19/1999]
FY99 Intel Authorization $29.0 Billion
[1998, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 10/8/98]
FY98 Intel Authorization $26.7 Billion
[1997, Senate Roll Call Vote #109]
FY97 Intel Authorization $26.6 Billion
[1996, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/96]
(Source: CDI)
"We have a president armed with a silly smirk and zero leadership."
"We have a president armed with a silly smirk and zero leadership. The once great Republican party has given us a pathetic president with no intellect at the very time the world is crying out with the need for intelligent, forceful direction. We are at a period in history where never before have we faced such a crisis with so little to offer in capable leadership."--Former U.S. Sen. Jim Exon
Condolences
Heartfelt Condolences to my good friend and former campaign treasurer, Michael Hulsey, on the loss of his Mother, Rosella.
Peace.
--Alex
The Plain Truth
If you cannot admit he was wrong--if you still blindly support Mr. Bush, you are either very ignorant, very greedy or very, very much in need of help. This man and his policies are crippling this country. True Patriots take heed: if you love America, you must vote against Bush.--Editor
Published on Thursday, June 17, 2004 by the New York Times
It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.
Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11. And since the invasion, administration officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, have continued to declare such a connection. Last September, Mr. Bush had to grudgingly correct Mr. Cheney for going too far in spinning a Hussein-bin Laden conspiracy. But the claim has crept back into view as the president has made the war on terror a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
On Monday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." Mr. Bush later backed up Mr. Cheney, claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who may be operating in Baghdad, is "the best evidence" of a Qaeda link. This was particularly astonishing because the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime.
The staff report issued by the 9/11 panel says that Sudan's government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden in the early 1990's, tried to hook him up with Mr. Hussein, but that nothing came of it.
This is not just a matter of the president's diminishing credibility, although that's disturbing enough. The war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be Qaeda forces, including Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world.
June 17, 2004
IS THE END NEAR??? FOX NEWS LIKES MICHAEL MOORE MOVIE!
FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Fox411 - 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Gets Standing Ovation
But once "F9/11" gets to audiences beyond screenings, it won't be dependent on celebrities for approbation. It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.
As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, "F9/11 as we saw last night is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty β and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.
Dan Boren MISLEADS voters in the 2nd Congressional District with his FIRST television ad
Free campaign challenges Boren to change his misleading statement
The first ad Dan Boren is running is inaccurate. The ad claims Dan is "from here". Dan Boren is not from Eastern Oklahoma. He was not born or raised here. Indeed, he only moved into this district to run for congress.
We challenge Dan Boren to change his ad to fix the misleading statement therein. Further, we challenge Dan to make a commitment to the voters of this district that he will not use misleading statements to advocate his election to congress.
June 16, 2004
IGNORAD
Thanks to Nick for these links.--Editor
IGNORAD - The military screw-up nobody talks about. By Scott Shuger
ALSO:
Panel Investigating 9/11 Attacks Cites Confusion in Air Defense
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16panel.html?hp
Tell Your Entire Email List:
NO EVIDENCE CONNECTING IRAQ Iraq to AL QAEDA, 9/11 Panel Says
washingtonpost.com
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; 1:32 PM
There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein's secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons, the panel found in the first of two reports issued today.
The findings come in the wake of statements Monday by Vice President Cheney that Iraq had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, and comments by President Bush yesterday backing up that assertion.
The commission issued its report on al Qaeda's history at the start of a two-day round of hearings this morning. In a separate report on the planning and deliberations for the Sept. 11 plot, the panel cited numerous pieces of FBI evidence in concluding that ringleader Mohamed Atta never met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9, 2001, as Cheney and some other Bush administration officials have alleged.
"Based on the evidence available -- including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting -- we do not believe that such a meeting occurred," the second report said.
The report on al Qaeda's history said the government of Sudan, which gave sanctuary to al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996, persuaded bin Laden to cease supporting anti-Hussein forces and "arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda." But the contacts did not result in any cooperation, the panel said.
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan [in 1996], but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report says. "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
The conclusions provide the latest example of how the Sept. 11 commission has become a political irritant for the Bush administration. The 10-member bipartisan commission, initially opposed by the White House, has frequently feuded with the government over access to documents and witnesses and has issued findings sharply critical of the Bush administration's focus on terrorism prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
In testimony before the commission, CIA and FBI officials said they agreed with the staff report's assessment of the abortive relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq.
A CIA counterterrorism analyst who testified using the pseudonym Ted Davis said, "Were in full agreement with the staff statement," which he said did "an excellent job" of representing the agencys current understanding of the al Qaeda-Iraq relationship.
John Pistole, the FBI's executive assistant director for counter-terrorism, concurred.
WHILE REAGAN NAPPED: RONNIE, OSAMA AND THE CHIN DEFENSE
by Greg Palast
New York, Tuesday, June 14 - Vinnie the Chin had a great alibi. The New York mob capo shuffled down the street in his bathrobe, unshaved, drooling out the side of his mouth. When he got busted, he pleaded he was too gone-in-the-head to know about the Cosa Nostra running rackets from his candy shop.
Ronald Reagan out-Chinned the Chin. When caught paying ransom to Khomeini and his Hizbollah terrorists, Reagan did his aw-shucks I'm just a ga-ga grandpa routine, "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart tells me that's true, but the facts tell me it is not." Oh, OK then.
If it were Jimmy Carter who'd been caught in such an act of treason -- arming our enemy -- Republicans would still be roasting his flesh today. You know it and I know it.
The Reagan Right has used the late President's funeral for a shameless political victory dance, carefully wiping the blood off the historical files. Before the truth is interred, let us have a moment of remembrance for the dubious doings in the White House while Reagan napped:
* South Africa's government went on a murder spree to insure that Black folk would never vote. Reagan blessed that police state with a smile, refusing, despite the pleas of Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, to take even the small measure of limited trade sanctions against the evil white empire.
* Reagan's Secretary of Interior, James Watt, launched a biological pogrom against trees. Before he was indicted, the Environmental Protection agency became a country club for polluters' lobbyists. Reagan's heart told him it wasn't true, but the screeching chain saws said otherwise.
* AIDS was identified in 1981. Reagan's official policy was to hit the research snooze button. Our president did not mention nor act on the epidemic until 1987 -- 30,000 funerals too late. The gay death toll brought glee to Reagan's apocalyptic allies, the mewling mullahs of the Christian Right. (But As the Good Book warns, doing unto others has a price: the same fruitcake fanatics that slowed AIDS research also blocked the stem cell studies that might have saved the dying president from the horrors of Alzheimer's.)
* Reagan politically fathered those rascally Rosemary's Babies of the Bush junta: Dick Cheney, Ronnie's appropriately titled Whip in Congress; Paul Wolfowitz, the kind of Dr. Strangelove that scares even Henry Kissinger; John Poindexter, convicted of abetting Contra terrorists while in the Reagan White House, later Bush's first Total Information Awareness chieftain; and Reagan Treasury Secretary James Baker, who tried his damnedest to bankrupt America for Ron, and now, from his Bush White House office, is doing the same for Iraq as "special advisor" to the conquered nation.
But there can be no more dangerous creature to have burbled out of the Reagan Frankenstein factory than his Cold War comrade, Osama bin Laden.
In November 2001, with my BBC television and Guardian newspaper colleagues, I reported that, during the Reagan presidency, a US embassy official in Saudi Arabia was, in his own words, "repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants."
Sounds icky but not too notable until you learn the identities of these "applicants." They claimed to be engineering students who, when queried as to what school they attended, answered they "could not remember." They didn't have to. The unlikely "engineers" had little helpers in the Reagan Administration.
After investigation, the career diplomat, attorney Michael Springmann, learned they were, "recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to [bring to] the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."
Uh, oh. They returned to Afghanistan all right. But terrorists are like homing pigeons -- they have a bad habit of coming home to roost. In spook-world, it's known as "blow back." The Reagan-bin Laden killer brigade, skilled in such crafts as skinning Russian prisoners alive, blew back with a sickening vengeance.
That story ran world wide at the top of the BBC nightly news -- except in the USA where it bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall. Our media was careful not to wake America from its nap, to hide the deeply disturbing truths behind Grandpa Gipper's grin.
Ronald Reagan's loss of memory was, undeniably, a great personal tragedy. But lost in this week's circus of fakery and fawning for a failed president, is the greater national tragedy: America's amnesia, an unforgivable forgetting, a great sleep of reason from which we have yet to awaken, even after September 11.
****
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, just released in a new Expanded Election Edition. To view Palast's report on bin Laden for the BBC and the Guardian report (winner of a 2002 California State University Journalism School Project Censored Award), go to http://www.GregPalast.com.
Confusion..? Oh Please
We Have Asked This Question Before.--Editor
Panel Investigating 9/11 Attacks Cites Confusion in Air Defense
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, June 15 - The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has found that the Pentagon's domestic air-defense command was disastrously unprepared for a major terrorist strike on American soil and was slow and confused in its response to the hijackings that morning, according to officials who have read a draft report of the commission's findings.
The officials said the draft had been circulated in recent days among commission members and at the Pentagon in preparation for public release of the report at a hearing on Thursday.
The 9/11 commission draft summarized the response of the military, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies with this passage:
"On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced."
The report, they said, suggests - though it does not say explicitly - that a more organized response by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, might have allowed fighter pilots to reach one jetliner and shoot it down before it flew into the Pentagon, more than 50 minutes after the first of the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
Instead, the report finds, an emergency order from Vice President Dick Cheney authorizing the hijacked planes to be shot down did not reach pilots until the last of the four commandeered jetliners had crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania, after a struggle between terrorists and passengers aboard that plane.
A spokesman for Norad, which is based in Colorado, had no immediate comment on accounts of the report. Norad's commander, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are to testify before the commission at the Thursday hearing, along with former officials of the F.A.A., which has been harshly criticized by the commission in the past.
Commission officials said that Norad and the F.A.A. believed that elements of the criticism in the draft report were wrong or exaggerated, and that they were pressing for last-minute corrections. The 10-member bipartisan commission, which is in the final weeks of its investigation, has repeatedly tangled with the air-defense command and the aviation agency, and issued subpoenas to both last year in trying to gather documents and testimony.
The commission's public hearings this week - Wednesday on Al Qaeda and the development of the Sept. 11 plot, Thursday on the chronology of that morning and how Norad, the F.A.A. and other agencies responded to the attacks - are the last the panel is scheduled to hold before it delivers a final, all-encompassing report late next month.
Thomas H. Kean, the commission's chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in an interview Tuesday that the hearings this week would "close the circle" on the inquiry and alter the public's understanding of exactly what happened on Sept. 11 and of the plotting of Qaeda terrorists in the months before.
While Mr. Kean said he could not disclose in advance what exactly the commission had learned, other panel officials said the hearings this week would depict widespread chaos within the federal government on the day of the attacks, offering extensive new evidence of how the White House, the Pentagon and federal emergency response agencies were slow to react.
Members of the commission, they said, are expected to question witnesses about hesitation among White House aides on the morning of the attacks, why President Bush was allowed to remain in a meeting with Florida schoolchildren for several minutes after it became clear that a terrorist attack was under way and why he was then taken on a perplexing, hopscotch series of flights on Air Force One that created the appearance of chaos among the nation's leaders.
"There was a lot of chaos," Mr. Kean said. "We'll go over what the president did, what the vice president did, what was going on in the PEOC - the whole story." PEOC is the acronym for the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a White House bunker where Mr. Cheney and senior aides were sheltered in the hours after the attacks.
Mr. Kean said that in a closed meeting on Tuesday, the panel began to debate the report's final recommendations in earnest, including proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the nation's intelligence agencies. He said he remained optimistic that the commission could produce a unanimous report.
Commission officials have made clear in the past that the report will offer blistering criticism of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other intelligence and counterterrorism agencies for failures before Sept. 11. Some members have suggested that the commission may want to recommend the creation of domestic intelligence-gathering agencies separate from the F.B.I., similar to Britain's MI-5.
The intelligence overhaul "is probably the most complex and the most difficult" of the issues under consideration by the panel, Mr. Kean said. "But yes, I'm optimistic. Even with 10 very independent-minded people, this is not impossible."
The Fight of Our Lives
IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE TODAY, PLEASE READ THIS.--Alex
Bill Moyers , AlterNet
Editor's Note: This was a speech given at the Inequality Matters Forum on June 3, 2004 at New York University.
It is important from time to time to remember that some things are worth getting mad about.
Here's one: On March 10 of this year, on page B8, with a headline that stretched across all six columns, The New York Times reported that tuition in the city's elite private schools would hit $26,000 for the coming school year -- for kindergarten as well as high school. On the same page, under a two-column headline, Michael Wineraub wrote about a school in nearby Mount Vernon, the first stop out of the Bronx, with a student body that is 97 percent black. It is the poorest school in the town: nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of 10 lives in a homeless shelter. During black history month this past February, a sixth grader wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes. There were no books on Langston Hughes in the library -- no books about the great poet, nor any of his poems. There is only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass. None on Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Leontyne Price, or other giants like them in the modern era. In fact, except for a few Newberry Award books the librarian bought with her own money, the library is mostly old books -- largely from the 1950s and 60s when the school was all white. A 1960 child's primer on work begins with a youngster learning how to be a telegraph delivery boy. All the workers in the book -- the dry cleaner, the deliveryman, the cleaning lady -- are white. There's a 1967 book about telephones which says: "when you phone you usually dial the number. But on some new phones you can push buttons." The newest encyclopedia dates from l991, with two volumes -- "b" and "r" -- missing. There is no card catalog in the library -- no index cards or computer.
Something to get mad about.
Here's something else: Caroline Payne's face and gums are distorted because her Medicaid-financed dentures don't fit. Because they don't fit, she is continuously turned down for jobs on account of her appearance. Caroline Payne is one of the people in David Shipler's new book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America. She was born poor, and in spite of having once owned her own home and having earned a two-year college degree, Caroline Payne has bounced from one poverty-wage job to another all her life, equipped with the will to move up, but not the resources to deal with unexpected and overlapping problems like a mentally handicapped daughter, a broken marriage, a sudden layoff crisis that forced her to sell her few assets, pull up roots and move on. "In the house of the poor," Shipler writes "...the walls are thin and fragile and troubles seep into one another."
Here's something else to get mad about. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives, the body of Congress owned and operated by the corporate, political, and religious right, approved new tax credits for children. Not for poor children, mind you. But for families earning as much as $309,000 a year -- families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts. The editorial page of The Washington Post called this "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed," said the Post, "but they're not."
And this, too, is something to get mad about. Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours and still falling behind; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans -- eight out of ten of them in working families -- are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.
Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years -- the worst inequality among all western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it -- among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.
Let me tell you about the Stanleys and the Neumanns. During the last decade, I produced a series of documentaries for PBS called "Surviving the Good Times." The title refers to the boom time of the '90s when the country achieved the longest period of economic growth in its entire history. Some good things happened then, but not everyone shared equally in the benefits. To the contrary. The decade began with a sustained period of downsizing by corporations moving jobs out of America and many of those people never recovered what was taken from them. We decided early on to tell the stories of two families in Milwaukee -- one black, one white -- whose breadwinners were laid off in the first wave of layoffs in 1991. We reported on how they were coping with the wrenching changes in their lives, and we stayed with them over the next ten years as they tried to find a place in the new global economy. They're the kind of Americans my mother would have called "the salt of the earth." They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week -- both mothers have had to take full-time jobs.
During our time with them, the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One had to stay in the hospital two months, putting his family $30,000 in debt because they didn't have adequate health insurance. We were there with our camera when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of the other family because they couldn't meet the mortgage payments after dad lost his good-paying manufacturing job. Like millions of Americans, the Stanleys and the Neumanns were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.
What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that they are patriotic. They love this country. But they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country. When our film opens, both families are watching the inauguration of Bill Clinton on television in 1992. By the end of the decade they were no longer paying attention to politics. They don't see it connecting to their lives. They don't think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class. They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them. They know this, and we know this. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold.
Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that's not the case. As the economist Jeff Madrick reminds us, the pressures of inequality on middle and working class Americans are now quite severe. "The strain on working people and on family life, as spouses have gone to work in dramatic numbers, has become significant. VCRs and television sets are cheap, but higher education, health care, public transportation, drugs, housing and cars have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. And life has grown neither calm nor secure for most Americans, by any means." You can find many sources to support this conclusion. I like the language of a small outfit here in New York called the Commonwealth Foundation/Center for the Renewal of American Democracy. They conclude that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life."
Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.
Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.
Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hennings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died -- the one request we think Sally Hennings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness.
In his book on the Declaration, my late friend Mortimer Adler said Jefferson realized that whatever things are really good for any human being are really good for all other human beings. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. A just society is grounded in that recognition. So Jefferson kept as a slave a woman whose nature he knew was equal to his. All Sally Hennings got from her long sufferance -- perhaps it was all she sought from what may have grown into a secret and unacknowledged love -- was that he let her children go. "Let my children go" -- one of the oldest of all petitions. It has long been the promise of America -- a broken promise, to be sure. But the idea took hold that we could fix what was broken so that our children would live a bountiful life. We could prevent the polarization between the very rich and the very poor that poisoned other societies. We could provide that each and every citizen would enjoy the basic necessities of life, a voice in the system of self-government, and a better chance for their children. We could preclude the vast divides that produced the turmoil and tyranny of the very countries from which so many of our families had fled.
We were going to do these things because we understood our dark side -- none of us is good -- but we also understood the other side -- all of us are sacred. From Jefferson forward we have grappled with these two notions in our collective head -- that we are worthy of the creator but that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Believing the one and knowing the other, we created a country where the winners didn't take all. Through a system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a safe, if shifting, equilibrium between wealth and commonwealth. We believed equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy. So early on [in Jeff Madrick's description,] primary schooling was made free to all. States changed laws to protect debtors, often the relatively poor, against their rich creditors. Charters to establish corporations were open to most, if not all, white comers, rather than held for the elite. The government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters' rights. The court challenged monopoly -- all in the name of we the people.
In my time we went to public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. When I bought my first car for $450 I drove to a subsidized university on free public highways and stopped to rest in state-maintained public parks. This is what I mean by the commonwealth. Rudely recognized in its formative years, always subject to struggle, constantly vulnerable to reactionary counterattacks, the notion of America as a shared project has been the central engine of our national experience.
Until now. I don't have to tell you that a profound transformation is occurring in America: the balance between wealth and the commonwealth is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to what the Commonwealth Foundation calls "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From land, water and other natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate control. And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for 'political debate' in this country has become a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on -- the not-so-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power in order to divide up the spoils.
We could have seen this coming if we had followed the money. The veteran Washington reporter, Elizabeth Drew, says "the greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years -- in its culture, in the way it does business and the ever-burgeoning amount of business transactions that go on here -- has been in the preoccupation with money." Jeffrey Birnbaum, who covered Washington for nearly twenty years for the Wall Street Journal, put it more strongly: "[campaign cash] has flooded over the gunwales of the ship of state and threatens to sink the entire vessel. Political donations determine the course and speed of many government actions that deeply affect our daily lives." Politics is suffocating from the stranglehold of money. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the religious right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush's wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an "influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder."
Small wonder that with the exception of people like John McCain and Russ Feingold, official Washington no longer finds anything wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. Hit the pause button here, and recall Roger Tamraz. He's the wealthy oilman who paid $300,000 to get a private meeting in the White House with President Clinton; he wanted help in securing a big pipeline in central Asia. This got him called before congressional hearings on the financial excesses of the 1996 campaign. If you watched the hearings on C-Span you heard him say he didn't think he had done anything out of the ordinary. When they pressed him he told the senators: "Look, when it comes to money and politics, you make the rules. I'm just playing by your rules." One senator then asked if Tamraz had registered and voted. And he was blunt in his reply: "No, senator, I think money's a bit more (important) than the vote."
So what does this come down to, practically?
Here is one accounting:
"When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it's ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don't contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America's tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You're compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You're barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed."
I'm not quoting from Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. I'm quoting Time magazine. Time's premier investigative journalists -- Donald Bartlett and James Steele -- concluded in a series last year that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many." Economic inequality begets political inequality, and vice versa.
That's why the Stanleys and the Neumanns were turned off by politics. It's why we're losing the balance between wealth and the commonwealth. It's why we can't put things right. And it is the single most destructive force tearing at the soul of democracy. Hear the great justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.' " Learned Hand was a prophet of democracy. The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.
I know, I know: this sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful paperback polemic by William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. He called on the financial and business class, in effect, to take back the power and privileges they had lost in the depression and new deal. They got the message, and soon they began a stealthy class war against the rest of society and the principles of our democracy. They set out to trash the social contract, to cut their workforces and wages, to scour the globe in search of cheap labor, and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly at the time: "Some people will obviously have to do with less....it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."
The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us.
To create the intellectual framework for this takeover of public policy they funded conservative think tanks -- The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute -- that churned out study after study advocating their agenda.
To put political muscle behind these ideas they created a formidable political machine. One of the few journalists to cover the issues of class -- Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post -- wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperate action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the religious right -- Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition -- who mounted a cultural war providing a smokescreen for the class war, hiding the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the cause of privilege.
In a book to be published this summer, Daniel Altman describes what he calls the "neo-economy -- a place without taxes, without a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds -- and [said Altman] it's coming to America." He's a little late. It's here. Says Warren Buffett, the savviest investor of them all: "My class won."
Look at the spoils of victory:
Over the past three years, they've pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts -- almost all tilted towards the wealthiest people in the country.
Cuts in taxes on the largest incomes.
Cuts in taxes on investment income.
And cuts in taxes on huge inheritances.
More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest one percent. You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut services for and raise taxes on middle class working America.
Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next ten years.
These deficits have been part of their strategy. Some of you will remember that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us 20 years ago, when he predicted that President Ronald Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, admitted as such. Now the leading rightwing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the goal is to "starve the beast" -- with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the United States Government is so anemic and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub.
There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.
And they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of practicing journalism I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers report that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's Federal Reserve Chairman says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in social security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway. The president's Labor Secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter."
You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.
But what they are doing to middle class and working Americans -- and to the workings of American democracy -- is no laughing matter. Go online and read the transcripts of Enron traders in the energy crisis four years ago, discussing how they were manipulating the California power market in telephone calls in which they gloat about ripping off "those poor grandmothers." Read how they talk about political contributions to politicians like "Kenny Boy" Lay's best friend George W. Bush. Go on line and read how Citigroup has been fined $70 Million for abuses in loans to low-income, high risk borrowers - the largest penalty ever imposed by the Federal Reserve. A few clicks later, you can find the story of how a subsidiary of the corporate computer giant NEC has been fined over $20 million after pleading guilty to corruption in a federal plan to bring Internet access to poor schools and libraries. And this, the story says, is just one piece of a nationwide scheme to rip off the government and the poor.
Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs -- if this isn't class war, what is?
It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.
But I don't need to tell you this. You wouldn't be here if you didn't know it. Your presence at this gathering confirms that while an America with liberty and justice for all is a broken promise, it is not a lost cause. Once upon a time I thought the mass media -- my industry -- would help mend this broken promise and save this cause. After all, the sight of police dogs attacking peaceful demonstrators forced America to recognize the reality of racial injustice. The sight of carnage in Vietnam forced us to recognize the war was unwinnable. The sight of terrorists striking the World Trade Center woke us from a long slumber of denial and distraction. I thought the mass media might awaken Americans to the reality that this ideology of winner-take-all is working against them and not for them. I was wrong. With honorable exceptions, we can't count on the mass media.
What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes -- there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives.
The Worst Attorney General in History
Travesty of Justice: John Ashcroft is the Worst Attorney General in History
No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.
For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.
We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.
Patriot Act Makes Art A Crime
Using the Patriot Act to muzzle lefty art professors defies common sense, not to mention the Constitution. The grand jurors should tell the Justice Department to get lost.
June 15, 2004
Cheney in Corruption From the Beginning?
HoustonChronicle.com - Dem says Cheney's staff in on Halliburton plan
Vice President Dick Cheney's staff was involved from the very start of the decision-making process that ended with Houston's Halliburton Co. being awarded a multibillion-dollar contract to perform work in Iraq, a key Democratic lawmaker said Sunday.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, was briefed in October 2002 on a proposal to assign Halliburton the task of drawing up a secret plan for putting out oil-well fires and rebuilding Iraq infrastructure in the event of war in Iraq, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., whose staff was briefed last week by Pentagon officials.
Liberals Can Win
Liberals will win the battle for democracy, Reich argues, if they get off their duffs and fight for it. In many ways, it is a commitment to the democratic process -- and the concept of one person, one vote -- that distinguishes liberals from Radcons, who would rather follow the Neo-Confederacy precedent of suppressing votes from non "Radcons."
Wired News: New 'Hiccup' for Florida Voters
Touchscreen voting machines in 11 counties have a software flaw that could make manual recounts impossible in November's presidential election, state officials said.
A spokeswoman for the secretary of state called the problems "minor technical hiccups" that can be resolved, but critics allege voting officials wrongly certified a voting system they knew had a bug.
A Legitimate Question
Why Were Fighter Jets Ineffective on 9-11?
A SoonerThought Editorial
On October 25, 1999, golfer Payne Stewarts Lear jet went off course and drifted across the country for several hours with no one at the controls. Due to a pressure leak, the passengers and crew were dead; aloft in a 20th Century Flying Dutchman. Within 20 minutes of losing contact with the ground, U.S. military jet fighters intercepted the doomed plane. They were under orders to be prepared to shoot the plane down if it were deemed to be a danger to a populated area. The plane eventually crashed in an unpopulated area after expending its fuel.
On September 11, 2001, four airplanes were hijacked by terrorists along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. According to published accounts, the hijacked jetliners veered radically off course and switched off their transponders. They would not respond to communications from the ground. When the first plane--Flight 11--slammed into the World Trade Center Tower, two F-15 fighter jets were in the air less than five minutes awayso close but yet so far. This was 25 minutes after the plane had been known to be hijacked.
The two F-15s, flown by Major Daniel Nash and Lt. Col. Timothy Duffy, were scrambled at 8:52 a.m., 38 minutes after Flight 11 was hijacked and after it slammed into the World Trade Center. They were ordered in from Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts153 miles away. With a top speed of 1,875 mph, they could easily have intercepted Flight 175 before it slammed into the second tower. Instead, they chose only to fly at about 447 mphthus insuring they would not intercept the second doomed airliner in time.
According to author Robert Sterling, Duffy and Nashs F-15s or fighters from nearby bases could easily have intercepted the hijacked planes before they crashed and killed thousands. Numerous air stations with combat-ready fighters were a few minutes of flying time from both NYC and D.C. There were well-established automatic procedures for intercepting aircraft that either were off-course or had lost communication. Yet none of the fighters were deployed. (Emphasis added).
Sterling also notes that the two F-15 fighters were patrolling off Long Island as ordered, but did not seem to understand the seriousness of the incident. The pair were not even ordered to Manhattan for patrol until after the second tower was hit. They could have stopped the second plane, perhaps driving it into the water away from Manhattan.
According to the Center for Cooperative Research, Air Force commanders all over the area volunteered to scramble their planes to meet the threat to NYC and D.C. Shortly after the second WTC crash, calls from fighter units start pouring into NORAD and sector operations centers, asking, What can we do to help? At Syracuse, New York, an ANG commander tells [Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) commander Robert] Marr, Give me 10 min. and I can give you hot guns. Give me 30 min. and I'll have heat-seeker [missiles]. Give me an hour and I can give you slammers [Amraams]. Marr replies, I want it all. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02] Supposedly, Marr says, Get to the phones. Call every Air National Guard unit in the land. Prepare to put jets in the air. The nation is under attack. [Newhouse News, 1/25/02] Canadian Major General Eric Findley, based in Colorado and in charge of NORAD that day, supposedly has his staff immediately order as many fighters in the air as possible. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/02] Yet another account says those calls don't take place until about an hour later: By 10:01 a.m., the command center began calling several bases across the country for help.
The Center reports further: In fact, it appears the first fighters don't take off from Syracuse until 10:44. This is over an hour and a half after Syracuse's initial offer to help, and not long after a general ban on all flights, including military ones, is lifted. These are apparently the first fighters scrambled from the ground aside from three at Langley, two at Otis, an unknown number of fighters from Andrews near Washington, and two fighters that take off from Toledo at 10:16. [Toledo Blade 12/9/01]
Finally, six minutes after the second attack on the towers, NORAD ordered F-16s out of Langley AFB in Virginia to go to battle stations. However, the order to scramble did not come for another 18 minutes more. Take-off was in three additional minutes. According to published reports, it took the F-16s nineteen minutes to reach the Pentagon, 130 miles away. According to Sterling, they only flew at about a quarter of their top speed of 1,500 mph. Why the slow pace? Wasnt this an emergency? An attack on Washington, D.C.? Hello?
Eight minutes before the fighter planes limped into D.C. airspace, Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon, killing all aboard and 125 in the Defense Department headquarters. Hijacked Flight 93, originating in Newark, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing all aboard.
Meanwhile, our president continues his photo op in Florida: President Bush, having just been told of the second WTC crash does not leave the Sarasota, Florida, classroom he entered around 9:03. Rather, he stays and listens as 16 Booker Elementary School second-graders take turns reading a story about a girl's pet goat.
They are just about to begin reading when Bush is warned of the attack. One account says that the classroom is then silent for about 30 seconds, maybe more. Bush then picks up the book and reads with the children for eight or nine minutes.
The United States military is the greatest and most powerful ever known. How did this happen?
"I want to see a clear timeline. What time did the FAA officially know a hijacking was taking place? What time did the president understand this was a hijacking? Why was there a delay in scrambling fighter jets?" said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband, Alan, was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Mindy deserves an answer. So do we.
How is it that a golfers tiny Lear jeterrant for a scant handful of minutes-- is intercepted and nearly blasted from the skies by vigilant fighters but four massive jetliners are allowed to plow into some of the most populated areas in the country? Why were our expensive, state-of-the-art fighters not scrambled immediately? Why did our president sit in a classroom of children and read a book instead of taking charge?
More sinister, though, than the questions, are surely the answers we may find.
Did our leaders cause our military to stand down or go slow during the most deadly terrorist attack in American history? If so, why? To what ends? Or was it merely incompetence? I find it difficult to believe our military would be that incompetent. I think the fault lies further up the ladder to what is at best poor leadership and at worst treason.
We have a right to know. We have a right to demand answers. Our news media has failed us since the stolen election of 2000. They are clearly asleep, or worse: bought and paid for. But we can still ask the questions. We owe it to our nation to find the answers and hold our leaders accountable.
June 14, 2004
Old Soldiers Die in the Desert
The oven-strength heat of Iraq apparently felled Louisiana National Guardsman Floyd Knighten, who collapsed last August as he traveled in a convoy. He was 54.
Doubts Linger About John F. Kerry
Doubts Linger as Kerry Advances (washingtonpost.com)
John F. Kerry has shattered fundraising records, unified an oft-warring party and pushed past President Bush in some national polls. Yet many Democratic voters, officials and even members of Kerry's staff express an ambivalence -- or angst -- about their presidential candidate that belies this strong public standing.
No More Special Interest Parties
Democracy 21 Proposes New Congressional Ethics Rules
To Prohibit Members from Throwing Lavish Parties at Political
Conventions Paid for By Corporate America and Other Interests
Democracy 21 today proposed new ethics rules for the House and Senate to prohibit Members of Congress from throwing lavish parties for themselves at the national political conventions paid for by corporations, trade associations and others, including charitable groups.
"The special-interest funded parties 'in honor' of Members of Congress that are being planned around the national political conventions this summer are clear avenues for special interests to buy access and gain influence with the Members," Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said.
According to published reports, corporate and other special interests are funding numerous events at the conventions, such as parties, concerts, receptions or dinners that are billed as "honoring" a Member of Congress. The conventions will be "an out-of-sight extravaganza of special interest money," according to a lobbyist quoted in a recent National Journal article by Peter Stone (May 15, 2004.)
"Members end up with the opportunity to throw expensive parties at the national conventions, sometimes six-figure events, for their political donors and supporters, free of charge to the Members," said Wertheimer. "Corporations, industries, and other special interests end up with the opportunity to provide large financial favors for the direct benefit of one or more Members. In particular, these special interest funded-parties give industries regulated by a congressional committee the ability to curry favor with that committee's chairman by spending large sums for his benefit and in his 'honor.'"
The National Journal article noted that "corporate America and K Street interests are hoping to capitalize on their connections to get their messages across at the convention." According to the article, "[M]any companies and trade groups are donating $5,000 to $50,000 each to help host lunches, dinners, and receptions at the convention."
The National Journal article cites the following examples:
The Securities Industry Association and the Bond Market Association, two major securities industry trade associations, plan to "fete" House Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley (R-OH), whose committee oversees the securities industry, at the Republican convention. At the Democratic convention, the same two trade associations are hosting a joint event for Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), who sits on the Senate Banking Committee.
Edison Electric Institute, the American Gas Association and the National Mining Association will jointly hold three evening receptions at the Republican convention to honor Republican committee chairmen who oversee their industries: Senators Peter Domenici (R-NM), James Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). The American Gas Association is also scheduled to host events at the Democratic convention for Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), as well as another event for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Lobbyists from several trade associations and companies such as Citigroup and Comcast are sponsoring a dinner at the Democratic Convention to honor Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-NV).
MassMutual Financial Group plans to hold an event at the Democratic convention in Boston to honor the Massachusetts congressional delegation.
Daimler Chrysler and Union Pacific will host a tribute to Republican congressional leaders at the Republican convention in New York.
The "Charity Fundraiser" Scheme
"Another, and relatively new, approach being used by Members of Congress to throw big donor-funded parties at the national conventions, at no cost to them, is the so-called 'charity fundraiser,'" said Wertheimer.
"The most egregious example of this was House Majority Tom DeLay's (R-TX) scheme, which he recently abandoned, to use a charity he had established as a fundraising vehicle to pay for a week-long schedule of DeLay parties, dinners and other events during the Republican national convention," Wertheimer said. "DeLay's scheme involved special interest donors giving up to $500,000 to help pay for these events and obtaining week-long access to DeLay and other Republican House Members in the process," Wertheimer stated.
Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AK) was scheduled to host a "Rocking on the Dock of the Bay" fundraising party at the Democratic national convention, sponsored by the AFLAC and held to benefit a cancer foundation, but withdrew from the event after an ethics complaint was filed.
But other Members are moving forward.
For example, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is hosting a fundraising concert at the Republican national convention on behalf of a humanitarian foundation that he set up last year. The foundation is being run by the former campaign finance director and executive director of Senator Frist's 2000 Senate campaign.
Senator Saxby Chamblis (R-GA), is hosting "Rocking the Apple... Georgia Style," the Republican national convention's version of the AFLAC sponsored "charity" event, also sponsored by Southern Co. Senator Chambliss apparently is unconcerned about the ethical questions that led Senator Lincoln to withdraw from the Democratic convention event, which was subsequently canceled by AFLAC.
Representative Mike Oxley (R-OH), chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services is hosting a convention night party at the Republican convention being thrown in "his honor" by the American Council for Excellence and Opportunity. Oxley serves as honorary chairman of the American Council, which has been soliciting donations for the event from various businesses, including Wall Street firms, according to an article from the May 25, 2004 New York Times. The House committee chaired by Oxley has jurisdiction over matters involving Wall Street.
"The problems with these 'charity' events are two-fold," Wertheimer stated. "First, big donors are able to provide large amounts of money, anonymously, to benefit Members of Congress and, in return, gain access to and influence with the Members of Congress benefiting from the events. Second, potential donors are faced with implicit coercion to contribute large amounts of money when they are solicited on behalf of powerful Members of Congress for the events and when they know they may pay a price on their issues in Congress if they fail to contribute."
According to Wertheimer, "even though the leftover funds, after the convention parties and other events are paid for, are designated for the charities, this neither eliminates the dangerous problems involved with the events, nor belies the fact that Members of Congress wind up throwing expensive parties and other events for themselves and their political allies that are paid for by undisclosed big donors.
Proposed New Ethics Rules
Under existing House and Senate ethics rules, Members of Congress are prohibited from accepting gifts and financial favors above a de minimis amount. An exception to these rules however, allows Members to receive large financial favors in the form of expensive parties and other events held "in honor" of the Members at the national political conventions. The new rules proposed by Democracy 21, and set forth below, would amend the congressional ethics rules to end the practice of corporations and others bankrolling expensive events for Members at the national conventions.
Proposed amendment to House Rule XXV, clause 5 (and to Senate Rule XXXV):
Notwithstanding any other provision of this rule, a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House may not be the honoree, host, sponsor or similar beneficiary, of any widely attended reception, party or other event held at, or in conjunction with, a national political party nominating convention, that is hosted or otherwise sponsored by a corporation, trade association, labor union, law firm, nonprofit organization, or similar entity, or a registered lobbyist or lobbyists or client of such lobbyist or lobbyists.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this rule, a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House may not control, directly or indirectly, any nonprofit organization that hosts or otherwise sponsors any widely attended reception, party or other event held at, or in conjunction with, a national political party nominating convention.
("Widely attended event" is a term used in the Congressional ethics rules.)
Capital Bits & Pieces, Vol. IV, No. 28 | Released: Monday, June 14, 2004
# # #
For the latest reform news and to access previous reports, releases, and analysis from Democracy 21, visit www.democracy21.org.
Cheney Bombshell From MoveOn:
Just this morning, the L.A. Times released a new Halliburton bombshell: it's now clear that over the protests of an Army official, Vice President Cheney's office helped ensure that Cheney's old company Halliburton would receive a $7 billion no-bid contract for rebuilding Iraq.[1] Faced with a choice between serving our troops and helping out his corporate buddies, Cheney chose the latter.
The timing for our new ad exposing how Halliburton and Bush administration officials took taxpayers for a ride couldnt be better. And starting tomorrow, Congress will be holding hearings on whether Halliburton used its close ties to administration officials to get sweetheart deals, shortchanging both our troops and U.S. taxpayers. Since Thursday afternoon, we've already raised about $420,000 to air the ad. But in order to get the ad in front of swing-state voters for a week starting tomorrow, well need to raise about $1.1 million. Together, if we all pitch in what we can, we can make it happen.
Take a look at the finished ad and help get it on the air at:
https://www.moveonpac.org/donate/halliburton.html?id=2940-3750877-I7ox4cEhl08tU01fDgWYJw
The list of governmental investigations against Halliburton just keeps on growing. Just last Friday, Halliburton disclosed yet another one -- the SEC is investigating one of its subsidiaries for foreign corruption. Halliburton's unethical behavior is in the news this week, and with your help we can get it in front of key voters in battleground states as well.
Don't misunderestimate how dirty your feet are!
Bush DoorMat-Give Bush the Boot and Please Wipe Your Feet.
Orwell Meets Kafka
By Tom Engelhardt
Quotes of the week:
"Congress lacks authority
to set the terms and conditions under which the president may exercise his authority as commander in chief to control the conduct of operations during a war
Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield. Accordingly, we would construe [the law] to avoid this difficulty and conclude that it does not apply to the president's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." (From a 56-page memo, "Detainee Interrogation in the Global War on Terrorism" written by a legal team for the Secretary of Defense on the eve of the Iraq War.)
"Congress shall have the power
to declare war and make rules concerning captures on land and water
to define offenses against the law of nations [and] to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." (From the Constitution, David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt, Lawyers Ascribed Broad Power to Bush on Torture, the Los Angeles Times)
"We need to have a less-cramped view of what torture is and is not." (A military official explaining the approach of the team writing the above memo, Jess Bravin, Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture, The Wall Street Journal)
"It's a very cowboy kind of affair." (Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who controlled the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib prison, speaking of the actions of the CIA unit there, R. Jeffrey Smith, Soldier Described White House Interest, the Washington Post)
Room 101
For his dystopia, 1984, his classic novel of totalitarianism, George Orwell created "Room 101," an interrogation room where a prisoner's deepest fears were to be realized and applied. Tier 1 in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, as the now-infamous photos indicate, was the Bush administration's Room 101 for the "Arab mind," and so the crown jewel of its global interrogation facilities; just as Guantanamo was the "crown jewel" of the prison camps in its global Bermuda Triangle of injustice; just as the new appointed "interim government" hidden within the ever-more fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and led by a prime minister and former CIA asset whose exile organization, we learned this week, once set off car bombs in downtown Baghdad, is now the crown jewel of "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East. This is our "war against terrorism." Talk about an Orwellian world.
As it happens, from the heart of Abu Ghraib's interrogation rooms and the acts of, as our President and other administration officials have repeatedly said, "a few people" or even "a few hillbillies," the nature of, extent of, knowledge about, and responsibility for such acts has been rapidly spreading outwards across the imperium, upwards into the highest reaches of our government, and backwards in time. We now know, for instance, that, to the various acts of horror caught on camera in Abu Graib, we must add murder (or rather numerous murders) in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and the use of electric shocks on prisoners, as the Marine Corps Times reported recently.
As for the acts we saw in the photographs, they too have "spread" and knowledge of them reaches ever higher: To take but two examples, Nakedness is now reported to have been used as a tool of humiliation not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, as it was used in one of the earliest acts of American inhumanity in the war against terrorism, the interrogation of John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan back in 2001; while the "technique" of menacing prisoners with dogs -- "an apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Army's field manual" -- has now been well documented at Abu Ghraib by the Washington Post ("On Jan. 13, Spec. John Harold Ketzer, a military intelligence interrogator, saw a dog team corner two male prisoners against a wall, one prisoner hiding behind the other and screaming, he later told investigators. When I asked what was going on in the cell, the handler stated that he was just scaring them, and that he and another of the handlers was having a contest to see how many detainees they could get to urinate on themselves '"); but it was also evidently employed at Guantanamo, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In the meantime, responsibility for such actions has moved inexorably upwards. We know now that interest in information gleaned from interrogations, ranging from that of John Walker Lindh to those in Iraq was requested at the highest official levels (not so surprising, since our offshore mini-gulag was a pet project of top officials in this administration): "The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by White House staff,' according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post." Far more specifically, R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White of the Post reported this Saturday that, despite his denials to Congress, in the fall of 2003, "Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents."
In turn, thanks to Jess Bravin and Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, we now know that in December 2002 Donald Rumsfeld approved a very similar list of "interrogation techniques" right down to those dogs for Guantanamo: "U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could put prisoners in stress positions' for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, fear of dogs' and mild non-injurious physical contact,' according to [a] list of techniques Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002." (The list was later rejiggered not because of any qualms Rumsfeld had but due to complaints from military officers about the severity of the methods suggested. The present list of approved techniques remains classified, but will undoubtedly soon be leaked to the press.)
The above can be traced back farther yet. According to "documents, read to The [Los Angeles] Times by two sources critical of how the government handled the Lindh case," writes journalist Richard Serrano, "After American Taliban recruit John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan, the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld instructed military intelligence officers to take the gloves off' in interrogating him In the early stages, his responses were cabled to Washington hourly, the new documents show What happened to Lindh, who was stripped and humiliated by his captors, foreshadowed the type of abuse documented in photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib."
This, of course, takes us not only to the top of the administration, but back to the brink of the -- if I dare put it this way -- Ur-moment in the setting up of what would become our offshore mini-gulag, those months right after the 9/11 attacks when the Bush administration began to set their system in place on the fly and, as Suzanne Goldenberg of the British Guardian reported recently, on key issues without initially even consulting White House or Pentagon lawyers.
"In one instance, President George Bush's military order of November 13 2001, which denies prisoner-of-war status to captives from Afghanistan and allows their detention without charge or access to a lawyer at Guantαnamo, was issued without any consultations with Pentagon lawyers, a former Pentagon official said
The military order issued by Mr Bush in November 2001 was the first such directive since the second world war, and the administration's failure to seek the Pentagon's advice on what would emerge as the entire system of detention at Guantαnamo surprised Pentagon officials."
Add it all up -- only what's been revealed so far -- and you have a global system of injustice and torture, purposely mounted in the moral and legal darkness, beyond the reach or oversight of anyone but the President, vice-president, secretary of defense and associated officials, meant to extract information (and take revenge), meant as in Kafka's fictional penal colony to write the sentence these men had passed on the bodies of America's captives.
And talk about paper trails! If you need any evidence of the combination of arrogance, incompetence, and plain stupidity of the Bush administration, it now sits unavoidably before our eyes. Didn't they know anything about deniability? Didn't they know that you can get so much done without committing anything to paper? Didn't they know that you can signal what you want from the top without issuing orders, making direct demands, or demanding supporting opinions on paper?
Note two things here: That almost all of the above, this whole little global shop of horrors, is already documented -- quite literally in papers pouring out of the bowels of this administration. These documents are leaking daily from an administration that seems to have split open along many angry rift lines. The British Telegraph this week, writing of the leaking of a legal document on torture to the Wall Street Journal commented, for example:
"The leak appears to be part of an extraordinary civil war in the Pentagon between civilian officials and uniformed officers appalled by what they have described as moves by political appointees to shroud the war on terrorism in an environment of legal ambiguity'."
Some in the military, the intelligence community, the State Department, administration legal offices, and possibly even the Justice Department opposed the creation of our mini-gulag and the kinds of interrogations and conditions planned for it; some simply feared what the illegality might do to them or their careers, including evidently Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers who fretted that he might become "a target for prosecution under laws governing prisoner treatment"; some are undoubtedly settling scores; others protecting tattered reputations; but it's now close to open season on the administration from within.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that, in a nearly unprecedented act in our country, 26 ex-military and senior diplomatic officials, "several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plan to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November." And retired officials almost invariably are speaking for larger constituencies within the government -- all those potential leakers and mutterers -- who fear speaking out publicly themselves.
Addressing an Asian security conference on the administration's "war on terror," Donald Rumsfeld recently commented : "[T]he reality is that today we remain closer to the beginning of this struggle than to its end." The same might be said of the uncovering of responsibility for our own global terror system. There will be so much more to learn. Already, when it comes to Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Pentagon keeps heaping investigations on top of one another, each subsequent one led by a figure with a higher rank and so more capable of investigating responsibility at higher levels, and I think it can be said with certainty that this will only get worse -- worse probably than anything we now imagine. After all, to take but the smallest of examples, CBS news reports that "of the 20 U.S.-run jails in [Afghanistan], the Red Cross has only been allowed to visit one in Kabul. Now one in Kandahar is being opened." Imagine what's been happening at those other 18.
Additional dispatches from Tom Engelhardt can be read throughout the week at TomDispatch.com, a web log of The Nation Institute.
Caught Red Handed Helping Halliburton?
Pentagon officials have acknowledged that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and other Bush administration political appointees were involved in a controversial decision to pay Halliburton Inc. to plan for the postwar recovery of Iraq's oil sector, a Democratic lawmaker said yesterday.
The decision, overruling the recommendations of an Army lawyer, eventually resulted in the award of a $7 billion no-bid contract to Halliburton, which Cheney ran for five years before he was nominated for vice president.
June 13, 2004
Voters of HD 87 Had a Chance to Avert a Worthen Dynasty in 2002--and Blew It
The Democratic voters of HD 87 in Oklahoma City, who stayed home when offered a clearly better candidate than Robert Worthen, are now faced with his retirement and the "coronation" of his snotty religious-right-addled son, Trebor. Frankly, they deserve him.--Editor
Ardmoreite.comRelatives file to keep family name in state Legislature 06/08/04
Although term limits are forcing more than 40 lawmakers from the statehouse, many Oklahoma voters will see familiar names on the ballot as spouses, children and siblings try to fill the shoes of their term-limited relatives.
On Monday, the first of the three-day filing period for state and federal offices, two wives, a husband, a brother, a son, a nephew and a cousin of term-limited legislators filed for office.
One of the most obvious benefits these candidates have is the built-in name recognition that all candidates strive for, said Jay Parmley, chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.
''You don't have to build name recognition -- you just use the same last name,'' Parmley said. ''It doesn't always work -- Cathy Keating can tell you it doesn't always work -- but for the most part it's not a bad strategy.''
Cathy Keating, the wife of then-Gov. Frank Keating, finished second in a five-way Republican primary for U.S. Representative in 2001 behind eventual winner and current U.S. Rep. John Sullivan.
Trebor Worthen, 24, agreed that winning a campaign takes more than name recognition. He is seeking the House District 87 seat in northwest Oklahoma City that which his father Robert Worthen was elected to in 1986.
''Name recognition is certainly helpful in any election, but I think the most important thing is personal relationships with voters, and you get that from hard work, personal contact and knocking doors,'' said Trebor Worthen, also an Oklahoma City Republican. ''I think any candidate that puts the time in to do that is going to achieve something better than name recognition, and that's personal recognition.''
U.S. Killed Civilians in Raids
The New York Times > International > Middle East > Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders
The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.
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Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.
The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said.
American General Approved Torture
Sanchez in the frame, papers show - After Saddam - www.smh.com.au
The senior US military officer in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, approved senior officials at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail using military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, newly obtained documents show.
The US policy was approved early last September, shortly after an army general from Washington inspected the jail and briefed Pentagon officials on the use of military police there to help implement the new high-pressure methods.
The documents spell out in greater detail than previously known the interrogation tactics General Sanchez authorised, and for the first time show that, before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees. Unnamed officials at US Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the most severe of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by General Sanchez. As a result some of them were removed.
June 12, 2004
See the Film. Remember Why We Fight
The Hunting of the President - official movie site, from Regent Releasing
Overkill
The New York Times > Washington > Day After Day, Funeral Filled the Small Screen
But one senior network executive who is not a member of a news division said the decisions were driven, at least in part, by the sense that any network that missed any of the ceremonies could be called disrespectful of Mr. Reagan. "God forbid we would have missed Nancy at the coffin," the executive said.
The Reagan Legacy
It's as if Gore Vidal coined the phrase "United States of Amnesia" for the moment of Ronald Reagan's death. Journalists, commentators and politicians gushed about this "optimistic" man of "vitality" who demonstrated a profound "love of his country" and single-handedly revived "patriotism." Most of the media coverage was a romanticized hail-to-the-chief celebration of a majestic figure rather than a realistic examination of what this man did for, or to, the country and the world.
The end of Reagan's life was sad. His family, like many others, went through a decadelong trauma as it watched Alzheimer's claim their loved one. (We applaud Nancy Reagan's effort to persuade George W. Bush to lift the restrictions he imposed on stem-cell research to placate the religious right.) But death, however it comes, does not warrant the rewriting of a life. And until the current occupant side-stepped into the White House, Reagan was the worst American leader since Herbert Hoover.
It would be impossible in this space to catalogue all the damage Reagan wrought in eight years. The standard line is that he won the cold war, but elsewhere in this issue Jonathan Schell corrects that notion. It is also worth noting that this man who yearned so much for freedom and democracy in Soviet-bloc nations showed limited concern for democracy and human rights in other parts of the globe. After Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa, Reagan vetoed the measure. His Administration cuddled up with the fascistic and anti-Semitic junta of Argentina and backed militaries in El Salvador and Guatemala that massacred civilians. It moved to normalize relations with Augusto Pinochet, the tyrant of Chile. Reagan sent George Bush the First to the Philippines, where the Vice President toasted dictator Ferdinand Marcos for fostering "democracy." Pursuing a quasi-secret war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Reagan Administration violated international law and circumvented Congress to support contra rebels engaged in human rights abuses and, according to the CIA's own Inspector General, worked with suspected drug traffickers. Reagan covertly sent arms to the mullahs of Iran and courted Saddam Hussein, even after his use of chemical weapons. He appointed officials who claimed nuclear war was winnable, thus raising the chances that miscalculations by the Soviet Union or the United States would plunge the world into chaos.
On the home front Reagan was almost as divisive and disingenuous as the second Bush, as William Greider recounts on page 5. His deficit-causing supply-side tax cuts (derided by the elder Bush as "voodoo economics") were sold with phony numbers and sleight-of-hand accounting. These "trickle-down" tax cuts--coupled with a tremendous boost in military spending--were designed to bankrupt the government, pressuring it to reduce government spending and thereby justifying draconian cuts in social programs. (Remember ketchup as a vegetable?)
Reagan showed little concern for the deindustrialized workers who suffered during the 1980s, and he was actively hostile to unions, firing PATCO air-traffic controllers en masse after they struck for better pay and working conditions. His Attorney General, Edwin Meese, displayed little regard for civil liberties, noting, "You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime." His Interior Secretary, James Watt, fancied dead trees over live ones. And no one in the Reagan White House appeared to care about a new pandemic that mainly killed homosexuals. Reagan's inaction and bigotry against gays and drug-users led to tens of thousands of deaths that might have been avoided if he had moved earlier.
Reagan effectively installed a revolving door at the White House through which key advisers passed on their way to lucrative jobs as lobbyists--and subsequent indictments for influence peddling. Despite his Administration's "law and order" language, by the 1990s nearly 200 Reagan-era officials had faced investigation and prosecution. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's conclusion that Reagan had "created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others" in the Iran/contra scandal holds true for the more widespread lack of ethical standards. His Administration weakened workplace safety standards. He presided over an S&L; scandal that stuck taxpayers with a bill approaching a trillion dollars. He appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. He tried to gut the Civil Rights Commission, and his Administration waged a relentless series of attacks on affirmative action while trying to grant tax-exempt status to private schools that engaged in racial discrimination.
Reagan, to a limited degree, had the ability to transcend ideology when reality intruded. When conservatives warned that Mikhail Gorbachev was a fraud with a stealth plan to destroy the United States, Reagan overcame his own history of right-wing dogmatism and negotiated with the Soviet leader. And after his tax cuts yielded enormous deficits, he went along with tax hikes to stop the fiscal bleeding (he apparently persuaded himself that he and Congress were merely closing loopholes). But such moments were far outnumbered by others suggesting at best a shaky grip on reality; he often seemed to live in a world of his own--with Reader's Digest his only news source.
But he won two presidential elections commandingly, and over the course of several decades inspired a devoted following that now wants to etch his name and image on currency, public buildings and monuments across the land. He won by displaying an optimism about his ideology that most right-leaning politicians before him had lacked; voters, even when they didn't particularly like his ideas, liked Reagan himself, because he convinced them he believed in these ideas and in a noble vision of America.
Reagan once malapropped, "Facts are stupid things." He meant "stubborn," and we hope that they are, and that the facts of Reagan's presidency survive the hagiography now being written. His life, as the clichι-soaked commentators note incessantly, may have been an "American life." But his presidency was no morning in America; it empowered and enabled some of the worst elements of public life in our country: greed, arrogance, neglect and hypocrisy. This Reagan legacy, unfortunately, survives its namesake, and, worse, it has been enhanced by the son of his Vice President.
Michael Moore Now Bowling for Blair
Zap2it.com MOVIES | MOVIE NEWS | STORY
Michael Moore isn't content to rest on his laurels when it comes to speaking out against the Iraq war.
The 50-year-old filmmaker -- whose latest documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top prize at May's Cannes Film Festival for its highly critical look at President George W. Bush's connections with high-ranking Saudis and his hawkish Iraq policies -- has new prey in sight: British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
More Voters to Be Denied Right to Vote in Florida
GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Jeb Bush -- A BuzzFlash Editorial
In the name of democracy, Jeb is preparing to steal another presidential election for his 'bro. If that doesn't get you into the World Wide Hypocrisy (WWH) finals, what will?
That's right, after successfully purging thousands of black people from the voter rolls in Florida in 2000 and denying entitled citizens, almost all Democrats, the right to vote, Jeb is back to try it again.
You know the scam. It was the infamous "felons purge." Greg Palast exposed it as a calculated effort to keep as many blacks from voting in Florida as possible. Of course, Jeb and his frightful cohab -- we mean cohort -- Katherine Harris claimed that they were just following Florida law by keeping felons from voting. But what they intentionally did was knowingly expunge such a wide net of names that they would also keep thousands of valid voters from exercising their Constitutional right to choose a president.
This one anti-democracy crime alone cost Al Gore Florida, even before Nino Scalia and his felonious five stole it for Bush.
Reagan in Black and White
He Brought Back Black and White
EXCERPT:
Reagan was silent for years on AIDS. He tried to get tax exemptions for racist Bob Jones University. He originally opposed the Martin Luther King holiday before signing it into law. He did veto an extension of the Civil Rights Act in 1988 and defanged the US Civil Rights Commission. He exchanged schools for the prison boom. Reagan's legacy is still alive. The senior President Bush vetoed a major civil rights bill in 1990 and vetoed an increase in the minimum wage. President Clinton slashed welfare. The junior President Bush campaigned at Bob Jones and sided with the white students who wanted to destroy affirmative action at the University of Michigan.
Pope fears Bush is Anti-Christ
According to freelance journalist Wayne Madsden, "George W Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to 'evil doers,' in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations--the anti-Christ."
Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.
Before he became pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."
The pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution.
Madsen contends that "Bush is a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult."
COPYRIGHT 2003 Catholic New Times, Inc.
2000 All Over Again in Florida
Florida elections division chief quits amid controvery on voter rolls: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls.
Ed Kast, who has worked for the state elections division for more than a decade, said only that he was resigning to "pursue other opportunities."
McCain for Veep--Could It Happen?
Senator Kerry should pick Wes Clark.--Editor
McCain's Resistance Doesn't Stop Talk of Kerry Dream Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has discussed the vice presidency with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on several occasions, the most recent in the past two weeks, informed sources said yesterday. But the conversations have gone nowhere because McCain believes such a bipartisan ticket would not work and could weaken the presidency, they said.
Limbaugh Also Apparently Addicted to Divorce
Rush Limbaugh and wife split up
Florida-based radio show host Rush Limbaugh and his wife, Marta, have decided to end their 10-year marriage, the third for each of them.
A statement from the popular conservative pontificator's Los Angeles publicists Friday said that the couple had separated and would seek an amicable resolution.
The reasons for the split were not revealed, although Limbaugh experienced a rough personal period last year when he became hooked on prescription pain killers.
Limbaugh married his wife, a former Jacksonville aerobics instructor, in 1994 in a ceremony at the Virginia home of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In 1996 the couple moved into a mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla., estimated to be worth $30 million.
Limbaugh and his wife, each of whom has been married three times, marked their 10th wedding anniversary on May 27.
June 11, 2004
Interesting...Privatize Iraqi Occupation?
Progressive News - An Iraqi 'Free' State by Charles Knight
An Iraqi 'Free' State
by Charles Knight
published by Project for Defense Alternatives
The neocons are a tenacious bunch. Last week I got together with an old college roommate who grew up to become a neocon insider in Washington. On the way to meet him I practiced my nuanced "I told you so" lines in anticipation that he would be anxious and vulnerable about the great project unfolding and apparently collapsing in Iraq. Instead he was positively glowing and enthusiastic about the future.
He told me he had just returned from a high-level weekend retreat at a location near Washington that he could not disclose. In the course of a single day they had gone from "very troubling" assessments of the prospects for the new Interim Government to detailing an "entirely new program for freedom" in Iraq. Somewhat dubious, I asked him what this could be. Earnestly he proceeded to outline the new plan.
First he reminded me that the Bush administration believes that "government is a bad way (sic) to do anything worthwhile" and that the policy in Iraq has been to privatize as many functions as possible.
The big new idea coming out of the weekend retreat was to privatize the whole affair. The Iraqis don't seem to be too keen on the democratic way we want to show them, so why not just dispense with the Iraqi government idea all together.
When, as expected, the new Iraqi government body collapses in failure later this year the U.S. will declare the new Iraq corporation modeled after the Congo Free State owned privately for thirty years by King Leopold II of Belgium in the late 19th Century. Secretary Rumsfeld, working closely with the Vice President's office, will put together a consortium of multinational corporations to invest in, run, and make profitable the Iraq Free State, Inc. "We've been criticized for unilateralism," he said, "but this will involve multinational corporations. You can't fault that."
"Look," my friend continued, "everyone knows that Iraq was cobbled together by the Brits and isn't a nation state in any true sense. Our corporate model will avoid all the problems of getting Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites to work together in a national government. We'll just appoint a board of directors, reserving a couple spots for prominent native Iraqis. Leave the day to day stuff to the CEO who could come over from any of the major corporations doing business in Iraq already."
"Between you and me," he went on, "the only important parts of the Iraqi economy are the natural resources and some agriculture along the river banks. The rest of the place, well forget it! Oh, I almost forgot, the Iraq Free State, Inc. will make some real good money from leasing bases to the U.S. military. With any luck in a few years the company can go public and the principals should be a position to become truly rich."
"But Iraq has population of 25 million," I protested, "and the business you have described would at best only employ a few hundred thousand."
"Yes that is a problem," he admitted, "and it took several hours at the retreat to come up with an answer. Many Iraqis actually prefer Arab tribal life to the modern market economy we have in mind, so we are thinking of declaring large parts of the desert 'Arab Reserves' where Iraqis who don't work for the company can pursue their traditional nomadic customs. In ten years or so these areas might even become a tourist attraction providing investors another profit center -- imagine camel rides and resorts with luxury air-conditioned tents surrounding large 'blue oasis' pools."
"Besides, a corporate structure makes it much easier to deal with recalcitrant characters and dead-enders. You just give them a pink slip and tell them to get off the property."
"Have you briefed the president on this yet," I asked.
"Yes, I'm pretty sure he'll buy in. He said he really liked the sound of the 'free state thing'; that it went really well with his big freedom theme."
"Oh, one other thing," he said as we parted, "The Israelis are really excited about the idea. How does 'Palestine Free State' sound?"
Charles Knight is the co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Commonwealth Institute; http://www.comw.org/pda/
The American Public Awakens
Politics News Article | Reuters.com
A majority of U.S. voters now say it was not worth going to war in Iraq and feel the United States is getting bogged down there, according to a Los Angeles Times poll published on Friday.
In the survey of 1,230 registered voters conducted across the country from Saturday through Tuesday, 53 percent said it was not worth going to war in Iraq while 43 percent said it was and 4 percent said they did not know. The sample has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The paper said the survey was the first time one of its voter surveys found a majority of voters doubting whether the situation in Iraq was worth the United States going to war there.
Ellsberg Speaks
Ellsberg: Still Ahead of the Curve
Excerpt:
The Bush administration: Bush and his entire cabinet are indictable at The Hague. Id like to see Congress say these crimes must be investigated. They deserve impeachment. Id do anything nonviolent and truthful to get this gang out of power. It will take a lot of people taking risks and showing courage.
Media Gets Reagan's Record Wrong...Over and Over
Don't know much about history (or economics) ... [Media Matters for America]
George Milhous Bush?
It's 1973-74 all over again.--Editor
Capitol Hill Blue: Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
Bush Leagues
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15
President George W. Bushs increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leaders state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as enemies of the state.
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
It reminds me of the Nixon days, says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. Thats the mood over there.
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be Gods will and then tells aides to fuck over anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
Were at war, theres no doubt about it. What I dont know anymore is just who the enemy might be, says one troubled White House aide. We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.
Aides say the President gets hung up on minor details, micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
This is what is killing us on Iraq, one aide says. We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bushs inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administrations war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administrations lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft the Blues Brothers because theyre on a mission from God.
The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion, says one aide. They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them fucking assholes in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him unpatriotic or anti-American.
The mood here is that were under siege, theres no doubt about it, says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. In this administration, you dont have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue
Media Fawning Myopic
Excerpt:
Yet the neocon ululaters tell us on CNN, he was the planet's salvation, thanks to his destruction of the empire of the last batch of evildoers, the Soviets.
Never mind that Russkies were collapsing under the weight of their military spending and imploding agro-industrial (such as it was) infrastructure. According to the talking heads, it was Reagan, with Britain's Margaret Thatcher as leading lady, who slew the Red Menace, as if former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, Poland's Solidarity movement, and other factors had nothing to do with it.
Judging from mainstream media coverage, Reagan was the guy in the white hat β both Time and Newsweek ran the identical photo β beloved by all, even though his approval ratings consistently ranked below Bill Clinton's.
Reagan Was No Neocon
As Ron Reagan, Jr. said: 'My Dad crapped bigger ones than George W. Bush.'--Editor
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: How Reagan Beat the Neocons
How Reagan Beat the Neocons
By JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS
Almost everywhere in the press one reads that President Bush sounds an awful lot like Ronald Reagan. Commentators and politicians alike have drawn the comparison between Mr. Bush's "muscular" foreign policy and the Reagan doctrine. However macho and aggressive Mr. Bush's foreign policy may be, when it came to the Soviet Union, Mr. Reagan's was anything but.
In 1985, Mr. Reagan sent a long handwritten letter to Mikhail Gorbachev assuring him that he was prepared "to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate such a withdrawal" of the Soviets from Afghanistan. "Neither of us," he added, "wants to see offensive weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, deployed in space." Mr. Reagan eagerly sought to work with Mr. Gorbachev to rid the world of such weapons and to help the Soviet Union effect peaceful change in Eastern Europe.
This offer was far from the position taken by the neoconservative advisers who now serve under Mr. Bush. Twenty years ago in the Reagan White House, they saw no possibility for such change, and indeed many of them subscribed to the theory of "totalitarianism" as unchangeable and irreversible. Mr. Reagan was also informed that the Soviet Union was preparing for a possible pre-emptive attack on the United States. This alarmist position was taken by Team B, formed in response to the more prudently analytical position of the C.I.A. and then composed of several members of the present Bush administration. The team was headed by Richard Pipes, the Russian historian at Harvard, whose stance was summed up in the title of one of his articles: "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War."
Not only did the neocons oppose Mr. Reagan's efforts at rapprochement, they also argued against engaging in personal diplomacy with Soviet leaders. Advisers like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, now steering our foreign policy, held that America must escalate to achieve "nuclear dominance" and that we could only deal from a "strategy of strength." Mr. Reagan believed in a strong military, but to reassure the Soviet Union that America had no aggressive intentions, he reminded Leonid Brezhnev of just the opposite. From 1945 to 1949, the United States was the sole possessor of the atomic bomb, and yet, Mr. Reagan emphasized to Mr. Brezhnev, no threat was made to use the bomb to win concessions from the Soviet Union.
The Star Wars missile defense system advocated by Mr. Reagan is often regarded as the final nail in the coffin of communism, as a military system that the Soviets could not afford and only fear. The first assumption was right, the second dubious. Margaret Thatcher, who urged Mr. Reagan to regard Mr. Gorbachev as "a man we can work with," also gave him more blunt advice on Star Wars: "I'm a chemist; I know it won't work." Like Mrs. Thatcher, Soviet scientists regarded it as a fantasy, and thus they were hardly impressed with Mr. Reagan's offer to share it with them once it was perfected. (It still hasn't been, nearly two decades later.)
Those advisers in the Bush administration who regard themselves as Reaganites ought to remember that Mr. Reagan ceased heeding their advice. According to George Shultz's memoir, "Turmoil and Triumph," Mr. Reagan would become uneasy when his hawkish advisers entered the Oval Office. In his own memoir, "An American Life," Mr. Reagan ridiculed the "macabre jargon" of warheads, I.C.B.M.'s, kill ratios and "throw weights," the payload capacity of long-range missiles. The president thought their figures sounded like "baseball scores" and dismissed his pesky advisers. Mr. Reagan rejected the neocons; George W. Bush stands by them no matter what.
The difference between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush's militant brain staff is that he believed in negotiation and they in escalation. They wanted to win the cold war; he sought to end it. To do so, it was necessary not to strike fear in the Soviet Union but to win the confidence of its leaders. Once the Soviet Union could count on Mr. Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev not only was free to embark on his domestic reforms, to convince his military to go along with budget cuts, to reassure his people that they no longer needed to worry about the old bogey of "capitalist encirclement," but, most important, he was also ready to announce to the Soviet Union's satellite countries that henceforth they were on their own, that no longer would tanks of the Red Army be sent to put down uprisings. The cold war ended in an act of faith and trust, not fear and trembling.
But many neocons came to hate Mr. Reagan, saying he lost the cold war since he left office with communism still in place. Some even believed that the cold war would soon be resumed. Dick Cheney, as President George H. W. Bush's defense secretary, dismissed perestroika ("restructuring") as a sham and glasnost ("opening") as a ruse, he insisted that Mr. Gorbachev would be replaced by a belligerent militarist; and warned America to prepare for the re-emergence of an aggressive communist state.
Mr. Reagan gave us an enlightened foreign policy that achieved most of its diplomatic objectives peacefully and succeeded in firmly uniting our allies. Today those who claim to be Mr. Reagan's heirs give us "shock and awe" and a "muscular" foreign policy that has lost its way and undermined valued friendships throughout the world.
John Patrick Diggins is a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of the forthcoming, "Ronald Reagan: Morning in America
Reagan: An Economic Legend
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: An Economic Legend
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a reporter defends prettifying history: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That principle has informed many of this week's Reagan retrospectives. But let's not be bullied into accepting the right-wing legend about Reaganomics.
Here's a sample version of the legend: according to a recent article in The Washington Times, Ronald Reagan "crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history." Actually, the 1982-90 economic expansion ranks third, after 1991-2001 and 1961-69 but even that comparison overstates the degree of real economic success.
The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment.
The depressed economy in 1982 also explains "Morning in America," the economic boom of 1983 and 1984. You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump. (Last year, Argentina's economy grew more than 8 percent.)
And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.
Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent.
In other words, it all played out just as "left-wing Keynesian economics" predicted.
In the late 1970's most economists believed that eliminating the high inflation then prevailing in the United States would require inflicting a lot of pain: the economy would have to go through an extended period of high unemployment and depressed output. Once the inflation had been wrung out of the system, the unemployment rate could go back down. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it's instructive to put a graph showing the actual track of unemployment and inflation during the 1980's next to a figure from a 1978-vintage textbook showing a hypothetical disinflation scenario; the two look almost identical.
Ronald Reagan didn't decide to inflict that pain. The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.
There was, in short, nothing magical about the Reagan economy. The United States did, eventually, experience an economic miracle but not until Bill Clinton's second term. Only then did the economy achieve a combination of rapid growth, low unemployment and quiescent inflation that confounded the conventional economic wisdom. (I'm aware, by the way, that this plain statement of fact will generate an avalanche of angry mail. Irrational Clinton hatred remains a powerful force in American life.)
It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for "Morning in America."
So here's my plea: let's honor Mr. Reagan for his real achievements, not dishonor him and mislead the nation with false claims about his economic record.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
UK Voters Send Blair Message About Iraq with Massive Defeat at Polls
We can do this in November to the Republican Chickenhawks over here, folks.--Editor
CNN.com - Iraq dents Blair at British polls - Jun 11, 2004
Excerpt:
Britons opposed to the war against Iraq have handed Prime Minister Tony Blair a stinging rebuff in local elections with the ruling Labour Party coming third behind the main opposition parties.
Government ministers and analysts agreed the Iraq war and violence since had taken its toll, with election returns raising new doubts about Blair's future as British PM in his seventh year in power.
June 10, 2004
Farewell to an American Original: Ray Charles
Musician Ray Charles Dies at 73 (washingtonpost.com)
Ray Charles, the blind singer and piano player who erased musical boundaries with classic hits such as "What'd I Say," "Hit the Road Jack" and the melancholy ballad "Georgia on My Mind," died Thursday. He was 73.
Charles died of acute liver disease at his Beverly Hills home at 11:35 a.m., surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.
The Grammy winner's last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.
66 Things to Think About When Flying Into Reagan National Airport
by David Corn
The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.
Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.
Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L; scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."
Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.
"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African- American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra.
"Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.
Palast Site Attacked for Publishing Dissenting View of Reagan
Greg's people emailed me and said his site's server was under "constant attack" since publishing the piece excerpted below.--Editor
Excerpt:
You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.
Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.
In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.
People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.
Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.
And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog
then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.
Editor's Note + Reagan One Hell of a Hedgehog
We have been away on business this past week, and have not updated our site. Many apologies to our daily readers. On the bright side: we hope you took the opportunity to catch up on your back-reading here at SoonerThought! Coming soon--more book reviews and our big pre-GOP convention reports! And now today...a word or two about Ronald Reagan that do not invoke fawning platitudes or over-lionization of the amiable dunce who snoozed in the Oval Office for eight years.--Editor
Ronald Reagan, Hedgehogs And The November Election
by Arianna Huffington
Since Ronald Reagan's passing, the media have been filled with a celebration of his youthful spirit, his indomitable optimism, his faith in America's greatness and in America's goodness. His words have been reverberating: "morning again in America," "springtime of hope," "a promised land," "the last best hope of man on earth."
The imagery varied, but a single, overarching principle remained: Reagan's pledge to return America to its essential role as "a shining city on a hill," a place of goodness, promise and hope.
In other words, Ronald Reagan was one hell of a hedgehog.
No, I'm not speaking ill of the dead. I'm referring to the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin who famously divided mankind into hedgehogs and foxes, taking his cue from a line in an ancient Greek poem by Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
According to Berlin, the fox will "pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way." This is in sharp contrast to the hedgehog's "unchanging, all embracing . . . unitary inner vision."
Above all else, it is Reagan's unwaveringly positive vision of America that the nation - friends and foes alike - is honoring this week. But once all the eulogizing is over, some powerful lessons will remain for the November election.
You see, George Bush is presenting himself as a steadfast hedgehog, and at the same time trying to paint John Kerry as an intellectually promiscuous fox - and a flip-flopping fox to boot.
Not a bad strategy, since there's no question that the country is longing for a hedgehog at the helm. If anything, this week has both confirmed and fed the hunger for hedgehoggery. Which is why there is no way that a fox, even a very clever fox, can beat a hedgehog, even a fanatical, delusional, incompetent hedgehog like George Bush. We are sick and tired of foxy triangulating and foxy slicing-and-dicing of the message.
The memorial pomp and circumstance and remembrance of GOP triumphs past surrounding Reagan's death have already given Bush's sagging approval ratings a bounce. But in the end, the president's vision is an irrevocably dark one, with fear at its heart. While Reagan rarely missed an opportunity to invoke America's greatness, Bush rarely misses a chance to scare and divide us.
Reagan spoke of an America whose "heart is full; her torch is still golden, her future bright . . . She will carry on unafraid, unashamed and unsurpassed. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is."
Bush spoke of an America threatened by "thousands of dangerous killers . . . now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go off without warning," cautioning that "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us . . . We cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Which America would you rather live in?
"Threat" must have really focus group-tested well, because the word runs like a dark thread through Bush's speeches: "a threat, a real threat"; "an unique and urgent threat"; "a real and dangerous threat"; "a serious and growing threat"; "a threat of unique urgency"; "a grave threat"; "a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
Reagan built his legacy on hope; Bush has built his on fear. And no matter how hard Karl Rove tries, he'll never be able to cloak Bush in Reagan's mantle. It just doesn't fit.
So it is into this void that John Kerry must stride, offering the American people a wise and hopeful and unifying hedgehog to counter Bush's dangerous and dogmatic and divisive one.
To do this, he doesn't have to turn himself into the second coming of the Great Communicator. As Reagan once said of his ability to connect with the public: "I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things."
In other words, John Kerry doesn't need speaking lessons or media coaching or more down-home outfits. He just needs to speak of great things.
Fortunately, he's already doing it: "More than ever, Americans are desperate for us to leave the petty and the partisan behind, and reach for America's higher promise. And the reason is simple: America is more than a piece of geography - more than a name of a country; it is the most powerful idea in human history, freedom and equal opportunity for all. And that idea demands a solemn responsibility from every citizen - that we do all that we can to help realize the promise of America."
Now he has to drive this bold and buoyant vision home, not just occasionally but again and again and again. The great lesson of Ronald Reagan's career is the power of knowing what your core vision is - and never leaving home without it.
John Kerry has appropriately cancelled all of his major public events scheduled for this week - including a pair of multimillion-dollar fund-raising concerts in Los Angeles and New York.
He should use the break to come out swinging with his inner hedgehog in full public view.
Reagan's Shameful Legacy: Mourn for Us, Not the Proto-Bush
by Ted Rall
NEW YORK--For a few weeks, it became routine. I heard them dragging luggage down the hall. They paused in a little lounge near the dormitory elevator to bid farewell to people they'd met during their single semester. Those I knew knocked on my door. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Where are you going to go?" A shrug. They were eighteen years old and their bright futures had evaporated. They had worked hard in junior and senior high school, harder than most, but none of that mattered now. President Reagan, explained the form letters from the Office of Financial Aid, had slashed the federal education budget.
Which is why the same grim tableau of shattered hopes and dreams was playing itself out across the country. Colleges and universities were evicting their best and brightest, straight A students, stripping them of scholarships. Some transferred to less-expensive community colleges; others dropped into the low-wage workforce. Now, nearly a quarter century later, they are still less financially secure and less educated than they should have been. Our nation is poorer for having denied them their potential.
They were by no means the hardest-hit victims of Reaganism. Reagan's quack economists trashed scholarships and turned welfare recipients into homeless people and refused to do anything about the AIDS epidemic, all so they could fund extravagant tax cuts for a tiny sliver of the ultra rich. Their supply-side sales pitch, that the rich would buy so much stuff from everybody else that the economy would boom and government coffers would fill up, never panned out. The Reagan boom lasted just three years and created only low-wage jobs. When the '80s were over, we were buried in the depths of recession and a trillion bucks in debt. Poverty grew, cities decayed, crime rose. It took over a decade to dig out.
Reagan's defenders, people who don't know the facts or choose to ignore them, claim that "everybody" admired Reagan's ebullient personality even if some disagreed with his politics. That, like the Gipper's tall tales about welfare queens and "homeless by choice" urban campers, is a lie. Millions of Americans cringed at Reagan's simplistic rhetoric, were terrified that his anti-Soviet "evil empire" posturing would provoke World War III, and thought that his appeal to selfishness and greed--a bastardized blend of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand--brought out the worst in us. We rolled our eyes when Reagan quipped "There you go again"; what the hell did that mean? Given that he made flying a living hell (by firing the air traffic controllers and regulating the airlines), I'm not the only one who refuses to call Washington National Airport by its new name. His clown-like dyed hair and rouged cheeks disgusted us. We hated him during the dark days he made so hideous, and, with all due respect, we hate him still.
Not everybody buys the myth that Reagan won the Cold War by demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this [Berlin] wall" or bankrupting the Soviet Union via the arms race--Zbigniew Brezinski's plot to "draw the Russians into the Afghan trap" by funding the mujahedeen, Chernobyl and covert U.S. schemes to destabilize the ruble had more to do with the end of the USSR. Gangsterism replaced the ossified cult of the state, millions of Russians were reduced to paupers, revived radical Islamism in Central Asia and eliminated our sole major ideological and military rival. That increased our arrogance and insularity, left us in charge of the world and to blame for everything, paving the road to 9/11. (Reagan even armed the attacks' future perpetrators.) Anyway, the Cold War isn't over. In which direction do you think those old ICBMs point today?
The lionizers are correct about one thing: Reagan was one of our most influential presidents since FDR, whose New Deal safety net he carefully disassembled. He pioneered policies now being implemented by George W. Bush: trickle down economics, corporate deregulation, radicalizing the courts, slithering around inconvenient laws and international treaties. On the domestic front, he unraveled America's century-old social contract. What the poor needed was a kick in the ass, not a handout, said a president whose wealthy patrons bought him a house and put clothes on his wife Nancy. National parks were to be exploited for timber and oil, not protected. The federal tax code, originally conceived to redistribute wealth from top to bottom, was "reformed" to eradicate social justice.
Bush also models his approach to foreign policy on that of the original Teflon President. Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art. In 1983, anxious to look tough after cutting and running from Lebanon, Reagan sent marines to topple the Marxist government of Grenada. His pretext for invading this Caribbean island was the urgent plight of 500 medical students supposedly besieged by rampaging mobs. But when they arrived at the airport in the United States, the quizzical young men and women told reporters they were confused, never having felt endangered or seen any unrest.
In a bizarre 1985 effort to free a few American hostages being held in Lebanon, Reagan authorized the sale of 107 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, at the time one of our staunchest enemies, with the proceeds to be used to fund rightist death squads in Nicaragua--something Congress had expressly forbidden him to do. Evidence strongly suggests that Iran-Contra was at least his second dirty deal with Islamic Iran, the first being the October Surprise, which delayed the release of the Iranian embassy hostages until after the 1980 election was over. Ronald Reagan eventually admitted to "trading arms for hostages," yet avoided prosecution for treason and the death penalty.
Reagan, like Bush 43, technically served in the military yet studiously avoided combat. Both men were physically robust, intellectually inadequate, poorly traveled former governors renowned for stabbing friends on the back--Reagan when he named names during McCarthyism. Both appointed former generals as secretaries of state and enemies of the environment to head the Department of the Interior. Both refused to read detailed briefings, worked short hours, behaved erratically in public appearances, ducked questions about sordid pasts, and relied on Christianist (the radical right equivalent of Islamist) depictions of foes as "evil" and America, invariably as embodied by himself and the Republicans, as "good." Based on intelligence as phony as that floated to justify the war against Iraq, Reagan bombed Muslim Libya.
June 06, 2004
Potential Kerry Running Mates Vie to Sing His Praises Loudest
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
WASHINGTON, June 4 On Tuesday morning, Senator Bob Graham boarded a plane in Virginia, flew to Florida with John Kerry, and introduced him to an overheated crowd outside Palm Beach as "a man of high intelligence, great energy and a sincere commitment to what's important to us today for our children and grandchildren."
In Des Moines the same morning, Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa stood outside the state capitol behind a "John Kerry for President" lectern and next to men wearing "Firefighters for Kerry" T-shirts and accused the Bush administration of cutting spending on domestic security.
Back in Washington, meanwhile, a top fund-raiser installed by Senator John Edwards inside the Democratic Party picked up the phone for another day of raising money for his new client, Mr. Kerry.
The campaign for the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket is on, and Mr. Kerry is reaping the benefits every day, as several men widely mentioned as possible running mates, including Mr. Graham and Mr. Vilsack, crisscross the country and wallpaper the cable networks on his behalf, talking up Mr. Kerry and talking down President Bush, raising money for Mr. Kerry, and shoring up his position in contested states and with constituent groups that might not have supported him in the primaries.
It seems hard to imagine that only a few weeks ago Democrats, worried that Mr. Kerry was being hammered regularly by Vice President Dick Cheney, were urging him to name a running mate quickly. But with his position in the polls strong, a decision is now unlikely until July, according to aides, and Mr. Kerry is able to unleash a kennel full of attack dogs, all standing to gain from impressing the man who could be their boss.
"Each of them has been very gracious, and they all understand that the name of the game here is to win the White House back for the Democrats in November," said Fred Baron, a Dallas trial lawyer who led Mr. Edwards's fund-raising and now is a chairman of Kerry Victory '04, the Democrats' coordinated campaign.
The process of picking a running mate can be a humiliating one for those who had or still have presidential aspirations, as it reportedly was for Mr. Kerry when he was closely considered four years ago but not chosen by Vice President Al Gore. Unlike Mr. Kerry then, Mr. Edwards, of North Carolina, and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri find themselves in the humbling position of hoping to be tapped after running presidential campaigns of their own.
But it is in the interests of nominees if running-mate hopefuls think they can improve their chances. Mr. Gore's campaign let it be known, for example, that people on his short list might help their appeal by raising money for him, said a Democrat close to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and Mr. Lieberman took the hint, holding a major fund-raiser for Mr. Gore in the final days before he made his decision, just as Mr. Kerry and the other senator on the list, Mr. Edwards, had done.
Mr. Baron said there were no fund-raising goals for those seeking the No. 2 spot on Mr. Kerry's ticket, nor was anyone keeping count of how much they were bringing in. And in general, Mr. Kerry is being even more discreet about his decision-making than Mr. Gore was. His campaign is doing little to encourage speculation about running mates; reporters traveling with Mr. Kerry only learned about a three-hour meeting he had on Thursday night in Minneapolis with James A. Johnson, the Minnesotan and veteran Democrat operative who is overseeing his selection process, when Mr. Johnson was spotted in an elevator afterward.
Those who have been vetted by Mr. Kerry to one degree or another deny, of course, that they are competing for his favor. "This is not a job for which a person runs," said Mr. Graham, who endured the screening process with Michael S. Dukakis, Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore. "It's not something that you audition for."
Like any presumptive nominee, Mr. Kerry has many more surrogates at the ready, from fellow members of Congress to governors to his own campaign officials and even his crewmates from the Vietnam War.
But those who have been considered by Mr. Kerry or still hope to be a list that includes Mr. Edwards, Mr. Gephardt, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark of Arkansas, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico may have more cachet, aides acknowledge, and they have been quick to comply with requests from Mr. Kerry's campaign.
General Clark, for example, who formed a political action committee last month and quickly set to attacking Mr. Bush as having "chosen the easy life" over combat, has carried Mr. Kerry's flag in the South, speaking in Little Rock, Ark.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss., in the weeks since.
Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who has frequently accompanied Mr. Kerry on campaign swings there, raised about $300,000 for Mr. Kerry over the telephone in the past week, Mr. Nelson's spokesman said. And Mr. Vilsack has already drawn criticism in Iowa for his work for Mr. Kerry, which last month included trips to Kentucky, Arizona, Boston and New York, and will take him to Wisconsin to give a keynote address at a Democratic dinner on June 11.
Mr. Edwards has been a whirlwind of activity, speaking on Mr. Kerry's behalf in Columbus, Ohio; Cleveland; and Duluth, Minn., in the past two weeks. On Thursday he sent out an appeal via e-mail to his own list of supporters to "reach deep down and work nonstop to support John Kerry." Next weekend he will speak at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner held by the Florida Democratic Party and raise money for Mr. Kerry on the west coast of Florida, and he plans political and fund-raising swings for Mr. Kerry to Houston; Baton Rouge, La.; and Alabama later this month, aides said.
If Mr. Edwards seems the most eager or at least the most available of the bunch, Mr. Gephardt could be said to be striking a pose of studied nonchalance. Though he spoke at a Washington fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee on Thursday night, he has taken a relatively low profile of late. In May, he participated in two conference calls with reporters, and gave the keynote address at the Michigan Democratic Party's annual dinner in Detroit, aides said, but he has nothing more on his calendar at the Kerry campaign's behest until late August.
Each vice presidential aspirant, by this point, has a practiced nonanswer to questions about whether he wants the job, but their friends and confidants are less constrained.
"His view of all this is that you don't campaign for this job," said an associate of Mr. Gephardt's. "Running around and saying `me, me' isn't Dick's style and isn't going to help your cause. Obviously he'd like to be vice president, but if he isn't, he'd be comfortable going off and enjoying his life and making some money, as opposed to some younger candidates for whom this is an important step in keeping their political career alive."
But Carter Eskew, a consultant to Mr. Gore in 2000, said there was more than one way for aspirants to position themselves for the job. "Playing it cool, that's fine as a strategy," Mr. Eskew said. "You don't egregiously lobby for the job. There are some people who say that lobbying doesn't matter, anyway. But if it's done skillfully enough, people respect it."
It is unclear if either the Democrats' posturing or their actual performance on Mr. Kerry's behalf will influence his decision much, if at all. While members of Mr. Kerry's staff work with surrogates to book them at political events and on television and radio, Mr. Kerry is seldom aware of their activities unless they slip up and draw criticism, or show up to share a plane ride or a microphone.
Besides, Mr. Eskew said, "Getting chosen to be V.P. is a little bit like what it used to be like to get into Harvard. All the extracurricular stuff being president of the band there are many paths to get to be considered for admission, but in the final analysis the interview matters most."
June 05, 2004
Rest in Peace, Mr. President
SoonerThought sends sincere condolences to the Reagan Family and offers thanks to President Reagan for his service to his nation.
June 04, 2004
Liar Liar
Humphreys campaign admits overstating jobs
2004-06-04
By Chris Casteel
The Oklahoman
WASHINGTON U.S. Senate candidate Kirk Humphreys oft-repeated claim that 54,000 jobs were created in Oklahoma City during his tenure as mayor is inaccurate, Humphreys press secretary conceded Thursday.
Rick Buchanan said the Humphreys campaign will stop using the number immediately.
In the campaigns first television ad, which began airing last month, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe cited the 54,000 new jobs figure in praising Humphreys; in the most recent ad, Humphreys uses the number. The figure also is a staple of Humphreys stump speeches.
Buchanan took responsibility for the mistake, which was caused by using the wrong set of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Buchanans admission came after The Oklahoman pointed out that the number Humphreys was using showed the growth in the labor force which includes the employed and unemployed rather than the number of people employed during Humphreys tenure as mayor.
Buchanan said he didnt want Humphreys or Inhofe blamed for the error. He said he came up with the number after reviewing Labor Department statistics.
Using the correct set of data from the Labor Department, Buchanan said, the number of new jobs created from May 1998, when Humphreys first took office in Oklahoma City, to October 2003, when he resigned to run for mayor, is closer to 38,000.
In an interview, Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said, If its a mistake, its an honest mistake. I know Kirk Humphreys would not say anything that he knew not to be true.
Inhofe was an early supporter of Humphreys, who is running for the Republican nomination to replace U.S. Sen. Don Nickles, R-Ponca City.
Oklahoma City or metro area?
However, the new number still greatly overstates the number of new jobs in the city over which Humphreys presided, because it accounts for employment in the entire Metropolitan Statistical Area. In the 2000 Census, the Oklahoma City MSA included six counties and cities such as Norman, Edmond, Midwest City, Moore, Guthrie and Shawnee.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oklahoma City had 16,332 more jobs in October 2003 when Humphreys left office than it did in May 1998, when he became mayor.
In an interview, Humphreys defended using job figures for the entire area, saying, The Oklahoma City metropolitan area is one economic engine, and Oklahoma City and the things weve done are the heart of the engine.
The whole area benefited from improvements Oklahoma City made to its airport and from the redevelopment of the downtown area, Humphreys said. He said the business magazines that ranked Oklahoma City higher this year than in previous years based their ratings on metro areas around the country.
Humphreys said the several counties in central Oklahoma are interdependent and that he has worked with the leaders of other communities to make the area stronger.
Is Oklahoma City better off that I was mayor and brought people together? he asked. I think so.
People who would argue with him using job numbers for the metro area, he said, are straining at gnats.
Bill Shapard, campaign manager for state Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony, one of Humphreys Republican primary opponents, said Thursday, Its not the first time Kirk Humphreys has had trouble telling the truth. He said he didnt take casino gambling money, but he did. Kirk has also proposed or supported over a dozen tax and fee increases, but he wont tell us the truth about them either.
Former Oklahoma Congressman Tom Coburn, a Muskogee Republican also running for the Senate seat, had no comment on the Humphreys campaigns mea culpa.
Unemployment also rose
Though the number of jobs rose in Oklahoma City and the metropolitan area during Humphreys tenure as mayor, job creation didnt keep pace with the growing labor force, according to labor bureau data.
In May 1998, Oklahoma Citys unemployment rate was 4.1 percent. By the time Humphreys left office last October, it had risen to 5.6 percent. For the metropolitan area, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7 percent to 5 percent in the same period.
Humphreys said in an interview that the unemployment rate in Oklahoma City was still probably lower than it was statewide and in the entire nation.
In fact, when Humphreys left office the rate was the same as the state figure and slightly lower than the national rate.
Humphreys said that the bottom line is that his leadership role helped bring improvements to major aspects of the city, including the schools and its downtown area.
On Tenet
The New York Times > Opinion > George Tenet Resigns
On Mr. Tenet's watch, the American intelligence community failed to comprehend the domestic threat from Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001. It either bungled or hyped its analysis of Iraq to spin fanciful threats from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, threats that President Bush used to justify the invasion. The C.I.A. itself apparently did not sign on to the more ludicrous visions offered by Mr. Rumsfeld's team, like the one of grateful Iraqis showering American soldiers with flowers. But it utterly missed the dismal state Iraq was in and the strength of the insurgency that Americans would face after the fall of Baghdad.
A Dream Candidate?
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Leap of Faith
His partisans describe Mr. Obama as a dream candidate, the point man for a new kind of politics designed to piece together a coalition reminiscent of the one blasted apart by the bullet that killed Robert Kennedy in 1968.
NY Times Features Guthrie, Oklahoma
The New York Times > Travel > Escapes > 36 Hours: In Guthrie, Okla.
June 03, 2004
The First Domino: CIA Director Tenet Resigns
By TSC Staff
6/3/2004 10:44 AM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/markets/marketfeatures/10164386.html
George Tenet, the Clinton administration appointee who became a lightning rod for criticism of the U.S. war on terrorism, resigned as CIA director Thursday.
Tenet cited "personal reasons," according to a statement President Bush made to reporters in Washington. No permanent successor has been chosen. The agency will be run by a deputy director on an interim basis after Tenet leaves the post in mid-July.
"He's done a superb job on behalf of the American people," Bush said. "George Tenet the kind of public servant you like to work with. He's strong, he's resolute. He's been a strong and able leader at the agency. He's been a strong leader in the war on terror."
While a favorite among CIA agents, Tenet has been faulted over the last two years for various failures of U.S. intelligence, including the inability to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks and apparently inflated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
A career Washington operative, Tenet's early career was accented by a Cold War expertise that some said left him ill-prepared for the changing nature of national security after Sept. 11. An investigative panel appointed by Bush last month criticized the CIA for failing properly to reckon the threat of al-Qaeda in months and years leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
In written testimony to the committee, Tenet defended the agency's record.
"There have been thousands of actions taken in this war over the past decade by CIA managers, operatives, and analysts," Tenet said. "Not every action we took was executed flawlessly, but I believe the record will show a keen awareness of the threat, a disciplined focus, and persistent efforts to track, disrupt, apprehend, and ultimately bring to justice Bin Ladin and his terrorist henchmen."
Tenet, who held the CIA post longer than any director except Allen Dulles, has also been at the center of a dispute over the administration's prewar claims about Iraq's weapons capabilities. The Justice Department is also looking into allegations that the public leak of a CIA operative's name last year originated in the Bush administration.
Church AND State
The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania.
Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort.
June 02, 2004
Was Bill Cosby Right, Wrong or Both?
A SoonerThought Editorial
By J. Alex Greenwood
Dr. Bill Cosby made news for a speech he presented deriding the "50% of poor blacks" for not doing anything to improve themselves:
As quoted in the media:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," Cosby' declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' . . . "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," he exclaimed. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is.'"
Some cheered. Some did not. He says he was not properly quoted by the "white paper," and it has been blown out of context. Perhaps yes--perhaps no, but without a complete transcript, I am inclined to take his word for it. I worked for a time with African American and Caucasian kids in an urban alternative school--these kids were there for disruptive or anti-social behavior. I saw many kids with parents who just did not give a damn what happened to their kids. No wonder many turned to guns, drugs and promiscuity.
In retrospect, I know that Cosby's observations about parents who choose not to play a role in their own childrens' lives is a real problem--one that is not always a direct consequence of institutionalized racism and ignorance. Often, it is parents with a chip on their shoulder or a monkey on their back, aggravated by a lack of education, initiative and/or crippling substance abuse problems.
Instead of trying to understand Cosby's meaning about 50% of the poor, the focus was that a black millionaire was attacking his own people for being poor.
If I understand his explanation on the Tavis Smiley show, Cosby's meaning could not have been more different. Cosby was lamenting not all poor blacks, but those who have squandered the freedom and opportunity paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before them. Yes, it definitely could still be a more level playing field for black people in America, but gains have been made. Cosby's speech belays his angst at watching many young black kids throw away those hard-won chances and opportunities for success, education and happiness.
The downside will be the whites who seize upon Cosby's remarks as some sort of vindication for their prejudices. Ignore them. Focus on the real message.
Maybe Cosby was the wrong guy to deliver this message--I mean, he's the sweet, rich comedian, author and icon who played Dr. Cliff Huxtable. But I don't think so. Cosby is a man who was on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and the actions of so many of today's young black people may make them appear to be ingrates in his eyes.
No wonder Bill Cosby is angry. And heartbroken.
And If My Grandma Had Been Born with Wings She Would Have Been A 747
President George W. Bush said the global war against terrorism is akin to the battle against tyranny during World War II and the Cold War and can be won only by the spread of freedom and democracy.
For Some Soldiers the War Never Ends
By ANDREW EXUM
Published: June 2, 2004
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Many Americans, feeling that we did not have enough troops in Iraq, were pleased when the Defense Department announced last month that 20,000 more soldiers were being sent to put down the insurgency and help rebuild the country. Unfortunately, few realized that many of these soldiers would serve long after their contractual obligations to the active-duty military are complete. In essence, they will no longer be voluntarily serving their country.
These soldiers are falling victim to the military's "stop-loss" policy and as a former officer who led some of them in battle, I find their treatment shameful. Announced shortly after the 9/11 attacks and authorized by President Bush, the stop-loss policy allows commanders to hold soldiers past the date they are due to leave the service if their unit is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Military officials rightly point out that stop-loss prevents a mass exodus of combat soldiers just before a combat tour.
But nonetheless, the stop-loss policy is wrong; it runs contrary to the concept of the volunteer military set up in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Many if not most of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have honorably completed their active duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq.
Among them are many of my former comrades in the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, I led a platoon of light infantry first to Kuwait in 2001 and then in combat in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in 2002. My men had all enlisted before the 9/11 attacks. In Kuwait and Afghanistan, they performed flawlessly, with several earning commendations for bravery in combat.
Yet even after two deployments to Afghanistan, and with many nearing the end of their commitments, these soldiers will have to head to Iraq this summer and remain there for at least a year. I remain close with them, and as the unit received its marching orders a few called me to express their frustration. To a man, they felt a sense of hopelessness they know they have little say over their future until the Army releases them.
I grew angry when my former radio operator told me the Army had canceled his orders to return home to San Francisco this month to start college. Another man had been due to leave the Army just two days after the order was given, but was instead told to draw his gear and prepare for 12 months in the desert. And as stressful as these orders are for the soldiers, imagine what their families are feeling. Theirs are lives interrupted by the needs of Iraq.
I wonder if I might have been affected too had I stayed at Fort Drum until the end of my service. (Instead, I left a year and half ago to complete my four-year obligation with a special operations unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thus don't fall under the Fort Drum stop-loss order.) I can imagine how angry and betrayed I would feel if, having served my obligation to the military for my college scholarship, I were told I was going to Iraq for a year against my wishes.
Of course, I would have done whatever was asked: as a commissioned officer, my oath of service to my country never really ends. But for enlisted soldiers, men and women who sign on with the Army for a predetermined period of service in lieu of commissions, stop-loss is a gross breach of contract.
These soldiers have already been asked to sacrifice much and have done so proudly. Yet the military continues to keep them overseas because it knows that through stop-loss it can do so legally, and that it will not receive nearly as much negative publicity as it would by reinstating the draft.
Volunteer soldiers on active duty don't have the right to protest or speak out against the policy. So my former radio operator has little option but to quietly pack up and put college on hold. For those of us who have seen these soldiers repeatedly face death, watching them march off again after they should have already left the Army is painful.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld continues to claim that the military, as now structured, can meet the needs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is simply wrong, as the Pentagon's actions make clear. In addition to stop-loss, the military is now activating significant portions of the Individual Ready Reserve as part of what it is calling an "involuntary mobilization."
The individual reserve consists of troops who are no longer expected to participate even in regular training; the idea is that they are to be called up only in a catastrophic national emergency. Most are veterans recently released from active duty; others are college students on scholarship and cadets at the service academies.
So several of my former soldiers now in the individual reserve who have left the Army, begun new careers and have not even been serving in reserve or National Guard units have now been told to expect orders to return to active duty in the near future.
Stop-loss and the activation of the inactive reserve show how politics has taken priority over readiness. The Pentagon uses these policies to meet its needs in Iraq because they are expedient and ask nothing of the civilian populace on the eve of a national election. This allows us to put off what is sure to be a difficult debate: whether our volunteer military is adequate to meet our foreign policy commitments. Meanwhile, in the absence of this debate, the men and women of our armed forces languish.
Last weekend, veterans of World War II were honored on the Mall in Washington for their sacrifices. Our government should begin treating the veterans of the global war on terrorism with a similar degree of respect, not as election-year fodder.
Andrew Exum, a former Army captain, is the author of the forthcoming "One Man's Army."
Democrat Herseth Kicks Elephant in SD
Democrat Wins Election for South Dakota House Seat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Democrats looking ahead to November got a bounce with the victory of Stephanie Herseth in a special election, marking the party's second straight congressional triumph and snatching a House seat in a heavily GOP-leaning state.
Herseth, a member of one of the state's most distinguished political families, narrowly defeated Republican Larry Diedrich in Tuesday's poll. She will immediately fill the seat of Bill Janklow, who resigned his seat before he went to jail over a deadly auto accident.
``We ran a positive, truthful campaign based on issues, not negative attacks,'' Herseth, 33, told a room of cheering, chanting supporters early Wednesday. She vowed to ``always do what's right for the entire state.''
Herseth now will serve out the seven months left in Janklow's term. She and Diedrich will meet again in November to compete for a full two-year term, but Herseth will have the advantage of incumbency in holding South Dakota's lone House seat.
The race was closely watched by national parties eager to pick up momentum ahead of the fall campaign.
The Republican and Democratic House campaign committees waged media blitzes in South Dakota, pouring $2 million into TV ads in a rural state of 765,000 people. In March, Vice President Dick Cheney campaigned for Diedrich in South Dakota. The parties also sent waves of supporters to the state to mobilize voters.
Herseth's win coincided with Democratic claims that a national tide is running their way. Recent polling shows support slumping for President Bush as well as for the Republican majority in the House.
Even after victories in South Dakota and in a special congressional election in Kentucky earlier this year, Democrats still must pick up 11 more seats in November to gain control of the House.
Republicans disputed Democratic claims about an anti-GOP trend. They noted that Herseth began the race with a huge lead, the residue of having run unsuccessfully for the seat in 2002.
They also emphasized that Diedrich had managed to close the margin in the polls dramatically in the race's final weeks.
Herseth won 51 percent, or 132,377 votes, to 49 percent, or 129,396 votes for Diedrich, a farmer, former state lawmaker and onetime head of the American Soybean Association.
Herseth is a Georgetown-educated lawyer who left the East Coast to launch a political career back home. She gained name recognition after running a close race in 2002 against Janklow, a Republican who moved to Congress after four terms as governor.
He resigned from Congress in January after being convicted of manslaughter in an accident that killed a motorcyclist. He served 100 days in jail and was released last month.
Diedrich, 46, and Herseth have both supported President Bush on the war in Iraq. The campaign instead focused on prescription drugs, Medicare, Bush's tax cuts and veterans issues.
Herseth's grandfather was governor and her father a longtime state lawmaker. She grew up on the family farm in north-central South Dakota before leaving for Georgetown, where she received both her undergraduate and law degrees.
The razor-thin contest was reminiscent of another recent high-profile South Dakota election that also went down to the wire. In 2002, Sen. Tim Johnson narrowly defeated Rep. John Thune after a campaign also marked by heavy advertising from both national parties.
``Compared to 524 votes, over 2,000 is a landslide here in South Dakota,'' Herseth said, referring to Johnson's margin over Thune.
Once Herseth is sworn in, Republicans will have 228 seats, to 206 for the Democrats with one Democratic-leaning independent.
Elsewhere Tuesday, Alabama voters chose Republican nominees for three seats on the Alabama Supreme Court -- races that became a referendum on ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore and his Ten Commandments monument. Moore was expelled from the bench by a judicial ethics panel for refusing to remove the 2 1/2-ton granite monument from the state courthouse rotunda.
Former Moore aide Tom Parker defeated Justice Jean Brown, another pro-Moore court candidate lost, while another was trailing in a four-way race that could lead to a runoff. With 94 percent of precincts reporting, Parker had 51 percent to Brown's 49 percent.
The Ten Commandments dispute also figured in the GOP primary for a U.S. House seat. Moore's attorney, Phillip Jauregui, was soundly defeated by six-term Rep. Spencer Bachus.
In New Mexico, Gary King, a former legislator and deputy Energy Secretary, won a Democratic congressional primary and will face GOP Rep. Steve Pearce in a district Democrats view as competitive in November. King is the son of former three-time Gov. Bruce King, the longest serving governor in state history.
On the Net:
Diedrich: http://diedrichforcongress.com
Herseth: http://www.hersethforcongress.org
Imagine What Your Taxes Buy...We Hardly Ever Try
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children" President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS OF JUST HOW MUCH OF YOUR MONEY FEEDS THE PENTAGON'S GLUTTONY.
June 01, 2004
Bush News Conference Transcript
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
WASHINGTON President Bush held a press conference Tuesday in the Rose Garden to address questions about Iraq. The following is a transcript:
Today in Baghdad, U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced the members of Iraq's new interim government.
Consulting with hundreds of Iraqis from a variety of backgrounds, Mr. Brahimi has recommended a team that possesses the talent, the commitment and the resolve to guide Iraq through the challenges that lie ahead.
On June 30th, this interim government will assume full sovereignty and will oversee all ministries and all functions of the Iraqi state. Those ministries will report to Prime Minister Allawi, who will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Iraq's interim government.
Dr. Allawi is a strong leader. He endured exile for decades and survived assassination attempts by Saddam's regime. He was trained as a physician, has worked as a businessman, and has always been an Iraqi patriot.
Prime Minister Allawi and Mr. Brahimi announced Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, an engineer from northern Iraq. They also announced two deputy presidents: Dr. Ibrahim Jaafari, who is a physician born in Karbala, and Dr. Rowsch Shaways, a prominent political and military leader who also has been a long-time opponent of Saddam's tyranny.
The new 33-member cabinet announced today reflects new leadership drawn from a broad cross-section of Iraqis. Five are regional officials, six are women, and the vast majority of government ministries will have new ministers.
The foremost task of this new interim government will be to prepare Iraq for a national election no later than January of next year, and to work with our coalition to provide the security that will make that election possible.
That election will choose a transitional national assembly, the first freely elected, truly representative national governing body in Iraq's history.
Earlier today, I spoke to Secretary General Kofi Annan. I congratulated him on the U.N.'s role in forming this new government. We also discussed the preparation for national elections, and our common work on a new Security Council resolution that will express international support for Iraq's interim government, reaffirm the world's security commitment to the Iraqi people, and encourage other U.N. members to join in the effort of building a free Iraq.
Last week, I outlined the five steps to helping Iraq achieve democracy and freedom. We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people.
The naming of the new interim government brings us one step closer to realizing the dream of millions of Iraqis: a fully sovereign nation with a representative government that protects their rights and serves their needs.
Many challenges remain. Today's violence underscores that freedom in Iraq is opposed by violent men who seek the failure not only of this interim government but of all progress toward liberty. We will stand with the Iraqi people in defeating the enemies of freedom and those who oppose democracy in Iraq.
The killers know that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. The return of tyranny to Iraq would embolden the terrorists, leading to more bombings, more beheadings and more murders of the innocent around the world.
The rise of a free and self-governing Iraqi will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology and give momentum to reformers across the region.
A free Iraq will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power and a victory for the civilized world and for the security of America.
The will of Iraqis and our coalition is firm. We will not be deterred by violence and terror. We will stand together and ensure that the future of Iraq is a future of freedom.
I'll take some questions.
Q: Mr. President, you just talked about more international support. With the new government and the expected Security Council resolutions, do you expect -- what do you expect in the way of other countries to come forward with major pledges of troops for Iraq? And do you think there's going to be more violence as the turnover occurs?
BUSH: I think on the second half of that question, yes, I believe there will be more violence because there's still violent people who want to stop progress. Their strategy hasn't changed. They want to kill innocent lives to shake our will and to discourage the people inside Iraq. That's what they want to do. And they're not going to shake our will.
In terms of whether or not there will be a major -- you said major commitment of new troops? Is that the adjective you used, "major"?
I don't know if there will be a major commitment of new troops, but I think there will be a major focus on helping Iraq become a free country.
And the next step in this process is to get a United Nations Security Council resolution. And to this end, I've been speaking with a variety of world leaders, to encourage them to -- by telling them we're willing to work with them to achieve language we can live with but, more importantly, language that the Iraqi government can live with. And Kofi and I talked today, and he wants to hear from the new Iraqi government, and I don't blame him.
And we heard from the new Iraqi government, by the way, today, and the new prime minister, who stood up and thanked the American people, for which I was grateful. He was speaking to the mothers and dads and wives and husbands of our brave troops who have helped them become a free country. And I appreciate his strong statement.
QUESTION: Were you surprised at the way the governing council took command of the selection process -- I mean, concern that the new president has had some criticisms of the United States?
BUSH: From my perspective, Mr. Brahimi made the decisions and brought their names to the governing council. As I understand it, the governing council simply opined about names; it was Mr. Brahimi's selections. And Ambassador Bremer and Ambassador Blackwill were instructed by me to work with Mr. Brahimi. As we say in American sports parlance, he was the quarterback.
And it seemed like a good group to me. They're diverse. As I mentioned, a number of women are now involved in the government, which is a positive step for the citizens of Iraq.
QUESTION: The new president's had some criticisms of the United States.
BUSH: The new president's has had some criticisms? Well, Mr. Brahimi put together a government that's going to be, first and foremost,loyal to the Iraqi people. And that's important.
It's a government with which I believe we can work.
Mr. Allawi said some strong statements today about security matters on the ground, about how he want to work with the coalition forces to provide security so that the country can go toward elections.
But, you know, what I'm most for is for people who are willing to work toward a free Iraq, that's my concern.
And it sounds like to me that these men are patriots -- men and women are patriots, who believe in the future of Iraq.
And if there's some criticism of the United States, so be it. The end result is a peaceful Iraq in the heart of the Middle East.
QUESTION: This new Iraqi government and others on the Security Council have expressed an interest in this interim government having substantial power over decisions -- military, security decisions.
This government has been clear that when it comes to protecting U.S. troops, American commanders will do everything that has to be done.
As you go to Europe now the next couple of days, what are you prepared to do to bridge that gap, to give this new independent government the sort of independence it's really asking for while retaining this essential role that you do have in securing Iraq?
BUSH: Listen, the American people need to be assured that if our troops are in harm's way they will be able to defend themselves without having to check with anybody else other than their commander.
At the same time I can assure the Iraqi citizens, as well as our friends in Europe, that we have done these kind of security arrangements before.
Witness Afghanistan. There's a sovereign government in Afghanistan. There are U.S. troops and coalition troops there, and they're working very well together.
The Iraqis will have their own chain of command and that's going to be very important. In other words, the Iraqi army will report up to a chain of command of Iraqis, not coalitions or Americans. And I think that's going to be an important part of the spirit and the capabilities of an Iraqi army.
But I'm confident we can bridge any gap because we have done it in country after country.
QUESTION: Mr. President, some will see the presence of Iraqi exiles, some of whom have received money from the United States government in the past, as proof in their minds that this is a puppet government of the United States. Could you answer that criticism and explain what role, if any, you had in the names as they stand?
BUSH: I had no role. I mean, occasionally somebody said,"This person may be interested," or that, but I had no role in picking. Zero.Secondly, in terms of whether or not our government helped, we did help some of the figures now in the interim government. We helped them because they were fierce anti-Saddam people. We helped their organizations, which believed that the tyranny of Saddam was bad for the Iraqi people.
Now, it's going to be up to the leaders to prove their worth to the Iraqi citizens. In other words, the leaders are going to have to show the Iraqis that they're independent, smart, capable, nationalistic and believe in the future of Iraq. And our job is to work with them.
But the decision-making process -- it's very important for our citizens to understand, the decision-making process is changing. Bremer comes home and the new government replaces Ambassador Bremer. At the same time we stand up an embassy that will interface with the new sovereign Iraqi government.
One of the interesting things I've heard from other leaders: "Are you really going to pass full sovereignty?" And the answer is, "Yes, we're going to pass full sovereignty."
The Iraqi government will need the help of a lot of people. We're willing to be a participant in helping them get to the elections.
And Terry asked whether there will be more violence. I think there will be. You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers.This guy Zarqawi, an Al Qaida associate, who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein, is still at large in Iraq. And, as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold-blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright future.
The other thing we got to do is work on reconstruction, to help rebuild parts of that country that suffered mightily under Saddam and are being -- you know, parts of which are being destroyed by these terrorists.
QUESTION: Mr. President, if the decision-making is now truly in the hands of the Iraqis, will that extend to them asking us to leave, pull out U.S. troops? Will you accede to that if they ask?
BUSH: Well, Mr. Allawi said today the troops need to be there. And so...
QUESTION: But all of them?
BUSH: Well, whatever it takes to get the mission done. And we look forward to working with the Iraq prime minister and the Iraq defense minister to help secure the country. As you know, circumstances change on the ground, and I've told the American people and our commanders that we'll be flexible and we'll meet those circumstances as they arise.
And what is important for the American people to know is that if a troop is in harm's way, that troop -- the chain of command of that troop will be to a U.S. military commander.
In terms of the strategy as to how to help Iraq become secure enough to have free elections, we'll work closely with the new Iraqi government to achieve those objectives.
There may be times when the Iraqis say, "We can handle this ourselves. Get out of the way. We're plenty capable of moving in to secure a town or to secure a situation." And there may be times when they say, you know,"We've got our hands full. Why don't you join us in an operation?" And we will collaborate closely with the new defense ministry.
It's a change of attitude in Iraq in that they now have got the decision-making capabilities.
Mr. Allawi today, I repeat, stood up in front of the world, and said two things that caught my attention. One, he thanked America. And I appreciated that a lot. And I think the American people needed to hear that, that in the new leader, there is this understanding and appreciation for the sacrifices that our country has been through.
And he also said, "We look forward to working with the coalition and forces to help secure the country."
QUESTION: Given the perception...
BUSH: I'm converting this into a full-blown press conference. It's such a beautiful day. I get credit for it? OK. Good.
QUESTION: Given the perception out there, especially in Iraq and among some (OFF-MIKE) are you confident that this new interim government has enough legitimacy within Iraq to hold together all the various factions there that threaten to go at each other's throats?
BUSH: No, I think that's a -- listen, yes, I am confident. But time will tell whether or not the leaders turn out to be as capable and strong as Mr. Brahimi thinks they will be.
One of the things I think that will keep the country intact is this notion of free elections. I mean, it appears to me that one of the things that does unite the Iraqi people is the deep desire to be able to elect their government. And as we head toward free elections, I think it will make it easier for the interim government to do their job.
QUESTION: Mr. President, I'd like to ask you about your goals for this -- your trip coming up later this week to Europe vis-a-vis your plan on the Middle East peace initiative. What do you hope in a concrete way to bring home?
BUSH: I'm giving a speech at the Air Force Academy that'll help answer your question.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
(LAUGHTER)
BUSH: They do have C-SPAN, you know. I mean, I'll be glad to rent it for you for an hour.
I'm going to talk about the war on terror, the clash of ideology. Part of winning the war on terror is to spread freedom and democracy in the Middle East. And the speech will help set up the types of conversations I will continue to have overseas and at Sea Island, Georgia, which is the need for us to understand that democracy can take hold in the Middle East.
It's important for our partners to understand -- I don't view it as American democracy, nor do I think it's going to happen overnight. I'll remind them that the Articles of Confederation was a rather bumpy period for American democracy. And so we're talking about reform in their image but reform at the insistence and help -- with the help of the free world. And I think it's possible, and I know it's necessary, that we work toward democracy in the Middle East. Because a society that is not free and not democratic is a society that's likely to breed resentment and anger and therefore a society that makes the recruitment of young terrorists more likely.
The idea is to find common spirit in our willingness to work in a variety of ways in the greater Middle East to achieve democratic societies, to work with reformers, to work on education processes that teach people to read and write and add and subtract, not to hate.
And always reminding people that the war on terror is not a war against a particular religion and that the war on terror is not a war against a particular civilization. It's a war against -- people have got this perverted vision about what the world should look like. And at my Air Force Academy speech, which you won't be at, I'll remind people that part of their objective is to drive the United States from countries in the Middle East so that they can flow their hatred into a vacuum. And it's very important that we not retreat, but not only stay the ground but also work toward democratic institutions and reform.
QUESTION: Mr. President, are you confident this interim government wants the U.S. troops to stay at least for the short term?
BUSH: I am confident, yes, sir. And I'm confident because of the remarks of Mr. Allawi. And I am told by people on the ground there that they feel, that they, the Iraqis, feel comfortable in asking for us to stay so that we can help provide the security.
Listen, I'm -- the Iraqis I've talked to are the first to say that the security situation must be improved.
And they recognize that there is a lot of work between now and the election in order to improve the security situation, starting with making sure the chain of command within the Iraqi army and the civilian forces and the police forces is strong and linked, as well as to make sure that these Iraqi forces are equipped and properly trained.
As I said in the statement last Monday, a week ago yesterday, that we saw that there were some weaknesses on the ground in Iraq. When the heat got on, some didn't stand up and do their duty. And we're addressing those weaknesses now. It's going to take time to fully address them.
But there is a deep desire by the Iraqis -- don't get me wrong -- to run their own affairs and to be in a position where they can handle their own security measures. And I think they will be in that position.
But I know that they're not going to ask us to depart until they're comfortable in that position.
And Mr. Allawi, again, I referred to his statements today. I thought they were good, strong statements.
QUESTION: Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader who has fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information or you...
BUSH: Chalabi?
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: My meetings with him were very brief. I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just, kind of, working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.
Mr. Brahimi made the decision on Chalabi, not the United States. Mr. Brahimi was the person that put together the group. And I haven't spoken to him or anybody on the ground as to why Chalabi wasn't taken.
In terms of information...
QUESTION: Do you feel like he misled your administration in terms of what the expectations were going to be going into Iraq?
BUSH: I don't remember anybody walking into my office saying, "Chalabi says this is the way it's going to be in Iraq." Let me step back and remind you that going into Iraq we had a belief that certain things -- that we had to plan for certain courses of action. One, that the oil production -- the Iraqi oil production, would be disrupted, through sabotage or Saddam's own whims. It didn't happen. We also thought there would be major refugee flows. That didn't happen. Or a lot of hunger; didn't happen.
What did happen was as a result of us storming through the country many of Saddam's elite guard saw what was happening, laid down -- well, didn't lay down their arms -- stored their arms, and hid and then regrouped.
As well as what happened was that some of the foreign fighters there were encouraged and bolstered by a foreign fighter that had been there during the period, Mr. Zarqawi.
And it's been tough fighting. I fully recognize that.
However, I just want to remind you that the mission of the enemy is to get us to retreat from Iraq -- is to say, "Well, it's been tough enough, now it's time to go home." Which we are not going to do. We will stand with this Iraqi government. Today the reason I'm out here is because this is a major step toward a -- toward the emergence of a free Iraq. This is a very hopeful day for the Iraqi people and a hopeful day for the American people, because the American people want to see a free Iraq as well. They understand what I know: A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East is going to be a game changer, an agent of change. It's going to send a clear signal that the terrorists can't win and that a free society is a better way to lift the hopes and aspirations of the average person.
QUESTION: So far, sir, Congress hasn't responded to your calls to do anything about rising oil prices. You've already said you want them to pass your energy bill and they aren't. So what...
BUSH: Yes. So go ask Congress why they haven't passed the energy bill. And I'll repeat it again: Congress, pass the energy bill.
QUESTION: But what more can you do, as prices rise?
BUSH: I can continue calling upon Congress to pass the energy bill and to make sure the American consumers are being treated fairly. But what you're seeing at the gas pumps is something I've been warning for two years, and that is that we're hooked on foreign sources of energy and that if we don't become less dependent on foreign sources of energy we will find higher prices at our gas pumps. It's precisely what happened. Had we drilled in ANWR back in the mid-'90s, we'd be producing an additional million barrels a day, which would be taking enormous pressure off the American consumer.
QUESTION: Mr. President, you said the United States (OFF-MIKE) would you like to go to Iraq before the end of the year (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: I would like to. But I'm not so sure that would be wise yet.
QUESTION: It's not secure?
BUSH: Well, I don't know. You're asking me to project six months down the road. And -- five months down the road. And that's the classic hypothetical: Will Iraq be secure enough for me to go to Iraq? I would hope it would be. And if it is, then whether or not I can go is another question.
QUESTION: Would you like to (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: I'd love to go back to Iraq at some point in time. I really would. I'd like to be able to stand up and say, "Let me tell you something about America. America's a land that's willing to sacrifice on your behalf. We sent our sons and daughters here so you can be free. And not only that, we're a compassionate country. We want to help you rebuild your schools and your hospitals." I'd like to do that. I really would. I'd like to also go to Afghanistan. And by the way, the reports from Afghanistan, at least the ones I get, are very encouraging. You know, we've got -- people who have been there last year and have been back this year report a different attitude.
And they report people have got a sparkle in their eye. And women, now, all of a sudden, no longer fear the future but believe that we're there to stay the course, and we will help a free society emerge. Both of which, a free society and a free Afghanistan, are very important to a future, a future world that is peaceful because freedom is the bulwark of the value system inculcated in those countries.
QUESTION: How close are you to agreeing with the United Nations (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: Well, I think our negotiator, the secretary of state, feels we're making good progress.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: I don't know. It's like saying can I go to Iraq in five months. Please, I thought I set the tone for hypotheticals. I don't know what it is. But as soon as possible; I'd like to get it done tomorrow if possible. And so we're working with all the parties. But you know how the United Nations is. It's a -- sometimes it can move slowly and sometimes it can move quickly. And the quicker the better as far as I'm concerned because it sends a message to the Iraqi -- new Iraqi government,"The world stands with you."
QUESTION: You're about to have a series of meetings with foreign leaders in which Iraq certainly will loom very large. (OFF-MIKE) What realistically do you expect to come out of this (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: A commitment to work together. A commitment that we all understand the importance of succeeding in Iraq. Understanding that terrorism will flourish and be emboldened if we're not successful in promoting a free government in Iraq. And I think, from my conversations, people understand that. But give us a chance to sit in the same room and talk about that. And that's an important commitment. In other words, once you get that in your mind that a free Iraq is important for world security, then it makes it easier for us to work together on certain matters.
And, look, we're still getting beyond the period where we had disagreements about Iraq. And now there's common ground, that a free Iraq is essential to our respective securities and, more important, is a very important signal to people in the Middle East that it's possible to live in a free society. And that's an important message as well.
It's important for the Iranian freedom -- those who love freedom in Iran to see. I mean, listen, a free Iraq on the border of Iran is going to send a very clear signal to the those who want to be free that a free society is very possible.
It's a hopeful period. And I'm so appreciative of the United Nations and Mr. Brahimi's work. It's hard work in Baghdad to do what he did. He did a lot of good work and came up with what looks like a very strong government.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: I would hope that the new government send somebody to New York soon. As a matter of fact, I don't think you're going to see much on the resolution, to answer your question, until the Iraqis come and make their case about why a resolution is needed. And I'd like to see that person come as quickly as possible.
We are going to have leaders from the greater Middle East in Sea Island. And as to whether or not a member of the new government shows up and says, "I'm from Iraq," I just don't know.
But we will talk about Iraq. We'll talk about Iraq in the context of the spread of democracy. And the countries that will be there will be sharing their experiences with democratic institutions in the Muslim world. And that will also serve as a reminder to the people of Iraq that they can succeed.
In terms of NATO, obviously we'll be discussing Iraq at NATO. Again, I don't expect any additional troop commitments out of NATO. I do expect there to be continuing NATO interest in Iraq. As you know, NATO has provided a headquarters or support for the Polish-led multinational division.
But we'll also make sure that we continue to focus NATO on Afghanistan. A peaceful and free Afghanistan is essential to our mission, to our objectives of encouraging the spread of democracy.
It was President Karzai, who I believe is coming soon and will be at Sea Island, by the way -- another good example of someone who has assumed responsibility in a country that had been savaged by barbaric leadership and who is doing a fine job.
BUSH: And he will be able to help people understand how to ask for help, as well as what help's available. I'm very impressed by him and impressed by his leadership.
QUESTION: Could you speak about Sudan? The peace agreement in Sudan and how that nation has turned away from terrorism?
BUSH: I appreciate that. The question is on Sudan.
Recently there was a signature on a document that took us a step closer toward achieving our objective. However, it is very important for the Sudanese government to understand we're watching very carefully the hunger, the brutal human conditions in the western part of their country, and that we expect there to be an accommodation to the relief agencies, as well as the American government, to get aid to those people.
We're closer to an agreement in Sudan. It's a very important agreement. And we will continue to work the issue really hard.
QUESTION: Can I ask about one of the things that the new prime minister in Iraq has said about your administration? He said that many of the postwar problems in Iraq has been from lack of proper planning; that America bears direct responsibility for that. How do you answer that?
BUSH: I would answer in that, you know, we had a plan in place. We succeeded in making sure that the oil flow continues so that he, as prime minister, has now got roughly 2.5 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil for the benefit of the Iraqi people; that there wasn't major disruptions of food so that people didn't starve.
In other words, we were very successful in certain things. But there is no question that the security situation on the ground is hard and tough. And my comment to him was we will be flexible and wise and work with him to continue to secure Iraq; that our mission is his mission, which is to get to elections so the country can be a free country.
Again, I think it's instructive that Mr. Brahimi picked leaders who are willing to speak their mind. Which is fine with me. I fully understand a leader willing to speak their mind. Kind of like doing it myself, you know?
And all the new prime minister needs to know is that I look forward to a close relationship with him. To do what's best for the Iraqi people, that's our interest. Our interest is a free Iraq. It's in their interests and it's in the world's interest. And it's something -- these are historic times.
And I am pleased with the progress -- the political progress being made today, and vow to the people of Iraq that we will finish the mission, we will do our job. And we expect them to do their job and we'll work with them to do so.
Thank you all very much.
Why Were Saudis Allowed to Leave on 9/11?
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: The Great Escape
By CRAIG UNGER
Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11.
We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members. of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks.
Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began.
In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.
The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis.
The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I. checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don't know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision.
The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I. before he left?
If the commission dares to address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing one of the most important national security investigations in American history in an election year, no less.
But if it does not, it risks something far worse the betrayal of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day, not to mention millions of others who want the truth.
Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."