"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". --A. J. Liebling (I own this Blog, GET-IT?) --DA
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." --Cyril Connolly
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."--Louis D. Brandeis
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead
"Knowledge about government is power" --GovTrack
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Innocents Abroad -- Mark Twain
"It liberates the vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction." - The American Abroad speech, 1868 - Mark Twain
Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those. - Letter to W. D. Howells, 5/20/1891 - Mark Twain
Click the picture (below) to enlarge this WaPo, color "sample":
« May 2005 | Main | July 2005 »
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Bush to Create New Unit in F.B.I. for Intelligence
Bush Expands Intel Chief's Power Over FBI
Bush Approves Spy Agency Changes
Bush sets up domestic spy service
And now for the Matching Game. Which one of these headlines is from the BBC?
First off, I want to thank DA for his excellent post on the latest perfidous attack on democracy to be advanced my congressman here in Ohio's 18th District, Bob Ney (link takes you to index of earlier posts on Dear Congressman's shady doings with lobbyists and helping to corrupt our election system).
Yes, indeedy. Bob "always there for the little guy" Ney (/sarcasm) wants to reduce to meaninglessness the small campaign contributions ordinary folks like you and me make by increasing the limits BY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS so REALLY, REALLY RICH PEOPLE can continue to buy elected officials who will watch out for their interests.
Here are the important links from DA's post so you can:
A) Find out what Common Cause has to say about the Orwellian named "527 Fairness Act of 2005" and send email to get friends to join the campaign to stop the "Help Greedheads Act of 2005".
B) Find out the contact info for your congressperson so you can voice your opposition to this brazen move by Ney, Pence, Wynn, et al. THEN MAKE THE CALL TODAY.
But before you make your call, here's what I learned from making mine:
When I called Bob Ney's office a legislative aide explained to me that Ney actually is not either an author, sponsor or co-sponsor of HR 1316, aka the "527 Fairness Act of 2005" -- which moniker, btw, Ney's aide says was given to the bill by its original authors, Republican Mike Pence of Indiana and Democrat Albert Wynn of Maryland.
Rather, according to said aide, opponents are deliberately calling HR 1316 the Ney-Pence-Wynn bill to contrast it with a different bill to address 527s -- HR 513, introduced by Republican Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Democrat Marty Meehan of Massachusetts and known as the "527 Reform Act of 2005".
Totally confused, I decided to call Congressman Meehan's office to see if someone there could explain why the "Fairness Act" was being attributed to Bob Ney if he isn't actually sponsoring it. Lo and behold, the answer was "yes" -- there was someone who could explain it to me. Here's what I learned:
Congressmen Pence and Wynn did introduce HR 1316, which was then referred to the House Administration Committee, chaired by Congressman Ney. But the bill that came out of committee was quite a bit different from the one that went in. It is because the bill was altered while in Ney's committee that his name has been attached to it when it is described now. It's just not the same Pence-Wynn bill it was anymore.
The situation is not the same for HR 513, the Shays-Meehan "527 Reform Act for 2005". This bill went into committee and came back out unchanged. In fact, the fellow I spoke with in Rep. Meehan's office said Bob Ney could not have been more fair in moving their bill through the mark-up process and out onto the Floor.
CONCLUSION # 1: Congressman Ney's folks are a bit testy about having his name associated with a bill that pretty blatantly plays to moneyed interests and diminishes the ability of ordinary voters to make their voices heard with their pocketbooks in American politics. And they certainly aren't interested in pointing out that their boss oversaw changes to that bill that:
And all this is in addition to the stuff in Pence-Wynn that Ney's committee let stand, like:
CONCLUSION # 2: Congressman Meehan and others are justified in calling HR 1316 the Ney-Pence-Wynn bill because as chair of the commitee he promoted alterations to it.
CONCLUSION # 3: Rep. Ney's office is correct that those attaching Ol' Bob's name to the bill oppose. And for good reason . . .
In fact, Rep. Meehan has set up a website where you can find all the reasons for opposing the "Fairness" bill, along with nifty slides like the one on the left that illustrate how the "Fairness" bill actually subverts campaign finance reform.
Another good site is Public Citizen, which suggests in this pdf that Ney's aide doth perhaps protest too much about his boss's on HR 1316, given that Bob has been tossing monkey wrenches into campaign finance efforts all along . . . At least when not busy scratching Jack Abramoff's back with his own itchy palms.
The Dauphin uttered the word "Afghanistan" exactly twice in his speech last night. Here's what he said:
To complete the mission, we will prevent al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.
And later in the wind-up:
When the history of this period is written, the liberation of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom.
If things are going so great in liberated Afghanistan, how come The Scotsman reported this a week ago? (link may require registration)
Secret UK troops plan for Afghan crisis
BRIAN BRADY
WESTMINSTER EDITOR
DEFENCE chiefs are planning to rush thousands of British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.
Ministers have been warned they face a "complete strategic failure" of the effort to rebuild Afghanistan and that 5,500 extra troops will be needed within months if the situation continues to deteriorate. (emphasis added)An explosive cocktail of feuding tribal warlords, insurgents, the remnants of the Taliban, and under-performing Afghan institutions has left the fledgling democracy on the verge of disintegration, according to analysts and senior officers.
The looming crisis in Afghanistan is a serious setback for the US-led 'War on Terror' and its bid to promote western democratic values around the world.
Defence analysts say UK forces are already so over-stretched that any operation to restore order in Afghanistan can only succeed if substantial numbers of troops are redeployed from Iraq, itself in the grip of insurgency.
And how come it reported this just days ago?
Bush warns Blair he must boost UK forces
BRIAN BRADY
WESTMINSTER EDITORBRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs
to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.
Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a "complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation.
The grim prognosis was underlined last night by Afghanistan's defence minister, who warned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was regrouping and planned to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to the country. (emphasis added)
Again. Compare what Bush said in his speech:
To complete the mission, we will prevent al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.
With what's really happening in Afghanistan:
The grim prognosis was underlined last night by Afghanistan's defence minister, who warned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was regrouping and planned to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to the country.
I've been known to use language that would make a sailor blush, but I can't think of words ugly enough to describe incompetent liars in charge of our government.
Wanna keep recruiters off your kid's back about Iraq?
Here is a story, and better, the direct links that provide the HOW-TO yer gonna want:
The 'Leave My Child Alone' Movement
By Rebecca Romani, Left Turn. Posted June 29, 2005.
Next, click the graphic images included in this post, to get right to the heart of matter.
You'll be taken to resources which will facilitate OPTING-OUT at both the local School District level, all the way up to adding your child to the Pentagon's "suppression" database listing.
These are all steps legally provided for, but under publicized. They are also a way to make a statement. It's a way to express your opinion about the way in which Americans have been lied to, and Congress manipulated by the Bush Regime.
The www.leavemychildalone.org site has done all the heavy lifting for you. It's also an indirect way to make your sentiments known regarding how the conflict has been managed, and the American people manipulated.
MainStreet Moms is another good resource for ways to protect your children. They're always lookin' for a few good muthers.
I've added links to both, down the left sidebar, under consumer/legal, here at BloggerRadio.com so, share the how-tos with everyone.
The WaPo report, below, exposes some truths about this Republican administration and Congressional majority.
First off, I can recall working around a couple of Veterans just prior to the past presidential election. Both expressed reservations about voting for John Kerry because both felt that Clinton era policies on military spending had somehow short-changed the military and its personnel. They expressed some concern that screwing the military was thus, somehow, an official Democratic platform plank. I suspect their perspectives had been mislead, and misguided by the Republican spin machine.
Turns out, these two Vets were intelligent types, and it's my understanding that both ultimately voted for Kerry. But, I know that many other military types were misinformed and misguided into sticking with Bush.
So, riddle me this, WHY? Why do military, and our Vets believe that this administration is somehow their friend. It ain't. That's a FACT.
Skipping, for the moment, that the Bush administration fabricated lies to justify attacking a country that neither represented any real threat to the USA, nor was the HQs for the terrorists responsible for 911, and is now causing the death and wounding of thousands of our military folks.
Let's talk about NOW, on the Republican'ts watch, veterans are being short-changed, and promises broken on fundamentals as basic as their health-care!
In the report below, we learn that for MONTHS Democrats have been trying to do the right thing by our Veterans while Republicans have literally been fighting to stop Democratic efforts to do the right thing by our Veterans. What the fuck is that? I'll tell ya what it is, it's OBSTRUCTION.
"The action represents a reversal of GOP policies toward the VA. For the past four months, House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly defeated Democratic amendments to boost VA medical funding."
This proves (to me), that once again, if you hear Republican'ts coin a term / phrase and try to label Democrats with it, look around and you'll soon discover that whatever they are currently blaming Dems for doing, it is precisely the thing the Republican'ts are guilty of doing. That tactic is straight from the Karl Rove school of political dirty tricks.
Only on the same day as the President is scheduled to make a national appearance, at one of the nation's premiere military bases, do the Congressional Republicans suddenly do an about-face. Just when the political liability becomes most critical, and their plot to screw Veterans is about to be exposed, THEN, and only THEN, are their hands forced, and the truth exposed.
'"I sit here having recently learned that the information provided to me thus far has been disturbingly inaccurate," Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) told Nicholson. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) told Nicholson that the failure to alert Congress earlier about the VA's money problems "borders on stupidity."
"Somebody was hoping they could hide the ball for a while and talk about it later, and frankly in this arena you can't afford to do that," Lewis said.
As GOP House and Senate leaders scrambled to deal with the politically damaging shortfall and quell criticism from veterans' advocacy groups, Democrats intensified charges that the Bush administration and the Republican congressional majorities are failing to care for those who put their lives on the line for the country.'
Of course, rather than tell the truth, by saying that they'd prefer to spend tax dollars supporting big business, than to properly care for our military folks, they shirk responsibility once again, and spin the story so that the blame lands on some VA Affairs Department administrator, who then must fall upon their sword, to protect the Prez's majority party's poll nums ... the nums they always say they don't care about. Yeah, those nums. And then House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) understates the SNAFU / FUBAR as "borders on stupidity". It ain't stupid, it's asinine!
What a crock. What a load. Vets typically don't pull down in excess of the $300Gs each, that would qualify them to appear on Republican radar screens, so they were about to be bunched with the great unwashed middle class masses that BushCo seeks to destroy. But, then they kindda got caught red handed by those same poll numbers. If the poll numbers (the ones they don't care about) had been showing strong support for Bush, we would never have seen a national appearance in front of a back drop of America's military elite ... and the Republican majority in Congress could have "stayed the course" and given Vets the shaft with greater impunity. Ya see, the paint has begun to approach the corner that this administration, and its Congressional lackeys have been painting themselves into. Worse for Republican'ts, the old Rove spin, and tricks have become entirely transparent and much less effective ... even among some ardent righties! Thus, the crappie poll nums (the ones they don't care about).
Secondarily, let's say, for sake of argument, that the faulty calculations being attributed to the VA really are the source of the problem (they're not). Who's in charge? Who is the so-called "Commander in Chief"? Who's in the majority, with the power to correct the cluster-fuck? Republican'ts. Any wonder why I spell Republican'ts the way I do? Republican administrations regularly screw-up train wrecks.
Check this out:
'Veterans Affairs budget documents projected that 23,553 veterans would return this year from Iraq and Afghanistan and seek medical treatment. However, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson told a Senate committee that the number has been revised upward to 103,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. He said the original estimates were based on outdated assumptions from 2002'
23,553 versus 103,000 ... ahhhh, let's see, that's a difference of 79,447! Who's the bumbling idiot that can't count? Who's in charge? Can there be ANY wonder left, about why we're in a QUAGMIRE? So, original estimates were off by at least a cool billion $.
Let us not forget that this administration continues to refuse to account for approximately $9-billion of taxpayer dollars which was earmarked for Iraq, but which has gone missing, for some time now. Again, Republicans have every majority and are in charge, and Bill Clinton has been gone for half a decade now, and the $9-billion wasn't even appropriated until LONG after Bill had departed. Sooo, who do the bumbling, and irresponsible Republican'ts blame it all on now, hmmm?
Hey Vet's who's your buddy, who's your pal? It certainly ain't the Bush administration, the Republican't majority, or the SUV driver with the yellow ribbon decal on the bumper, that's fur-sure. Read 'em and weep (poll nums):
VA Faces $2.6 Billion Shortfall in Medical Care
Agency Undercounted Size of Returning Force
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 29, 2005; Page A19Supporting Which Troops
by Ari Berman - The Nation Magz.
I got this action alert via e-mail & I wanna share it, with some emphasis added by BloggerRadio; here ya go:
"Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) has been in the headlines recently because of his ties to scandal-tainted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Rep. Ney now is working with Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) to push a bill that will make life much easier for Abramoff and lobbyists like him representing everything from tobacco companies and polluting industries to giant media corporations and drug companies. The Ney-Pence-Wynn bill will allow individual donors to give much, much more to influence politics in Washington: up to $3 million to a political party and its federal candidates during one two-year election cycle. Fat cats that hedge their bets and give to both parties can give up to $6 million every two years. That's 60 times what the current law allows.
We need your help to defeat this pro-corruption legislation today. The Ney-Pence-Wynn bill could be on the House Floor as soon as next week. Please call your Member of Congress today and ask them to vote against H.R. 1316, the "527 Fairness Act of 2005." You can find your Member of Congress by going to the following link:
http://www.commoncause.org/findelectedofficialsThe bill, H.R. 1316, is cynically named "The 527 Fairness Act of 2005." The bill is neither about regulating "527" groups nor fairness. Instead, it is a brazen attempt to increase the influence of big money on politics
The Ney-Pence-Wynn bill explodes the limits on contributions from individuals to federal candidates and political parties imposed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, when the public discovered that Nixon's fundraisers were getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash donations from wealthy donors in secret.And the bill once more allows the President, Senators, Members of Congress, and all federal candidates to go after this big money, forging once again the connection between huge contributors and key policymakers that had been broken by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act -- a law that we lobbied for so hard and helped to pass in 2002.
So, please call your Member of Congress today and ask them to vote against H.R. 1316, the "527 Fairness Act of 2005:"
http://www.commoncause.org/findelectedofficialsRight now, an individual can give up to $61,400 to a political party's committees over a two-year election cycle. The Ney-Pence-Wynn bill raises that limit to $1.1 million. Anybody who wants to hedge his bets on which party will be in control, will be able give more than $2 million in total to both parties.
Under current laws, an individual may give up to $4,200 to a Member of Congress, $2,100 for a primary election, and another $2,100 for the general election. And an individual may give, in total, $40,000 to support all federal races. Under the Ney-Pence-Wynn bill, a single donor will be able to give up to $2 million to one party's congressional candidates, and nearly $4 million to both parties' candidates.
Is it any wonder that the New York Times called this bill "shameful?" Indeed, The Times called on voters to "remember the name of any politician who stoops to support this destructive measure."
This is not what democracy is supposed to be about. We should not go back to the bad old days when a few wealthy individuals with special interest agendas bankrolled our elections. We should be doing everything we can to encourage the hundreds of thousands of small donors who gave to both political parties during the 2004 election.
That's why your help is so crucial. Please call your Member of Congress today and ask them to vote against H.R. 1316, the "527 Fairness Act of 2005." Also, please forward this message to your family and friends by going to: http://www.commoncause.org/PreserveCampaignFinanceReform
Together we need to let Congress know that our democracy can't afford this step backward to the Watergate era.
Let us know how your calls by going by posting your feedback on our blog at http://www.commonblog.com/section/Government_accountability
Thank you again for all you do for Common Cause.
Sincerely,
Chellie Pingree
President & CEO, Common Cause"
This is my very long INTRO to a WaPo report about BushCo efforts to reduce or eliminate Federal Housing assistance to the poor.
Ok, even the sheepeople should have begun to catch on by now. And, according to recent poll numbers perhaps they have, who knows.
BushCo and Republicans are all about the rich, and creating a 3rd-world-like workforce out of the rest of us. At EVERY turn now, we see an all-out assault on the middle-class on down to the lowest income of the low.
Here is the simple truth, people: if you make less than $300K+ per year and you voted for Bush, you got swindled by BushCo and Karl Rove's spin machine. Ya got hoodwinked. Ya got screwed, and ya ought to be feeling pretty damn betrayed right about now.
WE FREAKIN' TOLD YOU SO.
BushCo and his Daddy have the Economic sense that God granted to a quart of Quaker State Motor Oil.
Republican'ts in general spend more taxpayer dollars, on more nonsense than all the Democrats combined.
Republican'ts can't manage a budget to save their lame asses.
Republican'ts say they are for smaller government, then they expand the size of government like nobodys' business.
Republican'ts say they are for less intrusive federal government, and then they go out and strip states rights, and put their collective noses directly up every Americans' butt.
Republican'ts don't believe a word of any of that because they are all FOLLOWERS, not leaders, or at least independent thinkers. If Sean Insanity, or Lush Bimbaugh don't TELL them what to think, Republican'ts don't (think) for themselves.
Republican'ts hate to be confused by the FACTS.
Republican'ts are all righteous, macho, wannabes. But, then they get their main springs wound so tight from just trying to live up to their own distorted perception of what those things mean, that they end up in the news doin' it with barn yard animals, or underage members of the same sex, while preaching to the rest of us how we should live our lives, instead of minding their own damn business!
The point of including the WaPo story, below, is to highlight the difference in how Dems and Republican'ts will view it. Republican'ts will all say, "GOOD ... screw those poor bastards for being down on their luck and wanting a handout ... let 'em get a job and pull themselves up by the bootstraps"!
Geezus crimine, how damn shortsighted and stupid can Republican'ts be??? They just don't GET IT. It's like the old motor oil commercial that said: "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later". Let's ignore the separate debate, that says these folks ended-up as they are as a direct result of failed Republican't economic policy, and their ranks always swell under Republican't administrations, for now.
Let's just consider that by reducing aid to these folks the problems surrounding them impact and effect all of us, and the problem does not magically evaporate. Instead, it comes looking for the rest of us, one way or another. It just gets shuffled. It moves to a station near you, so-to-speak. It doesn't address the issue.
But NOOO, Republican'ts figure, that by cutting aid to the those who need it most, they will simply be forced to pull themselves up, and the rest will somehow magically disappear. Meanwhile, the aid monies can be given to some pork-barrel use, favoring a giant corporation, or executive who Republican'ts mistakenly believe will eventually trickle down to the rest of us. (The true definition of ignorance is the failure to learn from one's mistakes).
Republican'ts continue to ignore the laws of physics (MBA business majors aren't strong on science): "for EVERY action, there is an EQUAL, but OPPOSITE reaction.
When BushCo strips these poorest of the poor of aid and alternatives, they won't just lie down and die, thus eliminating the problem, they're gonna come to YOUR house and take your candy, sweetheart. They'll be more of 'em on the street panhandling you as you try to make your way to your Republican't offices. They'll be in hospital emergency rooms seeking health-care because they can't afford health insurance, and that will drive up YOUR health insurance premiums, ya dumb-ass. Etc, etc, etc.
We're all connected, as are all things in the universe, like that fact or not. The dots are ALL connected, like it or not. Republican't thinking is flawed because Republican't economic policies are all about forcing a greater space between those connections and those dots. Thing is, the laws of nature, and of God, both put us ALL in this TOGETHER.
Ever hear the adage: "There But For The Grace Of God Go I"? Huh, ever hear that one, my righteous, holier-than-thou, hypocrite righties? Keep pressing the poor to be poorer, and the rich to be richer, and that failed logic will net result in all of us being impoverished.
Republican'ts have some warped belief that all wealth and well being is supplied by those who are first rich enough to create employment opportunities, through business ventures that they can afford to launch, and that thus income opportunities all spring from on high, and trickle down to the great unwashed masses. The amazingly frustrating FACT is that such economic theory has been proven, over, and over again, to be a failure, based upon flawed logic, and yet the sheepeople of the right follow the preachers of those economic policies like the sheep they have become.
Worry Over Public Housing
Plan to Promote Self-Sufficiency May Cut Options for PoorestBy Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 26, 2005; Page A03PHILADELPHIA -- The Bush administration's proposal to eliminate many of the federal rules requiring public housing authorities to serve extremely low-income people has generated widespread concern among housing advocates who say the change could prove ruinous for the nation's poorest families who have nowhere else to turn for affordable housing.
The proposal, pending in Congress since earlier this spring, would allow local housing authorities to charge higher rents, provide lower subsidies and limit the amount of time tenants can remain in federally subsidized housing to as little as five years. Taken together, the changes would amount to one of the most dramatic policy shifts in the 68-year history of public housing.
...
"Public housing is a critical part of a pretty tattered safety net," said Barbara Sard, a housing expert with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "The rule changes would have the effect of shifting money away from lower-income to higher-income folks. ..."
Apparently BushCo has a hard-on for things that happened back-in-the-day. Like the Social Security plan that has worked successfully for 70 years, and now this. Thing is, if Bush hadn't cut the taxes of just the upper one-tenth of one percent of the very richest Americans neither of these things would be an issue. So now that BushCo has squandered the SURPLUS left behind for him, by Clinton, and sunk our grandchildren's grandchildren into the red, he's busy robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. --John Kenneth Galbraith
Man, only 35% of the people believe Bush&Co when they say the Iraq surgency is weakening -- and that's among Republicans! Factor in Dems and Independents and it's only 22%.
Still, as Armando points out over at DKos, the Post gives the news the best spin it can:
As with virtually every facet of the Iraq issue, deep partisan divisions were reflected in views of the current state of the insurgency. More than a third of all Republicans -- 35 percent -- said the insurgents were growing weaker in Iraq, compared to 13 percent of all Democrats and 19 percent of all political independents.
Well, no. What this actually says is that two-thirds of Republicans and more than three-fourths of Dems and Independents agree that Bush/Cheney/Rove and friends are talking out of their hats.
Jeesh.
Back in the spring, three John Kerry supporters wanted to attend one of Bush's SS-privatization infomercial events in Denver. They had tickets and everything, but they also had a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on their car. Lo and behold, shortly after they'd entered the building where Bush was scheduled to appear, they were pulled aside and told they had to wait to speak to a secret service agent.
So they did. A short time later a guy wearing an ear piece showed up and the three were forced to leave.
For months now The Denver Three -- Leslie Weise, Karen Bauer and Alex Young -- have been trying to get to the bottom of what happened to them that day. So far the Secret Service has told them it was a Bush volunteer, not an agent, who evicted them from the Denver stop on what Josh Marshall refers to as Bush's Bamboozlepalooza road show.
Fortunately for the rest of us, that answer wasn't enough for Wiese, Bauer and Young; they refused to let go of the matter and asked more questions instead. Like, if not an SS agent, under who's authority was the guy acting then? And if he wasn't acting under some sort of legal authority in kicking them out of a tax-payer financed event, why isn't he being prosecuted? Why won't anyone even tell them his name?
Last week The Denver Three took their questions to members of Colorado's Congressional delegation in DC, generating some national press in the process. Better yet, three of their state's congressfolk sent a letter to the head of the Secret Service reiterating demands for an investigation into just what went on . . . As of this morning Elizabeth Bumiller reports, deep down in her White House Letter account, that the Secret Service won't comment on the letter because the incident relates to "an open criminal investigation".
Of course there's no indication of how broad this investigation may be (after all, what happened to Weise, Bauer and Young isn't an isolated incident) -- or how vigorously it's being pursued. Still, these three intrepid individuals are keeping the story of extra-legal Bushcops running roughshod at government-funded events from being swept under the rug. Good on them . . .
While Dick Cheney's claiming the Iraq insurgency is in it's last throes, and Karl Rove's using lies to excoriate anyone who called for restraint after the 9/11 attacks, it looks like American officials have been meeting secretly with the leaders of insurgency groups in a villa outside of Baghdad.
According to an Iraqi source who described the meetings to the Sunday Times:
. . .one of the Americans introduced himself as “a representative of the Pentagon” and declared himself ready to “find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances”.
American officials haven't confirmed that the meetings took place, but regional specialists interviewed by the Times are spinning the story anyway, suggesting tribal heads and other rebel leaders are tiring of the conflict, only they can't say so openly for fear of being shot.
But one rebel commander had his own spin:
"It looks like the Americans are in big trouble in Iraq and are desperate to find a way out,” the commander said. “Why else would they have rounds of negotiations with people they label as terrorists?
UPDATE: Billmon has a great post on BushCo's pirouette away from the whole "you'e either with us, or you're with the terrorists" thing . . .
(OOPS! Forgot the link to Billmon's post, have added it now. And here's one to his follow-up, also quite good.)
The other day I tried composing a post on "Coingate" -- on the news that Ohio Governor Bob Taft failed to report some golf-outings on his annual disclosure statement (a big no-no made bigger by the fact that Taft made others resign for doing the same thing); and that some of those unreported trips 'round the links were with "Coingate" malfeasor Tom Noe and Bush's current treasury secretary, John Snow.
But in the course of writing that post I came across this report about how the Bureau of Workers Comp coin-fund may be out another $3 mil that Noe "borrowed" to personally invest in some stock. It seems pretty clear this was some kind of scheme to use BWC money to buy stock low, sell high, pay back the bureau and pocket the rest. And now Noe's all pissy because, in light of the "Coingate" revelations, Ohio's AG won't let him sell the stock back to the company to finish the deal!
Then, in the midst of trying to dissect those reports, I came across this Toledo Blade editorial about how the BWC is trying to keep the paper' from learning more about yet another of its investment failures -- the MDL deal. And at that point I just gave up on my post; trying to sort out the latest reports felt like wrestling an octopus . . .
Today, feeling a bit refreshed, I decided to have another go, but you know what? That octopus has grown even more arms in the interim. Get this . . .
Today the Blade reports that a lot of those coins Noe said went missing aren't missing after all -- just a matter of poor accounting, you see.
But Storeim, the guy Noe tried to finger for the not-really-missing missing coins rap, says it was a ruse by Noe to deflect heat from himself:
It is difficult to imagine any other explanation for the fact that Noe and his associates claim to have determined the coins to be 'missing' in their year-end audit of NPL [last summer], only to have them 'found' when an independent audit was conducted eleven months later.
But then, Noe still accuses Storeim of skimming from the coin fund. And, curiously, Storeim's home was burgled last week even while wrapped in tape as a crime scene. So who knows who or what to believe?
Can anyone blame anyone -- i.e, me -- for giving up in frustration at trying to sort this stuff out? And might that be one point of all this stonewalling, accounting slight-of-hand and skullduggery? To confuse readers like me into giving up all hope of ever understanding what's really going on?
Well, I haven't given up yet, but I hope the Blade does a long re-cap piece soon that collects what we know so far into a narrative form I can grasp. Because right now I've totally lost the plot, haven't a clue . . . how 'bout you?
Excerpts below, from this morning's NYT, highlight BushCo Pentagon's willingness to ignore the rules of engagement (emphasis added by BloggerRadio):
Age 16 to 25? The Pentagon Has Your Number, and More
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: June 24, 2005" ... The department began building the database three years ago, but military officials filed a notice announcing plans for it only last month. That is apparently a violation of the federal Privacy Act, which requires that government agencies accept public comment before new records systems are created.
David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, acknowledged yesterday that the database had been in the works since 2002.
...
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the notification in The Federal Register had drawn criticism from a coalition of eight privacy groups that filed a brief opposing the database's creation. Yesterday, many of those privacy advocates, learning that the database had been under development for three years, called its existence an egregious violation of the Privacy Act's rules and intent.
"It's far more serious if the database had been established prior to Privacy Act notice," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "It's end-running the act by putting it into private hands and subverting the act by creating a public database without public notice."
...
Drawing information from motor vehicle records, Selective Service registrations and private vendors, it includes a variety of personal information, including grades, height, weight and Social Security numbers.
...
"Halfway through 2004," said a briefing on the program in February that appears on a Pentagon Web site, "we started overlaying ethnicity codes and telephone numbers."
...
For some parents, any information gathered by the military covertly amounts to an intrusion.
"There is no buffer zone," said Sandra Lowe of Sonoma, Calif., who is a mother of four, including two teenage boys. "It's a direct shot to someone's child without consent from a parent. If you were to come on campus and wanted to take a picture of a child, you have to get a release - just to take a picture. This is a lot more than that."
Wholly incompetence Batman! The firm hired by the Pentagon to handle our kids' personal data can't even properly configure their own web-site according to findings by: "Irregular Times" which even lists all the company contact data for their employees ... hmmm, I wonder if anyone can collect their PERSONAL data from there? I mean, isn't turn-around fair play, after all?
--- original post below ---
Listen America's parents ... you CAN OPT your high school-er OUT of the recruiters collecting your child's data at the high school level; just ask your school how to be sure to get it done. Do it. Do it NOW.
BUT, I don't know how you protect them from the Pentagon's latest effort. Because so far, there is no draft, and only Congress has the authority to create one, and yet the Pentagon has apparently hired a private marketing company to assemble a database of your kids' personal information ... how long before we read a headline about THAT list being breached, too??? What gives those assholes the right to collect that data in the first damn place with no draft in existence??? BushCo, no doubt.
Pentagon Creating Student Database
Recruiting Tool For Military Raises Privacy ConcernsBy Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; Page A01
Get on the horn. Call your Senators and your Reps ... ask them what the hell gives the Pentagon the right ... do it now!
Here is the Pentagon's (& BushCo's) Ally's identity:
BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze large amounts of data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.
Anyone out there know the name and personal data of their CEO, perhaps??? We already know that stuff on the Pentagon's CEO!
On NBC Evening News I caught a glimpse of Rummy comparing our military's performance in Iraq to the early going of our military during WWII ... have aliens invaded Rumsfeld's brain, or does he even have one???
Rumsfled is a Nixionan Dinosaur that is killing Americans and the American military.
As for the men and women of the American Military ... we learned today that BushCo & Rumsfeld's bumblings have left them needing a whole lot more than a yellow decal on the SUV:
VA Needs $1B for Health Care
By MARY DALRYMPLE
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 23, 2005; 7:14 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress that its health care costs grew faster than expected and left a $1 billion hole in its budget this year, lawmakers said Thursday.
Hey Republicans out there ... the ones who voted for BushCo coz you said he takes better care of VETERANS ... what the fuck you got ta say now, huh? BushCo, makes a train wreck out of eveyrthing they touch!
Ignore Rove. His Emperor has no clothes, and Karl wouldn't be firing-off salvos if he wasn't trying to get us all to look away.
Ignore the weasel. Why does anyone care what Karl might think? Did he ever serve in the military? The closest Karlie-boy's big behind has been to combat is fighting political wars like the political terrorist he is ... from his spider hole. Bush's collapsed ratings are why Karla is suddenly raising his ugly melon now. Bush is like Custer. Reinforcements ain't gonna rescue him now.
Go see David Sirota's piece on the Rovemeister here: SirotaBlog
For a chuckle check out Tom Toles 06-23-05 cartoon:
http://www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/
Folks, it's time to toss some tea in the harbor ...
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes (and Businesses)!!!
"...Cities may bulldoze people's homes to make way for shopping malls or other private development, a divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday, giving local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the decision bowed to the rich and powerful at the expense of middle-class Americans. ..."
The American Middle Class takes it on the chin yet again. No wonder BushCo is always flapping their jaws about the ownership society. BushCo wants YOU to buy and pay for properties, so gubbermint can come along after, and steal it! Hell, he and Biden have already rigged it so you won't be able to claim bankruptcy, and if it all makes you sick ya probably won't be able to afford your health care co-payment, or the gas to drive to the saw-bones anyway. Maybe you can send Bill Frist a video tape and he'll diagnose what's ailing ya instead! Remember now, 7 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
In the ongoing saga of Biden's Bank Buddies screwing Americans (link(s) and emphasis added by BloggerRadio):
Cardholders Kept in Dark After Breach
Some Banks Decline to Tell Customers Whether Accounts Were Compromised
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; Page D05"... Companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., American Express Co. and MBNA Corp. said that they are not automatically alerting their customers that their information may have been exposed but that they are more closely monitoring the accounts that may have been affected. The policy was reported yesterday on CNetNews.com."
This is bullshit. Credit Card Companies and their fine print that allows them to alter prices of things consumers have already purchased, their mishandling of personal data, their lobbyists buying legislators like Biden, and legislation to squeeze the very people they aggressively targeted as customers, storing our personal data offshore, in foreign lands, and now the arrogance to not properly notify potential victims of the credit-card companies foul-ups! How much more crap are Americans gonna put up with, before they respond???
Yep. Governor Bob Taft has hired one of the state's highest-profile criminal-defense attorneys to represent him in the wake of exploding scandals triggered by the discovery of huge "losses" to Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation investment funds.
According to Taft, he discovered "on his own initiative" that he failed to disclose certain "golf outings in which I participated" on the annual financial disclosure forms required by the Ohio Ethics Commission.
So far nobody's saying anything officially about who else might have been tooling the links with Taft on those unreported occasions, but according to one unidentified source mentioned in stories in the Toledo Blade and Columbus Dispatch, Noe dropped Taft's name as a golfing buddy back in 2002. Yep, that Tom Noe, the guy at the heart of "Coingate" the first investment scandal to erupt from the BWC.
Granted, there's a lot of innuendo in that, there's no proof that Taft and Noe played golf -- or that, if they did, those particular "golf outings" are the one's the governor failed to report. But the Blade's been doing the deep digging on these scandals from the start, andI don't suppose they'd blow it now by publishing rumors unlikely to be backed up. Besides, as the paper points out, Taft has fired aides for failing to report "golf-outings" on their own disclosure statements. So it seems particularly suspicious that the governor would commit the same sort of "errors and ommissions" -- unless, like State Senator Theresa Fedor says, he's "covering his tracks." God, I hope she's right and that's it's way, way too late for that . . .
According to the Dispatch article, Taft's part of a stampede of Ohio officials trying to "update" financial disclosure statements. In Taft's case, what we seem to know so far is that, while Noe was a major contributor to his campaign coffers, the governors' original ethics filings don't list any "golf outings" or other gifts from the world's now-most-famous coin dealer.
But, uh-oh. Noe's attorney, "Noe attorney William C. Wilkinson said he thinks he is aware of every instance in which Noe entertained public officials but that Noe will discuss those details only with government investigators."
I wonder if Noe's memory and the gov's -- and a whole lot of other folks' -- are going to match up?
CLICK THE PIC . . . WATCH THE VIDEO
SIGN THE PETITION . . . PASS IT ON
That's what I'm doing, thanks to DFA and Ohio Watch blog . . .
Hey, this is good poop, go see:
Corporations got a problem? Call ALEC
This under-the-radar conservative-corporate political behemoth is having major impact on the state level.
By Matt Singer, University of Montana
Another slice of Americana selling-out to the Chinese:
Bidding war seen for Hoover owner
Maytag has been making domestic appliances for nearly 100 years
Haier Group, the giant Chinese fridge and washing-machine maker, has made a bid for Maytag, the US firm which owns the Hoover vacuum-cleaner brand.
I guess Mexico's slave labor wasn't cheap enough. So the Chinese to the rescue.
Maytag Moves to Mexico
The closing of the Galesburg Maytag plant has left more manufacturing workers pondering an uncertain future
By David MobergGalesburg, Illinois—Many Americans dream of getting rich. Aaron Kemp had more modest ambitions. “I wanted to work at a decent job and earn a decent wage, with decent benefits, so I can raise my kids, give them a decent education and maybe take them out to Pizza Hut on a Friday night. I don’t need a Mercedes, just a ho-hum existence, and now,” he says, with sadness and anger in his voice, “it seems hard to even do that.”
...
“Globalization is such a fraud,” says Bevard. “It’s just a rush to the bottom for cheap labor. Instead of reducing the United States to the Third World, we should be elevating the standards of those countries.” Then, perhaps, the Aaron Kemps of this country could hope once again for a ho-hum but decent life for themselves and their kids.
Corporate cronies whine about labor costs. If they want more people to buy their products they might try manufacturing something besides shit. I've owned Maytag products and discovered that they never come close to living up to the hype. They may have once, back during "The Greatest Generation", but in recent decades greed has driven quality right out of their equations.
UPDATE from Wednesday' LA-Times:
China Showing Bigger Interest in U.S.
An offer for Maytag and a possible bid for Unocal could lead to increased scrutiny in Washington.By Evelyn Iritani, Times Staff Writer
Ever notice how some corporations, especially utilities, just never GET-IT?
Sorta like the old adage: "if it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all"?
You've probably seen Qwest in the news being sued by one entity or another, and usually settling out of court or flat losing. Seen reports of big fines levied against 'em. Or, seen 'em try to buy another company like MCI, and lose their bid.
Qwest just seems like the Rodney Dangerfield of what used to be the Baby Bells.
The number of customer complaints about Qwest, to public utility commissioners, was apparently kindda steep for a while too. Qwest runs saturation ads in it's coverage area, pitching their "Spirit of Service" in a transparent attempt to counter all the bad press. Sorta like Bush telling us that private accounts are a good thing. Or, that he's the peace-president. Ya know, like when Nixon said: "I am not a crook".
Now, I don't know whether George Bush got the idea from Qwest or vice-versa, or if it's just one of the things ingrained in the noggins of every MBA, who requires help getting dressed, ... if you say it loud enough, and repeat it often enough, somebody, somewhere will begin to believe ya.
At one point, awhile back, I became so aggravated with Qwest's truly shitty customer service that I trimmed every extra feature until I was pared down to just dial-tone. No frills, no voice-mail, no call-freakin'-waiting, or caller ID, nuttin'. Pretty much just a couple of OJ cans and string between. Twenty-some-buck/month, period. The whole, Chinese, "less-is-more" adage at work.
Well, today I was moved to call and make my payment by using their automated payment mechanism. I called 1-800-244-1111. Instead of the usual voice prompts asking me to make a selection, using the keypad on my touch-tone phone, I got something new.
Yep, instead of the familiar voice prompts, I got the dreaded, interactive robot receptionist that wanted to engage me, in of all things ... live conversation! Hell, I've lived in the same house for 17 years, and I don't even enjoy talking to live neighbors all that much.
Here is this bloody condescending robot, with 'tude, asking questions, and then tellin' me what words he'd accept in response. I much prefer the old keypad choices.
I decided to make the best of it, and have a little fun. I tested the robot. I tested to see if the robot could recognize George Carlin's seven dirty words, for instance. Alas, even Qwest's robot is a dud! In abject failure the robot finally broke down and announced it was deferring to an actual flesh and blood humanoid-type.
Ok, so I'm easily amused. Rather than hang-up I waited for the human-robot to field my call. I can't be sure, but I suspect that Qwest's robot told the human the jest of our prior conversation. Coz, the human was laughing when he came on-line. The human life form assured me that I was not the first kid on my block to have expressed dissatisfaction with Qwest's new robot.
He even agreed with me that the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is applicable when comparing the voice prompt-to-keypad-entry system versus this new robot thingie. Sure, it would be ideal if Qwest actually employed more flesh-and-blood types to handle calls, but in today's environment it's something of a miracle that even the robot isn't located in Calcutta, India, or some such!
Sooo, go ahead, have a chat with the robot yourself. Who knows, maybe YOU'LL even enjoy it! And MAYBE, if enough folks call Qwest's toll-free number, to "TEST" the robot's word recognition, Qwest will get the message.
Voinovich voted against cloture this time after voting for on the earlier vote. Not sure what that's about. Frist voted against last time to enable a call for another vote, so maybe Voinovich is playing that Republican role this time 'round, but the CW seems to be that there won't be another attempt to move beyond cloture to the ubiquitous Republican call for an "up or down vote" on just about anything. Rather, most folks seem to be talking about a recess appointment over the July 4th break.
Visit Steve Clemons' blog, The Washington Note, to keep up to date, but Laura Rozen links to this Fred Kaplan article over at Slate that expresses some interesting thoughts, too.
As for me, I don't doubt for a minute that Bush is capable of using his recess fiat powers to put Bolton at the UN. What I want to see is some serious leaking of those docs that the White House refused to give up. Let's see just what sort of guy the Dauphin wants in our ambassador's chair . . .
We've all heard of connect-the-dots; well, the link below takes ya to a short animation with sound that provides a kitchen table explanation of Social Security, how it works, the politics surrounding it, and the Bush plot for it. Click the link below, then click the VCR-like play button to start the show:
Social Security: The Real Connections
If it clarifies things for ya, pass it along to others that you think might be interested, too.
Credit, Credit Reporting, Identity Theft, Personal Data, Medical Records, Direct Marketing, Privacy, Special Rules, Offshoring, Opt-In / Opt-Out, Consumers versus Lobbyists ... Consumers are being given the short end of the stick on all these scores!
Have ya noticed how these "announcements" are made just before the start of a weekend? Corporations who have made blunders naturally want to time the news releases to have the least exposure that they can manipulate. That's why I held this post *fur* Monday.
Hackers Tap 40 Million Credit Cards (70K bogus charges already seen)
Lost Credit Data Improperly Kept, Company Admits (here's what you get when Congress trusts CORPORATIONS to do the right thing ... you get the same quality and net results as when you allow government agencies to do a job)
Special Rules for Credit Card Companies? (credit card companies change the price AFTER you've made the purchase!)
U.S. Offshoring of Personal Data Grows (Is YOUR personal data being stored overseas, by companies avoiding ALL regulation?)
Delaware: America's First State...in Democratic sellouts ("Biden and Carper were two of the 14 Democrats who thwarted efforts to prevent passage of the federal bankruptcy bill . That measure is long a favorite of Wilmington-based credit-card giant MBNA, because it will make it harder for debt-plagued Americans (many of whom were lured down the path to insolvency by aggressive credit-card marketing tactics) to clear the debt in bankruptcy court. In a 2005 America where the big corporation seems to always beat the little guy, this is a pretty big win for the money boys.") (seen Biden's name on any bills to protect consumers? And, Biden has officially announced his run for Prez in '08 ... he's gotta make some major amends to get my nod over Hillary, or whoever at this point).
Take My Privacy, Please! ("We cannot even begin to control the growing army of businesses and industries that monitor what we buy, what we watch on television, where we drive, the debts we pay or fail to pay, our marriages and divorces, our litigations, our health and tax records and all else that may or may not yet exist on some computer tape, if we don't fully understand everything we're signing up for when we avail ourselves of one of these services.")
The Dunning Letter ("Musings over your privacy, stopping identity theft, and the right to control your name and personal data.")
Recommendation: Tell your Congressional-types that you'd like to have back what has belonged to you all along. Your personal identity. Tell 'em we're tired of corporations making a fortune on a product they never spent a cent to manufacture, our personal identities. Tell 'em to make the law clear, if we want to opt-in, we will, if not we shouldn't have to do a damn thing to opt-out. Period. TELL THEM NOW!
The news around Blogland is that the usual right-winger suspects are trying to argue that the Downing Street Memo and other damaging UK doc leaked recently are fakes.
But as American Street points out, 'taint true: Senior British officials have verified the authenticity of the document to Newsweek.
American Street recommends spreadin' the truth far and wide to counter the right-winger innuendos and lies. So that's what I'm doing. Now, pass it on . . .
This is a handy tool: A power point "election fraud for dummies" presentation that I picked up over at DKos, but now can't find out precisely where. (Many thanks for posting the link, DKos diarist/commenter -- whoever you are; and my apologies for losing track and not being able to give credit where credit is due.)
Michael Smith's latest scoop, in the Sunday Times yesterday, is on another leaked UK memo that says US and British pre-war bombing of Iraq was flatly illegal according to international law. Naturally -- surprise! surprise! -- the US didn't see it that way, since if BushCo is adept at anything it's construing laws to mean whatever it wants them to. But Tony Blair's adviser's told him quite plainly that in the UK view he and his bud George were flaunting the law. Of course, the media was hardly trumpeting the news that we had begun bombing Iraq outside legal parameters back in the beginning of 2002 . . .
Also from Sunday, Hunter over at DKos has a provocative post speculating that those intercepts Bolton asked to view with Americans' names unmasked might have had something to do with how the Bush administration found out Valerie Plame was undercover CIA op.
We've known for quite some time that Plame's covert work related to nonproliferation efforts, which happens to have been John Bolton's balliwick at the State Department, too.
Well, at least that's what he was purported to be working on. According to this article in the Washington Post (via Laura Rozen at War and Piece), Bolton did more to impede than to assist when it came to advancing counterproliferation efforts. Indeed, after being bogged down for years, the US and Russia have made real headway toward agreeing on plutonium disposal issues now that Bolton is gone!
In my travels through Blogland I come across references to Occam's Razor a lot -- the principle that the simplest explanation, the one that requires the fewest assumptions beyond available evidence, is most likely to be true.
So, here we have a guy, Bolton, who as undersecretary of state for counterproliferation blocked efforts to actually counter proliferation, all the while spying on other Americans who were trying to help counter proliferation instead. And during the time he's not doing his job and spying on other folks, a nonproliferation covert operative gets outed, too.
Now, I suppose you could argue that Bolton's a dolt. From what I've seen and read -- all claims about his brilliance to the contrary -- that rings pretty true. But while doltishness can explain mucking up his counterproliferation assignments it doesn't explain the unmasked intercerpts -- or the active intimidation of analysts who got in his way. A better explantion that connects known facts is that Bolton was deliberately undermining nonproliferation efforts for reasons unknown. If that's what he was doing, then it would behoove him to know all that he could about the other players in the game. And that leads to Plame . . .
The Toledo Blade has an article today that reviews the timeline of who knew what when about Tom Noe's possible illegal campaign contributions; strange goings on with Bureau of Worker's Compensation's Noe-managed rare-coin investments fund; and the rather sudden and enormous losses in the BWC hedge fund managed by MDL.
It's clear that high-level Republican officials were aware of all these alarming circumstances before the 2004 election, though a number of those involved make fairly effective arguments that the developments came to light too close to the election to investigate and announce them publicly before voters went to the polls on November 2nd.
But here's the thing. Even though John Kerry conceded on November 3, the myriad irregularities surrounding the election here led to a recount that put the results of the vote under a state and national microscope for the next two months.
And yet, no news seeped out about the investigation into whether Noe laundered campaign contributions to Bush/Cheney04 -- even though the Lucas County prosecutor passed its information on to the FBI and US attorneys for Ohio's Northern District on October 13th. The US attorney for the Northern District is Greg White, a Bush appointee.
Nor was a public word heard about Noe's mismanaged rare-coin fund, even though questions were being raised about the fund as far back as 2000, and Noe reported two coins worth $300,000 "lost in the mail" back in 2003.
Finally, the record shows that BWC's chief executive administrator, James Conrad, informed Governor Taft's office about the full extent of the damage to the MDL hedge fund no later than October 28, 2004. Who did Conrad tell? Why, James Samuel, a former BWC official who moved over to become one of the governor's executive assistant for business affairs in July of that year!
In other words, Conrad told a former colleague who probably already knew something about the MDL mess, or at the very least would know how to handle the information "discreetly" so close to the election. And sure enought, two days later Conrad wrote an email stating that Samuel and another Taft aide would omit info about the MDL loss from the governor's weekly report “due to the wide and
uncontrolled circulation" the report received.
Democrats of the stature of Rep.Sherrod Brown -- a highly regarded US congressman from our state -- and state Senator Theresa Fedor are on record as seeing concerted foot-dragging at best, deliberate cover-up at worst, in Republican maneuverings to keep the BWC scandals under raps before the election.
Of course, Republicans pooh-pooh such notions, because we all know they'd never do such things. According to the Blade:
Mark Weaver, a GOP political consultant who represented the Ohio Republican Party last year in election-law disputes with the Democrats, referred to that Democratic sentiment as “wishful thinking times 10.”
He recalled giving a speech to Republican county chairmen in Ohio in the spring of 2004. Based on polling results, Mr. Weaver said he told them that the presidential race in Ohio was “over.”
Maybe so, Mr. Weaver. But those polling results were based on what Ohio voters didn't know. And Republicans made sure to keep them in the dark up through the election and beyond, until media coverage of election irregularities, the recount and resulting law suits had quieted down . . .
Good news from Bring Ohio Home. The Campaign for America's Future has launched the opening salvo in a campaign to let constituents here in Ohio's 18th District know just what our Republican congressman, Bob Ney, has been up to so we bring him down! (Go here for a list of links to my earlier posts on Bob.)
On Thursday, June 16, CFAF ran the ad on the left -- only full-page size! -- in newspapers in Zanesville and Chillicothe, two of the larger town/cities in Ney's east-central Ohio district.
Here are the highlights from the Campaign's more detailed "rap sheet" on Bob Ney over at its website:
But those are just the highlights. For details, click the "rap sheet" link and read the whole thing . . .
Even CFAF's rundown doesn't cover everything Bob Ney has done. Who could? But here's some other stuff our boy Bob's been up to:
A New Bill in Congress Threatens to Leave Homeowners at the Mercy of Predatory Lenders, Says Policy Group Mar 17, 2005
The
bill by Congressmen Robert Ney of Ohio and Paul Kanjorski of
Pennsylvania would preempt state laws proven effective at curbing
abusive lending and replace them with a weak federal standard. The
Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy and
research group, urges Congress to reject this bill in its current form,
which CRL regards as an attempt by lenders to get around strong
predatory lending laws. (PR Newswire) [Via Surwax]
Scams
to rip off our money start at the top - Rehoboth Beach, DE
Rep. Mike Pence
and Ohio Rep. Bob Ney want to throw out the spending
limits under the Campaign Reform statutes . . . [Via BOH]
Ney wins federal money to demolish privately owned bridge - Akron, OH
A privately owned bridge be demolished using tax-payer monies under a provision that Ney has inserted
in a transportation bill making its way through Congress. The St . . .
Campaigns
pay off for kin of legislators- Cleveland, OH
-- Ohio congressman Bob
Ney usually coasts to lopsided election victories, sometimes without
an opponent, yet his wife and son have earned more than $117,000 . . . [Via BOH]
Watchdog
group says support of bill raises questions - New Philadelphia, OH
...
Bob Ney co-sponsored a bill seeking to make it easier for
tribal governments to issue tax-exempt bonds. The St. Clairsville Republican
held a Feb. [Via BOH]
The list goes on and on . . . Oh, just go to Bring Ohio Home's frequently updated page on Bob Ney, his district and his name in the news.
Attention Joe Biden; Calling Joe Biden;
Hey Joe, say it ain't so ... you whored out to the banking and credit-card companies ... such as MBNA ("international headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware"; "the largest independent credit card lender in the world"; "the world’s largest issuer of the Gold MasterCard®"; "our Customers remain our top priority.") and Joe Biden's largest campaign contributor when you voted in favor of bankruptcy reform to protect 'em.
Well Joey, below is an excerpt from a Reuters report that tells what credit card companies have been doing for us lately:
UPDATE 3-MasterCard security breach could hit 40 mln cards
Fri Jun 17, 2005 08:23 PM ET
(Adds details, senator's comments, background)
By Spencer Swartz
SAN FRANCISCO, June 17 (Reuters) - MasterCard International on Friday said a security breach of credit card payment data had exposed about 40 million cards to potential fraud in the biggest such privacy violation ever reported.
An unauthorized person infiltrated cardholder data at CardSystems Solutions Inc., which processes transactions for MasterCard. About 13.9 million of those credit cards at risk are MasterCard-branded cards, the company said.
The total number of cards exposed exceeds the population of California, the most populous U.S. state.
"It sounds like the Guinness Book of World Records here," said Richard Smith, a leading computer privacy activist who runs a Web site called ComputerBytesMan.com.
There are 1.1 billion credit cards in circulation in the United States, according to the Nilson report which tracks the credit card industry.
A string of companies this year have reported stolen or misappropriated customer data, including Bank of America Corp.(BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , ChoicePoint Inc.(CPS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , and Reed Elsevier's (ELSN.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) (REED.L: Quote, Profile, Research) . ...
Hey Joe, have ya co-sponsored any legislation to protect card holding consumers and Joe & Jane Sixpack? Or, haven't we contributed enough to your campaigns to get your attention? Ya know, Joe, we are the people who made those credit card companies rich, and this is how we're repaid? How about a little bit of that good ol' boy political, you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours, huh Joe???
Where have you gone Joe Biden?
ADDENDUM(s):
Hey Joe, besides your bankruptcy reform favor, and the credit card companies' gross incompetence in mishandling our personal information, how about these SPECIAL RULES that give them Carte blanche to change prices on crap we've already bought?
Elizabeth Warren 05.09.05
Special Rules for Credit Card Companies?
Sweet deal if ya can get it. And apparently, Senators like Biden help 'em get it.
Studying the stream of news reports and Blog posts over the past few weeks, it is increasingly difficult to imagine what mindset it must take to stubbornly continue to propagate such a selfish, arrogant, pro-corporate-governance as that of the Bush administration.
Even while poll numbers indicate that a growing majority of Americans strongly disapprove of BushCo actions and policies, the beat goes on.
I call BushCo attitudes and policy-making "selfish" because of the damage they do to the political prospects of his fellow Republican'ts. At the same time, his politically self-destructive folly is somewhat encouraging to the great unwashed masses. The Duck appears lame and fading fast, while taking his party with him.
I have to assume that BushCo is simply confident that no matter how blatantly anti-American his actions, he can count on corruption and DieBold to rig elections, so that it simply doesn't matter how pissed-off he makes the majority of Americans. We can't win an election against these people currently. It's currently impossible. The fix is in. And, unless we focus on that single challenge first, '06 is likely to bring more-of-the-same.
I mean, how arrogant was it for the Republican majority to try (but, alas fail) to silence those demanding accountability for the war on Iraq by refusing them a venue in our nations' Capitol until the eleventh hour, and only then relegating the meeting to the basement, this week???
There is simply too much skullduggery in politics. Yeah, I know, always has been. But, at least most previous Presidents have tried to ACT like they remember that the job is a civil-servant gig, and not a dictatorship, sheez.
Until there is REAL election reform, the Bush Administration has pulled off a coup, and hijacked a nation.
I fully expect to see legislation introduced to eliminate presidential term limits, and the same rigging of elections which stuck us with Georgie in the first place, will insure this nation's conversion to a monarchy. BushCo is already a dictatorship, drunk with power, and lead by one.
With a clear majority in every seat of government, I have to speculate that Republicans must simply be so embarrassed by their lack of results, and continued ineptitude, that they've opted for a strategy to publicly insist that it is somehow, albeit illogically, the fault of the Democratic minority.
Republican'ts IMAGINE some truly non-existent obstructionism. In reality, Dems have become so complicit it frequently looks like a one party system. Can you say "Liebermann"?
How discouraging it is to have your political party coming under full-on assault while national figures like Liebermann do Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along" parodies.
Still other national Democratic figures, like Joe Biden voting with the dark-side in support of the giant banking and credit card lobby. Biden simultaneously criticizing any REAL Democrat that speaks out against the invading forces. In other words, lying down with the enemy, and subverting Democratic efforts.
We have met the enemy and they are us, in far too many instances. I don't know, maybe Democrats are just jealous of the comedy skits by Republican'ts of late, and wanna get in on their comedy routines.
Listen, first the Republicans stupidly blame everything in the damn world on Bill Clinton, and then when they can't peddle that crap to the masses anymore, everything somehow becomes the fault of the "obstructionist" minority in Congress.
Over at "BottleOfBlog", Ricky highlights another good example of this same kind of flawed Republican logic with regard to Republican complaints about the judiciary. His post is titled: "Nearly Half Of Conservative Republicans Have An Unfavorable Opinion Of Conservative Republicans"
The righties whine about the Supreme Court even when it's their own majority making the rulings over there too.
Republicans try to say that Dems are always negative and whining, and yet Republicans demonstrate self-loathing daily. Republicans hating Republicans. No wonder they accomplish little and continue to screw-up train wreck after train wreck!
The difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans seldom break ranks. I mean, when Republicans screw-up a train wreck, they do it in unison; with one voice. Republicans seem sheep / lemming-like followers of the leader, right, wrong, or indifferent. Republicans do not like to be confused by the facts either.
Meanwhile, Democrats struggle to find a leader who their more diverse, and independent core will fall in line behind (and stay there).
"One nation, under God", hmmm? We'll see, I guess. Seems like that's being tested, yet again. Hopefully, these tests continue to strength our metal, in the long-term. It's clear, to this blogger, that there is little hope of progress as long as BushCo is calling the shots. So, any energy that might otherwise move us forward, has got to be expended in efforts to minimize the damage this stubborn, uncooperative, and misguided administration is bent upon cramming down our throats. And, the hotter our political war, the sooner our political peace. Bush represents bad karma. Extremely little, if anything at all, has been positive since the supreme Court first appointed him. And, the American middle class has nearly evaporated under his constant barrage of corporate rich policies.
The good news is, even the Republican sheep have begun to stray from THIS particular Shepard, and his flock. FINALLY.
Happy Friday. And despite the included image, above, this is not our final edition. Not by a long shot. We'll be here at least until George is outta office.
"cs" already wrote on this topic of the Schiavo autopsy. I liked this Friday (down-under in Australia where it's already Friday) report's title and tone (excerpts below) so much, I've just gotta get my two-cents in.
I also wanna spread the emphasis to include others, besides Frist, who flapped their jaws back when Tom DeLay rallied the entire Federal government to this issue in a shameless and disgusting effort to do nothing more than pander the votes of the religious right. Santorum acted as pointman. And, Bush signed-off on the whole mess.
Here is how The Australian tells it from down-under (emphasis added by BloggerRadio):
Proof Schiavo had no chance
Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent
June 17, 2005THE religious Right, the US Congress and President George W.Bush might have rallied around the "right to life" cause of Terri Schiavo but there was final proof yesterday that the Florida woman who died on March 31 really had no life at all.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer says it pretty well, too:
Medical examiners in Florida have delivered the ultimate verdict in the Terri Schiavo case.
The cause of death was dehydration, not starvation. There was no evidence that she had been strangled or otherwise abused, by her husband or anyone else. The 41-year-old woman was blind and in a persistent vegetative state from which she could not recover, her brain shrunken to half the size of a healthy woman.
...
It's appropriate, then, that science settled the argument.
So is it over now? Nope. Check this out from brutha Jeb:
Bush wants more information on Schiavo's collapse; call to 911
The Associated Press
June 16, 2005
Man, these Bush boys hate to be shown-up. Talk about a persistent vegetative state, it's these right-wingnuts! 15 years, 19 judges, and NOW they wanna blame the 911 call? These Bush boys are a little slow on the up-take. Guess that's one reason why big bro Bush can't capture bin Laden.
ADDENDUM(s):
It's getting to be a real trick to Blog fast enough to post something about every instance of corrupt bullshit being pulled by BushCo these days. The crap is everywhere! Everywhere you look, read, listen, Republicans are greasing the slide for giant corporations and theocracies.
I have to guess that because job-approval poll numbers are soooooo bad, the righties are reading the handwriting on the wall, and have calculated that they must steal all of America they can, while the stealing is good.
In the New York Times today we learn that a BushCo plant in the Justice Department queers a five-year investigation and prosecution of the tobacco industry precisely because BushCo has never seen a major corporation that they didn't care more about than they do the American people.
Excerpts:
"Lawyers Fought U.S. Move to Curb Tobacco Penalty"
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: June 16, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 15 - Senior Justice Department officials overrode the objections of career lawyers running the government's tobacco racketeering trial and ordered them to reduce the penalties sought at the close of the nine-month trial by $120 billion, internal documents and interviews show.
...
The trial team argued that the move would be seen as politically motivated and legally groundless.
"We do not want politics to be perceived as the underlying motivation, and that is certainly a risk if we make adjustments in our remedies presentation that are not based on evidence," the two top lawyers for the trial team, Sharon Y. Eubanks and Stephen D. Brody, wrote in a memorandum on May 30 to Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum that was reviewed by The New York Times.
The two lawyers said the lower penalty recommendation ordered by Mr. McCallum would weaken the department's position in any possible settlement with the industry and "create an incentive for defendants to engage in future misconduct by making the misconduct profitable."
...
"Mr. McCallum, No. 3 at the department, is a close friend of President Bush from their days as Skull & Bones members at Yale, and he was also a partner at an Atlanta law firm, Alston & Bird, that has done legal work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, part of Reynolds American, a defendant in the case."
If you can read that last paragraph and come to any other conclusion, than a conflict of interest unduly influenced the Justice Department actions, well then, you're an idiot.
BushCo hates all non-millionaires. Can you say pending "Holocaust" against the rest of us? The dude, is a fascist, and his ancestors are Nazis sympathizers.
A few days ago, I wrote about the assault on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
"Public Broadcasting (CPB, PBS, NPR) Assaulted By House Whores = Republican Friends of ClearChannel"
I had little idea, at that writing, just how appropriate that title would prove to be, over time. In excerpts from today's New York Times (emphasis added by BloggerRadio), we learn this:
Lobbyists' Role for Public TV Is Investigated
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: June 16, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 15 - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday.
...
One of the lobbyists, Brian Darling, was paid $10,000 for his insights into Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican who sponsored the provision. This year, he briefly served as a top aide to Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, but resigned after the disclosure that he had written a memorandum describing how to exploit politically the life-support case of Terri Schiavo.
Mr. Darling did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
The other lobbyist, Mark Buse, a former top aide to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he provided advice on the legislative process over a month and did not talk to any lawmakers. Mr. Buse, who was paid $5,000, said he was hired at the suggestion of Katherine M. Anderson, a former chairwoman of the corporation and a current board member.
...
Mr. Tomlinson has said in recent interviews that he has no desire to impose a political point of view on programming, and that his efforts are intended to help public broadcasting distinguish itself in a 500-channel universe and gain financial and political support. His critics, who include top officials at the Public Broadcasting Service and at National Public Radio, say his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
The inspector general is looking at contracts signed by Mr. Tomlinson with a man named Fred Mann to monitor the political leanings of "Now."Mr. Mann, who was listed in the contracts as living in Indianapolis, could not be located, and officials at the corporation said they knew nothing about him.
Look folks, if you buy Tomlinson's crock-o-crap line about not wanting to impose a political point of view, then you need to get-a-life. The entire BushCo administration and their Republican core, is hell-bent upon the complete elimination of the CPB, period.
And, in true right-wing style, they will lie, cheat, steal, and stop at nothing to get their way. BushCo and their core support represent a lower life form. Hopefully, the general population, and even some of the dark-side's sheep and lemmings are catching on.
Would you buy a used car from this guy?
Shoot! I wish I'd known Michael Smith, the Uk Sunday Times reporter who broke the story on the Downing Street Memo (minutes) and other damning pre-war documents would be chatting at the WaPo today. I'd have had a question or two . . .
As it was, all the questions aired were from folks supporting Smith's reporting and asking for more info about what to do/expect next. Smith responded that we're reaching a tipping point, that we must lobby Congress long and hard, and that he hopes his reports will spur other journalists to chase the stor -- and others with information to leak what they know.
Do read the entire conversation; it's damning, but damned encouraging, too. Having said that, I continue my skeptics pose -- wondering why it's a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that's publishing the leaks, what role he might be playing behind scenes, and what kind of right-wing advantage he may see in letting these stories come out.
That isn't meant to infer that they shouldn't come out; just that we folks on the progressive end of the spectrum can't assume our visions are the only ones that might benefit from damaging -- maybe even bringing down -- George Bush and Tony Blair.
We're going to have to keep our eyes on the game as well as the ball . . .
Laura Rozen says that Rep. John Conyers' hearing on the Downing Street Memo and the Bush administration's handling of pre-war intelligence will be held in the Capitol afterall. Hmmm, wonder what changed Sensenbrenner's mind; maybe the fact that the Dems turned the heat up on him a bit over unilaterally shutting down that judiciary hearing did the trick.
Whatever the reason, folks at DKos confirmed that Conyers shared the news with Amy Goodman in the course of their interview today on Democracy Now!
There's more good news in that C-SPAN will broadcast the hearing live, currently scheduled for Thursday at 2:30 pm, ESt. But the bad news is they plan to broadcast it on C-SPAN 3.
If you're like me and millions of others, your cable or satellite provider only offers C-SPAN 1 and 2. I've already written to ask that the broadcast be moved over a channel that reaches more viewers, which I imagine would be C-SPAN 2 since it's the House channel. Here's the email address so you can request a channel change for the hearings, too:
events@c-span.org
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting in which the Bolton vote was delayed was initially broadcast on C-Span 3, but was switched to 1 after the meeting began. So I think we can get a switch on the Conyers hearing if enough of us write in to C-SPAN.
Via Atrios' place:
Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a renowned heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader, went to the floor late Thursday night for the second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state."
"I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."
And the determination by the medical examiner who's autopsy report on Theresa Shiavo was released today:
Thogmartin also said that the autopsy, including 274 external and internal body images, and an exhaustive review of Terri Schiavo's past medical records, police reports and social services agency records produced no conclusion on what triggered the collapse that caused her severe brain damage, including whether she suffered from an eating disorder.
He said that Schiavo was blind and that "no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of nerves."
You know, I spend a lot of time trying not to see some of these folks as two-dimensional, cartoon-character demons. But Senator Frist is the same guy who lied through his teeth at a press conference on the Bolton nomination yesterday when he claimed Democrats kept "shifting the goal posts" on their document requests -- and then repeated the phrase over and over and over again. He's the same guy who ignored requests for the Anti-Lynching Resolution to be debated during the Senate's daytime "business hours", denied multiple requests to for a roll-call vote on the Resolution -- and then lied and said the Monday night scheduling and voice-vote procedures were at the sponsors' requests! The same guy who tried to force the Senate to cower before the Executive with the nuclear option. The list just goes on . . .
So it's extremely difficult to visual this guy as a real, live three-dimensional human being; but I'll keep trying, because I'm a secular humanist liberal and that's what we do . . .
Was there ever a more plainly put truth than this?
When people are made to feel powerless, either by religious despot or
political preacher, they feel despair, even if they disguise the
anxiety and pain of that powerlessness as piety or as patriotism--or
both.
From Doris "Granny D" Haddock's commencement address to graduates at Hampshire College in western Massachusetts.
(With thanks to DU.)
So, after holding a press conference on John Bolton with John McCain there to hold his hand, Steve Clemons says Bill Frist may call for another cloture vote on Bolton's UN appointment -- get this! -- on Thursday! (For reports on the press conference itself go to Steve's blog and just start scrolling down . . .)
What else is scheduled for Thursday that they might want to shove to the inside pages of newspapers and off our tv sets? Why, John Conyers' unofficial hearings on the Downing Street Memo and the lies used to lead us to war, of course.
Wait. There's more! Senator Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the same guy who shut down a judicial committee hearing the other day because he didn't like what witnesses called by Dems had to say, is trying to muck up Conyers' hearing, too. According the The Hill, Conyers isn't obsequious enough when he holds these ad hoc panels, so Sensenbrenner's refusing to give him a room! (All info initially picked up at Steve Clemons' blog in posts by commenters who probably picked it up somewhere else.)
Over at DKos they're having a lively discussion on where Conyers should hold his hearing instead. There's lots of support for holding it on the Capitol steps (that's what I voted for in the poll), but lots of ideas for other good historical locales, too. Go take a look . . .
Then come back here and use the links below to [politely] let Sensenbrenner know you think he's an ass; that shutting down meetings and locking colleagues out of rooms is the the kind of thing you'd expect an old Politburo member to do, not a United States congressman . . .
As DA would say, you can call Jimmy Junior, the Kotex pads heir, toll-free at:
1-877-762-8762
Or you can share your thoughts with the senator's aides by calling his office directly at:
(202) 225-5101
Or email him here: sensenbrenner@mail.house.gov.
I think folks are gettin' into position for some serious wranglin', don't you?
While American Citizens & Consumers go about their daily lives, news reports abound about attacks upon, and mishandling of our personal identities and data.
Most of us are too busy making it from paycheck-to-paycheck, or searching for employment to provide one, to become actively involved in lobbying Congress to ask for laws to protect what should, naturally, belong to us in the first place.
Meanwhile, companies which have become filthy rich preying upon our individual identities, and data are joining forces in meetings designed to plot and strategize ways to influence Congress to leave us, and or identities vulnerable to those attacks.
The insanity of it is that some of the very corporations responsible for recent breaches in the security of our personal data (Choicepoint, Inc., Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp., Ameritrade Holding Corp., DSW Shoe Warehouse, Time Warner Inc., LexisNexis, CitiFinancial, the consumer finance subsidiary of Citigroup, etc) are the very ones joining forces with the Private Investigations industry lobbyists, in back rooms, where they are putting their heads, and dollars, together to make war plans against the Joe & Jane Sixpacks of America.
The very essence of our beings is the commodity these parasites make their livings from, and what commissions do we receive? I'll tell ya what, they loose and mishandle millions of folks' information and make us vulnerable to a life-long effort to repair the resulting damage. But, they are fighting, tooth and nail to have Congress protect the free-ride they have already proven they are incapable of protecting.
According to another report,
U.S. Offshoring of Personal Data Grows
By Diane M. Grassi
Jun 12, 2005, 18:13
corporations may already be storing your personal identity and information offshore, in foreign lands, in an effort to avoid U.S. regulation, in much the same way that corporations open post office boxes in offshore locales to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Sure sounds like yet another slide back to the days of the Robber Barons!
I suggest that the Private Investigations industry is far from being well regulated enough to be trusted with access to these databases in the first place. I don't even think every state requires a PI to be licensed ... hair stylist are better regulated!
Below is a link and excerpt(s) from a WaPo story (emphasis added by BloggerRadio) about their plans. Below THAT are other, related links of interest. I strongly urge each of us to lobby our respective Congress-persons immediately, in an effort to counter the massive DOLLARS these industry crooks are already using to promote their own private interests. Perhaps if the 13.5-Million+ whose ID has already been mishandled respond, we can hope Congress might listen, for once, rather than whoring-out as usual:
'Several bills are moving through the Capitol to prevent identity thieves from getting Social Security numbers to gain access to consumers' financial accounts. In the past year, the Social Security numbers of tens of millions of Americans have been exposed through personal data being lost, stolen or hacked.
But private investigators contend that the rush to protect privacy goes too far and would damage their ability to deliver valuable services, such as locating people who skip out on debts, commit fraud or want to avoid testifying in court.
In a lobbying blitz, trade associations representing roughly 40,000 licensed private investigators are exhorting their members to "please do something, or we will have nothing" by writing to Congress and state legislatures, many of which also are moving to curb the availability of Social Security numbers.
Representatives of private investigator groups discussed lobbying strategy last month with several data brokers -- companies that buy and sell personal information -- at a meeting hosted by ChoicePoint Inc., one of the country's largest such firms.
According to a summary of the meeting circulated to online news groups frequented by private investigators, "PIs and data provider companies are committed to a massive lobbying effort to educate our legislators on the ill effects of truncating data to licensed investigators."'
They Won't Go
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 13, 2005
"George W. Bush is in no danger of being ranked among the nation's pre-eminent commanders in chief. Not only has he been unable thus far to win the war in Iraq, but on his watch significant sectors of the proud U.S. military have been rapidly deteriorating."
Read the whole WaPo piece here, it sums it up pretty well.
Hey ... if you didn't catch Sensenbrenner's ACT in Congress on this past Saturday, visit these links to see VIDEO of your U.S. Congress in action. It's better than "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Sensenbrenner stars in it as two of those three characters.
http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/10/54149/5115
OR
Read about it here:
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/fl20_schultz/judgavelledoff.html
Afterward, play movie critic; call and fax Jimmy Junior toll-free at: 1-877-762-8762 and give the big cheese from Wisconsin your review of his act.
Go to http://www.freepress.net/ and give Congress hell about PBS! I did. I wrote & E-Mailed 'em, I faxed 'em and I called 'em. Hell, I might do all 3 again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, etc. Let's try some of BushCo's strategy of REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT ourselves! TOLL-FREE: 1-877-762-8762
Dear Chairman Lewis and Vice Chairman Regula,
I am writing to express my grave concern over the elimination of federal
funding for public broadcasting by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. I urge you to restore these
funds and help support the valuable service that public broadcasting
provides to the public.If allowed to move forward, these cuts would devastate programming on
National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and other
public media. I am also shocked by the $23.4 million cut in federal funds
for children's educational shows such as "Sesame Street," which are relied
on by millions of American families.Your Subcommittee's desire to cut public broadcasting is not shared by most
Americans. In fact:-- In 2003, a national poll by RoperASW found that Americans ranked PBS as
the "most trusted" national institution, ahead of the courts, the federal
government, the commercial broadcast networks, newspapers, cable television
and Congress.-- In a 2004 Grunwald Associates poll of 1,200 the nation's educators, PBS
ranked as the top source of classroom video content.-- In a recent Tarrance Group poll, more than 75 percent of those asked said
"it is important for the federal government to support [PBS and NPR]
financially."Public media are an essential part of our democracy. I urge you to act on
behalf of the vast majority of Americans and protect public broadcasting.
From ColdFusion04 @ DKos:
Saturday afternoon during their annual State Convention at the Park Plaza in downtown Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin adopted the following resolution:
CALLING ON THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO INITIATE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH, VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY AND DEFENSE SECRETARY RUMSFELD FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Go read the rest . . . Then send them and email to tell them Thank You!
party@wisdems.org
Wow. I hope that Ohio's long-slumbering state party will wake up this way.
First, let's set the stage.
This guy's credentials almost read like those of a career student. This guy mustta spent more on tuition than a Bush pioneer spent on BOTH inaugurations combined. This guy probably had to major in economics just to figure out how to juggle all his student loans:
Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.
Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.
At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
Ok, with the stage set, on with the show:
Mr. Krugman gets it said so well I would really like to include his entire op-ed piece right here. Instead, I highly recommend following the link, above, to the entire NYT online version. Here are a few excerpts, anyway:
"Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.
But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists."
...
"Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.
It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on."
...
"But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.
Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed."
That last line ... about "the politics of greed" ... bring me to this quote by yet another size-12 brain:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." --John Kenneth Galbraith
The American middle-class and below is on the ropes people. We're looking like Mike Tyson in the 6th. Unable to answer the bell. Catch-a-clue. Stop letting the dark-side divert your attention with their slight-of-hand CAUSES that get ya all riled-up, while they pick your pocket with their free hand. BushCo is killing the American middle class, the nation, as a whole, can't be far behind. C'mon, it doesn't take a size-12 brain to see what's going on folks!
There, but for the grace of God ...
(computer image by "Elsina")
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."--Thomas Jefferson
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison
"When the government fears the people it is a democracy....when the people fear their government it is tyranny..." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." – Herman Goering - Nazi
"patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." - Samuel Johnson
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