usdemocrats.com political news weblog
OCTOBER 2005
back to weblog index
usdemocrats.com political news weblog
OCTOBER 2005
back to weblog index
|
Repost: Bin Ladens evacuated
from U.S. after 9-11 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 04, 2003 By: Staff read original source: http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm....0Crime%20Family In the immediate aftermath of the Sept.
11 attacks while U.S. airspace was restricted, planes sanctioned
by the Bush administration flew about the country gathering some
140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians – including several relatives
of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden – who were then spirited
out of the country within a week of the terror, according to
a senior official. Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke described the Saudi exodus in an interview for the current issue of Vanity Fair on newsstands today. Clarke, who left the White House in February, lends confirmation to reports of the evacuation which first surfaced in September 2001, but have been dispelled as rumor and urban legend. Citing Clarke, the magazine reports that within a week of the hijackings private planes picked up individuals from 10 cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Houston and Boston. Aviation officials complained the flights took place before the government had lifted flight restrictions for the general public. "We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history and here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens. ... I wanted to go the highest levels in Washington," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan International Airport, told the magazine. Kinton said it was clear the operation had the blessings of federal authorities. Once the flight ban was lifted, two jumbo jets transported the Saudis out of the country. The Boston Globe reported at the time that two flights bound for Saudi Arabia with members of the bin Laden clan on board left Logan on Sept. 18 and 19. Other reports put the departure date at Sept. 14. Clarke said the Saudis feared they "would be targeted for retribution" by Americans after the hijackings. According to the Globe, a Saudi diplomat said the relatives of bin Laden had been advised by both the Saudi government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to return to Saudi Arabia at least temporarily for their own safety. Bin Laden is said to be estranged from his family. "Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke, who headed the Counterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council, told Vanity Fair. He said he did not recall who requested approval for the flight, but believes it was either the FBI or the State Department. He said he, in turn, checked with FBI officials, who gave the go ahead. "So I said, 'Fine, let it happen,'" Clarke told the magazine, adding that he asked the bureau to make sure no one "inappropriate" was leaving the country. "I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second guess the FBI," he said. The FBI role in the Saudi evacuation operation is in contention. The Tampa Tribune and New York Times reported at the time that FBI agents supervised the shepherding of young members of the bin Laden family by car and plane to secret assembly points in Texas and elsewhere prior to their ultimate departure out of the country. FBI officials deny this. "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights one way or another," Special Agent John Iannarelli, the FBI's spokesman on counterterrorism activities, told Vanity Fair. Iannarelli told the New York Times bureau agents interviewed the adult relatives of bin Laden in the days following Sept. 11 before the White House cleared them to leave the country. "We did everything that needed to be done," the Times quotes him as saying. "There's nothing to indicate that any of these people had any information that could have assisted us, and no one was accorded any additional courtesies that wouldn't have been accorded anyone else." Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, offered contradictory statements to Vanity Fair. He said that while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations." According to Clarke, top White House officials personally approved the repatriation plan, which is thought to have been organized by Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Vanity Fair reports Prince Bandar met with President George W. Bush on Sept. 13, 2001, but it is not known whether the plan was discussed. WorldNetDaily has reported the Saudi envoy donated millions of dollars to bin Laden's favorite charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO. And tens of thousands of dollars in donations made by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Bandar, wound up in the hands of two al-Qaida operatives who later became 9-11 hijackers. The recently released congressional report on the 9-11 attacks accused the Saudi government of financing al-Qaida operations through Saudi-based charities. Twenty-eight pages of the 800-page report the Bush administration refused to declassify is said to detail suspected ties between the hijackers and agents of the Saudi government. Congressional sources claim the report was delayed for months over arguments with the Bush administration on details of Saudi involvement with al-Qaida. Saudi officials have reportedly urged the president to release the missing pages. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who last month demanded Riyadh remove a powerful member of the Saudi royal family from public office over a failure to police terrorist funding, seized on Clarke's information to call on the White House to investigate the post-9-11 Saudi evacuation. In an interview with the New York Times, Schumer said he suspected that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11. Particularly valuable, he said, would have been information gleaned from two relatives of bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups. "This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get," Schumer told the Times. "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed." Reuters reported Bandar had lunch last Wednesday with former President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the family has long had a vacation home. The next day, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney in Wyoming. The news agency noted the meetings coincide with efforts by Saudi Arabia to halt a slide in relations amid reported links between some Saudis and attacks on the United States.
Original Link: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34405 |
|
Kerry: Bring troops home over
Christmas -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Posted: 6:08 p.m. EDT (22:08 GMT)
read source: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/26/iraq.kerry.ap/index.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry says President Bush should bring home 20,000 troops from Iraq over the Christmas holidays if the December parliamentary elections there are successful. Defeated by Bush last year and a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Kerry called for a "reasonable time frame" for pulling back troops rather than a full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. He said it could be completed in 12 to 15 months. (Read the passage of Iraq's constitution) "It will be hard for this administration, but it is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down ... starting immediately after successful elections in December," Kerry said in a speech Wednesday at Georgetown University. The presence of 159,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is deterring peace efforts, said Kerry, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "To undermine the insurgency, we must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces linked to specific, responsible benchmarks," he said. "At the first benchmark, the completion of December elections, we can start the process of reducing our forces by 20,000 troops over the course of the holidays." Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, has been a strong critic of Bush's handling of the war, accusing the president of misleading the public into going to war. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
|
The Great American Spending
Spree -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=1769
Recent disasters in the United States have blown in a new era of government freewheeling. There seems to be free money for everyone. But "free money" can be devastatingly costly. The United States of America is in the midst of an unprecedented spending spree. Yet, in comments made about the federal budget he submitted to Congress in February, President Bush told a group of U.S. governors, “I presented a good, lean budget to the Congress—it sets priorities, it meets priorities. It … says, if a program isn’t working, don’t fund it; or if it duplicates efforts, streamline” (February 28). The truth is exactly the opposite. The $2.57 trillion spending plan was America’s biggest ever—about $330 billion more than would be generated by tax revenue. How anyone can describe a $330 billion deficit as a lean budget is beyond me. And if you think the emergency relief the government has now ponied up to repair the wreckage from two devastating hurricanes will jolt the government into curbing its federal spending, think again. Unanswered Questions President Bush said rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina would be “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” Criticized by the liberal media for not responding to the tragedy fast enough, the president seemed to be making up for lost time by sending cash—lots of it. “Federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone, from roads and bridges to schools and water systems. Our goal is to get the work done quickly” (September 15). But in the rush to throw blank checks at the rebuilding project, a number of critical questions were barely considered. For example, what exactly is the federal government’s role in rebuilding entire communities or cities after natural disasters? As Stephen Moore wrote for OpinionJournal.com, “Chicago was burned to the ground in 1871; San Francisco was leveled by an earthquake in 1906; and in 1900 Galveston, Texas, was razed by a hurricane even more ferocious than Katrina. In each instance, these proud cities were rebuilt rapidly and to even greater glory—with hardly any federal money” (September 19). Of course, a lot has changed since those disasters. Today we live in the era of big government and ever-expanding entitlement programs. If something bad happens, the welfare state recipients simply expects the government to take care of it—plain and simple. Another question that has been shoved aside is, how can we make sure the free-flow of money into places like New Orleans will be spent wisely? When you hear commentators talk about the history of political corruption at the state and local levels in Louisiana, it is almost accepted as part of the region’s cultural charm. The Washington Post even labeled Louisianan police forces as “famously corrupt.” Last year, the head agent at the fbi’s New Orleans bureau, described the corruption among Louisiana’s local and state officials as “epidemic, endemic and entrenched,” saying that “no branch of government is exempt.” According to OpinionJournal’s John Fund, the number of Louisiana state elected officials per capita convicted of crimes is the third highest of any state in America (September 26). Of course, the mainstream media are much too fixated on exposing President Bush’s faults to give any serious attention to state and local officials stealing or wasting billions of dollars. As columnist Peggy Noonan rightly asked, “How much of the $100 billion coming its way is going to fall off the table? Half? OK, let’s not get carried away. More than half” (September 22). In the same speech where President Bush promised truckloads of money for the Gulf Coast states, he referred to the “persistent poverty” all of us witnessed on television during the New Orleans flood. This poverty, he said—echoing the sentiments of his left-wing critics—had its “roots in a history of racial discrimination ….” Thus, in an effort to confront widespread poverty and racism with “bold action,” the president promised to send lots of money—not for merely replacing what was destroyed, but to build up even “higher and better” than before. He promised tax breaks, government-funded accounts of up to $5,000 for education and childcare for each evacuee seeking a job, etc. Never mind the corruption—just throw money at the problem and hope for the best. One Missouri congressman even complained about signing off on the president’s initial $62 billion rebuilding bill “even though we knew a lot of the money may go to waste.” Isn’t this a much bigger problem than poverty or racism? Government handouts for poor people amount to 14.6 percent of President Bush’s overall budget, nearly twice the dollar amount of what President Clinton spent on poverty. Yet, if much of the money intended to help storm victims disappears or is wasted away in bureaucracy, are these programs really serving their intended purpose? Poverty, after all, is at about the same level it has been for the past 40 years, even though we are dumping money into these programs by the hundreds of billions. That brings us to another question that has not been answered, although several media outlets and a few maverick politicians have at least asked it. And that is, how are we going to pay for all of this? The day after the president promised the moon to the Gulf Shore, he admitted that rebuilding will cost a lot of money. “It’s going to mean that we’re going to have to make sure we cut unnecessary spending.” It makes for a great sound bite. But politicians have been saying things like this for years—even as they continue to spend more money, start new programs and expand the size of government bureaucracy. Nowhere to Cut? According to Stephen Moore’s column, a few dozen congressmen proposed an amendment be added to the initial $62 billion hurricane relief bill that the president pushed through Congress. The idea was to cut other government programs by 2.5 percent—just 2 ½ pennies trimmed from every dollar spent by a federal agency. According to Moore, “The Republican leadership would not even allow it to come to a vote, on the grounds that there was no waste which could be easily identified and cut” (op. cit.). The amendment didn’t even make it to the floor. When asked later about possible budget cuts that Congress could make, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (who later temporarily resigned from his top position in the House after a Texas indictment) said he would be glad to make cuts, but that “nobody has been able to come up with any yet.” A reporter then asked DeLay, whom many consider to be one of the most conservative politicians in Washington, if that meant government operations were running at peak efficiency? DeLay’s response: “Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority, we’ve pared it down pretty good” (emphasis added). Can he be serious? Federal spending has increased by 79 percent since “conservatives” gained control of the House in 1994. Yet, presumably with a straight face, Mr. DeLay went on to declare “victory” against wasteful government spending. He told reporters there is simply no fat left to be cut from the federal budget (Washington Times, September 14). DeLay’s astonishing remarks prompted a number of conservative columnists to put forward long lists of suggested budget cuts—many of them singling out the $286 billion highway bill Congress passed in August. That bill contained a record amount of pork—more than 6,000 pet projects tacked on by politicians from both sides of the aisle, which will cost American taxpayers $24 billion. The most publicized of these additional “earmarks,” as politicians affectionately call them, is the infamous Alaskan “bridge to nowhere”—a $223 million project, sponsored by Rep. Don Young. A career politician and member of Congress for more than 30 years, the Alaskan Republican bragged that the highway bill was “stuffed like a Turkey” with all sorts of treats for his state. The bridge will be named after Congressman Young, but to honor what? His skillful lobbying for pork? President Bush had originally said he would reject any bill above $256 billion. Later, he raised the spending limit to $284 billion, before finally signing on—as he has for every congressional spending bill since becoming president—at $286 billion Going back to the early 1990s, when Democrats controlled Congress, the average number of pork projects stacked on top of spending bills amounted to about 4,000 annually—in itself, an embarrassment. Today, with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate (as well as the White House), there are more than 15,000 pork projects each year. And yet, neither the president of the United States nor the House majority leader can find any room in the budget to cut costs? Ryan Sager wrote in the New York Post, “The point of the debate among the Republicans isn’t about whether to spend the money needed to rebuild after Katrina—that’s a given. The question is whether, even under the most extreme of circumstances, they can make even the most minor of cuts to the size of government” (September 19, emphasis added). Indeed, if our leaders won’t reduce their standard of living even in the midst of a national tragedy, when will they ever do it? Dangerous Precedent Politicians throw around the terms billion and trillion so often these days that it can seem like spare change. To help put the estimated cost for Katrina ($200 billion) in perspective, Stephen Moore said it amounted to about $400,000 for every family displaced by the hurricane. Think about the standard of living each of those families could have if starting off with $400,000 to invest! Of course, there’s also the infrastructure to build up—particularly in New Orleans—but still, 200 billion dollars? That’s a lot of money to go around—more than we’ve spent on the war in Iraq. Stephen Moore wrote, “Politicians from seemingly every congressional district appear to be elbowing their way to the orgy table for a slice of this $200-billion pie. At last count, 12 governors declared their states emergency disaster areas, and thus eligible for federal aid. Iowa, Michigan and Utah, for example, states nowhere near the hurricane, are lining up for disaster relief funds” (op. cit.). And why not? It’s free money. If politicians won’t sign off on a highway bill, unless they get hundreds of millions of dollars for unnecessary “projects” in their state, why should they sign off on a bloated hurricane relief bill unless they get some sort of compensation? Isn’t it a wonderful system? Following up on the president’s $62 billion of initial relief, Louisiana’s two senators (a Republican and a Democrat) authored the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, hoping to push it through Congress while politicians are in the mood to “give.” The $250 billion bill, according to the Washington Post, would cost more, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than the entire Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The bill actually calls for the Army Corps of Engineers annual budget to be increased by 900 percent—from $4 billion to $40 billion. Besides rebuilding the infrastructure of New Orleans and helping other destroyed communities in Louisiana rebuild, the bill also calls for $14 billion to go toward ecosystem restoration and another $13 billion for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. According to the Post, “It also includes hefty payments to hospitals, ports, banks, shipbuilders, fishermen and schools, as well as $8 million for alligator farms, $35 million for seafood industry marketing, and $25 million for a sugar-cane research laboratory that had not been completed before Katrina” (September 26). Senators Vitter and Landrieu admitted it was a lot of money when they introduced the bill. But they said an unprecedented tragedy requires an unprecedented response. Speaking of precedent, assuming this bill is approved (or some variation of it), what will it signal to other regions ravaged by future disasters? If the federal government is now obligated to rebuild New Orleans better than before, and without regard to cost, what happens if hurricanes intensify? What if the “big one” finally splits Southern California? Or a suitcase bomb obliterates a major U.S. city? How much would it take—how long would it be—before our fragile economy grinds to a halt? As we told you in last month’s Trumpet, Jesus prophesied that weather disasters would take a violent turn for the worse in the days leading up to His Second Coming. “And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven” (Luke 21:11; see also Matthew 24:7). Weather disasters, as they increase in frequency and intensity, are actually fulfilling Bible prophecy. This prophecy, along with other geopolitical factors, will ultimately lead to a worldwide economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the U.S. dollar. When that happens, it will clear the way for a dangerous new world force to emerge out of the heart of Europe. The Trumpet, basing its analysis on the sure word of Bible prophecy, has made this prediction for years. Debt Threatens Economy Last year, the leftward-leaning USA Today ran an article on the astronomical debt our nation is plunging into. “$53 trillion is what federal, state and local governments need immediately—stashed away, earning interest, beyond the $3 trillion in taxes collected last year—to repay debts and honor future benefits promised under Medicare, Social Security and government pensions,” it said. “And like an unpaid credit card balance accumulating interest, the problem grows by more than $1 trillion every year that action to pay down the debt is delayed” (Oct. 3, 2004, emphasis added). Unless action was taken soon, the paper warned, the consequences could be “catastrophic.” The article quoted Glenn Hubbard, who used to serve as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for President Bush. “Political leaders know this is a big problem. … I know the president is keenly aware. But in an election year, it’s not easy to talk about. The solutions may be very painful. If he is re-elected, I think he will make this a top priority next year” (emphasis added). Sadly, that has not happened. Federal spending has grown by 7 percent this year—and that’s not counting costs for the Iraq War or the relief needed for Katrina and Rita. Under President Bush’s watch, the federal government has undergone its largest expansion since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. In our May issue, we referred you to a comment made last November in a private meeting by Morgan Stanley’s chief economist, Stephen Roach. According to the Boston Herald, Roach suggested the United States had less than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic Armageddon! “It struck me how extreme he was—much more, it seemed to me, than in public,” one source who attended the meeting, was quoted as saying (Nov. 23, 2004). According to the Herald, “Roach’s analysis isn’t entirely new. But recent events give it extra force.” That was a year ago. More recently, an Associated Press story picked up on this same theme. According to journalist Robert Tanner, “A chorus of economists, government officials and elected leaders both conservative and liberal is warning that America’s nonstop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster—one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforcement” (August 27, emphasis added). The article interviewed David Walker, who audits the federal government’s books. He said, “I believe the country faces a critical crossroad and that the decisions that are made—or not made—within the next 10 years or so will have a profound effect on the future of our country, our children and our grandchildren. The problem gets bigger every day, and the tidal wave gets closer every day.” Two days after that ap story was posted, Katrina slammed into the Gulf Shore. And how have we gone about getting out of that $200 billion mess? Borrow more money. Just charge it to the deficit. “Certainly, there are those who feel such comments bring to mind the preachers who predict the end of the world at a specific time and place, and have always been wrong …. But something has changed. More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin warned: ‘He that goes aborrowing, goes asorrowing.’” That’s not the Trumpet’s warning—it’s from the Associated Press! The article projected this year’s deficit to be $331 billion—about $100 billion less than expected—before the hurricanes, that is. The nation’s overall debt has now surpassed the $8 trillion mark—and it grows by about $1.5 billion every single day. Making matters unbelievably worse, politicians have promised Americans many trillions more in entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. As mentioned earlier, we would need another $40 to $50 trillion in the bank to follow through on all those promises. One congressman suggested that simply delaying the new, multi-trillion-dollar prescription drug benefit for seniors would save us $40 billion this year—money that could then be re-directed to hurricane relief. Can’t do it. Seniors gotta have drugs. Our troops gotta have guns. Poor people gotta have welfare. We can’t leave any child behind in education. Louisiana has to have $250 billion to rebuild everything from roads to alligator farms. And how will Alaskans survive without a bridge to nowhere? Everyone—poor, middle class, wealthy, young and old, every special interest group, every politician, every state, every victim of disasters—everyone must get paid. There is simply no room to make any significant cuts in the federal budget. We must keep borrowing. Day of Reckoning According to an Associated Press survey, at least 70 percent of Americans consider themselves at least somewhat or significantly worried about America’s addiction to deficit spending. Seventy percent—that’s an overwhelming majority! Ah, but here’s the kicker—only 35 percent of those surveyed were in favor of the government making spending cuts that would reduce government services! And only 18 percent were willing to have their taxes raised to keep government services where they are. And get this: A measly 1 percent of respondents were willing to raise taxes and reduce spending. As the ap article noted, “The nation’s political leaders could hardly be said to have a mandate calling for fiscal responsibility.” That’s because most Americans themselves are living way beyond their means! On average, we save nothing from what we earn. Debt consumes about 20 percent of the money Americans have left over to spend after taxes and payments for food and housing. We are a nation of deficit spenders. And while I haven’t conducted a survey, I’ll bet a majority of those who are up to their eyeballs in debt worry about their deficit spending, either “some” or “a lot.” But instead of making cuts in the family budget, we go right on spending. And why not—there’s always free money available. There’s always a way to bump up the spending limits. There’s always another credit card we can add to the plan. There’s always another loan. And we had better be grateful for all these high-interest handouts, because there are always—always—a lot of things that we absolutely must have. It’s the exact same, greed-is-good mentality that paralyzes politicians in Washington and practically every other state and local governing body in America. A vast majority of Americans are worried about where our deficit spenders are leading this country. But a pathetically miniscule number of people are willing to make any kind of sacrifice, whether personally or nationally, in order to avoid disaster! And for that reason, politicians will continue looting the Treasury—running up astronomical debt for oncoming generations. They do it for the same reason looters raided Walmart during the New Orleans flood—because they can. No law enforcement agency is there to stop them. But there will be a day of reckoning. American voters may not hold their leaders accountable for their reckless spending. But one day, in the not-too-distant future, foreign creditors will. “In a very real sense,” the ap story continued, “the U.S. economy is dependent on the central banks of Japan, China and other nations to invest in U.S. Treasuries and keep American interest rates down. The low rates here keep American consumers buying imported goods.” To this point, foreign investors are willing to finance our debt because of how dependent their economies are on Americans consuming foreign goods. As long as there is something in it for them, they will continue financing our debt. And as long as they do that, we will go right on spending. And when bad things like Katrina happen, we’ll borrow more to dig ourselves out of a hole. But the party will not go on forever. Eventually, outside “law enforcement” will show up, and the looting will come to an abrupt halt. Are you prepared for that reality? If not, you had better wake up! And if you don’t like hearing that from the Trumpet, then please heed the warning from the Associated Press: “There’s no way we’re going to grow our way out of our long-range fiscal imbalance,” said David Walker, the one who audits the U.S. government’s books. “I really do not believe the American people have a real idea as to where we are and where we’re headed, and what the potential implications are for the country if we don’t start making some tough decisions soon.” Are you worried about what’s ahead?
If so, judging by surveys, you’re not alone! A large American
majority is worried. The question is, Are you prepared to make
tough decisions? And will you follow through with sacrifice?
|
|
House Republicans chop several
important programs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, October 27, 2005; Posted: 2:17 p.m. EDT (18:17 GMT)
read source: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/27/congress.budgetcuts.ap/index.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts. More politically difficult votes -- to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies -- are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill. It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery. President Bush met with House and Senate GOP leaders and said he was pleased with the progress. He also appeared to endorse a plan by House Speaker Dennis Hastert's plan for an across-the-board cut in agency budgets, perhaps including the Pentagon, by the end of the year. "I encourage Congress to push the envelope when it comes to cutting spending," Bush said. Budget bill The measure is the first in eight years to take aim at the automatic growth of federal spending programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. In the Senate, the Budget Committee voted along party lines to bundle together the work of eight legislative committees into a bill that will be debated next week by the full Senate. The Congressional Budget Office said the Senate measure would save $39 billion over five years -- $4 billion more than the budget passed last spring. Pressed to produce more savings than the Senate, House committees took more political chances in drafting the $50 billion House plan, which has become a rallying point for the GOP's conservative wing and its anxiety about hurricane relief worsening the deficit. The House Education and the Workforce panel, for example, was told to generate $18 billion in savings over five years. On Wednesday it approved squeezing lenders in the student loan program and raising premiums to employers for government insurance of their employees' and retirees' pension benefits. 'Raid on student aid' The Ways and Means Committee approved on a party-line vote a plan by its chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-California, with so many difficult-to-swallow provisions that lawmakers and aides whispered about whether the intent was to make it hard for GOP leaders to win its passage in the full House. It includes $3.8 billion in cuts to child support enforcement. Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-North Dakota, charged that Republicans were appealing to the "constituency of deadbeat dads." The bill also would tighten eligibility standards for foster care assistance in nine states and delay some lump-sum payments to very poor and elderly beneficiaries of Social Security's Supplemental Security Income program. "It was abundantly clear that Thomas didn't want to do this stuff," said an aide to a Ways and Means Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity but cited meetings that occurred behind the scenes. House GOP leaders this month directed Thomas to produce $8 billion in savings, eight times the original target he was assigned. The Ways and Means plan also would eliminate payments to industries harmed by unfair foreign trade practices. Those payments come from the proceeds of duties on foreign goods "dumped" into the U.S. market. ANWR drilling Minority Democrats opposed virtually everything that was done, saying Wednesday's actions are part of a broader GOP budget blueprint that also calls for $106 billion in new tax cuts over the next five years. "They are targeting programs for poor
people to pay for tax cuts for rich people," said Rep. David
Obey, D-Wisconsin. Once those tax cuts are passed, Obey added,
deficits will be increasing again. |
|
King: President 'at war with
his own party' Thursday, October 27, 2005; Posted: 12:50 p.m. EDT (16:50 GMT)
read source: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/27/king/index.html (CNN) -- The withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers followed weeks of criticism from some of Bush's supporters, who wanted a nominee with a clear conservative record. The announcement also came during the last days of an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity, which could target White House officials. CNN anchor Miles O'Brien spoke Thursday with CNN chief national correspondent John King about these events and the president's next step. O'BRIEN: Let's bring in yet another somewhat potentially related story here, and that is what is happening to the White House with the CIA leak probe and Karl Rove being a target of it. He is known as the architect. He is the political mind of the White House and has been distracted, and thus the White House is left with a rather embarrassing episode here. How embarrassing is it? KING: Well, Miles, Karl would insist he's not distracted, but everyone at the White House insists that. And of course they are. I went through something very similar to what the Bush White House is going through now during the Clinton-Lewinsky days. And everyone says they're not distracted. Of course they are. And you mentioned the CIA leak investigation. Now you have the president being embarrassed, essentially, into having to withdraw a nominee for the Supreme Court. And look at the disarray in the Republican Party because of the indictment of the former House majority leader, Tom DeLay. This is both a party and a presidency right now at the precipice, if you will. The Democrats did not have to lift a finger to create this turmoil, but they will be emboldened by what they see, what they believe to be a weakened presidency. And tomorrow we are likely to find out what happens with the CIA leak grand jury. You have a president right now who is at war with his own party. As (CNN correspondent Dana Bash) just noted and has been reporting over the past couple of weeks, it is conservative organizations that have raised all these questions about Harriet Miers and have directly challenged a president who was once their hero. And when you see so many Republicans on Capitol Hill refusing to back this president up, this is a president only one year into his second term who has a major problem. He needs to pull his party back together, he needs to pull his presidency back together. And the big question now is, will he get his back up and will he pick another fight with the conservative base of the party because they forced him to do this, or will he pick somebody that they like? And that is the key question for this president now, who is clearly weakened. Now, don't underestimate him. He has rallied back in the past. But this is a defining moment for this president, who has much he would like to get done on the domestic front, an important international agenda, too, including the unpopular war in Iraq. This is a big test for this president. He is weak right now. As Dana noted, I spoke to a former senior administration official just last night who said this was an unimpressive pick, the president never should have done it. But the last thing he could do right now is back down. That former aide saying that, essentially, that would be the dam coming down, that everyone would then challenge the president if he withdrew this nomination. Well, he's done it. O'BRIEN: The way you put it there, the president is almost painted politically into a corner. He has to at this point, when you look at the political tea leaves, pick somebody who's going to appeal to the right flank, right? KING: Well, sometimes that's when presidents and good politicians are at their best, when they're painted into a corner. So don't count him out just yet. As the president is fond of saying, making jokes, and when he sometimes trips over his own tongue, don't "misunderestimate him." He is a tough man. But his back will be up now. This is a man who is very competitive. And make no mistake about it, he is mad the people that he thought that should give him the benefit of the doubt, that he thought should back him up directly challenged him. Now, the White House does not believe many of these conservative organizations that challenged him on this, they don't believe they actually represent many voters out in the country. They believe that they use these fights to raise money, direct mail letters saying, "Help us defeat Harriet Miers" to raise money. They are mad at them, but guess what? Those groups that the White House would like to say are fringe groups, they just won this round. And it's a pretty big battle. The question now is, does the president go back to that conservative base, or will he pick another friend? Will he pick the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and, in essence, pick another fight with the very groups that forced him to withdraw Harriet Miers? This is a big test for this president. We are going to learn a lot about the tone
of the rest of his second term by how he responds to this. |
|
Lyle residents ask county to address
election fraud --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
read source: http://www.austindailyherald.com/articles/2005/10/27/news/news3.txt Unhappy with the handling of their complaints about election fraud, Meri Jo Lonergan, Norma Olson and Blanche Hollerud went to the Tuesday meeting of the Mower County commissioners. “We realize we can't overturn what has been done,” Lonergan said. “We feel betrayed.” Before the morning was over, a visibly upset Mower County Attorney Patrick W. Flanagan lectured the women on the criminal justice system and normally mild-manner Mower County Auditor Woody Vereide started expressing his frustration over the women's complaints. In the end, nothing was done. “It appears there's really no action the county board can take as far as the complaints are concerned,” said Ray Tucker, 2nd District county commissioner and chairman of the county board. Tucker did agree with the three women that more training of election judges may help prevent some of the apparent irregularities from happening at future elections. Tucker also appeared to express sympathy with the Lyle area residents. “This is very similar to what happened in Grand Meadow,” he said. Lonergan, who started the discussion, ended with the same introductory remarks. “You were our last-ditch chance,” Lonergan said. In between, there was an emotional exchange between the Lyle delegation and the county. On Sunday afternoon, ground-breaking ceremonies will be held for the new $8.34 million school construction project. In a May 24 referendum, voters in the Lyle school district approved the referendum by a 449 to 343 vote total. Ninety-eight percent of the eligible voters cast ballots, Both sides waged bitter campaigns for their “Vote ‘Yes'” and “Vote ‘No'” sides on the issue. Many opponents included farmers fearful the referendum would result in high taxes for their farmland. Since the May vote, the “No” side has waged a campaign to discredit the election results and have it overturned. Lonergan told the commissioners complaints have been made to the Minnesota Secretary of State, Attorney General and State Auditor. In addition, the non-believers have complained to the Mower County Attorney, Sheriff and Auditor. Despite the non-interest by state officials, Lonergan - with help mainly from Olson - detailed their complaints: People were not allowed to vote if they were known to be opponents of the bond issue, absentee ballots were distributed to a residents at a senior housing project, who were told “if they didn't vote ‘Yes' they would not have a home” and people who were not living in the Lyle school district, but who favored the referendum were allowed to vote. According to Lonergan and Olson, even the 98 percent turnout in a well-publicized school referendum should have been suspect. “Over 60 of those who vast ballots were new voters in this referendum” Lonergan said. “It's hard to believe in a small town like Lyle, there could be that many new residents or new votes since the last referendum.” That occurred in the fall of 2004. The May 2005 referendum was the fourth time Lyle school district voters went to the polls. Lonergan and Olson presented copies detailing their complaints and petitions signed by over 70 people to Tucker, the board chairman, and asked for the county commissioners' help. The Mower County Auditor admitted the alleged election irregularities mentioned by Lonergan and Olson were “new to me.” Then, the Mower County Attorney took over. “There is nothing this board can do, I can do or the government can do to overturn the election,” Flanagan said. All of the complaints made by the Lyle school district citizens to state or local officials have been investigated, according to Flanagan. He also took exception to their request that Lyle Police Chief Forrest “Frosty” Miller be excluded from any investigation because he is “too close” to Lyle residents. “We've had several discussions, and I keep repeating myself over and over,” Flanagan said Until the complainants produce specific details and identify the alleged culprits, Flanagan's hands are tied. “I've expressed this to you dozens of times,” Flanagan said. When Olson took over, she frequently stopped Flanagan from interrupting her presentation just as he did the pair from interrupting his response to Lonergan's accusations. When it was the commissioners' turn to speak, Dick Lang, 4th district, said, “I don't want a witch hunt here.” Lang also said, “We have some citizens who believe their rights were violated.” The county commissioner said he understood their complaints to mean the want to “clear the air” over the Lyle referendum results. Garry Ellingson, 5th district county commissioner and a retired Mower County chief deputy, said whomever would investigate the charges “would have to follow the same procedures that Frosty did, the Sheriff did and the DCA would if asked.” Olson said having a school referendum shrouded in so much doubt by so many people may influence voters in future elections. “They may feel their votes don't count,” Olson said. Hollerud said she questioned the process of voting in the Lyle school district before the ballots were counted. But Craig Oscarson, county coordinator, attempted to explain that elected official such as the attorney, auditor and sheriff “answer to themselves” and that the county board had no supervisory powers over them. Frustration does not describe how we feel,” said Lonergan. “‘Trampled on' describes that.” Back and forth it went until Tucker said there was nothing the county commissioners could do. When he referred to a similar reaction to a $12 million school referendum issued in the Grand Meadow school district. The referendum was approved in a September 1998 vote. The tally was 496 “Yes” to 322 “No” votes cast. Opponents said the $12-million school referendum would place too great a burden upon the ag land which comprises the largest portion of the property tax base in the Grand Meadow school district. That's the same argument Lyle referendum opponents made. Today, Grand Meadow has a new K-12 concrete dome school facility along Highway 16 at the east edge of the community. The Lyle school project will take place on-site. The newer portions will be renovated while the oldest portion will be demolished and a new structure erected. There were no support from the county commissioners for hiring a third-party investigator to pore over the Lyle district's naysayers' complaints. Lee Bonorden can be contacted at 434-2232
or by e-mail at lee.bonorden@austindailyherald.com. |
|
Logan lawmaker named coconspirator in
election fraud -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=6027 CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Federal prosecutors
consider House of Delegates member Joe C- Ferrell a co-conspirator
in the election fraud case that accuses several southern West
Virginia officials and residents of vote-buying. Ferrell, a Logan
County Democrat, has not been charged in the case. But prosecutors
say he has provided a tape-recording of a 1992 conversation that
could become evidence at trial. Ferrell's name came up today
during a U-S District Court hearing in Charleston for the election
fraud trial of six Lincoln County men. Those men include Circuit
Clerk Greg Stowers and Assessor Jerry Weaver. The trial has been
postponed until January. Ferrell's lawyer declined to comment
on today's disclosure. Ferrell was a multi-term legislator in
1992 when he pleaded guilty to illegal campaign spending. Though
he promised afterward never to run again, Ferrell has won re-election
to the House each term since 1998. Investigators searched Ferrell's
business in June. |
|
Tom Feeney, Alleged Election Rigging Conspirator, Op/Eds Against 'Voter Fraud' read source: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001958.htm Republican U.S. Congressman, Bush Crony,
Attempts to Restore 'Voter Confidence' by Disenfranchising Voters,
Offering Misleading Information and Calling for Unconstitutional
Measures at Poll
Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) wrote an Op/Ed this week in the Orlando Sentinel in hopes of fooling the American public into supporting his atrocious new "Election Reform" bill in the... Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) wrote an Op/Ed this week in the Orlando Sentinel in hopes of fooling the American public into supporting his atrocious new "Election Reform" bill in the U.S. House. His Op/Ed which supports his bill's call for National Photo ID requirement at the polls, was published the same day that the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a previous decision by a Federal Court that Georgia's recent bill requiring Photo ID amounted to a new "poll tax" and was therefore unconstitutional. Here's the Counter-Op/Ed I just sent to the Sentinel in reply to Feeney's. I've added links here to the items I mention in the letter and for easy access to just some of the criminal conspiracy allegations made against Feeney as reported since last December by The BRAD BLOG. Contact info for the Sentinel, if you should wish to conatct them or write a letter as well, is at the bottom of this item...
In order to support his latest Election Reform bill in the U.S. House of Representative, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) wrote an Op/Ed in this week's Orlando Sentinel. The one-time speaker of the Florida Senate and unsuccessful gubernatorial running-mate to Jeb Bush in 1994, continues his anti-American, un-democractic assault on American Voters. His latest sham bill calls for the requirement of a national photo ID card at all polling places. That, despite a U.S. Federal Court ruling just this past week which found Georgia's similar requirement for a state-wide Photo ID to be unconstitutional and amounting to no more than a "modern day poll tax." Feeney, however, doesn't care. He is, after all, the man accused by Florida software programmer Clint Curtis of having sought to create vote-rigging software at the Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) firm back when Feeney was speaker of the Florida Senate and -- at the same time -- general counsel to and registered lobbyist for YEI. Curtis has filed a sworn affidavit to that effect, given sworn video-taped testimony before members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and successfully passed a polygraph test in relation to all of the above. Feeney, on the other hand, has demonstrably and repeatedly lied about his connections to both YEI and Clint Curtis. (see http://www.BradBlog.com/ClintCurtis.htm for Curtis' sworn affidavit and video-taped congressional testimony, along with reams of documented evidence in support of his claims.) And now, Feeney, in an attempt to shut out the more than 10 million Elderly, Minority and Poor (read: Democratic-leaning) voters in America who would be disenfranchised by the new already-proven unconstitutional measure that Feeney is calling for, is using phony numbers and scare tactics concerning the relatively minor issue of "Voter Fraud" to smoke-screen the very real and massive Election Fraud and Disenfranchisment occuring in America. A recent study by the non-partisan League of Women's Voters in Ohio found no more than 4 cases of Voter Fraud amongst more than 9 million votes cast in the last two National Elections there. The authors of the Photo ID requirement bill in the state of Georgia were unable to cite a single case of "Voter Fraud" in the state that would have been avoided by their new unconstitutional measure. But this won't stop Tom Feeney on his Anti-American, Anti-democratic march to ensure that millions of Democratic-leaning voters should be shut out from the polling place all together in future American elections. His cynical, unconstitutional and regrettable ploy is just the next step to ensure that real Electoral Reform -- the type that calls for Paper Ballots to be the Ballot of Record for every vote cast in America and transparent, verifiable, auditable software and hardware in Voting Machines -- will never see the light of day in the U.S. Congress. Congressman Rush Holt's (D-NJ) bill (H.R. 550) which calls for real Electoral Reform, has been languishing for years under Feeney's nose with more than 100 bi-partisan co-sponsors. Yet Feeney has no interest in helping that bill move forward since it might actually help create an Electoral System that Americans can have confidence in again. Instead, Feeney's real hopes are revealed in the final line of his Op/Ed in which he says: "My hope is that these common-sense measures will restore faith in the electoral system and, more important, American perception that our elections are a fair and true reflection of the will of the people." For Feeney, the "perception" by Americans of "fair and true" elections far outweighs the need for elections that actually are "fair and true." His track record in Florida for supporting "Exclusion Lists", suppression at the polls by police presence, disinterest in the actual intention of Florida voters wishes, and now his latest call for unconstitutional disenfranchisment of voters more than reveals Feeney's true intentions. From the man who called, in 2000, for Florida's Electors to be given to George W. Bush no matter what Sunshine State voters and the U.S. Supreme Court decided, it's little surprise that he would attempt to once again pull the wool over America's eyes in his seemingly never-ending attempt to ensure that Republican Power Brokers -- as opposed to American Voters -- actually determine the outcome of future American elections. Shame on you, Congressman. It's time to call for real Election Reform. The American people have been fooled and have seen their will thwarted by the shenanigans of your party too many times already. Enough is enough. We won't be fooled again. Brad Friedman is the Publisher and Managing Editor of The BRAD BLOG (www.BradBlog.com) and has been reporting on Tom Feeney, Yang Enterprises Inc., Clint Curtis and a myriad of Election Reform matters since Election 2004.
...CONTACT... |
|
Women of the Civil Rights
Movement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.ajc.com/news/content/living/1005/31otherwomen.html
By JOHN BLAKE Yet there were plenty of other women in the civil rights movement, which historians agree was rife with sexism, who never got the attention they deserved.
AP MOST POPULAR STORIES EMAIL THIS
"Women were not the out-in-front spokesmen in the movement," said Vicki L. Crawford, co-editor of "Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965." "That was reflective of societal customs. Men led and women were organizing in the background, but these women were just as critical." Some of these women were so extraordinary, though, that they became known despite the sexism of some movement leaders.
Coretta Scott King Wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Instrumental in keeping King's legacy alive by pushing for the national observance of his holiday and creating the King Center, a site devoted to preserving his philosophy of nonviolence.
Constance Baker Motley Motley fought for civil rights in the legal system. As an attorney, she won nine of the 10 cases she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the 1962 case in which James Meredith won admission to the University of Mississippi. In 1966, she was the first black woman to become a federal judge. Motley died last month at 84.
Fannie Lou Hamer One of the most charismatic leaders to emerge from the civil rights movement. She was a sharecropper in Mississippi who was part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that gained attention at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her public testimony at the convention, where she asked, "Is this America?," was so riveting that President Lyndon B. Johnson hastily arranged a television news conference to draw attention away from her.
Ella Baker Baker co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders but eventually left because she felt stymied by sexism in the group. She also disagreed with the SCLC over tactics. She went on to help organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, becoming a mentor to young activists.
Unita Blackwell The daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, Blackwell became the first black woman elected mayor in her native state. She was arrested at least 75 times and was the target of numerous firebombs and burning crosses. When asked about the risks she took, Blackwell said, 'If I die, I die for something."
Viola Liuzzo An important martyr in the movement. Liuzzo was a Detroit housewife who went to Selma, Ala., in 1965 to help register black voters. She was shot to death by Ku Klux Klansmen. Her death is a reminder that ordinary white people gave their lives in the movement as well.
Virginia Durr Once called a "Southern belle turned liberal activist." In 1955, she accompanied her husband, Clifford, to Montgomery's jail to post bond for Rosa Parks. The Durrs were ostracized for supporting civil rights.
Constance Curry Activist and film producer, Curry was the first white woman appointed to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's executive board. She worked to desegregate Mississippi schools and increase voter registration among blacks for the American Friends Service Committee. She is the author of "Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement" and lives in Atlanta.
Elaine Brown The only woman to head the Black Panther Party. Brown took over after Huey Newton, the party's co-founder, left the country. In her searing memoir, "A Taste of Power," Brown writes eloquently about trying to fight racism and sexism on the front lines of the civil rights movement. A popular lecturer, Brown lives in Georgia.
Victoria Gray Adams A co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she became the first black woman to be invited as a guest on the floor of the U.S. House when she went there to complain about election fraud in her state. She was the first woman to run for the U.S. Senate from Mississippi.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESOURCES: |
|
The White House Criminal Conspiracy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=9016 Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.
In response to the outcry raised by Enron and other scandals, Congress passed the Corporate Corruption Bill, which President Bush signed on July 30, 2002, amid great fanfare. Bush declared that he was signing the bill because of his strong belief that corporate officers must be straightforward and honest. If they were not, he said, they would be held accountable.
Ironically, the day Bush signed the Corporate Corruption Bill, he and his aides were enmeshed in an orchestrated campaign to trick the country into taking the biggest risk imaginable -- a war. Indeed, plans to attack Iraq were already in motion. In June, Bush announced his "new" pre-emptive strike strategy. On July 23, 2002, the head of British intelligence advised Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the then-secret Downing Street Memo, that "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Bush had also authorized the transfer of $700 million from Afghanistan war funds to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Yet all the while, with the sincerity of Marc Antony protesting that "Brutus is an honorable man," Bush insisted he wanted peace.
Americans may have been unaware of this deceit then, but they have since learned the truth. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in June, 52% of Americans now believe the President deliberately distorted intelligence to make a case for war. In an Ipsos Public Affairs poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org and completed October 9, 50% said that if Bush lied about his reasons for going to war Congress should consider impeaching him. The President's deceit is not only an abuse of power; it is a federal crime. Specifically, it is a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States.
So what do citizens do? First, they must insist that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence complete Phase II of its investigation, which was to be an analysis of whether the administration manipulated or misrepresented prewar intelligence. The focus of Phase II was to determine whether the administration misrepresented the information it received about Iraq from intelligence agencies. Second, we need to convince Congress to demand that the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the administration's deceptions about the war, using the same mechanism that led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the outing of Valerie Plame. (As it happens, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and others have recently written to Acting Deputy Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. pointing out that the Plame leak is just the "tip of the iceberg" and asking that Fitzgerald's authority be expanded to include an investigation into whether the White House conspired to mislead the country into war.)
Third, we can no longer shrink from the prospect of impeachment. Impeachment would require, as John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney, author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, has explained, that the House pass a "resolution of inquiry or impeachment calling on the Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation into whether grounds exist for the House to exercise its constitutional power to impeach George W. Bush." If the committee found such grounds, it would draft articles of impeachment and submit them to the full House for a vote. If those articles passed, the President would be tried by the Senate. Resolutions of inquiry, such as already have been introduced by Representatives Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich demanding that the Administration produce key information about its decision-making, could also lead to impeachment.
These three actions can be called for simultaneously. Obviously we face a GOP-dominated House and Senate, but the same outrage that led the public to demand action against corporate law-breakers should be harnessed behind an outcry against government law-breakers. As we now know, it was not a failure of intelligence that led us to war. It was a deliberate distortion of intelligence by the Bush Administration. But it is a failure of courage on the part of Congress (with notable exceptions) and the mainstream media that seems to have left us helpless to address this crime. Speaking as a former federal prosecutor, I offer the following legal analysis to encourage people to press their representatives to act.
The Nature of the Conspiracy
The Supreme Court has defined the phrase "conspiracy to defraud the United States" as "to interfere with, impede or obstruct a lawful government function by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement "between two or more persons" to follow a course of conduct that, if completed, would constitute a crime. The agreement doesn't have to be express; most conspiracies are proved through evidence of concerted action. But government officials are expected to act in concert. So proof that they were conspiring requires a comparison of their public conduct and statements with their conduct and statements behind the scenes. A pattern of double-dealing proves a criminal conspiracy.
The concept of interfering with a lawful government function is best explained by reference to two well-known cases where courts found that executive branch officials had defrauded the United States by abusing their power for personal or political reasons.
One is the Watergate case, where a federal district court held that Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, and his crew had interfered with the lawful government functions of the CIA and the FBI by causing the CIA to intervene in the FBI's investigation into the burglary of Democratic Party headquarters. The other is U.S. v. North, where the court found that Reagan administration National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Poindexter's aide Oliver North, and others had interfered with Congress's lawful power to oversee foreign affairs by lying about secret arms deals during Congressional hearings into the Iran/contra scandal.
Finally, "fraud" is broadly defined to include half-truths, omissions or misrepresentation; in other words, statements that are intentionally misleading, even if literally true. Fraud also includes making statements with "reckless indifference" to their truth.
Conspiracies to defraud usually begin with a goal that is not in and of itself illegal. In this instance the goal was to invade Iraq. It is possible that the Bush team thought this goal was laudable and likely to succeed. It's also possible that they never formally agreed to defraud the public in order to attain it. But when they chose to overcome anticipated or actual opposition to their plan by concealing information and lying, they began a conspiracy to defraud -- because, as juries are instructed, "no amount of belief in the ultimate success of a scheme will justify baseless, false or reckless misstatements."
From the fall of 2001 to at least March 2003, the following officials, and others, made hundreds of false assertions in speeches, on television, at the United Nations, to foreign leaders and to Congress: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Under Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Their statements were remarkably consistent and consistently false.
Even worse, these falsehoods were made against an overarching deception: that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. If Administration officials never quite said there was a link, they conveyed the message brilliantly by mentioning 9/11 and Iraq together incessantly -- just as beer commercials depict guys drinking beer with gorgeous women to imply a link between beer drinking and attractive women that is equally nonexistent. Beer commercials might be innocuous, but a deceptive ad campaign from the Oval Office is not, especially one designed to sell a war in which 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and that has cost this country more than $200 billion so far and stirred up worldwide enmity.
The fifteen-month PR blitz conducted by the White House was a massive fraud designed to trick the public into accepting a goal that Bush's advisers had held even before the election. A strategy document Dick Cheney commissioned from the Project for a New American Century, written in September 2000, for example, asserts that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." But, as the document reflects, the administration hawks knew the public would not agree to an attack against Iraq unless there were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
Not surprisingly, the Bush/Cheney campaign did not trumpet this strategy. Instead, like corporate officials keeping two sets of books, they presented a nearly opposite public stance, decrying nation-building and acting as if "we were an imperialist power," in Cheney's words. Perhaps the public accepts deceitful campaign oratory, but nevertheless such duplicity is the stuff of fraud. And Bush and Cheney carried on with it seamlessly after the election.
By now it's no secret that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to promote its war. They began talking privately about invading Iraq immediately after 9/11 but did not argue their case honestly to the American people. Instead, they began looking for evidence to make a case the public would accept -- that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much.
In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in effect as of December 2001 said that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; was not trying to get them; and did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program since the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors departed in December 1998. This assessment had been unchanged for three years.
As has been widely reported, the NIE is a classified assessment prepared under the CIA's direction, but only after input from the entire intelligence community, or IC. If there is disagreement, the dissenting views are also included. The December 2001 NIE contained no dissents about Iraq. In other words, the assessment privately available to Bush Administration officials from the time they began their tattoo for war until October 2002, when a new NIE was produced, was unanimous: Iraq did not have nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. But publicly, the Bush team presented a starkly different picture.
In his January 2002 State of the Union address, for example, Bush declared that Iraq presented a "grave and growing danger," a direct contradiction of the prevailing NIE. Cheney continued the warnings in the ensuing months, claiming that Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda, possessed biological and chemical weapons, and would soon have nuclear weapons. These false alarms were accompanied by the message that in the "post-9/11 world," normal rules of governmental procedure should not apply.
Unbeknownst to the public, after 9/11 Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had created a secret Pentagon unit called the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG), which ignored the NIE and "re-evaluated" previously gathered raw intelligence on Iraq. It also ignored established analytical procedure. No responsible person, for example, would decide an important issue based on third-hand information from an uncorroborated source of unknown reliability. Imagine your doctor saying, "Well, I haven't exactly looked at your charts or X-rays, but my friend Martin over at General Hospital told me a new guy named Radar thinks you need triple bypass surgery. So -- when are you available?"
Yet that was the quality of information Bush Administration officials used for their arguments. As if picking peanuts out of a Cracker Jacks box, they plucked favorable tidbits from reports previously rejected as unreliable, presented them as certainties and then used these "facts" to make their case.
Nothing exemplifies this recklessness better than the story of lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Atta had met the head of Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001. In fact, the IC regarded that story, which was based on the uncorroborated statement of a salesman who had seen Atta's photo in the newspaper, as glaringly unreliable. Yet Bush officials used it to "prove" a link between Iraq and 9/11, long after the story had been definitively disproved.
But by August 2002, despite the Administration's efforts, public and Congressional support for the war was waning. So Chief of Staff Andrew Card organized the White House Iraq Group, of which Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was a member, to market the war.
The Conspiracy Is Under Way
The PR campaign intensified Sunday, September 8. On that day the New York Times quoted anonymous "officials" who said Iraq sought to buy aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. The same morning, in a choreographed performance worthy of Riverdance, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Gen. Richard Myers said on separate talk shows that the aluminum tubes were suitable only for centrifuges and so proved Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
If, as Jonathan Schell put it, the allegation that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger is "one of the most rebutted claims in history," the tubes story is a close second. The CIA and the Energy Department had been debating the issue since 2001. And the Energy Department's clear opinion was that the tubes were not suited for use in centrifuges; they were probably intended for military rockets. Given the lengthy debate and the importance of the tubes, it's impossible to believe that the Bush team was unaware of the nuclear experts' position. So when Bush officials said that the tubes were "only really suited" for centrifuge programs, they were committing fraud, either by lying outright or by making recklessly false statements.
When in September 2002 Bush began seeking Congressional authorization to use force, based on assertions that were unsupported by the National Intelligence Estimate, Democratic senators demanded that a new NIE be assembled. Astonishingly, though most NIEs require six months' preparation, the October NIE took two weeks. This haste resulted from Bush's insistence that Iraq presented an urgent threat, which was, after all, what the NIE was designed to assess. In other words, even the imposition of an artificially foreshortened time limit was fraudulent.
Also, the CIA was obviously aware of the Administration's dissatisfaction with the December 2001 NIE. So with little new intelligence, it now maintained that "most agencies" believed Baghdad had begun reconstituting its nuclear weapons programs in 1998. It also skewed underlying details in the NIE to exaggerate the threat.
The October NIE was poorly prepared -- and flawed. But it was flawed in favor of the administration, which took that skewed assessment and misrepresented it further in the only documents that were available to the public. The ninety-page classified NIE was delivered to Congress at 10 PM on October 1, the night before Senate hearings were to begin. But members could look at it only under tight security on-site. They could not take a copy with them for review. They could, however, remove for review a simultaneously released white paper, a glitzy twenty-five-page brochure that purported to be the unclassified summary of the NIE. This document, which was released to the public, became the talking points for war. And it was completely misleading. It mentioned no dissents; it removed qualifiers and even added language to distort the severity of the threat. Several senators requested declassification of the full-length version so they could reveal to the public those dissents and qualifiers and unsubstantiated additions, but their request was denied. Consequently, they could not use many of the specifics from the October NIE to explain their opposition to war without revealing classified information.
The aluminum tubes issue is illustrative. The classified October NIE included the State and Energy departments' dissents about the intended use of the tubes. Yet the declassified white paper mentioned no disagreement. So Bush in his October 7 speech and his 2003 State of the Union address, and Powell speaking to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, could claim as "fact" that Iraq was buying aluminum tubes suitable only for centrifuge programs, without fear of contradiction -- at least by members of Congress.
Ironically, Bush's key defense against charges of intentional misrepresentation actually incriminates him further. As Bob Woodward reported in his book Plan of Attack, Tenet said that the case for Iraq's possession of nuclear weapons was a "slam dunk" in response to Bush's question, "This is the best we've got?" Obviously, then, Bush himself thought the evidence was weak. But he did not investigate further or correct past misstatements. Instead, knowing that his claims were unsupported, he continued to assert that Iraq posed an urgent threat and was aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons. That is fraud.
It can hardly be disputed, finally, that the Bush Administration's intentional misrepresentations were designed to interfere with the lawful governmental function of Congress. They presented a complex deceit about Iraq to both the public and to Congress in order to manipulate Congress into authorizing foreign action. Legally, it doesn't matter whether anyone was deceived, although many were. The focus is on the perpetrators' state of mind, not that of those they intentionally set about to mislead.
The evidence shows, then, that from early 2002 to at least March 2003, the President and his aides conspired to defraud the United States by intentionally misrepresenting intelligence about Iraq to persuade Congress to authorize force, thereby interfering with Congress's lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations, all of which violates Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.
To what standards should we hold our government officials? Certainly standards as high as those Bush articulated for corporate officials. Higher, one would think. The President and Vice President and their appointees take an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. If they fail to leave their campaign tactics and deceits behind -- if they use the Oval Office to trick the public and Congress into supporting a war -- we must hold them accountable. It's not a question of politics. It's a question of law.
Copyright 2005 Elizabeth de la Vega
Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal
prosecutor with more than twenty years' experience. During her
tenure she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and
chief of the San José branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office
for the Northern District of California. |
|
Voters to decide who gets
power to create district -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday, October 31, 2005 By JOHN McCARTHY read source: http://www.indeonline.com/left.php?ID=4614&r=2&Category=1 COLUMBUS – Voters will be asked Nov. 8 to do what the Legislature has rejected for at least three decades – strip elected officials of the power to draw legislative and congressional district lines. One of four election-related issues on the ballot would give that highly prized authority to a bipartisan board. The other issues would allow any voter to vote by absentee ballot, lower the caps on campaign contributions and replace the secretary of state as the overseer of elections in Ohio. The power to create districts is the most contentious issue. The party that draws the lines – now the Republicans – can shape public policy for decades by forging districts to include voters favorable to its candidates. The state lottery and income tax were produced with Democrats in control; Republicans’ watch brought income tax refunds and restrictions on abortion. Democrats say the shift in authority would ensure more competitive districts. Republicans say it would create oddly shaped districts that pay little attention to common interests of constituents. “If they (current districts) are so bad, how come the courts declare them constitutional?” asked former Senate President Richard Finan, co-chairman of Ohio First, which opposes all four issues. “Competitiveness is not the bellwether of drawing districts in the state of Ohio or any other state and the U.S. Supreme Court has said that many times.” Proposals to drop elected officials as mapmakers have been around since the 1970s but failed regularly in the Legislature. Leadership of the ruling party always spiked such bills to retain power. The last time the question appeared on a ballot, in 1981, the party roles were reversed. Democrats controlled state government and opposed the change. Republicans have been in control since 1994. Issue supporters are banking on voter frustration with a $300 million investment scandal in the state’s injured workers’ insurance program and an ethics scandal that led to the conviction of Republican Gov. Bob Taft. A similar issue will be decided Nov. 8 in California. A proposal backed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would shift redistricting power from the Democratic-controlled Legislature to a board of retired judges appointed by legislative leaders. Ohio’s redistricting proposal would try to make congressional and legislative elections more competitive, said former state Rep. Ed Jerse, the campaign director for Reform Ohio Now, which proposed the four election issues. The goal would be to draw as many districts as possible where the difference between the number of Democrats and Republicans is within 5 percentage points. In last year’s election, only four Ohio House districts among 133 legislative and congressional races produced contests where the margins of victory were less than 5 percentage points. Anyone would be able to submit a district map to the board. Voters also will decide whether to put a board in charge of elections, instead of the secretary of state, an elected position. Opponents say the proposal would take power away from a duly elected official and give it to a board that is accountable to no one. Jerse said a bipartisan board is preferable to a partisan secretary of state, no matter what party is in charge of the office. Secretaries of state from both parties have been criticized over the years for political activity. “This whole idea about keeping the politicians accountable is laughable,” Jerse said. Backers say voting by mail would ease the long lines at many polling places in the 2004 presidential election, when Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes needed for victory. Opponents say there is a danger of fraud, because voters would not have to produce identification to obtain a ballot. The campaign contributions proposal would lower the caps from $10,000 to $2,000 for a statewide candidate and $1,000 for a legislative candidate. Reform Ohio Now says it is a way to take
big money out of campaigns. Ohio First says loopholes, especially
for small-donor political action committees that allow $10,000
contributions to political parties, would give unions an unfair
advantage. |
|
Bush 'light years behind'
on climate change -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=160826800&p=y6x8z75x6 US President George Bush is “light years” behind the rest of the world on tackling climate change, a leading British environmentalist claimed today. Jonathan Porritt, chairman of Britain's Sustainable Development Commission, condemned the US president for refusing to sign up to the Kyoto protocol. “I’m sorry to say that the Bush White House is now light years behind the rest of the world, and actually behind most of the rest of America now,” he said. Porritt said there had been a distinct change in large sections of the US business community and political system, with people now acknowledging more needed to be done to tackle climate change. But the president had not caught up. He dismissed suggestions that moves to combat global warming would harm the economy. He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “If we make the kind of investments that we could make now in energy efficiency and in cleaner, more sustainable technologies, it wouldn’t just be good for the environment and our grandchildren, it would actually be very good indeed for the economy.” He added that Kyoto did not go far enough
but it had set the right direction for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. |
|
Storm damage -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5100493 George Bush should use Harriet Miers's withdrawal as a prompt to rebuild his presidency MANY jobs get easier the longer you do them. But not the presidency. The second term usually sees the occupant of the White House gradually engulfed by scandal and disappointment: that was the story with both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Seldom, however, has the fall from grace been as rapid as it has been with George Bush. The man who marched triumphantly back into the White House a year ago at the head of a conservative revolution now looks more isolated and powerless than ever. This week, Mr Bush suffered one hefty blow to his authority and prepared to receive another. On October 27th Harriet Miers, his personal lawyer, whom he had foolishly nominated to the Supreme Court, withdrew. The excuse given was that she could not answer the questions asked of her by increasingly indignant senators without breaking rules about client privilege. In fact, her nomination was in trouble with politicians of all persuasions for the simple reason that she was woefully underqualified for the highest court in the land. Even social conservatives objected to a born-again Christian who opposed abortion on the ground that she looked like a presidential crony. Advertisement The Plame blame falls maybe on the Brain The case is a complicated one. It revolves around the spin-doctors' briefing of journalists about Ms Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, who had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium there—and who had subsequently accused Mr Bush of lying on that score. Much depends on whether Mr Bush's men knew that Ms Plame was a covert agent, and what exactly they said to the investigating prosecutor. All the same, any indictment, even under a technicality to do with perjury, would still be a hammer-blow if it involved Mr Rove. The architect of Mr Bush's victories in 2000 and 2004 is not only crucial to the running of the White House; he is also the man best placed to repair Mr Bush's relations with the right. Conservatives are furious not just about the Miers nomination, but also about government spending and Iraq. The problem for Mr Bush is that Ms Miers's withdrawal and the fuss about Plamegate compound a picture of incompetence and sleaze. In the wake of his disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina (where he also got into trouble for having appointed cronies to important jobs), Mr Bush's approval ratings have fallen to around 40%. Americans by a wide margin now claim they will vote for congressional candidates who oppose him. His main domestic goal—reforming the Social Security pension system—looks beyond reach already. As for foreign policy, support for the American-led invasion of Iraq has fallen sharply this year. This week a rare triumph—the passing of the new constitution—was balanced by the 2,000th American death in the conflict. As for scandal, the Republican leader in the Senate, Bill Frist, is under investigation for insider dealing and the House leader, Tom DeLay, has been indicted on charges to do with campaign fraud. It would be foolish to count Mr Bush out—especially if Mr Rove survives. The Republicans still look well placed to hang on to Congress next year—if only because the Democrats are so shambolic. The withdrawal of Ms Miers may even come to be seen a turning point. But only if Mr Bush learns from his mistakes. The main priority is to clean up the White House and to remove the tinge of cronyism. After all, whenever Mr Bush appoints well qualified people, he gains. He won plaudits for appointing John Roberts to be chief justice of the Supreme Court; the same broadly applies to making Ben Bernanke head of the Federal Reserve. When he appoints people like Ms Miers or Michael Brown, the erstwhile horse-expert whom he put in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it returns to haunt him. Choosing somebody who is intellectually first-rate for the Supreme Court would be a good first step. But the broom must surely sweep more briskly than that. Whatever comes of Mr Fitzgerald's investigation, it is an excuse for a clean-out of some of the more established retainers, who have underperformed. It is well past time for Mr Bush to call Donald Rumsfeld to account for the disasters in Iraq and much more. Mr Bush should take the same approach to Congress. One reason why spending is out of control is the worrying links between the Republican Party and lobbyists. Far too much money has been spent on boondoggle projects of one sort or another. Mr Bush, who has yet to use the presidential veto even when presented with absurdities like a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, should not tolerate any more follies. Mr Bush is an odd mixture. Few recent presidents
have come to the White House with such a bold vision to change
society or been so willing to spend political capital in that
quest. But his boldness will come to naught if it is not followed
up by efficient execution. Unless he tidies up his administration
after this storm, Mr Bush runs the risk of sullying the ideas
that he has championed. |
|
George Bush's Ratings Continue
to Drop -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 October 2005 | 17:48 | FOCUS News Agency read source: http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=136&ch=0&newsid=75495 Washington. The approval of US President
George Bush’s actions continues to drop, the television
channel ABC News reported, citing the results of a public opinion
study. According to the study, 39% of interviewees supported
George Bush while a month ago the approval of US President’s
policies was 42.5%. |
|
Odds slashed on Bush leaving
the White House -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 29th October 2005, 13:14
read source: http://www.lse.co.uk/uknews.asp?story=FD....the_white_house
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The indictment and resignation of top White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby over the investigation into the unmasking of a CIA agent is dominating US media outlets. And bookies William Hill reacted today by cutting the odds about Bush failing to see out his Presidential term of office from 100/1 to 25/1. William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said: "Mr Bush seems to be surrounded by problems and his popularity ratings have slumped so it is not impossible to envisage him stepping down if things get much worse." The firm quote Hillary Clinton as 11/4 favourite to be the next elected US President and also offer 6/1 about John Edwards, 10/1 former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, 12/1 John McCain and Condoleeza Rice and 16/1 Jeb Bush. The charges laid against Libby, which follow
a two-year investigation, are being seen... Read More |
|
A heap of trouble for George
Bush -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editori....or_george_bush/ WHEN TROUBLE arrives, it comes in droves. And from an unpopular war to top White House aides under investigation to yesterday's withdrawn Supreme Court nominee to the conservative revolt that precipitated that surrender, droves of troubles are now camped out on George W. Bush's doorstep. Article Tools The chief cause of the president's slide, of course, is the Iraq war. With neither weapons of mass destruction nor collaborative Iraq-Al Qaeda connections found, Bush has been left to offer rationales that reinvent reality, such as his insinuation that Iraq was complicit in Sept. 11 or his assertion that we are fighting terrorists there so we won't have to face them here. Now, with US military losses creeping above 2,000 in Iraq, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's probe into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame has opened a window onto White House doings. Regardless of whether the conduct in question proves criminal, the investigation has revealed an administration seemingly more concerned with undercutting critics like her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, than it had been with making sure its own claims about WMDs in Iraq were accurate. Within Bush's own base on the right, it was the nomination of Harriet Miers, a pleasant but unremarkable loyalist with no judicial background, that sparked open rebellion. Not only were right-wing talk radio hosts up in octaves, but conservative pillars such as William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and even former Bush speechwriter David Frum had all come out against her. Yesterday, that crescendo of conservative criticism culminated in Miers's withdrawal, a capitulation by a weakened White House that only foretokens further demands from the starboard side. In Congress, meanwhile, key figures in the president's party are battling ethical clouds, while Republicans who came to power as putative reformers now greedily practice pork-barrel politics. Against the backdrop of those troubles, any number of national problems await more-realistic approaches. Having blundered in disbanding the entirety of the Iraq Army, and then having compounded that error by failing to focus immediately on training battle-ready Iraqi troops, the administration seems determined to stay an indefinite course, though voices from former Nixon defense secretary Melvin Laird on the right to US Senator John Kerry on the left are now calling for a draw-down of US troops in the near future. In an interview with The New Yorker, meanwhile, Brent Scowcroft, a principal architect of foreign policy under George H.W. Bush, has aired his dismay at this administration's foreign policy. Moving to the domestic front, there is no serious plan to bring the nation's books back to some reasonable semblance of balance. As for healthcare? Well, as policy analyst Matt Miller has written in ''The Two Percent Solution," back in 1992 George H.W. Bush offered a plan that would have covered 30 million of 35 million uninsured. George W.'s proposal would cover only 6 million of the 42 million uninsured. The current situation has highlighted how confused and contradictory contemporary conservatism has become. Earlier this month, when I wrote about Republican borrow-and-spend fiscal policies, any number of conservatives responded this way: Please don't call this president's approach conservative. To which one can only reply that the same basic policy has flown under the flag of conservatism since 1981. Assaying the right-of-center crackup, David Brooks, The New York Times's thoughtful conservative columnist, has praised Bush for modernizing conservatism and making the GOP the party of the middle class. Certainly it has been remarkable, say, to see an African-American woman representing the United States as secretary of state on the world stage, the more so since Condoleezza Rice follows Colin Powell in the job. (If only Powell had enjoyed the influence with the president his post should have commanded.) But in the main, Bush's conservatism is an exercise in ideological incoherence or contradiction. Fiscally, for example, Bush has been able to escape the budgetary consequence of his tax cuts -- and thereby style himself a compassionate conservative -- only by relying on massive borrowing. Now his policies have fallen from favor with the American people. Absent a major course correction, it's hard to see how this president can put the pieces back together again. Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com |
|
George Bush & His Band
of Crooked Cronies -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Deborah White, read source: http://usliberals.about.com/b/a/212302.htm I live on the outskirts of one of the most conservative areas in the US. And yes, I have plenty of conservative friends. Most of them are experiencing their first epiphanies that George Bush is far less competent and trustworthy than they thought. So I smile with relief when reading the the passionate, wise and often quite clever words of my compatriots in the liberal blogosphere. I'm not alone....there's a whole world of fellow liberals who "get it." And since the Bush Administration now registers the lowest approval ratings in recorded history, liberals and progressives are finally no longer alone in judging the Bush presidency to be a dismal, bankrupt and bankrupting failure. Let's take a jog around the liberal blogosphere
to hear the latest scoop on the Bush and his not-so-merry band
of cronies.... This is nothing out of character for him, given that he also ignored the background chatter and noise from the August 6, 2001 PDB to focus on the remainder of his vacation that year. It is also not out of character for him to ignore the discussions he himself had with his chief political aide about his “clumsy” effort to destroy political opponent Joe Wilson and his wife, even as Bush lied to the country for two years about the role of his own staff in the smear campaign, and in claiming that he didn’t know who was involved in such activities. So keep on ignoring the chatter Mr. President.
Ignoring things that you don’t want to deal with is the
one damn thing at which you excel." "Although the President and Vice President are the only two elected positions voted on by all Americans to hold office, George Bush will get to appoint a replacement for Dick Cheney if the latter is forced to resign. That "nomination" will have to be confirmed by Congress...... I guess the Founding Fathers didn't think of everything. They never in their wildest dreams could have foreseen the coming of two Republican scoundrels. One Richard M. Nixon, the other George W. Bush." Take time to read the rest of this post
at Crooks and Liars. Lots of fascinating info there. "It is never just the crime, it is the cover-up that destroys political careers. Just ask Nixon. He was an expert on the subject. As George Bush the First said many moons ago, 'Nixon’s only crime was getting caught.' True words of wisdom. Dubya seems destined to follow in those large 'I am not a crook' footsteps. Bush has committed enough impeachable offenses to open a dedicated Impeachment Library, but so far the RepubliCon’s control of Congress has stopped, blocked, and stalled all major investigations into his crimes. But the one that got away is also the one they fumbled: the Valerie Plame case. The beauty of this case, of course, is that it is lying about their attack on the person who pointed out that they were lying that got them in trouble.... Dubya claims he never knew anything about it. He appeared on camera several times, wagging his finger, saying “I did not have Roving intercourse with those men.” To no avail. Everyone in the world knows he is genetically incapable of telling the truth. Dubya should have just smirked and shut the hell up. Instead, he said he never knew, they never did it, and if anyone in his administration ever did they would be fired. Sir, surely thou doth protest too much!
The problem here is that he now firmly established a lie. The
problem with lies is that when truth eventually shows up, there
is really nothing left for your defense. Ye olde nail in the
cross. |
|
Eisenhower warned us about
American fascism -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- read source: http://spofga.org/tax/2005/oct/american_fascism.php
This by commentary by Norman Black, deals
with the “military-industrial complex”, which Pres.
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about, on January 17, 1961, in his
farewell speech.
About the author: Norman Black of Norcross, Ga., is a writer and volunteer press relations director of the Georgia Heritage Council. His work includes speeches for Fortune 500 corporate CEOs and presidents, annual reports, and other financial relations collateral. His ongoing studies include politics, economics and the interplay between them. American fascism Fascism came to America, in 1947-1948, wrapped in the American flag. That happened only three years after the economic system known as fascism was ended in Germany and Italy, by force, with the victory of the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union over Germany’s fascists, and of the U.S. and British over Italy’s fascists in 1945. (The system, however, remained alive and well in Spain.) This fact seems unrecognized by the U.S. print and electronic press (the press), which reported, on May 8, 2005, that U.S. President George Bush would travel to Europe to take part in celebrations of the end of World War II there. Bush said, “I will take part in celebrations to mark the victory over fascism.” It was, however, not fascism that was defeated in Europe, but a dictator and a demagogue. The press’s confusion exemplifies Americans’ educational conditioning, for most Americans define fascism as dictatorship and socialism as food subsidies for the poor, a national pension system, and national health insurance, a confusion perpetuated by schools, the press, and politicians. Socialism is actually the control of production by those that produce in a factory, on a farm, etc. Food subsidies, national health, and national pension systems are parts of a welfare system that may exist under a dictator, or in a democracy governed by representatives that represent their constituents. Fascism may be either a constitutional system in which the state and corporate leadership are merged, or an economic system run for the benefit of corporations. The form it takes is different in each country and reflects each country’s cultural patterns. When it was forecast, during the 1930 Depression of the 1930's, that fascism would come to America wrapped in the American flag the meaning was that U.S. fascism would be cloaked in American cultural forms. Fascism was known in Europe, in the 1930s, as “corporatism”. It was adopted by Mussolini, in Italy, Hitler, in Germany, and Franco, in Spain. It was also in use in the U.S., during Lincoln’s War (1861-1865) and again during World War I and II. The U.S. economy, during World War II, was actually a very complete command economy, in which the U.S. government controlled wages, prices, and the flow of resources. Many leading Americans and Europeans considered fascism to be a model economy. It was only the combination of fascistic economic policies with political totalitarianism and aggression towards neighboring states by Hitler and Mussolini that caused U.S. leaders to shun the term. Fascism in the U.S. is now called “industrial policy” or “planned capitalism”. U.S. Sen. Henry Clay and Pres. Abraham Lincoln both advocated fascism as a way to build U.S. business. Lincoln, of course, implemented the “American Plan” (as Clay called it) without giving it a name. At the time, however, free enterprise worked well in the U.S., and the tax money Lincoln shoveled to corporations merely added to their profits. The economy is different now, and George W. Bush heads the largest fascist economy in the world. In addition, every other industrialized and developing country also has a fascist economy. Free enterprise, in the U.S., was in abeyance during World War II, and replaced by fascism by 1948. Despite this, U.S. schools, corporations, chambers of commerce and politicians continue to teach that the U.S. has a free enterprise economy, and U.S. governments preach the need for free trade, but only when this suits the needs of U.S. business. Today, free enterprise is so dead that badly run airlines, steel companies, and banks are helped to avoid bankruptcy, by Congress, with tax money. Oil and gas companies are given great tax breaks for doing what their companies incorporated to do. In the international field U.S. tax support of Boeing and the European Union’s support of Airbus, highlight how deeply buried free enterprise is. The $286.4 billion highway bill signed by Pres. George W. Bush, on Aug. 9, 2005, is also a make-work and make-profit law that will enable many construction companies to reap large profits in the coming years. The bill also grants large tax benefits to companies that look for oil and gas, even though that is what those companies were incorporated to do. Worldwide fascism Fascism won acceptance, as a result of the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s. Its depth and breadth convinced world leaders that capitalism was dead, and the rich countries’ leaders decided to use tax money to spend their nations out of the Depression. In the totalitarian, fascist countries governmental spending got the countries out of the Depression fairly quickly. Elsewhere, it helped to mitigate the worst aspects of the Depression In the U.S, the form fascism first took was New Deal legislation enacted to combat the Depression. But New Deal spending did not have the desired effect, and the U.S. economy remained depressed. The people that ran the U.S economy, during World War II, were mostly corporate executives that had been called to the capital to direct the economy for the war effort. The U.S. economy prospered, during the war. Industrial production nearly quadrupled and the U.S. Depression ended. The corporate executives running the economy noticed this. Then the war ended and those persons studying the economy expected it to slip right back into depression, because nothing fundamental had changed. This did not happen at once, because there was much pent up consumer demand and people had money with which to buy consumer goods. In 1947 and 1948, however, consumer demand began to drop, and it looked as if the U.S. was headed for another recession, or depression. As a result of the World War II experience with a government-controlled economy, businessmen knew the solution was government economic stimulation. This led to U.S. governmental spending for military purposes, which U.S. governments said this was necessary to prevent Soviet expansion, although it was well known the Soviets had no intention of invading any countries (until Afghanistan, from 1979-1989). Fascism as security At that time, U.S. economists, such as Paul Samuelson, said that advanced, high-tech industry “cannot survive in a competitive, unsubsidized free-enterprise economy.” As a result of their World War II experience with a government-controlled economy, they knew the solution was government economic stimulation. By this time the economists had Keynes theory to justify government subsidies. Before that they had done it by instinct. The discussions about how the government should stimulate the economy to prevent depression show there was great agreement that the government should spend for military purposes and not for social purposes. The money given corporations is a subsidy that gives them a small, but important part of their profit. This was not for economic efficiency, since military spending does not redistribute wealth, nor create popular constituencies. The reason was to keep the people from trying to become involved in decisions about how tax money should be spent. The public is not supposed to know this. Stuart Symington, the first Secretary of the Air Force, stated this clearly, in 1948: “The word is not ‘subsidy’. The word is ‘security’.” The U.S. government understood that, for as long as the public accepts that its taxes money will be spent for security and not for subsidies, it will not question. Perpetual threats Policy-makers have kept the U.S. public paying for the fascist economy, by continually convincing the people that there is a major foreign threat to their existence. The Cold War and the arms race did that in the latter part of the 20th century, and the Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist threat has now partly replaced it, even though mention is now made of new threats to the U.S. “by the rising military power of China”, to remind that aerospace and military spending must continue. U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) spending, through the Pentagon, was begun to give tax-subsidies to U.S. companies, so as to guarantee them profit and, thereby, ensure the economy remains healthy. It accomplishes this for those that get this tax money. For the DOD’s Pentagon system to function properly, however, citizens must be prevented from interfering in the decision-making process This is the “Military-industrial complex” Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans to beware of. He did little to eliminate it, in part because of the Korean War and in part because he presented the Congress with no viable alternative. Estimates of the total tax burden of most U.S. wage earners vary, but a low average would be that an individual or family that has wage, salary, and dividend income of $40K to $100K yearly pays about 50% of its earnings in U.S. and state income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes. The government does not want average Americans, the Sam and Sally Sixpacks, to try to tell it how to spend their tax money. It prefers to have them spend their time with sports and religion, so they do not study what the government does. It can then continue to finance the electronics industry, the aircraft industry, computers, metallurgy, machine tools, chemicals, and so on. To keep the public satisfied with how its tax money is spent, the U.S. maintains the constant pretense of threats to the public’s safety. The U.S. also spends billions for crop subsidies and research to develop superior agricultural products, which will enable U.S. agri-business corporations to compete successfully in international markets. Cotton is a good example of this situation. Without these subsidies, U.S. agriculture, even with very cheap legal and illegal workers, could not maintain its competitive position in the world Even better examples are the tax money shoveled into National Public Radio and PBS (“public” TV), grants to universities for research and to theaters and other “arts” organizations to pay their bills. The attacks in the U.S., on Sept. 11, 2001 resulted from continual U.S. support of repressive, greedy, and unrepresentative governments in Muslim nations, as well as decades of U.S. support for Israel’s gradual destruction of the Palestinians and attacks on its Arab neighbors. However, the Sept. 11th attacks created fear in the U.S. public and gave the U.S. elite the ability to enflame the public’s fears for many more decades. It also enabled the U.S. government to spend more for “security, and through the DOD, as well as to pass legislation that enables it to spy on Americans. The U.S. electorate gladly accepted the new, police-state legislation and traded freedom for supposed security. As a result, it lost more freedom, but did not gain security. The U.S. border with Mexico remains porous. Drugs, illegal aliens, and an unknown number of hostile aliens easily pass across it, and Pres. Bush refuses to let this to be stopped. The need for fascism, corporatism, or state capitalism is explained only in highly specialized publications, which are not easily accessible to the general public. It is not a subject the general-readership and general-viewership print and electronic press in the U.S., care to explain, nor is it explained in school texts. Corporate and political leaders view the U.S. population as potential challengers of their fascist spending policies. They do not want the profits they gain from the U.S. tax money to be challenged. To continue to control the U.S. without internal difficulty, they want the U.S. population quiescent and obedient. Part of the way in which this is controlled is through wholesale legal and illegal immigration into the U.S. from lands where there is either political or religious persecution or poverty. To such immigrants, the U.S. seems like heaven, and they have been politically benign and compliant. (Combinations of the very rich and top corporate managers, in every land, face the same problem. In the U.S., however, effective challenges to current economic policies are exercises in futility. Entrenched economic interests are represented by both Democrats and Republicans, and no mechanism for meaningful change exists within the constitution, except in theory. The police power controlled by the U.S. foredooms to failure possible attempts to make changes outside the constitution. Change will only happen, if continued fascism becomes structurally unsound, or change is imposed from outside. Useful threats All post-World-War-II U.S. governments have been excellent at fabricating “threats” to the U.S. The most recent example, the Iraq invasion, is one of the more transparent threat fabrications, but it also shows the extent to which a U.S. government will lie, do what it wants to do, and then lie more to cover the initial lie. The creation of “threats” is easily done. When, for example, the U.S. government wanted to invade Iraq, it needed only to convince the public that Iraq threatened the U.S., and the U.S. government must defend the U.S. public by invading Iraq. Earlier post World War II threats included Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Viet Nam. China is now mentioned, as a rising military power, the implication being that it has no right to arm itself even partly the way the U.S. arms itself. While war with China may not be necessary, publicizing the thought that it challenges the U.S. is necessary, for it helps to continue public approval of the great amount of U.S. spending done for military and aero-space research, development, and products. Pres. Bush lied when he said Iraq posed a threat to U.S. security. The falseness of his statements was shown when, after Iraq was conquered in three weeks, no mass destruction weapons were found there. However, once U.S. troops were in Iraq, it did not matter what the public thought. The U.S. congress said at once, “we must support the troops”. So, billions of tax dollars continue to be spent on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Almost no oppositional voices have been heard. Along with popular support “of the troops”, most churches and civic groups have become cheering squads that urge “support our troops”. They and pro-war politicians use this argument to cast aspersions, by implication or directly, on anyone that questions keeping the troops in Iraq, or appropriating tax money to keep them there. (The Cuban missile crisis was real, but resulted from the over-exuberant extension of U.S. encirclement of the USSR, which included US missiles in Turkey. Results of the crisis were the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, US missiles from Turkey, and an unwritten US-USSR agreement that the US would not invade Cuba.) Spending on aero-space development and space exploration is also important in stimulating the economy. If, however, spending for military purposes declined, it would be very difficult for U.S. governments to get U.S. taxpayers to continue to subsidize high-technology industry, as they have done for more than fifty years. Therefore, military spending “to counter the threat” must be high, and a large number of men and women must be in uniform, so the public will see military personnel that use a little bit of what the money is spent for. (Examples of the control of U.S. governments by businesses and corporations abound. Very visible examples of the immense control corporations exert over states’ governors and legislatures have been happening in Georgia, since 2001 A.D. Corporate leaders said the state flag, which honored Georgians that fought for the Confederacy, had to be changed, because it was a threat to economic growth. The specific lie they told was that Daimler would not build a new car-making factory in Georgia, unless the flag was changed. Daimler said the flag was not an issue, and after the flag was changed, chose South Carolina as the location for its new car-making factory. (The governor responsible for the initial flag change was voted out of office and the state elected the Republican party’s gubernatorial candidate gave majority’s in both houses of the Legislative Assembly to Republicans, for the first time in the state’s history. The new governor had promised to allow the voters to state their flag preference in a referendum. However, because of chamber of commerce and corporate pressures he reneged on his promise. (Public boasting about its influence, in preventing the flag referendum, and getting enacted much other legislation wanted by the chambers showed the extent to which the chamber and corporations that fund it control Georgia’s government. (Corporate control of the governments of other U.S. states is similar and is almost total at the federal level.) Business literature has, for more than fifty years, discussed the danger that the people might want to be involved in social and economic policy making. These specialists know, as do economists, that spending for civilian purposes may be more efficient and more profitable than spending for military purposes. They also know there are many more efficient ways to use tax money to subsidize high-technology industry than through the DOD. When a government wants to stimulate the economy, it does not matter what the government spends tax money on. The spending itself is what causes the stimulation. The government may buy military hardware or build roads and hospitals and the economic effects will be the same. Even so, U.S. business leaders think spending for civilian purposes has negative side effects for them. For one thing, it interferes with their managerial prerogatives. Money the government gives corporations through the DOD is like a gift. The government says it will buy what the company makes; pay for its research and development; and allow the company a profit, if it can make one. Corporate managers say this arrangement is the best. They know that, if the government began to have business make products that could be sold in the commercial market that production would interfere with corporate profit making. The production of waste, however, does not interfere, because, for example, no other company will compete with a company that makes artillery, tanks, or B-2 bombers. Non-commercial spending Because corporate leaders prefer it, U.S. government spending to keep major U.S. businesses profitable has gone to the military and aero-space industries for the research, development and production of non-commercial products. The DOD, for instance, gives money to corporations to develop missile defense systems that guard against non-existent missile threats. Once a system like that has been developed, businesses then try to find ways to adapt some of its technology for commercial uses. In contrast, other countries give large percentages of their tax money directly to businesses, so the businesses can develop products salable in international markets. Japan is a good example of this. For many decades, It has given tax money directly to Japanese businesses to enable them to develop products that can be sold internationally in commercial, competitive markets. This system is streamlined and not wasteful. It is a stark contrast with the way the U.S. gives money to businesses for military and aero-space research and development. The difference in efficiency between the U.S. and Japanese’ fascist economic systems is the main reason why Japan’s fragile, post World War II economy grew to be the world’s second largest, and Japan competes so successfully with the gargantuan U.S. economy. Japan can give tax money directly to businesses to keep them competitive internationally partly because it has not lied to its citizens and created stories about security threats. The nation has democratic governmental procedures that result in representative governments. As a result, Japanese corporations have not been able to gain complete control of governmental budgets. In turn, the Japanese understand the need to help their corporations and have not objected to governmental grants to corporations to develop new, commercially applicable technology. Control Corporate control of U.S. tax subsidies is of prime interest to U.S. corporate leaders. To them, social spending is a serious threat to their power, for it increases the danger of democracy, because is liable to increase popular involvement in decision-making. For example, if the government were to be involved in building housing, schools, roads, and similar things people would be interested in how the money is spent, because they understand how these things affect them. They would have opinions and would want to tell their elected officials how it should be spent. In contrast, when the government says it will build a stealth bomber, nobody in the public quite understands that and few people offer opinions. Since the first requirement of control is to keep the public passive, those in power want to eliminate anything that tends to encourage the population to be involved in its planning. This is because popular involvement could threaten the power monopoly business has. The people might organize and demand a redistribution of profits and decision-making. The primary and secondary schools in the U.S. play critical roles in keeping the public docile and passive. (This includes tax-supported school systems and parochial and private schools). In primary and secondary schools, teachers teach the half truths and misinformation written into texts by university professors (a.k.a., political indoctrination commissars), and the administrators ensure that teachers inculcate only approved doctrine into the minds of the children and youth sent them to condition. They teach, for example, that the U.S. has a free enterprise economy, the press is a guardian of our freedom, and the political system is representative. The press repeats this. At the higher education level, professors repeat misinformation and diluted, inaccurate history, political science, and economics. They are the guardians, preservers, and ideologues that ward off all challenges to the veracity of the falsehoods they perpetrate. They are in effect political indoctrination commissars. They feel threatened by views that challenge the view promulgated by the state and act as defamation specialists to beat down challenges to those views. They have aptly been described as a secular priesthood dedicated to ensuring that the state’s doctrinal faith is maintained. The press reports their derogatory judgments of those views with which they disapprove as valid value judgments of right-think and wrong-think. Any conversion to an economic system that funnels tax money to social improvement, or national health insurance, or building schools can only be done as part of a total, societal restructuring that is designed to undermine centralized control. In addition, DOD’s wasteful spending cannot be ended until an alternative is agreed to, because the U.S. economy’s well-being depends upon the tax money spent now to keep corporations profitable. In order to change what tax money is spent on, a cultural and institutional structure must also be created, so public funds can be used to improve U.S. citizens’ social needs, such as housing and health care, and societal infrastructure, such as schools, roads, and bridges. If this were done, it would be possible to use tax money to stimulate the economy in a different way than does the current DOD system. These possibilities seem highly unlikely,
for those that control a state do not allow change that in any
way threatens their profits. Changes in the ways in which the
U.S. spends its fascist budget will only happen, if the present
ways become structurally unsound, as happened to the Soviet Union,
or change is imposed from outside, as in the case of Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan. |
|
George Bush: How Low Can He Go? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.wisdems.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/687466 Contact: Jessica Erickson (608) 255-5172 x 406 (voice) (608) 255-8919 (fax) The Democratic Party of Wisconsin President: I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up MADISON – On the heels of a poll last week showing the President’s approval ratings plummeting by 10 percentage points in Wisconsin, yet another national survey shows Bush’s approval ratings have sunk to a new low in Wisconsin. According to Survey USA, only 36 percent of Wisconsinites approve of the President’s job performance – an approval rating even lower than the latest national numbers. Yesterday’s poll by CNN/USA Today has the President at a 39 percent approval rating nationwide. “Republican lawmakers who walked lock-step with this President on his failed Iraq policy and ignored repeated calls for energy reform better prepare for some tough questions when they go to the doors of voters next year,” said Joe Wineke, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “Wisconsin families are fed up with the failed leadership of President Bush and Republicans in Congress.” Wineke said recent polls show that the people of Wisconsin are becoming increasingly upset with President Bush over rising energy costs, his failure in Iraq, record federal deficits, his failure to extend the MILC program for Wisconsin dairy farmers, and the federal government’s failure to respond swiftly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “How many polls will it take for Republicans both in Washington and Madison to realize that their to-do list doesn’t match the priorities of the people of Wisconsin?” Wineke asked. “People are worried about how they’re going to adjust family budgets to pay for skyrocketing gas and home heating prices, and why their health insurance premiums are going up again this year.” The poll also shows President Bush has serious problems in Wisconsin with the type of swing voters who can often turn an election. Only 28 percent of moderates and 31 percent of independents approve of the President’s job performance. And the President’s support among his own base is in trouble in Wisconsin, with 21 percent of Republicans disapproving of his performance and only a slim margin of pro-life voters approving of his performance. Support for President Bush is below 50
percent in 25 of the states he won last November, according to
the poll. In so-called swing states, the President’s numbers
are dramatically lower than that. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
January |
|
|
|
|
| |
February |
|
|
|
|
| |
March |
|
|
|
|
|
|
April |
|
|
|
|
|
|
May |
|
|
|
|
|
|
June |
|
|
|
|
| |
July |
|
|
|
|
| |
August |
|
|
|
|
| |
September |
|
|
|
|
| |
October |
|
|
|
|
| |
November |
|
|
|
|
| |
December |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
