Floor Statement on the Habeas Corpus Amendment

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Sen. Barak Obama

Mr. President, I would like to address the habeas corpus amendment that is on the floor and that we just heard a lengthy debate about between Senator Specter and Senator Warner.

A few years ago, I gave a speech in Boston that people talk about from time to time. In that speech, I spoke about why I love this country, why I love America, and what I believe sets this country apart from so many other nations in so many areas. I said:

That is the true genius of America--a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. .....

Without hearing a sudden knock on the door. I bring this up because what is at stake in this bill, and in the amendment that is currently being debated, is the right, in some sense, for people who hear that knock on the door and are placed in detention because the Government suspects them of terrorist activity to effectively challenge their detention by our Government.

Now, under the existing rules of the Detainee Treatment Act, court review of anyone's detention is severely restricted. Fortunately, the Supreme Court in Hamdan ensured that some meaningful review would take place. But in the absence of Senator Specter's amendment that is currently pending, we will essentially be going back to the same situation as if the Supreme Court had never ruled in Hamdan, a situation in which detainees effectively have no access to anything other than the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, or the CSRT.

Now, I think it is important for all of us to understand exactly the procedures that are currently provided for under the CSRT. I have actually read a few of the transcripts of proceedings under the CSRT. And I can tell you that oftentimes they provide detainees no meaningful recourse if the Government has the wrong guy.

Essentially, reading these transcripts, they proceed as follows: The Government says: You are a member of the Taliban. And the detainee will say: No, I'm not. And then the Government will not ask for proof from the detainee that he is not. There is no evidence that the detainee can offer to rebut the Government's charge.

The Government then moves on and says: And on such and such a date, you perpetrated such and such terrorist crime. And the detainee says: No, I didn't. You have the wrong guy. But again, he has no capacity to place into evidence anything that would rebut the Government's charge. And there is no effort to find out whether or not what he is saying is true.

And it proceeds like that until effectively the Government says, OK, that is the end of the tribunal, and he goes back to detention. Even if there is evidence that he was not involved in any terrorist activity, he may not have any mechanism to introduce that evidence into the hearing.

Now, the vast majority of the folks in Guantanamo, I suspect, are there for a reason. There are a lot of dangerous people. Particularly dangerous are people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Ironically, those are the guys who are going to get real military procedures because they are going to be charged by the Government. But detainees who have not committed war crimes--or where the Government's case is not strong--may not have any recourse whatsoever.

The bottom line is this: Current procedures under the CSRT are such that a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government's case and has no way of proving his innocence.

I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their safety--when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is protected.

But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.

This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have been there. As one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street Journal:

Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks.

We all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to Syria--through a rendition agreement--tortured, only to find out later it was all a case of mistaken identity and poor information.

In this war, where terrorists can plot undetected from within our borders, it is absolutely vital that our law enforcement agencies are able to detain and interrogate whoever they believe to be a suspect,
and so it is understandable that mistakes will be made and identities will be confused. I don't blame the Government for that. This is an extraordinarily difficult war we are prosecuting against terrorists. There are going to be situations in which we cast too wide a net and capture the wrong person.

But what is avoidable is refusing to ever allow our legal system to correct these mistakes. By giving suspects a chance--even one chance--to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit.

Let me respond to a couple of points that have been made on the other side. You will hear opponents of this amendment say it will give all kinds of rights to terrorist masterminds, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But that is not true. The irony of the underlying bill as it is written is that someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is going to get basically a full military trial, with all of the bells and whistles. He will have counsel, he will be able to present evidence, and he will be able to rebut the Government's case. The feeling is that he is guilty of a war crime and to do otherwise might violate some of our agreements under the Geneva Conventions. I think that is good, that we are going to provide him with some procedure and process. I think we will convict him, and I think he will be brought to justice. I think justice will be carried out in his case.

But that won't be true for the detainees who are never charged with a terrorist crime, who have not committed a war crime. Under this bill, people who may have been simply at the wrong place at the wrong time--and there may be just a few--will never get a chance to appeal their detention. So, essentially, the weaker the Government's case is against you, the fewer rights you have. Senator Specter's amendment would fix that, while still ensuring that terrorists like Mohammed are swiftly brought to justice.

You are also going to hear a lot about how lawyers are going to file all kinds of frivolous lawsuits on behalf of detainees if habeas corpus is in place. This is a cynical argument because I think we could get overwhelming support in this Chamber right now for a measure that would restrict habeas to a one-shot appeal that would be limited solely to whether someone was legally detained or not. I am not interested in allowing folks at Guantanamo to complain about whether their cell is too small or whether the food they get is sufficiently edible or to their tastes. That is not what this is about. We can craft a habeas bill that says the only question before the court is whether there is sufficient evidence to find that this person is truly an unlawful enemy combatant and belongs in this detention center. We can restrict it to that. And although I have seen some of those amendments floating around, those were not amendments that were admitted during this debate. It is a problem that is easily addressed. It is not a reason for us to wholesale eliminate habeas corpus.

Finally, you will hear some Senators argue that if habeas is allowed, it renders the CSRT process irrelevant because the courts will embark on de novo review, meaning they will completely retry these cases, take new evidence. So whatever findings were made in the CSRT are not really relevant because the court is essentially going to start all over again.

I actually think some of these Senators are right on this point. I believe we could actually set up a system in which a military tribunal is sufficient to make a determination as to whether someone is an enemy combatant and would not require the sort of traditional habeas corpus that is called for as a consequence of this amendment, where the court's role is simply to see whether proper procedures were met. The problem is that the way the CSRT is currently designed is so insufficient that we can anticipate the Supreme Court overturning this underlying bill, once again, in the absence of habeas corpus review.

I have had conversations with some of the sponsors of the underlying bill who say they agree that we have to beef up the CSRT procedures. Well, if we are going to revisit the CSRT procedures to make them stronger and make sure they comport with basic due process, why not leave habeas corpus in place until we have actually fixed it up to our satisfaction? Why rush through it 2 days before we are supposed to adjourn? Because some on the other side of the aisle want to go campaign on the issue of who is tougher on terrorism and national security.

Since 9/11, Americans have been asked to give up certain conveniences and civil liberties--long waits in airport security lines, random questioning because of a foreign-sounding last name--so that the Government can defeat terrorism wherever it may exist. It is a tough balance to strike. I think we have to acknowledge that whoever was in power right now, whoever was in the White House, whichever party was in control, that we would have to do some balancing between civil liberties and our need for security and to get tough on those who would do us harm.

Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.

In Sunday's New York Times, it was reported that previous drafts of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, a report of 16 different Government intelligence agencies, describe:

..... actions by the United States Government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. .....

This is not just unhelpful in our fight against terror, it is unnecessary. We don't need to imprison innocent people to win this war. For people who are guilty, we have the procedures in place to lock them up. That is who we are as a people. We do things right, and we do things fair.

Two days ago, every Member of this body received a letter, signed by 35 U.S. diplomats, many of whom served under Republican Presidents. They urged us to reconsider eliminating the rights of habeas corpus from this bill, saying:

To deny habeas corpus to our detainees can be seen as a prescription for how the captured members of our own military, diplomatic, and NGO personnel stationed abroad may be treated. ..... The Congress has every duty to insure their protection, and to avoid anything which will be taken as a justification, even by the most disturbed minds, that arbitrary arrest is the acceptable norm of the day in the relations between nations, and that judicial inquiry is an antique, trivial and dispensable luxury.

The world is watching what we do today in America. They will know what we do here today, and they will treat all of us accordingly in the future--our soldiers, our diplomats, our journalists, anybody who travels beyond these borders. I hope we remember this as we go forward. I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the ``great writ''--a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years.

Mr. President, this should not be a difficult vote. I hope we pass this amendment because I think it is the only way to make sure this underlying bill preserves all the great traditions of our legal system and our way of life.

I yield the floor.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama on the Military Commission Legislation

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Statement for the Record

Mr. President, I am proud to be sponsoring this amendment with the senior senator from West Virginia. He's absolutely right that Congress has abrogated its oversight responsibilities, and one way to reverse that troubling trend is to adopt a sunset provision in this bill. We did that in the Patriot Act, and that allowed us to make important revisions to the bill that reflected our experience about what worked and didn't work during the previous 5 years. We should do that again with this important piece of legislation.

But I want to take a few minutes to speak more broadly about the bill before us.

I may have only been in this body for a short while, but I am not naive to the political considerations that go along with many of the decisions we make here. I realize that soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.

And yet, while I know all of this, I'm still disappointed. Because what we're doing here today - a debate over the fundamental human rights of the accused - should be bigger than politics. This is serious.

If this was a debate with obvious ideological differences - heartfelt convictions that couldn't be settled by compromise - I would understand. But it's not.

All of us - Democrats and Republicans - want to do whatever it takes to track down terrorists and bring them to justice as swiftly as possible. All of us want to give our President every tool necessary to do this. And all of us were willing to do that in this bill. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to the American people.

In the five years that the President's system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we're here today.

We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay. Easily. This was not an either-or question.

Instead of allowing this President - or any President - to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered.

Instead of detainees arriving at Guantanamo and facing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that allows them no real chance to prove their innocence with evidence or a lawyer, we could have developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.

And instead of not just suspending, but eliminating, the right of habeas corpus - the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention, we could have given the accused one chance - one single chance - to ask the government why they are being held and what they are being charged with.

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."

And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.

The problem with this bill is not that it's too tough on terrorists. The problem with this bill is that it's sloppy. And the reason it's sloppy is because we rushed it to serve political purposes instead of taking the time to do the job right.

I've heard, for example, the argument that it should be military courts, and not federal judges, who should make decisions on these detainees. I actually agree with that. The problem is that the structure of the military proceedings has been poorly thought through. Indeed, the regulations that are supposed to be governing administrative hearings for these detainees, which should have been issued months ago, still haven't been issued. Instead, we have rushed through a bill that stands a good chance of being challenged once again in the Supreme Court.

This is not how a serious Administration would approach the problem of terrorism. I know the President came here today and was insisting that this is supposed to be our primary concern. He's absolutely right it should be our primary concern - which is why we should be approaching this with a somberness and seriousness that this Administration has not displayed with this legislation.

Now, let me be clear - for those who plot terror against the United States, I hope God has mercy on their soul, because I certainly do not. And for those who our government suspects of terror, I support whatever tools are necessary to try them and uncover their plot.

But we also know that some have been detained who have no connection to terror whatsoever. We've already had reports from the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo shouldn't have been there - as one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street Journal, "Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks." And we all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to Syria, and tortured, only to find out later that it was all a case of mistaken identity and poor information.

In the future, people like this may never have a chance to prove their innocence. They may remain locked away forever.

And the sad part about all of this is that this betrayal of American values is unnecessary. We could've drafted a bipartisan, well-structured bill that provided adequate due process through the military courts, had an effective review process that would've prevented frivolous lawsuits being filed and kept lawyers from clogging our courts, but upheld the basic ideals that have made this country great.

Instead, what we have is a flawed document that in fact betrays the best instincts of some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle - those who worked in a bipartisan fashion in the Armed Services Committee to craft a bill that we could have been proud of. And they essentially got steamrolled by this Administration and by the imperatives of November 7th.

That is not how we should be doing business in the U.S. Senate, and that's not how we should be prosecuting this war on terrorism. When we're sloppy and cut corners, we are undermining those very virtues of America that will lead us to success in winning this war. At bare minimum, I hope we can at least pass this provision so that cooler heads can prevail after the silly season of politics is over. Thank you.

In Case I Disappear

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 29 September 2006

I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. "Be careful," people always tell me. "These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed." A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.

I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff. Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought. This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn't yet been red-lined, I thought.

Matters are different now.

It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid. It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough. Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.

So much of this legislation is wretched on the surface. Habeas corpus has been suspended for detainees suspected of terrorism or of aiding terrorism, so the Magna Carta-era rule that a person can face his accusers is now gone. Once a suspect has been thrown into prison, he does not have the right to a trial by his peers. Suspects cannot even stand in representation of themselves, another ancient protection, but must accept a military lawyer as their defender.

Illegally-obtained evidence can be used against suspects, whether that illegal evidence was gathered abroad or right here at home. To my way of thinking, this pretty much eradicates our security in persons, houses, papers, and effects, as stated in the Fourth Amendment, against illegal searches and seizures.

Speaking of collecting evidence, the torture of suspects and detainees has been broadly protected by this new legislation. While it tries to delineate what is and is not acceptable treatment of detainees, in the end, it gives George W. Bush the final word on what constitutes torture. US officials who use cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment to extract information from detainees are now shielded from prosecution.

It was two Supreme Court decisions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that compelled the creation of this legislation. The Hamdi decision held that a prisoner has the right of habeas corpus, and can challenge his detention before an impartial judge. The Hamdan decision held that the military commissions set up to try detainees violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

In short, the Supreme Court wiped out virtually every legal argument the Bush administration put forth to defend its extraordinary and dangerous behavior. The passage of this legislation came after a scramble by Republicans to paper over the torture and murder of a number of detainees. As columnist Molly Ivins wrote on Wednesday, "Of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place."

It seems almost certain that, at some point, the Supreme Court will hear a case to challenge the legality of this legislation, but even this is questionable. If a detainee is not allowed access to a fair trial or to the evidence against him, how can he bring a legal challenge to a court? The legislation, in anticipation of court challenges like Hamdi and Hamdan, even includes severe restrictions on judicial review over the legislation itself.

The Republicans in Congress have managed, at the behest of Mr. Bush, to draft a bill that all but erases the judicial branch of the government. Time will tell whether this aspect, along with all the others, will withstand legal challenges. If such a challenge comes, it will take time, and meanwhile there is this bill. All of the above is deplorable on its face, indefensible in a nation that prides itself on Constitutional rights, protections and the rule of law.

Underneath all this, however, is where the paranoia sets in.

Underneath all this is the definition of "enemy combatant" that has been established by this legislation. An "enemy combatant" is now no longer just someone captured "during an armed conflict" against our forces. Thanks to this legislation, George W. Bush is now able to designate as an "enemy combatant" anyone who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."

Consider that language a moment. "Purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" is in the eye of the beholder, and this administration has proven itself to be astonishingly impatient with criticism of any kind. The broad powers given to Bush by this legislation allow him to capture, indefinitely detain, and refuse a hearing to any American citizen who speaks out against Iraq or any other part of the so-called "War on Terror."

If you write a letter to the editor attacking Bush, you could be deemed as purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States. If you organize or join a public demonstration against Iraq, or against the administration, the same designation could befall you. One dark-comedy aspect of the legislation is that senators or House members who publicly disagree with Bush, criticize him, or organize investigations into his dealings could be placed under the same designation. In effect, Congress just gave Bush the power to lock them up.

By writing this essay, I could be deemed an "enemy combatant." It's that simple, and very soon, it will be the law. I always laughed when people told me to be careful. I'm not laughing anymore.

In case I disappear, remember this. America is an idea, a dream, and that is all. We have borders and armies and citizens and commerce and industry, but all this merely makes us like every other nation on this Earth. What separates us is the idea, the simple idea, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our organizing principles. We can think as we please, speak as we please, write as we please, worship as we please, go where we please. We are protected from the kinds of tyranny that inspired our creation as a nation in the first place.

That was the idea. That was the dream. It may all be over now, but once upon a time, it existed. No good idea ever truly dies. The dream was here, and so was I, and so were you.

Note: William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

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US Senate passes Bush's controversial detainee bill

By Devika Bhat and agencies
TimesOnline
Sept 29, 2006

The US Senate has approved contentious legislation to impose George W Bush’s proposals for the interrogation and trial of foreign terror suspects, setting new and far-reaching rules on how such prisoners may be treated.

After a heated debate, the Senate eventually passed the bill by a 65-34 majority, a day after the House of Representatives passed an almost identical measure. President Bush is expected to sign the new legislation in a matter of days.

The bill sanctions the use of special military courts to try suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, and would allow the use of some evidence obtained by harsh interrogation methods.

Crucially, it also eliminates the right of habeas corpus, stopping foreign prisoners from going to a federal court to challenge their own detention.

In one concession, defendants would, however, be given access to the evidence being used to prosecute them, even when it is classified.

The new legislation forbids US guards from inflicting treatment which could constitute a war crime – including torture, rape, murder, and any act intended to cause "serious" physical or mental pain – but gives the President the right to define and decide which other techniques can be used short of that. The CIA would be allowed to continue its secret prisons programme.

Human rights groups have expressed concern that harsh techniques that border on torture, such as sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia, can be used under the new law.

The bill also expands the definition of the "enemy combatants" who can be held and tried, to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups. The bill also enables evidence found in the US or abroad to be taken without a search warrant.

While the President had to concede on some of the specifics, the final bill contained broadly all the key measures he was hoping to see passed.

"The Senate sent a strong signal to the terrorists that we will continue using every element of national power to pursue our enemies and to prevent attacks on America," Mr Bush said in a statement after the Senate vote.

"The Military Commissions Act of 2006 will allow the continuation of a CIA programme that has been one of America’s most potent tools in fighting the war on terror," he added.

The legislation had become a major battleground in US politics, pitting measures to safeguard the country from terrorism against the need to protect civil liberties, just weeks ahead of November legislative elections.

Republicans argued that the new legislation was essential, arguing that lawsuits from Guantanamo Bay inmates were blocking the courts’ ability to proceed with the course of justice and were detracting from the war on terror. They accused the Democrats of being soft on matters of national security.

Twelve Democrats joined the Republicans in voting in favour of the bill, while one Republican, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, opposed it and another did not vote.

However, most Democrats slammed the measures as "unconstitutional" and "un-American", saying they fell short of fair judicial standards and would further increase international anger towards the US at its treatment of detainees since 9/11.

They accused Republicans of rushing through the legislation in order to gain votes in the November elections, rather than because the bill made good sense.

"This longstanding tradition of our country about to be abandoned here is one of the great, great mistakes that I think history will record," said Democrat Chris Dodd.

The removal of habeas corpus came under particular criticism, from both sides, with even some Republicans who voted for the bill nonetheless predicting it likely that the Supreme Court would strike down the legislation because of its scrapping of the right of prisoners to challenge their own detention.

Democrats also criticised the sanctioning of harsh interrogation techniques which they said would border on torture. "This bill gives an administration that lobbied for torture exactly what it wanted," said Senator John Kerry

"I’m convinced that future generations will view passage of this bill as a grave error," said Harry Reid, a Democrat and Senate Minority Leader.

Dianne Feinstein, another Democrat, added: "We are being asked to consider legislation that will determine how our troops and personnel, foreign troops and personnel, as well as innocent bystanders, will be treated when captured during conflict."

The new bill was sent to Congress after the Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals set up by President’s Bush after the September 11 attacks, mainly to try suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan, violated the US Constitution as well international law under the Geneva Convention.

Another bill was then submitted by the White House earlier this month, but was contested by three key Senate Republicans, who argued they would not support a bill that flouted the Geneva Convention.

John McCain, one of the three Republicans who rebelled, said that the new bill was a compromise, which, crucially, maintained the country’s commitment to adhere to the Geneva Convention.

"The United States should champion the Geneva Conventions, not look for ways to get around them, lest we invite others to do the same," he said, speaking minutes before the vote.

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Note: Here is the roll call vote on this bill in the Senate

Here is the roll call vote on the related bill in the House.

Deficit Comes in Below Projections, Thanks to "Off-budget" Borrowing

By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday 28 September 2006

Washington - The U.S. government closes the books on fiscal 2006 Saturday, and politicians are likely to trumpet that the federal deficit came in almost $60 billion below projections. Problem is, they won't be using the same math you use.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the federal deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 will total around $260 billion, aided by a surge in revenues. That's $58 billion lower than last year's deficit and about $77 billion lower than projections at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Great news? Budget experts in Washington and on Wall Street say it's a welcome development, but misleading. Washington's funny math excludes the Social Security trust fund, which is running a $177 billion surplus this year. Washington spends it, but doesn't count it as spending. It's officially listed as "off-budget" borrowing.

"In practice, all the money Washington collects goes into the same pot and gets spent the same. On paper, we say we'll pay Social Security back later," said Brian Riedl, chief budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research center.

So the deficit is actually about $437 billion, the CBO calculates: the $260 billion official deficit plus the $177 billion borrowed from the trust fund. Since the money is "borrowed," it adds to the gross federal debt, which is expected to reach about $8.5 trillion by Jan. 1.

This is why New York investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co. issued a dour report Sept. 22 titled "The U.S. Budget Outlook: No Lasting Improvement."

Spending trust-fund money to mask the true size of the federal deficit is a longtime Washington gimmick, but even so, Heritage calculates that the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress have increased government spending by 45 percent since 2001. Heritage uses spending numbers from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Federal spending increased by 9 percent in fiscal 2006, the biggest jump since 1990. It's risen sharply for education, agriculture and several nondefense programs as well as for the war on terrorism and homeland security.

"It's really been a guns-and-butter spending spree," Riedl said. "Of all the federal spending increases since 2001, defense and homeland security combined are responsible for less than a third."

Heritage calculates that discretionary spending, excluding defense and homeland security, has increased by 7 percent annually during the Bush presidency. That nearly doubles the 4.2 percent annual growth under President Clinton.

The current spending increases appear less dramatic, however, when they're viewed as a percentage of gross domestic product, the total value of U.S. goods and services produced in a year. In its midyear review, the White House projected fiscal 2006 spending in the ballpark of 20 percent of the GDP. That's about the same as it was for most of the 1990s, although up sharply from 18.4 percent in 2000.

"We're in a situation where the immediate cash budget isn't the issue. People shouldn't focus too much on that," said Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan grassroots organization that advocates balanced federal budgets. "The real issue we need to start paying more attention to is what sort of enormous balloon payment are we setting ourselves up for in the future."

Looming just over the horizon is a huge demographic shift that'll strain the federal budget enormously. On Jan. 1, 2008, the first baby boomers - 76 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 - become eligible for Social Security benefits. From that point on, a two-decade assault on federal finances begins. The federal government will turn to an ever-declining number of active workers to pay for the health and retirement benefits it's promised to baby boomers.

"For people who think that's a long ways off, the first baby boomer collects their first Social Security check in 14 months," Riedl said. "No economic boom can make up for Medicare rising 9 percent, Medicaid rising 8 percent and Social Security rising 6 percent."

There's another important way that Washington math differs from yours. The nation's books are done on a cash basis: money coming in and going out. Most American business and family budgets don't look only at the flow of money. They use accrual-based accounting, in which liabilities, or commitments, are factored in.

When you buy something with a credit card, you incur those liabilities immediately even if you intend to pay off your debt in the future. The federal cash-basis budget doesn't treat things such as promised future pension benefits to veterans as immediate liabilities.

Buried deep in the nation's financial report, issued every December, is an alternative accrual-basis deficit calculation. For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2005, that deficit totaled $760 billion. It has grown every year of the Bush presidency. It will grow in the 2006 fiscal year too, approaching $800 billion or more.

Comptroller General David Walker, the nation's chief accounting auditor, has added up all the federal government's unfunded liabilities, or promises, and offers a present-day figure of $46 trillion. Think of that as promises to the tune of $155,932.18 for each of the 295 million Americans.

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For more on the CBO's budget outlook, go to www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/74xx/doc7492/08-17-BudgetUpdate.pdf.

For historical data on the federal budget, go to www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf.

For the Government Accounting Office's latest budget update, go to www.gao.gov/new.items/d061077r.pdf.

Keith Olbermann's commentary on "I tried, he didn't"

Former Pres. Clinton on Fox & Aftermath

Most Iraqis Favor Immediate US Pullout, Polls Show

By Amit R. Paley
The Washington Post
Wednesday 27 September 2006

Leaders' views out of step with public.

Baghdad - A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.

Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year. By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intends keep permanent military bases in the country.

The stark assessments, among the most negative attitudes toward U.S.-led forces since they invaded Iraq in 2003, contrast sharply with views expressed by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Last week at the United Nations, President Jalal Talabani said coalition troops should remain in the country until Iraqi security forces are "capable of putting an end to terrorism and maintaining stability and security."

N.Y.Times Columnist Threatens Readers on Health Care Costs

Posted by Dean Baker on September 27, 2006 06:14 AM

In his weekly column, David Leonhardt tells readers that the problem with the U.S. health care system is not waste, rather we are getting what we pay for. I'll leave it to others to assess the value of good health and longer life expectancies, I'll simply point out that everyone else seems to get much more for what they pay. As I've noted before, every other wealthy country enjoys longer life expectancies than the United States and they pay on average less than half as much per person.

We can also say the same thing about the change in spending over the last 35 years, with the increase in spending in the United States vastly exceeding the increase in spending in other countries, with no corresponding gains in outcomes. For example, while life expectancy incrased by 5.9 years between 1970 and 2000 in the United States, it increased by 6.4 years in Canada. Over roughly the same period, Canada's per person health care spending went from 85 percent of the U.S. level in 1970 to 52 percent in 2003. Life expectancy in Germany increased by 8.0 years, while its per capita health spending went from 76 percent of U.S. levels in 1970 to 53 percent in 2003. France had a gain of 6.8 years, although its spending levels only dropped from 58 percent in 1970 to 53 percent in 2004. Norway and Sweden did have smaller gains than the U.S., but their life expectancies are still 1.9 years and 2.9 years longer than ours, respectively. (They pay 65 percent and 48 percent as much per capita as the United States, respectively.)

Maybe the benefits from our health care spending are worth the cost, but then everyone else in the world seems to be getting a really good deal. Where oh where are the proponents of free trade?
--Dean Baker

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Maggie Mahar, on the American Prospect Online Edition, has an appropriate tie-in to this discussion

The Cost of High Costs
David Cutler argues that health-care cost inflation is nothing to worry about. He's wrong.
By Maggie Mahar
Web Exclusive: 09.06.06

Last Thursday The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that contradicts nearly everything that you and I thought we knew about skyrocketing medical bills. According to Harvard economist David Cutler, health-care inflation is a good thing.

“The rising cost … of health care has been the source of a lot of saber rattling in the media and the public square, without anyone seriously analyzing the benefits gained,” Cutler, the lead author on the study, told the Associated Press. “But the dramatic increase in life expectancy that we've seen over the last decades shows that rising medical costs have been largely justified."

Cutler doesn't dispute that costs have soared. On average, a person born in 1960 could expect to rack up medical bills of $13,943 over the course of a lifetime, while cradle-to-grave care for Americans born in 2000 is likely to average $83,307. (Dollars are adjusted for inflation.) But he stresses that those born in 1960 could look forward to living only 70 years; someone born in 2000 has a life expectancy of 77 years.

The NEJM study estimates that 3.5 of the seven years gained are due to improvements in medical care. Cutler’s team then divides the change in spending by the change in life expectancy to conclude that each one of those extra 3.5 years the “average” American gained cost just $19,000. Not a bad deal -- especially if you happen to be one of those who makes it to 77.

Cutler’s study came on the heels of a New York Times article that appeared a week earlier headlined “Making Health Care the Engine that Drives the Economy.” The Times reported that while “huge increases are coming” in our health-care bills, “some [economists] say that may be just fine.”

The article quoted Cutler as well as Nobel Laureate Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, who predicts that by 2030, health-care spending will equal 25 percent of gross domestic product (up from 16 percent today). In his view, this will make medicine “the driving force in the economy, just as railroads drove the economy at the start of the 20th century." “Taxpayers will foot the bill. But Dr. Fogel is not alarmed,” the paper explained. “Americans can afford it, he says, because the nation is so rich."

After years of reading all of those depressing stories about spiraling costs and families who can’t afford care, this fresh perspective on U.S. health care is undeniably heartening. If only it were true.

Begin with the notion that a rich nation can afford to spend 25 percent of what it produces on health care. The bulk of our health-care bill is covered by taxpayers. “The health-care industry has become addicted to revenue growth -- and it’s crowding out other things that we care about,” says Alan Sagar, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. We spend 16 percent of GDP on health care, and only 4.7 percent on primary and secondary education. That’s just 1 percentage point more than we spent in 1970 -- even though the number of children in the United States has increased by 13 percent. As a result, while we sink a much larger percentage of GDP into healthcare than any other country in the world, when it comes to education, we rank 10th -- behind Saudi Arabia, Norway, Malaysia, France, and South Africa, among others.

David Cutler is aware of the problem. “That is why we have to raise taxes,” he said in a phone interview last Friday. “Government has grown to one-third of GDP because we have decided we want government to do more. At the high end, wealthier people will have to pay more taxes to cover those who cannot afford health-care inflation. Do you want to pay more taxes or do you want to ration care?"

Cutler’s is a generous vision. But will the wealthiest among us really be kind enough to finance health care for all at a level that equals 30 percent of GDP? Not if they realize that other countries have made similar strides in lengthening life expectancy while spending far less. Indeed, many have done better. Worldwide, the United States ranks 31st in longevity, behind such countries as Australia, Canada, and Malta. And it ranks 40th in the probability that a child will die before age 5, with nations such as Estonia, Portugal, and Slovenia doing better.

Pundits have suggested that this is because we live in a more heterogeneous society where the poor (minorities in particular) pull down the national average -- both because they receive less care and because they indulge in self-destructive lifestyles. But a study published in JAMA last May tested that hypothesis by focusing squarely on white 55- to 65-year-old Americans and comparing them to white 55- to 65-year-olds in England. Hands down, the British proved much healthier. Indeed, the study revealed that white Americans at the top of our income and education ladder suffered diabetes and heart disease at about the same rate as the poorest and least well-educated British subjects.

The investigators looked at lifestyle factors to try to explain the difference, but it turns out that while we’re fatter and exercise less, the British drink more. Smoking rates are similar. Researchers speculated that life in the United States may be more stressful -- but the U.K. is hardly a Polynesian island. Polite to a fault, the British investigators refrained from suggesting that the problem might lie in our health-care system. Nor did they mention that we shell out twice as much for health care.

Why do we spend so much more to achieve only middling results? The best evidence available suggests that up to half of the $2.2 trillion that we lay out on healthcare is wasted on unnecessary -- and often overpriced -- products and procedures.

Consider cardiac care. According to the NEJM study, advances in cardiac care account for fully 79 percent of the gains we have made in life expectancy. At the same time, Cutler is quick to agree with most cardiac specialists that "we perform far too many cardiac procedures in the U.S.”

How can he say both that the major benefit of health-care inflation has been the progress we've made in cardiac care and that we perform way too many bypasses and angioplasties? A closer look at Cutler’s data helps to reconcile this seeming contradiction. In a study published in Health Affairs in 2006, researchers from Dartmouth discovered that although early advances in cardiac care brought great benefits, after 1996, survival gains stagnated, even while spending on lucrative cardiac procedures continued to spiral.

"The vast majority of the increase in 30-day survival rates [for cardiac patients] between 1975 and 1995 was the consequence of low-cost treatments such as aspirin, [and] beta-blockers,” the researchers concluded. Meanwhile “the incremental benefit of more-expensive treatments such as invasive surgery” has shrunk.

This is not what device makers who sell bare-metal stents for $1,500 a pop want to hear. As blogger Matthew Holt pointed out, “the ink was barely dry” on Thursday’s edition of the NEJM when Advamed, the chief lobbying group for the medical-device industry, published a press release referencing Cutler's study and touting its own pricey medical products and procedures. Last year, medical device makers raked in $36.5 billion in profits. No wonder they’re the head cheerleaders for health-care inflation.

As for Cutler, in Friday’s interview he conceded that we have learned much more about health-care waste in recent years, “and I’ve tried to include that in my latest research.” In particular, he's now a bit less sanguine about healthcare inflation when it comes to spending on older patients. For this group, gains in life expectancy are much more expensive. Cutler calculates that the average cost of an additional year for a 65-year-old is $84,500. At that price, the quality of that extra year becomes central -- but the NEJM study does not tackle that question. It simply assumes that living longer is a good in itself. After all, Cutler notes, “Everything that we know suggests that older people are healthier than ever before.”

In general, this is true. But anyone who thinks that, with advances in technology, 95 is becoming the new 80 should consider this brutal fact: 40 percent of Americans over the age of 85 suffer from Alzheimer’s -- as do 20 percent of those between the ages of 75 and 84.

Finally, while the argument that if we spend more, we’ll live longer and feel better is seductive, in many cases Americans are simply paying more for the same products and procedures that are available at half the price in other countries. In an article titled "It's the Prices, Stupid" published in Health Affairs in 2003, researchers concluded that, even after adjusting for differences in cost of living, we spend more than other countries, not because we’re receiving more services, but because we pay higher prices for drugs, devices, hospital stays and doctor’s visits.

In the end, the notion that if we overpay for health care, it can replace the railroad as the engine that drives the economy defies any common-sense understanding of what adds to the wealth of a nation. The point of health-care spending is not to fuel the economy, create jobs, spur new technologies, or provide profits for shareholders. The raison d’etre of health care is simply to improve our health. And the question, “How much is an extra year of life worth?” is an emotional red herring that distracts from the more important debate: How do we cut waste and get better value for our health-care dollars?

Time for a Unifying National Debate on the 'War on Terror'

by David DeCosse

What if, in the high political season of the next two months, we had a national debate about the ethical values at stake in the conflict with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda? A debate in which values weren't asserted, but argued for? In which valued ends were connected to appropriate means? Sure, we've had a few moments of open exchange before key congressional votes. But these have mostly been stage-managed affairs with a pre-ordained conclusion. Most of the time debate just stops, either silenced by an ad hominem attack on President Bush or evaded by a crazy allegation that supporting civil liberties makes you as dangerous as al Qaeda. A true debate would consider: What are the values at stake in this conflict? What are the best ways to protect and promote those values? How should America's voters make their way through the inevitable thicket of claims and counter-claims that would emerge? Here are a few tips for identifying the best answers in the debate that ought to happen.

Beware politicians who only argue ends: Ethics involves ends, to be sure. It also involves the choice of means. But, thus far, the question of means has been submerged in our discourse about terrorism. Instead, the internal American argument over what to do about the terrorist threat has more or less followed a story line that pits amoral liberal relativists, who don't get the nature of the fight that we're in, against a righteous vanguard, who are bravely defending America in the face of the evil of an unprecedented threat. The popularity of this false story line has had the very regrettable effect of dividing the American people and of silencing debate. Questions about means are shouted down as being questions that can't be asked without putting our American soul and survival in jeopardy.

Beware politicians who can't balance intellect and will: The best ethical choices are an exercise of practical reason involving a balance of intellect and will. Matters of the intellect -- evidence, perception of value, prudence, good judgment, openness to new information, keenness about likely consequences -- are one key component in such choices. Matters of the will -- bravery, toughness, decision, resolve, force -- are another. Too often today, what passes for the primary ethical imperative in the conflict with terrorism is the absolute importance of resolve, but with little rational purpose beyond not shirking some imagined, elemental test of wills. By insisting on this balance of intellect and will, we might start more openly exploring our ethical and policy alternatives in Iraq.

We also might start re-thinking unquestioned staples of the "war on terror," such as the absolute ethical requirement not to appease terrorists. What does appeasement mean when we face terrorists who long for death, even want us to attack them and often seem to gain much needed political support under a barrage of our anti-appeasing bombs? Was launching the war in Iraq a laudable moment of refusing to appease terrorists? Or was it playing into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who, according to "The Looming Tower: al Qaeda and the road to 9/11," by Lawrence Wright, increased the scale of his attacks against the United States precisely to provoke an unwieldy war such as the one we now have?

Beware big abstractions: By now, the American people are accustomed to the conflict with terrorists being cast in the language of big ideological, moral, and historical abstractions. But the details are often left out and considered obstructionist in the face of the ethical requirements of such abstractions. Thus, invading Iraq was the "morally right thing to do" in a "struggle of good versus evil" -- damn the voluminous studies that said doing so would be far more problematic than the airy predictions of President Bush would allow. We are also told, in a more concrete but still too abstract phrase, that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." But those who use this catch-all abstraction gloss over such details as: Are the Sunnis and Shiites now murdering each other in Iraq really part of the same front of Islamic fascists with whom we are allegedly at war?

On the distant American left, whose members recently marched in San Francisco to protest the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, this problem of abstraction cropped up in a foolish refusal to pay attention to Hezbollah's detailed and stated intention to destroy Israel. In ethical terms, all of these abstract ways of putting things convey a high but deceptive sense of moral purpose, bought at the price of a resolute disregard for facts. Ethics is not about such big abstractions, no matter how appealing the values or rhetoric. Rather, it's about the integration of values and concrete details.

The American people, united? A final paradox is in order. I noted earlier that the American people today are divided. The very idea of a debate also suggests division. A real debate, however, could unite the American people around a clearly articulated purpose. The great medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, said that in wartime leaders are to "summon together the people." So let us hope that a real national debate might be one means toward the end of the requisite national unity.

Let us insistently ask in the debate that ought to happen: "How well does the candidate summon together the American people? How well does he or she articulate the values that all Americans share, defend and promote in the conflict with terrorism?

How well does he or she argue on behalf of the values enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution: a common defense, to be sure, but also a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquillity, general welfare and the blessings of liberty?"

Note: David E. DeCosse is director of campus ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. This article was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 8, 2006.

Fighting the wrong war

by Jeffrey Sachs, Guardian: Unlimited
Sept. 25, 2006

"It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the conversion of Britain's navy from coal to oil at the start of the last century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments and taking sides in wars...

Just when one is lulled into thinking that something other than oil is at the root of current US and UK action in Iraq, reality pulls us back. Indeed, President Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world 50 years from now. He did not have in mind the future of science and technology, or a global population of nine billion, or the challenges of climate change and biodiversity. Instead, he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world's oil.

Whatever we are worrying about in 50 years, this will surely be near the bottom of the list. Even if it were closer to the top, overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure oil supplies in 50 years ranks as the least plausible of strategies. Yet we know from a range of evidence that this is what was on Bush's mind when his government shifted its focus from the search for Osama bin Laden to fighting a war in Iraq.

The overthrow of Saddam was the longstanding pet idea of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which was already arguing in the 1990's that Saddam was likely to achieve a stranglehold over "a significant proportion of the world's oil supplies." Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated these fears in the run-up to the Iraq war, claiming that Saddam Hussein was building a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to "take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies".

Cheney's facts were obviously wrong, but so was his logic. Dictators like Saddam make their living by selling their oil, not by holding it in the ground. Perhaps, though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions to French, Russian, and Italian companies rather than British and US companies.

In any event, the war in Iraq will not protect the world's energy supplies in 50 years. If anything, the war will threaten those supplies by stoking the very radicalism it claims to be fighting. Genuine energy security will come not by invading and occupying the Middle East, or by attempting to impose pliant governments in the region, but by recognizing certain deeper truths about global energy.

First, energy strategy must satisfy three objectives: low cost, diverse supply, and drastically reduced carbon dioxide emissions. This will require massive investments in new technologies and resources, not a "fight to the finish" over Middle East oil. Important energy technologies will include conversion of coal to liquids (such as gasoline), use of tar sands and oil shale, and growth in non-fossil-fuel energy sources. Indeed, there is excellent potential for low-cost solar power, zero-emitting coal-based technologies, and safe and reliable nuclear power. ...

It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through R&D, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological progress.

Preying on Our Troops

American Progress Report on Predatory Lending
"Predatory lending is seriously harming our military. A Defense Department report issued last month found that as many as one in five U.S. service members “are being preyed on by loan centers set up near military bases,” which can charge annual interest rates of 400 percent or more. Increasingly, soldiers have debt levels so high they are barred from serving overseas; others suffer from “bankruptcies, divorces and ruined careers” due to the strain and stress of debt.

The Pentagon has joined consumer, military, and veterans groups in backing a bipartisan amendment from Sens. Jim Talent (R-MO) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) that places a cap of 36 percent on high interest rates for short-term payday loans to military members. But two conservatives -- Reps. Geoff Davis (R-KY) and Steve Buyer (R-IN) -- have been working to block Congress from making this bill law. Take a moment to call their offices -- use the toll-free congressional switchboard: (866) 808-0065 -- and tell them to support the Talent/Nelson amendment."

Note: A call to Rep. Davis's office today yielded a very pleasant personal reply from a staffer who said Rep. Davis's position was misrepresented, and he is actually working to make the bill stronger, he agrees with the goal of the amendment, and since the bill is in conference, if the amendment cannot be made stronger, he will support the amendment as currently written.

Bill Clinton does Fox News Special: Sunday Sept. 24th, 2006

Cleaning Chris Wallace's Clock in the process ! Remember the "Wag the Dog" spectacle? Former President Clinton puts that episode in the broader perspective.

Matthew Yglesias gets it absolutely correct !

"What are the consequences -- not intentions, not desires, not hopes, but consequences -- of our policies?"

Voter ID Cards

Voter ID ploy stands on lame fraud claims
Atlanta Journal Constitution - Cynthia Tucker
Published on: 09/24/06

Republican leaders have discovered a grave threat to American democracy that most of us apparently had not noticed: Everywhere, in big states and small, red enclaves and blue, bustling metropolises and rural hamlets, impostors are flocking to the polls to vote under false pretenses. Apparently, the nation has been overrun by fake voters.

What else would explain the GOP's insistence on using its power to ram through requirements that voters show government-issued photo IDs at the ballot box?

Last week, the GOP-dominated House passed a measure requiring voters to show government-issued photo IDs to vote in federal elections by 2008.

"Americans should have their votes counted, and not negated by an illegal alien," said U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.)

Similarly, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and his state Republican colleagues have backed a stringent state requirement for government-issued photo IDs. (Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford struck down Georgia's voter ID law, ruling it violates the state's constitution. The state said it will appeal.)

Announcing a plan this month to crack down on fraudulent documents, Perdue said, "It's simply unacceptable for people to sneak into the country illegally on Thursday, obtain a government-issued ID on Friday ... and go to vote on Tuesday."

Now, you can be forgiven if you've never heard of a single case in which an illegal immigrant successfully used a fake ID at the polls. Neither Burton nor Perdue presented evidence of any such cases.

"If you are an illegal immigrant, the last thing you want to do is show up at a polling place, ..." said Thomas Patterson, an expert on elections at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. "We have enough trouble getting people to vote when they're eligible. The idea that people are going to stick their necks out and get [a] penalty stretches the imagination."

Patterson notes that the voting and registration rules that apply in much of this country are already more stringent than those in most Western European democracies. In much of Western Europe, for example, the postal service simply notifies voter registration officials when a citizen moves, and his voting precinct is automatically changed.

"Here, the onus is on the citizen. You kind of sense that the ballot box belongs to registration officials instead of the citizens," Patterson said.

The 2004 presidential election followed a campaign that centered on the threat of terrorism, following the gravest attack on American territory since Pearl Harbor. Even with those high stakes, only 60 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots.

In the presidential election of 2000, 51 percent of eligible citizens voted. In 1996, about 49 percent cast ballots; in 1992, about 55 percent. In Georgia's last gubernatorial election, about half the eligible citizens cast a ballot. To boost voter turnout in Arizona, an enterprising political activist there has proposed placing each voter's name in a draw for a million-dollar lottery.

Yet, the lack of a problem has made Republicans no less insistent on a solution. It makes you wonder whether they are up to something other than ferreting out voter fraud. Even if there is a legitimate need for a single, government-sponsored identification card in an age of terrorism, it would take years — and a well-organized, government-funded effort — to place those IDs in the hands of every elderly and rural American in out-of-the-way towns and every American of color in down-at-the-heels urban neighborhoods.

Of course, Republicans know that. They also know that most minority voters tend to cast their ballots for Democrats; so do many low-income elderly voters. Since those voters are less likely to have driver's licenses, it's a safe bet that requiring a photo ID at the polls will shave off a few Democratic voters. As we've seen in the past two presidential elections, just a few votes can make a winner out of a loser.

The GOP has given up making its policies broadly appealing. Instead, it works hard at keeping a certain slice of voters from the polls.

Their focus on blocking the ballot box seems especially harsh — and hypocritical — at the very time that President Bush has claimed that spreading democratic ideals is the centerpiece of American foreign policy. How can we export democracy to Iraq if we are so uncomfortable with it here at home?

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The federal Voting Rights Act requires Georgia and other states with records of racial discrimination in voting to get federal approval for voting law changes.

The Georgia Department of Drivers Service will issue a valid DSS Identification card which is equivalent in the rigor of the identification process to the standard drivers license. The requirements for the proposed Georgia Voter Registration card, (as amended through April 2006), are minimal and nowhere near approaching that used for the GA drivers or DSS ID license. The GVR card appears to be oriented primarily toward having a photo of the person on a card, apparently for visual confirmation of identity at the polling place.

The application for voting by Absentee ballot in Georgia does not require the submission of photo identification, nor is any justification required to vote by absentee ballot.

According to the current state of voter identification for in-person voting in Georgia, the following six documents will suffice for advance, absentee, or poll day voting:

1. A Georgia driver’s license or Department of Driver Services identification card;

2. a valid U.S. military identification card containing your photograph;

3. a valid photo identification card issued by any branch, department, agency, or entity of Georgia, any other state, or the U.S. authorized by law to issue personal identification;

4. a valid state or federal employee identification card containing your photograph issued by a branch, department, agency, or entity of the U.S., this state, or any county, municipality, board, authority or other entity of this state;

5. a valid U.S. passport; or

6. a valid tribal identification card containing your photograph.

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Voting irregularites in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections occurred in at least two dozen states; but numerous reports were filed in the swing-states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. However serious allegations also occurred in New Mexico, Illinois, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. According to several investigations the States that provided paper-trails, or paper-receipts showed the least amount of variance between exit polls and actual polling place records.

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In 2004, exit polls taken in several states had a variance of up to 15 points from the tabulations at the voting booths, the highest variance ever seen in any General Election. In one of the best researched technical papers presented: "Study of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies" by Prof's Mitofsy and Edison the following observations were made:
a) The Edison/Mitofsky report confirms there were large differences between their exit polls and the official results of the 2004 presidential election – much more so than in previous elections(p. 31). The national exit poll indicated a 3 point victory for Kerry; whereas the official election results indicated that he lost by 2.5%, a difference of 5.5%. More disturbing was that this variance showed up in all three swing-states, and all were in favor of Bush.

b) The reliability of exit polls is so generally accepted that the Bush administration helped pay for them during recent elections in Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine. Testifying before the House Committee on International Relations Dec. 7, John Tefft, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, explained that the Bush administration funded exit polls because they were one of the “ways that would help to expose large-scale fraud.” Tefft pointed to the discrepancy between exit polls and the official vote count to argue that the Nov. 22 Ukraine election was stolen.

c) A review of scientific and research papers by Stephen Freedman, PhD at the University of Pennsylvania entitled: "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy" gives a good overview of experienced problems with several explanations offered for the discrepancies.

There's speculation Osama Bin Laden is dead...

Note: This photo is just plain stupid...a white head scarf, a white robe, and a green camoflage shirt...with an AK47 in the background.

Recycling Fakers In Atlanta Metro

We have found several dozen entities listed in various media which promote themselves as eWaste recyclers in the Atlanta Metro area. We want to take a look at a few to give you some idea of who are real, and who are "All Hat, No Cattle".

Hensley Industries
Website: www.hensley-ind.com
Email: info/sale/service/support:/hensley-ind.com
Address as Listed: 81 Kelli Clark Court, Cartersville, GA, 30121

   Review: The information on their website appears to have been last updated in 2002. Their "East Cost Operations" shows an address that does not exist. The information on the website says they are one of the oldest and largest recyclers in the United States; they are not. They are not even included in the top twenty eWaste recyclers in the Atlanta Metro area!

Their Internet registration information shows the registrant contact to be: Brent Sorchik, (bsorchik@yahoo.com) at a company called: Sybertek Solutions Inc, at 2774 N. Cobb Parkway, Ste 109-350, Kennesaw, GA, 30152, with phone number: 770-621-5050. When you dial that number you get Allied Enforcement Solutions LLC. Using Google Earth, the address provided appears to be a vacant lot. According to the GA Secretary of State, Mr. Sorchik has offices at: 5025 Wellcrest Court, Kennesaw, GA, 30152.. Mr. Sorchik is listed as: CEO, CFO, Secretary, etc. on the registration papers for the companies.

If you do a search on the primary listed "Main Office Phone Number" of 770-975-4528, you get no web-based reference on 411.com nor Google. If you do a search on any of the other phone numbers provided for Hensley Industries from their paperwork, nothing relavant shows up. You do get listings for Hensley Industries in Texas, which is a manufacturer of heavy (earth moving) equipment. If you do a Google search on anything related to any of Mr. Sorchik's companies, you get nothing that supports their website claims.

Also on the Hensley Ind. website, they claim they are "EPA Certified". For a fuller description of EPA "Certification" go here, or here.. Briefly, electronic recycling facilities located in Georgia generally have no legal authority to provide EPA compliance certification for eWaste recycling. According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Molam International is the only EPA certified recycler in Georgia. None of Mr. Sorchik's companies is even listed in the GA DNR Recyclers List.


From the Georgia DNR comes this caveat:
"Some recyclers claim to be "EPA Permitted," “EPA Certified,” or “EPA Approved.” However, the EPA has no permitting, certification, or approval process for electronics recyclers. Many times when these recyclers are asked for copies of their "EPA Permit," “Certification,” or “Approval” they offer a copy of an EPA ID number. This typically begins with three letters, including the state initials followed by nine numbers. This is merely an EPA-issued number that is required for manifesting hazardous waste for shipment. Anyone who generates hazardous waste must have one to transport material for disposal. It is not a permit to recycle electronics.

Sen. Barak Obama Energy Independence Speech - 9/20/06

Senator Obama delivered this speech to 700 students of Georgetown University today as part of the MoveOn Progressive Vision series.
Listen to the podcast here -

"In the middle of the Cold War, we built a national highway system so we had a quick way to transport military equipment across the country. When we wanted to beat the Russians into space, we poured millions into a national education initiative that graduated thousands of new scientists and engineers. If we hope to strengthen our security and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, we can offer no less of a commitment to energy independence."

Routine HIV tests urged for all Americans from 13 to 64

Up to 250,000 may have virus for AIDS and not know, CDC says
By BILL HENDRICK
COX NEWS SERVICE
Sept. 22, 2006

ATLANTA -- Next time you go to your doctor for a routine checkup, don't be surprised if you are counseled not only to get a blood test, but also to have it checked to see if you have the deadly virus that causes AIDS. In fact, be surprised if your physician doesn't recommend an HIV test.

The same is true if your pediatrician doesn't recommend that your teenager, 13 or older, get a similar test. Ditto if you're seeing an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Concerned that 250,000 Americans have HIV but don't have a clue that they do, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued "unprecedented" new guidelines Thursday urging doctors and all health care providers to make HIV screening a routine part of medical care for everyone from 13 to 64. Patients would have the option of declining the test and confidentiality would be assured, CDC said.

The new recommendations go beyond those set down in 1993 for routinely testing only patients considered to be at risk. Health officials said that routine testing would remove the stigma that prevents many people from seeking the test on their own.

The call is for the screenings to be voluntary, but CDC's clout is such that its guidelines carry more weight than mere recommendations, said Lawrence Gostin, associate dean at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. In short, Gostin said, if a physician fails to at least brief patients on the importance of HIV testing -- now that CDC has recommended it -- and the person contracts the virus, the doctor could be in legal jeopardy.

Screening-test costs vary widely. Dr. Carlos del Rio, chief of Emory Medical Services at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, said an initial test could cost $15 but "a confirmatory test" might run up to $50. Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade association representing insurance companies covering 200 million Americans, said most people have insurance that would cover the HIV screens now if ordered up by a physician.

Some tests cost labs only $3 to $5, but the amount doesn't include overhead charges that doctors add in, Mastro said. Rapid HIV tests often cost between $20 and $50, he said. But costs for an HIV screen would be minimal if part of an overall blood test, such as those taken during routine physical exams.

The CDC said nearly 40 percent of people with HIV are currently diagnosed within a year of their infection progressing to AIDS, when it might be too late for them to fully benefit from treatment. Routine testing, it is hoped, would allow for earlier diagnosis and treatment.

So far, about 1.2 million people are living with HIV, and 500,000 have died, Mastro said. What's more, "we think there are 40,000 new infections in the U.S. every year." Twenty-five percent of new infections are in those 19 and under, said Sweet, a past chairwoman of the University of Kansas Medical School board.

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Note: Hmm, the numbers...According to the CDC, 250,000 people or roughly 1 in 1,000 may be HIV positive, so 240 Million people or more than 99.999% of the population will pay from $15 to $35/ea to be tested if they are between 13 and 64 years old. If the tests costs $5 to administer but the testee pays an average of $25, that means 240 million people will have pumped almost $500 million into the coffers of health care providers. Studies have shown that HIV is overwhelmingly a disease acquired by "at risk people", not the public at large. If you are over 19 years old, do not engage in "risky sexual activity", and are a hetrosexual white male, your probability of becoming HIV positive is roughly equivalent to the chance you will be hit by lightning. But never mind, you have insurance...just shut up, sit down, and take the damn test because you MIGHT be at risk and not know it. And don't forget about life insurance, fire insurance, accidental death insurance, dental insurance, et al - because stuff happens...just look at what happened to Steve Irvin. More to the point: do it because the healthcare and insurance industries need the money, and you wouldn't want to have to sue your own doctor would you?.

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Also in the news:

HIV/AIDS advocates said it was ironic that the federal government is calling for more HIV testing at the same time it is cutting local grants for AIDS treatment and medications.

More information about the CDC guidelines are available at www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/testing.

Information about free, confidential HIV tests in Santa Clara County, (California), is available by calling (408) 792-3720

Here's the first website I came to on Google with HIV testing...cost = $199.00 !! (It said in the article "about $15 - $35" didn't it?)

Here's another one: cost range: $100 - $431

Where are the majority of the new HIV cases occuring? (Hint: It is NOT in California.) The percapita leader is...Florida!

The 2004 death count from AIDS in the US was 15,798, with a cumulative count of 529,113 people during the twenty year period of the epidemic

Which groups are the most at risk?

NY Times Comment #78: 9/22/2006 - Brian (#55) came closest to the nub of the scientific problem here, as opposed to the political/ethical quarrels..

Assume that the test being used (elisa or whatever) is accurate 99.5% of the time. That is, it correctly identifies 99.5% of those with HIV as ‘positive’ cases (sensitivity) and 99.5% of those free of HIV as ‘negative’ cases (specificity).

Assume that 1 in 250 of those in the targeted age range really is HIV+. To make our calculations easier, let’s just say it comes to 1,000,000 HIV+ cases and 250,000,000 HIV- cases.

Now everybody gets tested.

We will identify 995,000 of the 1,000,000 people who have HIV, missing only 5,000. That is a great improvementy over the current stuation, with as many as 250,000 undiagnosed cases running around. More people in treatment sooner, staying healthier longer, and fewer people being infected by innocent but ill sexual partners.

We will also correctly classify 248,750,000 of the healthy people as, in fact, healthy. BUT we will also INCORRECTLY classify 1,250,000 healthy people as HIV+! That is, even with a darn good test, given a base rate of less than 0.5% of the population being infected, a universal testing program would produce more false positive test results than it would find genuine cases.

I am not sure of the exact sensitivity and specificity of the HIV tests now in use. I think they may even be a bit higher than the figures I used above. But the basic problem remains - especially when you consider than 75% of the people we would identify as having HIV already knew it!

This is basic diagnostic reasoning, people. I teach it to undergraduate students in psychology, and any physician, public health official, or medical researcher who doesn’t know it must have skipped some pretty important lessons.

NT Times Comment#83:
Widespread HIV testing is medically sound but upon further examination is naive and a bad idea in the context of the medical and insurance system currently in place in the U.S. If your HIV test yields a false positive, the error will continue to cloud your medical history. There is no such thing as confidentiality of medical records so any HIV test must be truly anonymous to protect identity. If like half of Americans, you lack health insurance, a positive HIV test means you will never obtain insurance in the future — so never pay for the test through your insurance or take it with your regular doctor, who will report you. (Did the friendly government doctor forget to tell you that?)

One solution is that as an intergral part of HIV testing, the federal government offers free medical treatment for life. Since this will never happen, the notion of widespread HIV testing is good to raise awareness of carriers who don’t know they are infected and will be able to avoid infecting others. But the average individual should avoid it for economic reasons.

NY Times Comment#92:
Routine HIV testing, but not education about prevention via the use of condoms? This administration actively blocks sex education here and abroad and instead promotes abstinence, for example as in forcing the CDC to take educational information about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing transmission off its webpages,and in preventing education about condoms in federally funded anti-HIV programs abroad. There is a unwilllingness to confront this major public health problem at a key point of transmission, where information and condoms can make an enormous difference.

NY Times Comment#114:
One in four people with HIV in this country does not know that s/he is infected and could pass on the infection. Moreover, 40% of Americans infected do not get tested until they develop AIDS (i.e., they get sick). It can take around 10 years to develop AIDS from HIV infection. That is 10 years during which HIV can unknowingly be transmitted.

By encouraging all Americans 13-64 to have an HIV test, America is setting a great example for the rest of the world and doing its part in fighting stigma and discrimination that prevents people from getting tested. But the US is going about it in all the wrong ways.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is urging that testing be conducted without a separate signed consent form and without adequate counselling. That will save you time at the doctor, but defeats half the purpose of testing. When you are counselled before and after a test, you discuss your risk behavior with the counselor-activities that increase your risk of contracting HIV. You have a rare opportunity to learn what behaviors are putting you at risk, and to dispel myths you may have about the disease. Knowing your status is not enough- you must also know how to prevent transmitting HIV to others or being reinfected yourself.

Is counselling really necessary or is it just some touchy-feely, activist nonsense? Well, remember something called a “window period”? It takes awhile for the antibodies to the virus to show up. So if you had unprotected sex or shared a needle with someone who has HIV and you get tested the next week, you could be infected, but test HIV negative. Weeks later you could test HIV positive. But during those six or so weeks, when HIV is most contagious, you could have more unprotected sex thinking that you were “clean” and infect other partners. A good HIV counselor will tell you this, even when your regular doctor does not. Most of the time your regular doctor won’t even tell you this. S/he is busy rushing you out the door for the next 10 minute patient.

And what if you test positive? Counselling is crucial because it provides a support mechanism. Many people who test positive do not understand that they can live a full and relatively healthy life on antiretrovirals in the US, sometimes even if they have no money. The sad truth is that many people commit suicide once finding out they are infected. They don’t know where to turn for psychological support, medical care, or further information. AIDS is still a death sentence to the uninformed.

Imagine going for your annual exam and finding out your blood pressure has gone up, you’re verging on obesity, your vision is a little bit worse, and Oh, by the way, you’re dying of an incurable disease. Fifty dollars please, come back next year.

The CDC says that anyone testing positive under this new measure should receive counselling. But the CDC is also a government agency, and we know how well the US government lives up to its promises. Is the CDC really to be trusted with our lives and well being? Imagine the US turning into a country (again, and like so many other countries today) where people living with HIV and AIDS cannot get a job, an apartment or house, health insurance, a visa, a loan, send their kids to the local school, etc, because people do not understand how HIV is transmitted? Did you know that there’s a debate raging in professional football whether people living with HIV and AIDS should be allowed to play? Is there something going on in the lockerooms we don’t know about, or are football players really scared of breathing the same air as someone living with HIV? Are we to allow the “role models” for so many American boys to spread such ignorance?

HIV is spread through unprotected sex, sharing contaminated needles, unsafe blood transfusion, from mother to child, and through breast feeding. Not touching, kissing, sharing utensils, or breathing the same air. But the US has made it so that most people are still ignorant about all this by criminalizing sex education and by demonizing sex itself as the Government abolishes the separation of church and state and imposes Christian fundamentalist ideology upon all of its “free” citizenry.

Some states with a low prevalence rate such as Wyoming are arguing against this measure, saying that it places an uncessary “burden” on doctors and patients. Unless people from Wyoming only sleep with others in Wyoming and no one has ever injected drugs with a shared needle (somewhat implausible given that an estimated 0.67% of Americans injects drugs on a regular basis, over 200,800 people-Avert.org), I would argue that Wyoming’s leadership should be ashamed to make such statements about their HIV infallibility in public. HIV infection as it spreads today transcends all our “boundaries” of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and wealth.

In the article, “Rose A. Saxe, a staff lawyer with the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said her group opposed the recommendation because it would remove the requirement for signed consent forms and pretest counseling. In settings like emergency rooms where doctors are strapped for time, Ms. Saxe said, ‘we’re concerned that what the C.D.C. calls routine testing will become mandatory testing.’

Patients, particularly teenagers, she said, ‘will be tested without an opportunity for understanding the magnitude of having a positive result.’ ”Today, when some of our leadership is finally considering sanctioning the current administration for tapping our phones and arresting our citizens without trial for indefinite periods of time in dubious conditions of torture and repression– Today, do we trust this government to be responsible with the confidentiality of our HIVstatus? In a country so divided, violent, propagandized, and sensationalized, do we trust our fellow citizens to remember that an HIV-infected person is a Person first and foremost?

What happens in ten, twenty years if HIV continues to explode exponentially the way it has now? When the world finally wakes up to the depth of the devastation that is now conveniently wiping out those we have decided do not matter- the poor people, the black people, gay people and sex workers? When we panic as we realize that we are not immune either, what will stop us from using this HIV data to lock all PLWHA in a concentration camp?

In the past and present, the United States is very good at locking away people who are “dangerous” to its continued prosperity. First the Japanese in the ’40s, now the “Islamofascist terrorists,” next you or I, if we happen to be infected with HIV and AIDS.

Do we trust a government agency to keep our medical information confidential? That every person who is tested will be asked beforehand? That people going in for testing will receive information about the disease and how to live with it if they are infected? I, for one, do not. Without adequate safeguards that all HIV testing will be voluntary, this action by the CDC is illegitimate and stands to violate the human rights of all Americans, HIV positive and negative.

Joya Banerjee
Program Coordinator for the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (www.youthaidscoalition.org)
New York
posted on September 22nd, 2006 at 5:53 pm

Wal-Mart to sell generic drugs for $4

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO AP Business Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
Sept. 21, 2006

TAMPA, Fla. — Wal-Mart announced today that it will start a test program in Florida, where it will sell generic prescription drugs for $4 for a 30-day supply. The test will start tomorrow in 65 Tampa Bay-area stores and is to expand to the whole state by January.

In a statement, CEO Lee Scott says the world's largest retailer intends to "take the program to as many states as possible next year."

On average, generic drugs tend to cost between $10 and $30 for a month-long supply.

The world's biggest retailer said Thursday that it will test the program in Florida and it will include 291 generic drugs available for conditions from allergies to high-blood pressure. The plan is available to its employees and customers, including those without insurance.

Wal-Mart officials said the reduced price represents a savings to the customer of up to 70 percent on some drugs.

"Wal-Mart is taking this step so our customers and associates can get the medicines they need at a cost they can afford," Bill Simon, executive vice president of the company's professional services division, said in announcing the plan at a Tampa, Fla., store.

The program will be launched on Friday at 65 Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sams' Club pharmacies in the Tampa Bay area and will be expanded to the entire state in January.

Simon wouldn't be specific about why Florida and specifically the Tampa Bay area was chosen for the rollout of the initiative, saying only that there was a need for it here.

The company said it plans to expand the program to as many states as possible next year.

Simon said the 291 generic drugs include "the most commonly prescribed drugs for the some of the most common illnesses that face Americans today, including cardiac disease, asthma, diabetes, glaucoma, Parkinson's (disease) and thyroid conditions."

Simon wouldn't give details on how much the plan is expected to cost Wal-Mart or the company's dealings with the drug companies involved.

"We're able to do this by using one of our greatest strengths as a company _ our business model and our ability to drive costs out of the system, and the model that passes those costs savings to our customers," he said. "In this case were applying that business model to health care."

The $4 prescriptions are not available by mail order and are being offered online only if picked up in person in the Tampa Bay area.

In a conference call with reporters, Simon said that the generic drugs would not be sold at a loss to entice customers into the stores, a strategy that has been used in Wal-Mart's toy business.

He said Wal-Mart is working with drugmakers to help them be more efficient, but added, "We are working with them as partners. We are not pressuring them to reduce prices."

Tampa Wal-Mart pharmacy customer Pat Sullivan praised the company's initiative. The retired Massachusetts police officer said $4 generic prescriptions are a tremendous help.

"I'm on disability and my benefits run out by the end of the month," he said. "It comes down to where do I go for a $100 prescription? I have no outlet other than to break a pill in half and take half today and half tomorrow."

The initiative is the fourth since last October that Wal-Mart has moved to improve health benefits.

Wal-Mart's recent moves included relaxing eligibility requirements for its part-time employees who want health insurance, and extending coverage for the first time to the children of those employees. Part-time employees, who had to work for Wal-Mart for two years to qualify, now have to work at the company for one year. This year, Wal-Mart also expanded a trial run of in-store clinics, aimed at providing lower cost non-emergency health care to the public.

Last October, Wal-Mart offered a new lower-premium insurance aimed at getting more of its work force on company plans.

But critics argue that Wal-Mart's coverage calls for a deductible that requires workers to pick up the first $1,000 in medical expenses, and the deductible rises to a maximum of $3,000 for families.

Union-backed Wake Up Wal-Mart, one of its most vociferous critics, have called upon Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart to offer better health care coverage and higher pay to employees.

Critics contend that the company's benefits are too stingy, forcing taxpayers to absorb more of the cost as the workers lacking coverage turn to state-funded health care programs.

This past summer, Wal-Mart won a successful fight against a first-of-its-kind state law that would have required the retailer to spend more on employee health care in Maryland. A federal judge ruled in July that it was invalid under federal law. But other states are considering similar legislation aimed at the company.

WalMarts shares fell 17 cents to $48.70 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Note: Oh my, this could be very, very interesting! Health care providers, parmaceudical manufacturers, druggists, doctors, insurance companies, and HMO's could take a huge stock value hit if this goes nationwide. Don't think so? Check what happened to ToysRus when Walmart got into the toy business big time several years ago. Walmarts shares fell? You can bet your ass there will be major activity against Walmart by those threatened with this. Stay tuned.

5th Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Objects to Bush’s Plan To Authorize Torture

CNN News
Sept 21, 2006

Last Thursday, Gen. Colin Powell, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) objecting to the President’s plan to redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Powell said Bush’s plan would “put our troops at risk.”

He was joined by three other former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs — Gen. John Vessey, Gen. John Shalikashvili and Admiral William Crowe. Moments ago, McCain’s office announced that a fifth former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Hugh Shelton, has publically declared his objections. Shelton said Bush’s plan “would signal that the U.S. ‘is attempting to water down’ its obligations and would be an ‘egregious mistake.’”

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ARTICLE 3

"In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict. "

Note: Not only is the Bush administration attempting to "redefine" torture but just as importantly: attempting to mitigate the boldly marked (d) section above: in re: extra-judicial incarcerations at Gitmo et al

Georgia Law Requiring Voters to Show Photo ID Is Thrown Out

By Darryl Fears and Jonathan Weisman
The Washington Post
Wednesday 20 September 2006

Judge says some would be disenfranchised; state plans appeal.

A state judge yesterday rejected a Georgia law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification, writing in his decision, "This cannot be."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. said the law, pushed by Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) to fight voter fraud, violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises citizens who are otherwise qualified to vote.

State officials vowed to appeal Bedford's ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court before the Nov. 7 general election.

The timing of the judge's decision could have political ramifications in Washington. The House is set today to vote on legislation that would require voters in 2008 to present a valid photo identification that "could not have been obtained without proof of citizenship."

The bill is part of a package of measures designed to demonstrate a new get-tough attitude on illegal immigration and border security.

"There have been enough reports over the years of voter fraud that it is time to have a picture ID to ensure the integrity of our voting process," House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said yesterday.

Like the Georgia law, the federal legislation would almost certainly be challenged in court. A coalition of interest and civil rights groups, including the NAACP, AARP, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, denounced the bill yesterday, saying it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of minority and elderly voters.

Georgia's law was challenged by Rosalind Lake, an elderly black woman who was left partially blind after being nearly electrocuted in her home, is unable to drive and could not easily obtain a voter ID, her attorney said.

The lawyer, former governor Roy Barnes, argued that even though the state offered to deliver an ID to Lake's home, it could not do the same for everyone who is similarly challenged.

"We have a low voter participation," said Barnes, a Democrat. "We're going to make it more difficult?"

In previous elections, Georgians could present any one of 17 types of identification with their names and addresses, including a driver's license, utility bill, bank statement or paycheck.

Perdue and other proponents of the law said it is needed to curtail fraud. They cited an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that said 5,000 dead people were listed as having voted in the eight elections preceding 2000.

But the fraud happened primarily in absentee balloting, Barnes said. Under the new law, absentee voters are not required to show identification.

"This is the most sinister scheme I've ever seen," Barnes said, "and it's going on nationwide."

Bedford's ruling was the latest in a string of court decisions against the Georgia law. Last year, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy issued an injunction against the law, likening it to a segregation-era poll tax because the digital picture ID would cost voters $20.

After the Georgia General Assembly revised the law to issue the ID at no cost, Murphy refused to completely lift the injunction, saying the state did not have time to properly educate voters before July primaries.

In his ruling, Bedford said the law places too much of a burden on voters, regardless of certain state remedies. Voters could cast ballots without identification, but they would have to return to an elections office within two days to prove their identity or forfeit their vote.

"Any attempt by the legislature to require more than what is required by the express language of our Constitution cannot withstand judicial scrutiny," Bedford said.

Russ Willard, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, said: "The state has already begun working on its appeal. We plan to file an appeal as soon as possible."

Control the Dictionary, Control the World

By Bernard Weiner
The Crisis Papers
Tuesday 19 September 2006

"Clinton tried to fudge the truth when he claimed he'd "never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," but he felt he could get away with that language because, in his mind, he defined "sexual relations" as referring to vaginal intercourse.

Bush, with a straight face, tells us that he has never authorized torture, and he thinks he can get away with that lie because the public is mostly unaware that his administration has totally altered the definition of "torture."

According to the infamous 2002 torture memos, which effectively set the policy, torture no longer means what we all understand that term to mean (physical beatings, shoving suspects under water to "drown" them unless they give up secrets, electric shocks to the genitals, unbearable stress, sexual abuse and humiliation, etc.). No, those internationally-understood definitions have become, under Bush&Co., "quaint" remnants from an earlier era.

Under the leadership of Alberto Gonzales and other lawyers - mainly from the White House, Rumsfeld's office, and Cheney's office - the Bush administration went through all sorts of moral gyrations and emerged with new definitions of what constituted torture. Basically, it's not torture if it doesn't kill you or if the excrutiating pain and injuries don't lead to organ failure.

You think I'm exaggerating? Check it out for yourself. The Justice Department's August 1, 2002, legal memo concluded that "the ban on torture is limited to only the most extreme forms of physical and mental harm," which the memo defined as akin to "death or organ failure." [See also "Bush's Torture Deceit: What 'Is' Is" and "Gonzales Grilled on Role in Torture at Confirmation Hearing."]

So when Bush says the US doesn't torture and he would never authorize torture, in a sense he believes himself to be telling the truth, since he transformed the meaning of "torture" to give it a totally different, exceedingly narrow, interpretation. The administration apparently believes that as a result of interrogations under what Bush calls its "alternative set of procedures," only if the detainees die or are the victims of organ failure could officials rightfully be accused of authorizing torture. (Actually, it's estimated that perhaps as many as 100 detainees have died while in US custody, scores of them directly from torture.)

A Few "Exceptions" From Torture Laws

Furthermore, Bush is asserting that US laws against torture, and Congressional oversight of such activity, should apply only to interrogations that take place on American soil. If the CIA uses the "alternative procedures" in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or in the secret CIA prisons abroad, those don't count. Plus, the administration has moved to shield those who authorized and carry out "harsh" interrogations from national and international laws against mistreatment of prisoners. Meanwhile, of course, a few lower-level, enlisted "bad apples" have been tried, convicted, and sent to prison.

Likewise, according to the Bush administration, the "extraordinary rendition" of especially recalcitrant prisoners to friendly countries abroad that are notorious for extreme physical torture does not count as the US cooperating in the administration of torture. The Bush crew play variations on: "They were tortured there? Really? We are shocked, shocked! We don't approve of torture and had no idea it was used on prisoners entrusted to their care." Yeah, sure.

But recently, in making the case to Congress that it should pass the administration's draconian laws permitting such "alternative procedures," Bush let the cat out of the bag and admitted that several al-Qaida suspects gave up a good deal of valuable information while being interrogated in those secret CIA prisons abroad. But he still denies that his administration carried out "torture" there. Does he think we're stupid?

Do you see how it works? And the ramifications of how it works? In short, Bush&Co. have simply rewritten the dictionary to remove their legal liability for such crimes, and in the process have rewritten the rules under which they, and their subordinates, act. When reality doesn't meet their needs, they don't consider making alterations to their policies; they just change the definition of what's "real."

Bush Desperate for Torture Victory

In a sign of how desperate Bush is to maintain complete control of the torture definition - and thus keep himself and other top US officials out of the war-crimes court in The Hague - Bush took a rare visit to Congress last week to try to forestall defeat of his torture/military tribunals bill. It was a definition struggle again.

The Geneva Convention on the treatment of captured prisoners is quite clear and specific: no country is permitted to use "cruel" treatment or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" on prisoners in its care. Too "vague," says Bush. Instead, he suggests, CIA interrogators need "latitude" (euphemism: "clarity") in interrogating and torturing suspects so that they won't be nervously looking over their shoulders at war-crimes charges.

The Pentagon's senior lawyers think Geneva's definitions are quite clear and openly disagreed with the hardline Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld interpretation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Even Colin Powell bestirred his calcified conscience to point out that by trying to do an end-around Geneva, the US risked losing the moral high ground internationally. Also, as Senator John McCain (who was tortured as a POW in Hanoi) and others have pointed out, the US would put its captured troops in great jeopardy of "cruel and degrading" treatment - in other words, torture - similar to what the CIA was meting out in its secret prisons abroad.

Republican "moderate" senators McCain, Graham, Snowe, Warner and others have been demanding that the US remain consistent with the Geneva protections and also provide some legal safeguards to suspects on trial in military tribunals. But time and time again, these so-called "moderates," under extreme Roveian pressure, have caved and given Bush what he wants. As I write this, it's unclear whether they have the courage to stick to their guns this time. We shall see. In the meantime, get this: Bush threatened to close down the CIA's questioning of terrorist suspects unless Congress approves his bill. Talk about cutting off your nation's nose to spite your personal face! Blackmail as a pre-emptive veto.

The Immorality of "Pre-Emption"

Let's move to another definition, at another level. Bush's National Security Strategy asserts that the US can "pre-emptively" attack another country when it determines that country might possibly be thinking of attacking America or grossly harming our interests. In the "old days" - that is, pre-Bush - the definition of "pre-emption" meant that a country, in some circumstances, was permitted under international law to act first when faced with an imminent threat of attack.

In Bushspeak, it doesn't matter that the countries in question might be 10 or 15 years out from being a viable threat, or that, while they might be antagonistic to US policies, they have no intent of ever actually attacking America. No, according to the Bush Doctrine, you destroy possible or potential enemies first, long before they have the chance to even think of doing the US harm.

That's one of the administration's ex-post-facto justifications for having invaded and occupied Iraq. Once the early rationales for attacking were shown to be false - those big lies including that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD, and was allied with al-Qaida in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks - then the administration went back to its "pre-emption" rationalization, in effect asserting: "We had to attack before Saddam got close to reconstituting his weapons programs; even though US/UK intel was confirming that Iraq was well-contained and that it could be 10 years before they would be a believable threat to anybody, we had to act now, to abort that development in its blastocyst stage before that potentially dangerous fetus could grow and do us harm as an adult."

Transfer that rationalization theory to a trial for murder: "Your honor, I cannot be convicted of murdering the victim by shooting him six times. I fully believed he was thinking of doing me harm, maybe next year or the year after that, and so I took him out pre-emptively. It was a clear case of early self-defense." That explanation should satisfy a Bush administration jury.

No Court Review Permitted

Perhaps the most reprehensible aspect of the administration's desperation to avoid indictment for authorizing torture is a tactic they've used in other areas as well: Trying to eliminate judicial review of their actions. In taking this tack, they are making an open assault on the Constitution and several centuries of governmental precedent.

Despite the fact that Bush&Co. have packed the Supreme Court and the various appellate courts with their ideological brethren, they still don't have total control of the legal system, and therefore want to avoid judicial review whenever possible. They know how weak their Constitutional cases are. So they have had their flunkies in Congress introduce a variety of bills to prohibit court review of certain administration policies and laws - as if the Supreme Court would ever OK having its judicial prerogatives revoked.

But in the administration's military-tribunals bill currently before Congress, Bush&Co. also have inserted an in-your-face clause that would prevent civilian courts from intervening in, or reviewing the legality of, the proposed military tribunals. This would totally violate America's historic checks-and-balances system of governance, and would amount to the Executive Branch effectively controlling the Legislative and Judicial branches of government. In short, a budding dictatorship.

As noted previously, the administration has created what they consider to be an airtight legal justification for Bush to act outside the law whenever he claims to be doing so as "commander in chief" during "wartime." Since his "war on terrorism," by definition, is a never-ending war, this means his actions "in defense of the homeland" permanently cannot be challenged. Sounds like the ingredients for dictatorship.

The Court Slaps Down Bush

No wonder Bush is leery of courts ever getting near the justifications for his imperial presidency. The two times when the Supreme Court did review his behavior toward detainees in US care, he was reprimanded mightily, in no uncertain language.

In the 2004 case of Mr. Hamdi, a US citizen, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the Court: "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.... Even the war power [of the President] does not remove constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties."

In the recent case of Mr. Hamdan, a foreign suspect, the court slapped down Bush's I-am-the-Law approach again. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority: "[I]n undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction."

Revolt of the Moderate Middle

The power to nominate new Supreme Court justices is just one of many reasons why the momentum of this outlaw administration must be broken as quickly as possible. Which brings us to the midterm elections in November.

The imminence of that election explains why Bush is trying to create a rushed, "crisis" atmosphere to get his bill passed; after all, his administration could have brought these suspects to trial anytime within the past five years. "We're running out of time," Bush says, by which he really means: "We've got to get this issue neutralized now, before the election, or else we can't smear the Democrats as pro-terrorist for blocking my bill, since it will be Republicans, with military credentials, who also are doing the obstructing."

Even if the GOP rebels hold their ground this one time, but especially if they don't, the American people - left, right and center - must speak with one enormous groundswell of revulsion against the ruling Republican Party in the Congress that has rubber-stamped virtually everything Bush&Co. have asked for. A convincing GOP defeat in the House would do great damage to the administration's momentum of lawlessness.

The current fracturing of the Republican Party in Congress is a testament to the revolt of the moderate middle in America against the Bush administration's catastrophic bungling in Iraq, its demonstrated incompetence in the Katrina debacle, its lies and deceits, its slimy denunciations of those who oppose the CheneyBush Iraq policy (which means about two-thirds of the American people) as terrorist-supporting traitors, etc., etc.

If the GOP can be roundly trounced two months from now at the polls, its defeat will be due in no small part to those honest, traditional conservatives who, appalled by the hijacking of their once-great party by extremists from the Far Right, are thoroughly fed up and have had enough of misrule on a grand scale. (Note: This election, given Rove's previous history, will require extreme vigilance, and probably court suits, to keep the voting honest and honestly-counted.)

Let us all - Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, progressives - join with these moderate Republicans, and start the process of moving our country back to common decency, earned respect, and a sane foreign and domestic policy based on reality and the true needs of the American people. Can I hear an Amen?"

Note: Bernard Weiner, PhD in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years, and currently co-edits the Crisis Papers. To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net.

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Another editorial on the topic is available, also from the Washington Post at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901547.html

The Essential Krugman: "Progress or Regress"

by Paul Krugman, Middle Class Commentary, NY Times:

Is the typical American family better off than it was a generation ago? That’s the subject of an intense debate these days, as commentators try to understand the sour mood of the American public.

But it’s the wrong debate. For one thing, there probably isn’t a right answer. Most Americans are better off in some ways, worse off in others, than they were in the early 1970’s. It’s a subjective judgment whether the good outweighs the bad. And as I’ll explain, that ambiguity is actually the real message. ...

From the end of World War II until 1973, ... the U.S. economy delivered a huge, broad-based rise in living standards: family income adjusted for inflation roughly doubled for the poor, the middle class, and the elite alike. Nobody debated whether families were better off...; it was obvious that they were...

Since 1973, however, the picture has been mixed. Real median household income ... rose a modest 16 percent between 1973 and 2005. ... The typical full-time male worker saw his wages, adjusted for inflation, actually fall; the typical household’s real income was up only because women’s wages rose (although by far less than everyone’s wages rose...) and because more women were working.

The debate..., for the most part, is about whether these numbers understate or overstate the true progress achieved by typical families. The optimists point to technological advances that, they argue, don’t get reflected in official estimates of the standard of living. In 1973, you couldn’t chat on a cellphone, watch a video or surf the Internet; many medical conditions that are now easily managed ... were untreatable; and so on.

The pessimists point to ways in which life has deteriorated, things that also aren’t counted by the official statistics. Traffic has gotten far worse... The economic riskiness of life has increased: ... fluctuations in family income have grown... The rat race has intensified... [F]amilies, no longer confident in the quality of public education, stretch to buy houses in good school districts — and often go bankrupt when misfortune strikes in the form of a layoff for either spouse or high medical bills.

Does the good outweigh the bad? Never mind. As I said, the ambiguity is the message.

Consider this: The United States economy is far richer and more productive than it was a generation ago. ... Yet in spite of all this technological progress..., we’re not sure whether there was any rise in the typical worker’s pay. Only those at the upper end of the income distribution saw clear gains — gains that were enormous for the lucky few at the very top.

That’s why the debate over whether the middle class is a bit better off or a bit worse off ... misses the point. What we should be debating is why technological and economic progress has done so little for most Americans, and what changes in government policies would spread the benefits of progress more widely. An effort to shore up middle-class health insurance, paid for by a rollback of recent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans ... would be a good place to start.

Instead, the people running our government are fixated on cutting tax rates for the wealthy even further. And their solution to Americans’ justified economic anxiety is a public relations campaign, an effort to convince middle-class families that their problems are a figment of their imagination.

Before the beginning of years

by Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837 – April 10, 1909)

Before the beginning of years,
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after,
And death below and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span,
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south,
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

For the love of oil, U.S. spills blood in Iraq

Published on: 09/17/06
Cynthia Tucker - AJC

You haven't heard a word about oil from President Bush or his Cabinet as they've gone about the country on their pre-Halloween scarefest, trying to frighten voters into supporting their so-called war on terror. They've spoken of freedom and civilization, courage and cowardice, Nazis and appeasers.

But they haven't mentioned oil.

By now, of course, most Americans have long since ceased giving any credence to the administration's public explanations for the war in Iraq. Most Americans no longer believe toppling Saddam Hussein was worth the sacrifices; nor do they connect the invasion to the broader war against Islamic jihadists. The idea that the president has pitched most recently — that the very foundations of Western civilization are at stake, as they were in World War II — is no more persuasive. If Bush genuinely believed the stakes were that high, he would have called on all the nation's resources, including a military draft. Instead, the White House has gone about business as usual — cutting taxes, refusing to take port security seriously and relying on an all-volunteer military.

While several agendas converged to drive the war wagon to Baghdad, providing the United States access to Middle East oil reserves was always a critical factor. It's not just liberals — Democrats, environmentalists, Hummer-haters — who say so. So do candid conservatives.

In a book titled "The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War," Boston University professor and West Point grad Andrew Bacevich analyzed four military interventions of the Reagan era: "None of the four episodes can be fully understood except in relation to global reserves of fossil fuels and America's growing dependence on imported oil."

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican political strategist, is blunt in his latest book, "American Theocracy": "Oil abundance has always been part of what America fights for, as well as with."

Most Americans don't want to concede that. Perhaps that's why Bush was able to con the voters into re-electing him; Americans wanted to believe that we went to Iraq to clean out a terrorist infrastructure and to establish a base camp for democracy in the Middle East. No matter that the facts didn't point in that direction; it was easier for us to believe that than to believe we went to secure U.S. access to Mideast oil reserves.

Americans have a deep-seated denial about our addiction to petroleum and the political entanglements that it dictates. Our national mythology teaches that we are an exceptional country that does only good in the world. We simply refuse to consider that, as the world's remaining superpower, we do what other world powers have done: protect our own interests. We cannot believe that we go about the globe grabbing precious resources, as the Spanish did when they came to the New World or as the British did when they colonized India.

Yet, history is clear on the point. The CIA intervened in Iran in the 1950s, clearing a path for the shah, because Iran had nationalized its oil fields, displeasing Anglo-American petroleum interests. Phillips notes that in 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and others in President Richard Nixon's Cabinet "promoted, just short of openly, a plan for using U.S. airborne forces to seize the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi." And surely no one still thinks the United States would have driven Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991 had petroleum reserves not been at stake.

The current administration kept oil at the forefront of its planning after Sept. 11, too. In a speech last year, retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, revealed discussions about "mounting an operation to take the oil fields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the oil and the revenues accordingly."

Bush and his Cabinet deserve their share of blame for failing to confront Americans with the consequences of our addiction to oil. But we've gone along with their deception.

Until we admit the blood price we pay for petroleum, we'll never be able to construct a sane policy toward the Middle East.

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Note: Do you still think this analysis is wrong? Still think the new $787M US Embassy compound in Bagdad makes sense without oil in the picture? Still comfortable that the US Government has not put a major push on for biomass ethanol/diesel? or increased CAFE standards? Comfortable with knowing Venezuela, Iran, and China have signed long-term agreements on crude oil deliveries which specifically exclude American access. Believe that in the Summer of 2006 when crude was $70/barrel with gas at the pump at $3/gal has no relationship to the Fall of 2006 when crude was $68/barrel with gas at the pump at $2.50 - eight weeks before the mid-term elections.

American Prospect Online - The Costs of Crying Wolf:
If Americans seem burned out and cynical about the terrorist threat, the Bush administration has only itself to blame.

By Kirsten A. Powers
Web Exclusive: 09.15.06"

Bloggers help Obama pass Senate pork bill

Saturday, September 9, 2006
By William Neikirk - Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Teamed with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, Sen. Barack Obama has scored the biggest legislative victory of his Senate career on a bill to establish federal searchable databases of all government contracts, loans, grants and special-interest spending commonly known as pork.

Coburn of Oklahoma and Obama (D-Ill.) overcame the secret opposition of two powerful Senate veterans, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), partly because Internet bloggers on the left and right tracked down and disclosed that first Stevens and then Byrd had stealthily put holds on the bill.

Stevens, Byrd back away

Senators have the privilege of putting holds on legislation without their names being disclosed. Usually the leadership doesn't buck them. But, facing criticism in the blog world and in newspaper editorials, Stevens and Byrd--renowned for their ability to snare federal dollars for projects in their states--dropped their opposition.

The Senate approved the measure by unanimous consent Thursday night. The House has passed a similar bill that does not cover contracts. But late Friday, Obama's office announced that House sponsors had agreed to go along with the Senate-passed measure with some modifications. And so Obama, elected in 2004, likely can soon claim he has passed a law.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he planned to schedule the compromise bill, largely tracking the Obama-Coburn measure, for a House vote next week.

Obama earlier succeeded in passing an amendment to an Iraqi spending bill to provide assistance to the Republic of Congo, but the database legislation has further reach, covering $1 trillion in federal spending, and wider consumer appeal.

Both senators also have co-sponsored an amendment that would require competitive bidding on Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts, ending the practice of non-bid contracts.

The victory for Obama and Coburn demonstrated the growing power of the Internet in influencing legislation. Their bill would make it easier for Americans to use computers to quickly discover how their money is being spent, and particularly who is benefiting most from the federal budget.

Brian Riedl, a budget expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said computer users could type in "Halliburton" and get a list of all contracts between the government and the oil services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Similarly, he said, they could type in "Planned Parenthood" or "Sierra Club" and discover all federal financial dealings with such groups. Or they could type in a phrase for a broad category of spending, such as "highway spending."

"People are going to be stunned to see how much of our tax dollars are wasted," Riedl said, adding that over time the databases could be a powerful tool in controlling spending.

Although it doesn't directly crack down on earmarks by members of Congress, in which lawmakers attach local pork projects to large bills, it would allow the public to get complete lists of such projects with little effort. But the names of the sponsors of earmarks would not be disclosed. Obama has introduced legislation to do that.

Information on federal spending is widely available on the Web, but the Obama-Coburn bill would make it easier to search for and monitor spending.

"By helping to lift the veil of secrecy in Washington, this database will help make us better legislators, reporters better journalists and voters more active citizens," Obama said in a statement. "It's both unusual and encouraging to see interest groups and bloggers on the left and the right come together to achieve results."

An unlikely alliance?

The legislation also brought together an unlikely pair in Obama, who usually leans to the left on legislation, and Coburn, a physician who leans far to the right on many issues.

John Hart, Coburn's press secretary, said, "They have great rapport. It's surprising for people who make a lot of assumptions about partisan differences. Both have sincere motivations to hold government accountable."

In announcing an agreement on disclosure legislation, Boehner, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said the government awards $300 billion in grants to 30,000 different organizations and a million contracts that exceed the $25,000 reporting threshold. There will be separate databases for contracts and grants, they said.

Rob Portman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, praised congressional efforts for databases his agency will set up. "American taxpayers benefit from having the necessary information to hold government accountable," he said.

Thanks, But No Thanks, by Barney Frank, American Prospect:

" In the September issue of the Prospect, Robert Reich offers several Democrats, myself specifically included, some entirely gratuitous advice. Not having spoken with me – nor, I think, with my colleagues -- Mr. Reich lectures me that I must “resist (the) temptation” to spend most of my time in a series of shrill, wholly negative attacks on the Bush administration. Among the temptations I am urged to resist is to do a “job…on the Administrations nefarious links to Wall Street.” And he follows the sentence regarding me with the sarcastic question, “Hell, why not try to impeach Bush?”

My problem with Mr. Reich’s approach is that he is giving credence to Republican assertions that if we win we will be irresponsible, demagogic, and purely negative. There is simply no basis for this. I confess to some personal irritation in addition to my political concern when I am told that I had better not do things that I have no intention of doing, and that I should in fact think about beginning to do things that I have been doing. But the fundamental problem is that Mr. Reich’s article urges us not to conform to the caricatured version of us that the Republicans have put forward, and in doing so, he lends support to the notion that this caricature might represent reality."

Fanaticism Bush Style

Bush Says GOP Rebels Are Putting Nation at Risk
By Jim Rutenberg and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
The New York Times
Saturday 16 September 2006

Washington - President Bush made an impassioned defense on Friday of his proposed rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, warning that the nation's ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Republicans in the Senate did not come around to his position.

Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.

Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers - he referred to them repeatedly as "professionals" - would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action.

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," he said. "But the practical matter is if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward."

The administration has said the Central Intelligence Agency has no "high value" terrorism suspects in foreign detention centers, having transferred the last of them this month to military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But officials said they considered the program crucial to efforts to foil attacks.

"This enemy has struck us, and they want to strike us again," Mr. Bush said, "and we'll give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country. It's a debate that, that really is going to define whether or not we can protect ourselves."

It was also a debate Mr. Bush had hoped to have this week exclusively with Democrats as he and his party's leadership set out to draw unflattering distinctions between Republicans and Democrats on fighting terrorism for the fall elections.

Instead, Mr. Bush spent Friday in a second day of heavy debate, casting some of the most respected voices on military matters in his own party as hindering the fight against terrorism. As of late Friday there seemed to be no break in the impasse, even as White House officials worked behind the scenes to build new support in the Senate for the legislation the president wants.

Leading the efforts against him in the Senate are three key Republicans on the Armed Services Committee with their own military credentials: the chairman and a former secretary of the Navy, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia; Senator John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war in Vietnam; and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military judge. And publicly taking their side is Mr. Bush's former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell.

The dispute centers on whether to pass legislation reinterpreting a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 that bars "outrages upon personal dignity"; the Supreme Court ruled that the provision applies to terrorism suspects. Mr. Bush argued that the convention's language was too vague and is proposing legislation to clarify the provisions. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?" he said at one point.

Mr. McCain and his allies on the committee say reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would open the door to rogue governments to interpret them as they see fit.

In a statement late Friday, Mr. McCain stuck to his position, saying that his proposed rules included legal protections for interrogators. "Weakening the Geneva protections is not only unnecessary, but would set an example to other countries, with less respect for basic human rights, that they could issue their own legislative reinterpretations," he said.

Mr. Bush rejected the crux of Mr. McCain's argument when a reporter asked him how he would react if nations like Iran or North Korea "roughed up" American soldiers under the guise of their own interpretations of Common Article 3.

"You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country," Mr. Bush said, casting the question as steeped in moral relativism. "The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law."

He also discounted an argument made in a letter from Mr. Powell that his plan would encourage the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

Asked about that analysis, Mr. Bush said, "If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic."

Mr. Bush was alternately combative and comedic during the hourlong session with reporters. At one point, in describing how he thought the economy and Republican tax policies would help his party in November, he said: "I've always felt the economy is a determinate issue, if not the determinate issue in campaigns. We've had a little history of that in our family, you might remember."

It was an off-hand reference to his father's losing presidential re-election campaign in 1992, when he was damaged by economic woes and the breaking of his "read my lips" vow not to raise taxes.

Mr. Bush said it was "urban myth" that his administration had lost focus on capturing Osama bin Laden. The president said he was frustrated by the United Nations at times, especially when it came to addressing genocide in Darfur.

Asked about a Senate report concluding that there was no working relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in Iraq, Mr. Bush said forcefully, "I never said there was an operational relationship."

The questioner had included a reference to Mr. Bush's Aug. 21 news conference at which he had said, "Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would - who had relations with Zarqawi," referring to the Qaeda mastermind in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Democrats for the most part on Friday were content to allow Republicans to fight among themselves on the terrorism question.

"When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

September 15, 2006 | Scientists see a new trend of shrinking Arctic sea ice in the winter, as well as a continuing decline in the summer. The yellow border indicates the median edge of ice from 1979-2000. "This is the strongest evidence yet of global warming in the Arctic," said Josefino Comiso, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
(Photo: NASA )

If you have been in military service, and need a laugh...

...this link will take you back to Basic Training.

Excerpt:...
"When you respond to a Drill Sergeant, DO NOT look him/her directly in the eyes. This is known as "eye-balling," (such as, "Are you eyeballing me, boy?????"), and is a bad, bad, thing. Eye-balling a Drill Sergeant will immediately result in him eye-balling you back. This is done by placing his eye-balls about 1/8th of an inch away from yours. Suddenly, fire will erupt from his eye sockets and burn you down to your soul. Unfortunately, uncrisping your soul requires a ceremony which normally involves several push ups.

No matter how tough you think your Drill Sergeant is, he is nothing compared to his Grandmother. No matter how fast you run, how high you jump, how well you shoot, or how far you throw a grenade, his Grandmother can always do that better. Luckily, few people have ever met a Drill Sergeant's Grandmother. Those who have, rarely talk about the experience (with the exception of the Drill Sergeant, of course - who talks about his Grandmother every time there is something physical going on)."

Debate Grows as Colleges Slip in Graduations

By ALAN FINDER
Published: September 15, 2006

CHICAGO — When a research group started tracking what happens to Chicago’s public school graduates after they enter college, it came upon a startling and dispiriting finding: the graduation rates at two of the city’s four-year public universities were among the worst in the country.

At Northeastern Illinois University, a tidy commuter campus on the North Side of Chicago, only 17 percent of students who enroll as full-time freshmen graduate within six years, according to data collected by the federal Department of Education. At Chicago State University on the South Side, the overall graduation rate is 16 percent.

As dismal as those rates seem, the universities are not unique. About 50 colleges across the country have a six-year graduation rate below 20 percent, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit research group.

All kidding aside - do we have a problem here?

Bush's approval rating rose to 42 percent from 38 percent after his latest round of speeches on Iraq, a new WSJ/NBC News poll shows.

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Poll shows European confidence in U.S. leadership is shrinking

By Tom Hundley
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

LONDON - America's prestige among its traditional European allies is in steep decline and shows no sign of rebounding, according to an annual survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund.

The number of Europeans who say they would like to see the U.S. take a strong leadership role in world affairs has fallen precipitously, from 64 percent in 2002 to 37 percent today. During the same period, European unhappiness with President Bush has risen from 56 percent to 77 percent.

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This was a poll taken in the G-8 countries at the time of the November 2004 US General Election

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NBC/WSJ Poll: Americans Remain Down on GOP, Bush, Iraq - Dems Likely to Pick Up Mid-term Seats
Posted by Pamela Leavey
September 14th, 2006 @ 8:37 am


The latest NBC News/WSJ poll shows that with less than two months until election day, more than half of the registered voters disapprove of Bush’s job performance. Even more voters disagree with the way he is handling of Iraq. And worse for the GOP, the poll shows that “a strong plurality prefer a Congress controlled by the Democrats. The results of the poll suggests that Democrats are still poised to pick up seats in the upcoming midterms.

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Note: My reasons for asking the question: "do we have a problem here" is partially that somewhere between 30-45% of most US poll groups are satisfied with G.W. Bush's job performance, with 15-19% strongly supportive. After a couple of weeks of mostly propaganda-flavored speeches by several senior Administration officials there was a four point swing in Bush's approval rating among Americans. While the unstated poll data margin-of-error was probably small, it could be 1+%, indicating a miniscule temporary bump somewhere between 3-4%.

There was also a 3% positive bump in the poll for Bush's handling of the Iraq War between July 2006 and September 2006; yet by all news accounts, the situation in Iraq during the period became worse, with an average of 100 Iraquis a day being killed in Bagdad, many after having been tortured, or rounded up by some group and systematically murdered. What did the poll respondents see or hear that gave them even 1% more favorable opinions of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq War during that period? Europeans didn't see it. England, Spain, Germany, Japan didn't see it. Asia countries, excluding China, didn't see it. Turkey, the only Muslim country considered for inclusion in the EU saw just the opposite.

But more importantly, the polarization and rigidity of public opinion regarding the Bush Administration, which comes across so readily in the polling data, provides all the evidence one needs to see the amount of work that will be needed to obtain any kind of consensus, bi-partisianship, or even civility in American politics. We have major work to do if we seriously want to return to being the United States of America, and not become a striated society with huge class, ethnic, cultural, political, and economic divisions that have the potential to destroy the American experiment.

An Army of None

American Progress Report
Sept 14th, 2006

Over the last several weeks, President Bush and his allies have launched a new offensive against political dissent. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) wondered aloud if critics of the President's national security policy are "more interested in the rights of terrorists than protecting the American people." (White House Press Secretary Tony Snow defended Boehner, telling CNN he was "asking tough questions.") Earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of his policies to people “in the decades before World War II” who believed Hitler “could be appeased” and “argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated -- or that it was someone else’s problem.” (A poll yesterday found that more than 60 percent of Americans think this kind of comparison is inappropriate.) The rhetorical fireworks are intended to obscure severe problems in our national security posture, in particular military readiness. But attacking political opponents is far easier than addressing the fact that "strategic miscalculations and gross mismanagement of resources have pushed the all-volunteer force perilously close to its breaking point."

ARMY IS RUNNING ON EMPTY: In today's Washington Post, American Progress's Lawrence Korb and Peter Ogden note, "In July an official report revealed that two-thirds of the active U.S. Army was classified as 'not ready for combat.' When one combines this news with the fact that roughly one-third of the active Army is deployed (and thus presumably ready for combat), the math is simple but the answer alarming: The active Army has close to zero combat-ready brigades in reserve." Worse, "one-half of all Army units (deployed and non-deployed, active and reserves) received the lowest readiness rating any fully formed unit can receive." The readiness problem reflects the fact that every "available active-duty combat brigade has served at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many have served two or three." According to a report released yesterday by Reps. Dave Obey (D-WI) and John Murtha (D-PA), "The U.S. Army’s preparedness for war has eroded to levels not witnessed by our country in decades."

THE EQUIPMENT SHORTFALL: The Army is facing a "$50 billion equipment shortfall." Obey and Murtha report, "Thousands of key Army weapons platforms -- such as tanks, Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles -- sitting in disuse at Army maintenance depots for lack of funding. "This is having a snowball effect on its readiness issues because the Army is "compensating" for its shortfall by "shipping to Iraq some of the equipment that it needs to train nondeployed and reserve units."

THE RECRUITING QUANDARY: The Army is also struggling to meet its recruiting goals. For example, "After failing to meet its recruitment target for 2005, the Army raised the maximum age for enlistment from 35 to 40 in January -- only to find it necessary to raise it to 42 in June." Also, the Army has been forced to lower its standards for basic training. "Through the first six months of 2006, only 7.6 percent of new recruits failed basic training, down from 18.1 percent in May 2005." Even more alarmingly, "a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that thousands of white supremacists may have been able to infiltrate the military due to pressure from recruitment shortfalls."

THE FUNDING SHORTFALL: According to a letter signed by military experts last month, "Restoring the Army’s readiness requires additional funding, but, inexplicably, the administration is underfunding the Army." Specifically, "the Office of Management and Budget recently cut the Army’s request for FY06 supplemental appropriations by $4.9 Billion." In July, "General Schoomaker, the Army's Chief of Staff, testified before Congress that the Army needs an additional $17 billion in fiscal year 2007 to repair and replace equipment used for war." Obey and Murtha have requested President Bush "prepare for submission to Congress an emergency funding request to cover the Army readiness and equipment maintenance shortfalls." He has yet to do so.

Deficit Hits New Record

By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 13 September 2006

"Most people didn't see this headline, because the deficit that just soared to a new record was the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. The newly released trade data for July showed the deficit running at an annual rate of almost $820 billion, more than 6 percent of GDP. This is more than three times the size of the $260 billion dollar budget deficit now projected for 2006. Even adding in the money borrowed from Social Security, the budget deficit would only be $437 billion, just over half the size of the trade deficit.

Economic and business reporters, and their editors, have a hard time understanding the trade deficit, and therefore they largely ignore it. Most of the reporting on July's trade deficit was buried in the business pages where few people would notice it.

This is too bad, because the long-run impact of a trade deficit is pretty much the same as the long-run impact of a budget deficit: lower living standards in the future. As the editorialists and pundits continuously warn us, our children and grandchildren will have a higher tax burden because of the budget deficits that we are running at present. Well, our children and grandchildren will in effect face a foreign payments tax because of the trade deficit that we are running today.

The foreign payments tax is essentially the flip side of the trade deficit we face today. The trade deficit means that we import more than we export - in effect, we are consuming goods and services that we are not paying for. This allows us to have a higher standard of living at the moment than if we had balanced trade, just as lowering taxes allows us to enjoy a higher standard of living at the moment.

In the same way that the government is borrowing to finance the budget deficit, the country as a whole is borrowing to finance the trade deficit. We are selling off a wide variety of financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, to foreigners (individuals, corporations, and governments). At some future point, we will lose our ability to borrow, or at least to borrow at the same rate. At that point, the interest and dividends that we will be paying to foreigners will be a net drain on the US economy, which will require that we export more goods and services than we import.

Instead of consuming more goods and services than we produce, we will be producing more goods and services than we consume. The difference will be the foreign payments tax that is the long-term result of our current trade deficit.

Even though the foreign payments tax promises to be much larger than taxes resulting from current budget deficits, it receives almost no attention. There are two reasons for this.

The first has to do with partisan politics. The budget deficit is largely the fault of the Bush administration's tax cuts and the war in Iraq. If President Bush had not cut taxes and gone to war in Iraq, the overall budget would be in surplus. Even adding in the money borrowed from Social Security would still only leave a modest deficit.

By contrast, the record trade deficit is a bi-partisan policy. It had its origins in the high-dollar policy that Robert Rubin put in place as President Clinton's treasury secretary in 1996. The over-valued dollar, which has been advocated, or at least tolerated, by both Clinton and Bush, is the main cause of the trade deficit.

The other reason that the trade deficit draws less attention than the budget deficit is that there is a strong class bias to the short-term gains and pain. In the short-term, the main beneficiaries are the people who work in occupations that are largely protected from international competition, like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and economists. The people who are hurt by the high dollar policy are the people whom US trade policy has subjected to international competition, most importantly manufacturing workers.

Because the short-term winners have much more political power, and own the newspapers and write the news stories, we don't hear much about the trade deficit. So, until we get a better press corps, if you want the news that will really impact your life, you will have to hunt for it."

Keith Olbermann's 9/11 Special Video Broadcast

This Hole in the Ground
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Monday 11 September 2006

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and - as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul - two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast - of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds - none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial - barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field - Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party - tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election - ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications - forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President - and those around him - did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced - possibly financed by - the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you - or those around you - ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded - are still succeeding - as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car - and only his car - starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot - but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again - as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus - that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American ... When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11" ... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Didja ever notice how similar the maps are...

Between the Red/Blue electoral cartographic map and the DarfurScores.org map?

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UN Acts on Darfur, Will Congress Step Up?
Sam Bell | Friday, September 1, 2006

Yesterday morning, the United Nations Security Council authorized a UN peacekeeping force to expand from Southern Sudan into Darfur, to replace the African Union peacekeepers who will leave at the end of this month. The resolution asks the government of Sudan to approve the expansion — permission that, to date, Khartoum has not been willing to give.

Gay & Lesbian Humor

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in sick to work: "Hello. Can't work today, still queer." ~ Robin Tyler

I'd rather be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother. ~ Charles Pierce

"Dear Abby," In response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighbourhood. 'You could move.' ~ Abigail Van Buren.

The one bonus of not lifting the ban on gays in the military is that the next time the government mandates a draft, we can all declare we are homosexual instead of running off to Canada. ~ Lorne Bloch

Why can't they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going, "Who'd you call a faggot?" ~ Jon Stewart

My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I'm giving them my share. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons. ~ Letter to the Editor, The Advocate

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight. ~ Barry Goldwater

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~ Ernest Gaines

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Drag is when a man wears everything a lesbian won't. ~ Author Unknown

If male homosexuals are called "gay," then female homosexuals should be called "ecstatic." ~ Shelly Roberts

My mother took me to a psychiatrist when I was fifteen because she thought I was a latent homosexual. There was nothing latent about it. ~ Amanda Bearse

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain.... ~ Francis Maude

The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.... ~ Rita Mae Brown

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. ~ Lynn Lavner

Spitzer and Cuomo Win in N.Y. Primary

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer won the Democratic nomination for New York governor tonight, with his party hoping he will lead it to a potentially historic moment this November: a sweep of top statewide offices.

Note: A Sep. 5th poll puts Spitzer at 67%, his Republican opponent, John Faso at 21%.
Was it the Coolidge Administration that created the phrase: "Throw the bums out"?

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Voters Ready to Dump Incumbents in Congress: Poll: Monday Aug. 6th, 2006

American voters are as ready to dump incumbent lawmakers as they were just before they handed control of Congress to Republicans in 1994, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.

Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, stand to lose the most in the November elections because of strong anti-incumbent sentiment and they trail Democrats in support among registered voters, the poll showed.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed called themselves "anti-incumbent" -- nearly the same as the 54 percent who identified themselves as such in the summer of 1994 when Congress was still under the Democrats' control.

Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930's Germany

GERMÀ BEL*
Professor of Economics at Universitat de Barcelona &
Visiting Scholar at Harvard University (KSG).

"The Great Depression spurred state ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception; the last governments in the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream in the Western capitalistic countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s.

Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the production of public services previously delivered by government. Both the firms and the services transferred to private ownership belonged to diverse sectors. Privatization was part of an intentional policy with multiple objectives and was not ideologically driven. As has been usual in recent privatizations, particularly within the European Union, strong financial restrictions were a central motivation. In addition, privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and to reinforce support of the Nazi Party.
...
Ideological motivations do not explain Nazi privatization. On the contrary, political motivations were important. The Nazi government may have used privatization as a tool to improve its relationship with big industrialists and to increase their support for Nazi policies. Privatization was also likely used to enhance more general political support to Nazi party. Finally, financial motivations did play a central role in Nazi privatization. The proceeds from privatization in 1934-37 had relevant fiscal significance: Not less than 1.37 per cent of total fiscal revenues were obtained from selling shares in public firms. Moreover, the government avoided including a huge expenditure in the budget by using outside-of-the-budget tools to finance the public services franchised to Nazi organizations."

Note: Link to Professor Bel's Paper courtesy of http://economistsview.typepad.com/

Is it true that nothing really “biodegrades” in a landfill?

Organic substances “biodegrade” when they are broken down by other living organisms (such as enzymes and microbes) into their constituent parts, and in turn recycled by nature as the building blocks for new life. The process can occur aerobically (with the aid of oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen). Substances break down much faster under aerobic conditions, as oxygen helps break the molecules apart.

Most landfills are fundamentally anaerobic because they are compacted so tightly and thus do not let much air in. As such, any biodegradation that does take place does so very slowly. “Typically in landfills, there’s not much dirt, very little oxygen, and few if any microorganisms,” says green consumer advocate and author Debra Lynn Dadd. She cites a landfill study conducted by University of Arizona researchers that uncovered still-recognizable 25-year-old hot dogs, corncobs and grapes in landfills, as well as 50-year-old newspapers that were still readable.

Biodegradable items also may not break down in landfills if the industrial processing they went through prior to their useful days converted them into forms unrecognizable by the microbes and enzymes that facilitate biodegradation. A typical example is petroleum, which biodegrades easily and quickly in its original form, crude oil. But when petroleum is processed into plastic, it is no longer biodegradable, and as such can clog up landfills indefinitely.

Some manufacturers make claims that their products are photodegradable, which means that they will biodegrade when exposed to sunlight. A popular example is the plastic “polybag” in which many magazines now arrive protected in the mail. But the likelihood that such items will be exposed to sunlight while buried dozens of feet deep in a landfill is little to none. And if they do biodegrade at all, it is only likely to be into smaller pieces of plastic.

Some landfills are now being designed to promote biodegradation through the injection of water, oxygen, and even microbes. But these kinds of facilities are costly to create and as a result have not caught on. Another recent development involves landfills that have separate sections for compostable materials, such as food scraps and yard waste. Some analysts believe that as much as 65 percent of the waste currently sent to landfills in North America consists of such “biomass” that biodegrades rapidly and could generate a new income stream for landfills, marketable soil.

But getting people to sort their trash accordingly is another matter entirely. Indeed, paying heed to the importance of the environment’s “Three Rs” (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!) is likely the best approach to solving the problems caused by our ever-growing piles of trash. With landfills around the world reaching capacity, technological fixes are not likely to make our waste disposal problems go away.

Note: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Reduce-Reuse-Recycle page; www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/reduce.htm

Five Years After 9/11: Drop the War Metaphor

By George Lakoff and Evan Frisch -- Rockridge Institute

"Language matters, because it can determine how we think and act.

For a few hours after the towers fell on 9/11, administration spokesmen referred to the event as a "crime." Indeed, Colin Powell argued within the administration that it be treated as a crime.

This would have involved international crime-fighting techniques: checking banks accounts, wire-tapping, recruiting spies and informants, engaging in diplomacy, cooperating with intelligence agencies in other governments, and if necessary, engaging in limited "police actions" with military force. Indeed, such methods have been the most successful so far in dealing with terrorism.

But the crime frame did not prevail in the Bush administration. Instead, a war metaphor was chosen: the "War on Terror." Literal --not metaphorical -- wars are conducted against armies of other nations. They end when the armies are defeated militarily and a peace treaty is signed. Terror is an emotional state. It is in us. It is not an army. And you can't defeat it militarily and you can't sign a peace treaty with it.

The war metaphor was chosen for political reasons. First and foremost, it was chosen for the domestic political reasons. The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation. From within the war metaphor, being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic, to be against defending the nation. The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive. Once the war metaphor took hold, any refusal to grant the president full authority to conduct the war would open progressives in Congress to the charge of being unpatriotic, unwilling to defend America, defeatist. And once the military went into battle, the war metaphor created a new reality that reinforced the metaphor.

Once adopted, the war metaphor allowed the president to assume war powers, which made him politically immune from serious criticism and gave him extraordinary domestic power to carry the agenda of the radical right: Power to shift money and resources away from social needs and to the military and related industries. Power to override environmental safeguards on the grounds of military need. Power to set up a domestic surveillance system to spy on our citizens and to intimidate political enemies. Power over political discussion, since war trumps all other topics. In short, power to reshape America to the vision of the radical right -- with no end date.

In addition, the war metaphor was used as justification for the invasion of Iraq, which Bush had planned for since his first week in office. Frank Luntz, the right-wing language expert, recommended referring to the Iraq war as part of the "War on Terror" -- even when it was known that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and indeed saw Osama bin Laden as an enemy. Fox News used "War on Terror" as a headline when showing film clips from Iraq. Remember "Weapons of Mass Destruction?" They were invented by the Bush administration to strike terror into the hearts of Americans and to justify the invasion. Remember that the Iraq War was advocated before 9/11 and promoted as early as 1997 by the members of the Project for the New American Century, who later came to dominate in the Bush administration. Why?

The right-wing strategy was to use the American military to achieve economic and strategic goals in the Middle East: to gain control of the second largest oil reserve in the world; to place military bases right in the heart of the Middle East for the sake of economic and political intimidation; to open up Middle East markets and economic opportunities for American corporations; and to place American culture and a controllable government in the heart of the Middle East. The justification was 9/11 -- to identify the Iraq invasion as part of the "War on Terror" and claim that it is necessary in order to protect America and spread democracy.

What has been the result?

Domestically, the "War on Terror" has been a major success for the radical right. Bush has been returned to office and the radical right controls all branches of our government. They are realizing their goals. Social programs are being gutted. Deregulation and privatization are thriving. Even highways are being privatized. Taxpayers' money is being transferred to the ultra-rich making them richer. Two right-wing justices have been appointed to the Supreme Court and right-wing judges are taking over courts all over America. The environment continues to be plundered. Domestic surveillance is in place. Corporate profits have doubled while wage levels have declined. Oil profits are astronomical. And the radical rights social agenda is taking hold. The "culture war" is being won on many fronts. And it is still widely accepted that we are fighting a "War on Terror." The metaphor is still in place. We are still taking off our shoes at the airports, and now we cannot take bottled water on the planes. Terror is being propped up.

But while the radical right has done well on the domestic front, America and Americans have fared less well both at home and abroad.

What was the moral of 9/11?

To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.

The more Americans kill and terrorize Muslims, the more we recruit Muslims to become terrorists and fight against us.

The war in Iraq was over in 2003 when the US forces defeated Saddam's army. Then the American occupation began -- an occupation by insufficient troops ill-suited to be occupiers, especially in a country on the brink of a civil war, where neither side wants us there.

The number of lives lost on 9/11 is currently listed as 2973. As of this writing 2662 Americans have been sent to their deaths in Iraq, a Muslim country that did not attack us. At the current rate, within months more Americans will have been sent to their deaths by Bush than were murdered at the hands of bin Laden.

9/11 was a crime -- a crime against humanity -- and terrorism is best dealt with as crime on an international level.

It is time to toss the war metaphor into the garbage can.

The war metaphor is still intimidating progressives. To come out against "staying the course" is to be called unpatriotic, weak, and defeatist. To say, "no, we're just as strong, but we're smarter" is to keep and reinforce the war metaphor, which the conservatives have a patent on.

It is time for progressives to jettison the war metaphor itself. It is time to tell some truths that progressives have been holding back on. What has worked in stopping terrorism is just what has worked in stopping international crime -- like the recent police work in England. What has failed is the war approach, which just recruits more terrorists. In Iraq, the war was over when we defeated Saddam's army. Then the occupation began. Our troops are dying because they are not trained be occupiers in hostile territory on the cusp of a civil war.

Bush is an occupation president, not a war president, and his war powers should be immediately rescinded. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to do just that (H.R. 5875) should be taken seriously and made the subject of national debate.

I am suggesting a conscious discussion of the war metaphor as a metaphor. The very discussion would require the nation to think of it as a metaphor, and allow the nation to take seriously the truth of our presence in Iraq as an occupation that must be ended. You don't win or lose an occupation; you just exit as gracefully as possible.

Openly discussing the war metaphor as a metaphor would allow the case to be made that terrorism is most effectively treated as a crime -- like wiping out a crime syndicate -- not as an occasion for sending over a hundred thousand troops and doing massive bombing that only recruits more terrorists.

Finally, openly discussing the war metaphor as a metaphor would raise the question of the domestic effect of giving the president war powers, and the fact that the Bush administration has shamelessly exploited 9/11 to achieve the political goals of the radical right -- with all the disasters that has brought to our country. It would allow us to name right-wing ideology, to spell it out, look at its effects, and to see what awful things it has done, is doing, and threatens to keep on doing. The blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq, in New Orleans, in our economy, and throughout the country at large should be placed squarely where it belongs -- on right-wing ideology that calls itself "conservative" but mocks real American values.

Metaphors cannot be seen or touched, but they create massive effects, and political intimidation is one such effect. It is time for political courage and political realism. It is time to end the political intimidation of the war metaphor and the terror it has loosed on America.

The Essential Krugman: "Promises Not Kept"

Paul Krugman looks at why the trail for those responsible for 9/11 has gone "stone cold":

Promises Not Kept, by Paul Krugman, Still at Large Commentary, NY Times: Five years ago, the nation rallied around a president who promised vengeance against those responsible for the atrocity of 9/11. Yet Osama bin Laden is still alive and at large. His trail, The Washington Post reports, has gone “stone cold.” Osama and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are evidently secure enough in their hideaway that they can taunt us with professional-quality videos.

They certainly don’t lack for places to stay. Pakistan’s government has signed a truce with Islamic militants in North Waziristan, the province where bin Laden is presumed to be hiding. Although the Pakistanis say that this doesn’t mean that bin Laden is immune from arrest, their claims aren’t very credible.

Meanwhile, much of Afghanistan has fallen back under the control of drug-dealing warlords and of the Taliban, which sheltered Al Qaeda before it was driven from Kabul. ....

The path to this strategic defeat began with the failure to capture or kill bin Laden. Never mind the anti-Clinton hit piece, produced for ABC by a friend of Rush Limbaugh; there never was a clear shot at Osama before 9/11, let alone one rejected by Clinton officials. But there was a clear shot in December 2001, when Al Qaeda’s leader was trapped in the caves of Tora Bora. He made his escape because the Pentagon refused to use American ground troops to cut him off.

No matter, declared President Bush: “I truly am not that concerned about him,” he said ... in March 2002, and more or less stopped mentioning Osama for the next four years. ...[J]ust six months after 9/11 ... the pursuit of Al Qaeda had already been relegated to second-class status. A long report in yesterday’s Washington Post adds [that] ...: early in 2002, the administration began pulling key resources, such as special forces units and unmanned aircraft, off the hunt for Al Qaeda’s leaders, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. ...

During the first 18 months after the Taliban were driven from power, the U.S.-led coalition provided no peacekeeping troops outside the capital city. Economic aid ... was minimal in the crucial first year... And the result was the floundering and failure we see today.

How did it all go so wrong? The diversion of resources into ... Iraq is certainly a large part of the story. Although administration officials continue to insist that the invasion of Iraq somehow made sense as part of a broadly defined war on terror, the Senate ... has just released a report confirming that Saddam Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat, not an ally; he even made attempts to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But Iraq doesn’t explain it all. Even though the Bush administration was secretly planning another war in early 2002, it could still have spared some troops to provide security and allocated more money to help the Karzai government. As in the case of planning for postwar Iraq, however, Bush officials apparently refused even to consider the possibility that things wouldn’t go exactly the way they hoped.

These days most agonizing about the state of America’s foreign policy is focused, understandably, on the new enemies we’ve made in Iraq. But let’s not forget that the perpetrators of 9/11 are still at large, five years later, and that they have re-established a large safe haven.

---

Note: Let's be fair Paul...several of the leaders of Al Qaeda have been killed or captured...and over the past week several have been transferred to the US Military base at Guantanamo to await trial. Osama and Zawahiri are still at large, as is the former Taliban ruler Mulla Omar. If the world community continues to kill and capture the new outcroppings of the hydra-headed terrorist entity there's a good chance the top dogs will eventually get caught as well. After all, no one is immune from making mistakes...eh, no-one except GW of course.

Torture

Confessions
James Wimberley and Mark Kleiman team up to mount the argument that in Bush's Abu Zubaydah speech the other day he offered up what amounts to a confession of having ordered torture (banned by 18 USC 2340) and war crimes (as defined in 18 USC 2441) both crimes that carry hefty punishment under American law.

Sick as it is that the President would do the things he's done, it seems to me somehow even sicker that he proudly admit having done them in public speeches, believing that such confessions strengthen, rather than weaken, his domestic political standing.

Sickest of all is that if you made me guess, I'd say Bush is probably right and his advocacy of torture and cruel and degrading treatment (to the point of death in many cases) is a political asset. Certainly, I hope I'm wrong or a sad and shameful episode in our national history will get even sadder and more appalling.
-Matthew Yglesias Weblog-

The final stop for Flight 93 - Sept. 11, 2001
(Courage, Strength, Purpose, Altruistic, Sacrificial, Gallant, Caring)
versus (Chauvinistic, Jingoistic, Fundamentalistic, Fascist Martyr)
This -should be- the Spirit of 9/11 !!
It should -NOT- be America vs Islamo-Fascists !!
It should -NOT- be Democracy vs Autocracies !!
It should -NOT- be Christianity vs Islam !!
It should -NOT- be Us vs Them !!
It should -NOT- be 'With Us' or "Against Us' !!

Tyranny and oppression begins the moment one believes they are in ultimate possession of truth, justice, and moral wisdom !!

Teach tolerance for those whose ways and means enhance the human condition with the tools of social welfare - not warfare !!

In human affairs, nothing is without consequence, nor are most actions usually totally good, or totally bad !!

Being a good citizen demands active work on society's behalf; not passive consumption of it's yields !!

Turn off that damn TV, get up off your fat ass, learn something new with a bias toward objectivity, help someone or something without putting your hand out for a reward !!

If you are an American. Act like it !!!

Seniors & Walmart

John Tschudy @ UCCHRISTNET.ORG

"In my haste to respond to this note the first time I didn't deal with one point you made Mark. Walmarting of America is a concept based on the fact that when a new Walmart (or actually almost any large shopping center) opened in an area, small businesses within 50 miles radius either were forced to close or saw a measurable loss of business as people willing drove the extra miles to shop at the larger store. Wal Mart has used this tactic across the country to increase its market share and thus the name. The impact on small towns and smaller business in urban centers has been dramatic. But as was noted upstream-who gives a flying rip, when it saves us money?

It is a justice issue in that it leaves many folks who do not have access to either personal transportation or access to public transit without access to services they need. It means Seniors may have to leave their homes and move into institutional settings sooner because they don't have access to things such as grocery stores, pharmacies or other simple conveniences. As you noted it drives up prices for many folk because they can not sell the volume or have the variety of merchandise these larger commercial centers can have.

This is not just a rural issue. Here in suburbia the trend seems to be locating these important services on commuter routes which may make them difficult and literally hazardous for the elderly to get to. In Slinger people use to be able to walk to the pharmacy and the grocery store. Now they have to go out on a heavily traveled and dangerous four lane highway, with poor traffic control to get to these services. The result is many drive a back road to the next town to do their needed shopping. But again why care because these folk do not have the political clout or the organizational ability to raise the issue in the public forum as other groups can?"

---

Note: And then there is "the multiplier effect":

Buy locally and the economic multiplier is at its best, maximum recirculation of the money in the community seven times.

National chain store? Money circulates three times before leaving the community

Franchise stores, somewhere in between.

Internet stores and online transactions, once, at best, as your money leaves your local account.

---

williambrandes wrote:
> As far as circulating money, take a local mom and pop and multiply the circulation by the number of local living employees and then do the math for Walmart. Who has the larger multiplier?
<------------------------------------->
Note: That is not how one calculates the circulation multiplier. Rather, the CM is a measure of how many times a payment for goods and services is anticipated to stay in the local community. It has nothing to do with the number of employees, the type of business, etc. Payments made to employees in salaries, for example, do not directly relate to total income since they are only a small portion of gross sales.

This factor is one reason why there is such a hew and cry against WalMart opening it's own bank. If permitted, the local economy could expect the overwhelming majority of sales dollars received by Walmart would never be used in the local economy, only that small portion actually paid to employees, or for utilities.

In addition, there is a big concern with accountability and civic responsibility. WalMart has a horrendous record regarding it's support for it's employees especaily in terms of health care, site management (including waste water processing from their huge parking lots), and community involvement. A store that generates $25-35M/year in sales can involve 15-40 principals who are active in their community in the case of M&P's, or 1-5 in the case of Walmart.

And finally, for this discussion - the matter of criminal activity that occurs around M&P's versus what happens around the typical WalMart store.

The future of megaplexes and WalMart is really in the hands of buyers, only if government initiates and requires adherence to economic and social welfare norms by these entities. If left to their own devices, MegaCorp Inc. will make sure you will drive a GM car, shop at WalMart, get your phone/power/cable service from one company, and read the news provided by Time Warner Fox. I for one do not relish that happening.

---

Note #40067 from VHCHILD to UCCHRIST CHATTER:

"Wal-Mart doesn't pay its employees enough for them to purchase anything at any other store. They don't pay enough for them to live on their salary -- look at Barbara Ehrenreich's book "NIckel & Dimed" Walmart may hire dead-end folks, but they don't get ahead any morre than every Amway dealer becomes a millionaire.

Walmart fills a need, but it does so by ruthlessly forcing suppliers to sell to them at lower and lower costs. They often do that by exporting their operations to foreign countries, eliminating manufacturing jobs here in the US. so people end up working parttime at Walmart, making much less than a living wage, having no health insurance, etc etc etc.

While I know there are places where Walmart is filling an important role -- I once pastored in a town that was _thrilled_ to get a Walmart because the next closest store was 40 miles away - in the long run, the company is monopolistic and intends to wipe out all competition. And the lack of competion generally leads to higher prices."

10 Miami journalists take U.S. pay

At least 10 local journalists accepted U.S. government pay for programs on Radio Martí or TV Martí.
El Nuevo Herald fired two of them Thursday for conflict of interest.
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Martí and TV Martí, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.

Those who were paid the most were veteran reporters and a freelance contributor for El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper published by the corporate parent of The Miami Herald. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and writes an opinion column, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio Martí and TV Martí. El Nuevo Herald freelance reporter Olga Connor, who writes about Cuban culture, received about $71,000, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covers the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years.

Alfonso and Cancio were dismissed after The Miami Herald questioned editors at El Nuevo Herald about the payments. Connor's freelance relationship with the newspaper also was severed.

Alfonso and Cancio declined to comment. Connor was unavailable for comment.

Jesús Díaz Jr., president of the Miami Herald Media Co. and publisher of both newspapers, expressed disappointment, saying the payments violated a ''sacred trust'' between journalists and the public.

''Even the appearance that your objectivity or integrity might have been impaired is something we can't condone, not in our business,'' Díaz said. ``I personally don't believe that integrity and objectivity can be assured if any of our reporters receive monetary compensation from any entity that he or she may cover or have covered, but particularly if it's a government agency.''

Other journalists receiving payments from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and TV Martí, included: Diario Las Americas opinion page editor Helen Aguirre Ferre and reporter/columnist Ariel Remos; Channel 41 news director Miguel Cossio; and syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner, whose opinions appear in the pages of El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald.

GOVERNMENT PROJECT

Radio and TV Martí are U.S. government programs created to promote democracy and freedom in Cuba. Their programming cannot be broadcast within the United States because of anti-propaganda laws. Radio and TV Martí have received $37 million this year.

The payments to journalists were discovered in documents recently obtained by The Miami Herald as a result of a federal Freedom of Information Request filed on Aug. 15.

OWN RESPONSIBILITY

Pedro Roig, the director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting since 2003, said he has sought to improve the quality of news by, among other things, hiring more Cuban exile journalists as contractors. He said it's each journalist's responsibility to adhere to their own ethics and rules.

''We consider them to be good journalists, and people who were formed inside that system who got out [of Cuba] and adapted and made good,'' Roig said. ``In reality, I feel very satisfied.''

Journalism ethics experts called the payments a fundamental conflict of interest. Such violations undermine the credibility of reporters to objectively cover key issues affecting U.S. policy toward Cuba, they said.

Iván Román, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said the payments from TV and Radio Martí posed a clear conflict of interest.

''It's definitely a line that journalists shouldn't be crossing,'' said Román, a former El Nuevo Herald journalist. ``It's clear the medium has a particular agenda. If they cover Cuban issues, it could be seen as a conflict.''

El Nuevo Herald Executive Editor Humberto Castelló said he hadn't been aware that the three writers were being paid by the federal government.

''I lament very much that I had not been informed before by them,'' Castelló said. ``We discussed the situation with them and they were both dismissed immediately.''

POPULAR FIGURES

The journalists involved are among the most popular in South Florida, and many were reporting on issues involving Radio or TV Martí for their news organizations.

Channel 41 reporter Juan Manuel Cao, who received $11,400 this year from TV Martí, made news in July when he confronted Castro during an appearance in Argentina by pressing the Cuban leader to explain why his government had not allowed a well-known doctor and dissident, Hilda Molina, to leave the island to visit her son in Argentina.

During the exchange, Castro openly questioned Cao if anyone was paying him to ask that question. The Cuban government has long contended that some South Florida Spanish-language journalists were on the federal payroll.

''There is nothing suspect in this,'' Cao said. ``I would do it for free. But the regulations don't allow it. I charge symbolically, below market prices.''

DEFENDS ROLE

Ferre, the opinion page editor for Diario las Americas, was paid $4,325 from 2001 to 2005. She said the payments did not compromise her journalistic integrity. She was paid to be a guest on TV Martí shows and said her point of view was never suppressed.

''Guests are being paid for their time that they have to take in order to be able to accommodate the program,'' she said.

Ethicists say that it's common for journalists to be compensated by other media outlets but not by the government, built on principles that espouse an independent press.

''This is such an obvious textbook case,'' said University of Florida journalism professor Jon Roosenraad. 'This is exactly like a business reporter during the day going out and moonlighting as a PR [public relations] person for a local company at night and then going back to the paper the next day and writing about `his' company.''

Total payouts since 2001 range from $1,550 to Radio Mambi commentator Ninoska Perez-Castellón to $174,753 for El Nuevo Herald's Alfonso, the government payment records show. The payments -- which range from $75 to $100 per appearance -- are to host or appear on the government-produced shows.

The Miami Herald's review of dozens of articles by the El Nuevo Herald journalists -- including several about TV Martí or Radio Martí -- found no instance in which the reporters or columnists disclosed that they had received payment.

Two ethics experts compared it to the case of Armstrong Williams in 2005, when it was revealed that the Bush administration had paid the prominent pundit to promote its education policy, No Child Left Behind, on his nationally syndicated television show.

Herald staff writers Jasmine Kripalani, Luisa Yanez, Casey Woods and Alfonso Chardy contributed to this report.

Report Faults Tomlinson for Broadcasting Violations

by David Folkenflik
NPR.ORG

All Things Considered, September 8, 2006   A new investigation, obtained in full by National Public Radio, has found that Kenneth Tomlinson repeatedly violated federal statutes in his role as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The board is an obscure federal agency with a tremendous reach: It oversees the Voice of America, Radio Marti, the Arab-language Alhurra, and most of the rest of the U.S. government's broadcast services abroad.

The State Department inspector general found that Tomlinson had improperly hired a friend as a contractor, starting at $88,000 a year; that Tomlinson had staffers run personal errands, such as buying a belt, flowers, and books; that he charged the government for too many hours on the clock; that he charged the agency for days he also worked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and, incredibly, that Tomlinson operated his horseracing business out of his government office.

Tomlinson, who was forced to resign from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting last year after being accused of overstepping his authority as chairman there, disputes the charges.

He counters, "I can't wait for this fight, because the distortions are not to be believed."

Tomlinson spoke to NPR in his first extensive remarks about the investigation. He is a conservative with close ties to the Bush administration, and he blames the new inquiry on Democrats on the Broadcast Board of Governors.

"You're talking about a report that was generated from partisan differences on this board," Tomlinson says.

Two of the three Democrats on the board did not return calls. The third, Joaquin Blaya, declined to comment, as did former Democratic board member Norman Pattiz, who often clashed with Tomlinson.

The investigation was prompted by three Democratic lawmakers who forwarded complaints about Tomlinson from Board employees. One of the lawmakers, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), is calling for Tomlinson's resignation and says the findings are indisputable.

"Each one is serious," Berman says. " Together they show an abuse of office that's quite flagrant."

The friend Tomlinson hired as a contractor is Les Daniels. Daniels retired in 1997 from Voice of America after a long career there working on logistics. Tomlinson remembered him from his own days leading the Voice of America in the early 1980s.

"He's been described in the press as 'having his job because he's a friend of Ken Tomlinson,'" Tomlinson says. "He had the job because he's a real contributor to the Voice of America."

But the inspector general and the broadcasting agency's lawyers found Tomlinson didn't have the legal authority to put him on the payroll. Tomlinson says his friend helped again with logistics, and offered advice on how to boost morale -- suggesting an award for teamwork, for example.

Daniels told investigators he shredded his sole written memo because it was so sensitive. Tomlinson tells NPR that Daniels' reports were delivered in person to him, verbally, though his contract called for written reports.

Daniels no longer works there and could not be found for comment.

As for the horseracing charges, Tomlinson says his off-hours passion is only a minor diversion at work. He owns several horses named for Afghan figures at his Virginia stable, Sandy Bayou.

Tomlinson made more than 400 calls from government phones and sent or received more than 1200 e-mails on his official account related to horseracing. He was repeatedly in touch with his horse trainer and even emailed a Broadcasting Board employee and a Senate staffer dangling an "investment opportunity" in front of them -- and urging them to bet on his horse Massoud.

Tomlinson says that amounts to little more than a smattering of emails and calls a day.

"You can't question the contributions I've made in terms of time I've spent on BBG activities. I'm a hard worker," he says.

In fact, the inspector general found Tomlinson worked too much. The investigation determined he violated federal statute over the past three years by requesting compensation well above the 130 days allowed for the part-time position -- averaging instead 188 paid days.

Tomlinson says it was always understood his job would be more or less full time. But the report found Broadcasting Board lawyers had cautioned Tomlinson about it shortly after he took office in 2002 -- and again during ethics sessions.

But Tomlinson says he's ready to stand his ground at the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The White House re-nominated Tomlinson for a second full term as chairman of the Broadcasting Board -- but the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee now says it won't even consider the idea.

The Essential Krugman: "Whining Over Discontent"

by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times

"We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality, and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It’s all very confusing — deliberately so. So let me offer a few clarifying comments.

First, why are we suddenly talking so much about inequality? Not because a few economists decided to make inequality an issue. It’s the public — not progressive pundits — that has been telling pollsters the economy is “only fair” or “poor,” even though the overall growth rate is O.K. by historical standards.

Some conservatives whine that people didn’t complain as much about rising inequality when Bill Clinton was president. But most people were happy with the state of the economy in the late 1990’s, even though the rich were getting much richer, because the middle class and the poor were also making substantial progress. Now ... most working Americans are losing ground.

Second, notice the amount of time that inequality’s apologists spend attacking a claim nobody is making: that there has been a clear long-term decline in middle-class living standards. Yes, real median family income has risen since the late 1970’s ... But the rise was very small — small enough that other considerations, like increasing economic insecurity, make it unclear whether families are better or worse off. ...

Third, notice the desperate effort to find some number, any number, to support claims that increasing inequality is just a matter of a rising payoff to education and skill. ... In fact, the data refute any suggestion that education is a guarantee of income gains: once you adjust for inflation, you find that the income of a typical household headed by a college graduate was lower in 2005 than in 2000.

More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that the economy’s winners are a large group, like college graduates or people with agreeable personalities. But the winners’ circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile ... have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970’s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent ... has risen by a factor of 5.

Finally, while we can have an interesting discussion about questions like the role of unions in wage inequality, or the role of lax regulation in exploding C.E.O. pay, there is no question that the policies of the current majority party — a party that has held a much-needed increase in the minimum wage hostage to large tax cuts for giant estates — have relentlessly favored the interests of a tiny, wealthy minority against everyone else.

According to ... Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the leading experts on long-term trends in inequality, the effective federal tax rate on the richest 0.01 percent has fallen from about 60 percent in 1980 to about 34 percent today. Meanwhile, the U.S. government — unlike any other government in the advanced world — does nothing as more and more working families find themselves unable to obtain health insurance.

The good news is that these concerns are finally breaking through into our political discourse. I’m sure that the usual suspects will come up with further efforts to confuse the issue. I say, bring ’em on: we’ve got the arguments, and the facts, to win this debate.

---

Note: Krugman was on Bloomberg News: "Housing prices have a long way to fall" ... watch the video

NATO seeks 2,000 troops in Afghanistan

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland — NATO is seeking an additional 2,000 troops to bolster its force in Afghanistan amid increasing insurgent violence, a spokesman said Friday in Warsaw, where the alliance's defense chiefs were meeting.

NATO's top military commander, Gen. James L. Jones, on Thursday called on the 26 member nations to provide more troops for Afghanistan, which is facing its deadliest spate of violence since the Taliban regime was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Hundreds of people _ mainly militants _ have been killed almost monthly this year amid a wave of suicide bombings and ambushes in Afghanistan.

Jones said he was disappointed by the lack of commitment from some NATO nations and stressed he is hoping to drum up hundreds of troops, with planes and helicopters that could play a key role as allied forces seek to "destroy" the insurgents before they head to mountain hideouts for the winter.

On Friday, Turkey's top military commander said his country would not be contributing any combat troops. Turkey currently has 900 military personnel there helping with reconstruction. Some 20,000 NATO soldiers and a similar number of U.S. forces are in Afghanistan trying to crush the emboldened Taliban insurgency. The heaviest fighting takes place across vast desert plains in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, also center of the country's massive opium trade.

ABC Altering 9/11 Film After Clinton Officials Express Outrage

Friday, September 08, 2006
Fox News

ABC is altering its upcoming miniseries "The Path to 9/11" in response to intense criticism from members of the Clinton administration that the two-part, made-for-TV film is filled with factual errors and lies, a network official reportedly said.

Three members of the administration — former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, former National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger and Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey, who now heads the Clinton Foundation — said they sent letters to Walt Disney Company, parent of ABC, demanding that it re-edit or pull the five-hour film, scheduled for air Sunday and Monday nights without commercial interruption.

The Washington Post reported Friday that an ABC executive, who requested anonymity because the network is making only written comments, said small revisions have been underway for weeks.

The "adjustments and refinements" are "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" by federal officials that left America vulnerable to attack, and "not any one individual," the Post reported.

Thomas H. Kean, the film's co-executive producer and a former New Jersey governor who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, said that he asked for changes in response to the criticism.

"The script has been altered by ABC wherever they thought... it was justified, they've always made changes," Kean told FOX News on Friday.

When asked whether he thought the film unfairly portrayed President Clinton being distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair, Kean said, "There's a lot of things that are mentioned... I don't think that's really accurate," adding that at one point the film characterizes Clinton as "still focused" on Usama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda threat, a finding confirmed by the final 9/11 Commission Report.

"These are people of integrity," Kean said of the filmmakers, the Post reported. "I know there are some scenes where words are put in characters' mouths. But the whole thing is true to the spirit of 9/11."

"This idea that Hollywood is out for Bill Clinton is nuts," he said.

Kean also questioned whether Lindsey, who accused Kean of partisanship, actually sent his letter to ABC. "The press got it," Kean said.

Albright, who is featured prominently in the film, said she wrote a letter to Disney chief Robert A. Iger, complaining that she had been told by people who had seen the film that it “depicts scenes that never happened, events that never took place, decisions that were never made and conversations that never occurred.”

“It asserts as fact things that are not fact,” she reportedly wrote.

Albright specifically objected to a scene that showed her insisting on warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, and that she was the one who made the warning.

"The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory," she said.

In a statement released late Thursday, ABC said, "No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible."

"For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression," ABC said in its statement. "We hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it."

The miniseries is drawn from interviews and documents including the report of the Sept. 11 commission. ABC has described it as a "dramatization" as opposed to a documentary.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," Lindsey wrote.

Lindsey's accused ABC of "bias" and "fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans."

Lindsey and Douglas Band, a top lawyer in Clinton's office, objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested that Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.

"While ABC is promoting "The Path to 9/11" as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said. "Given your stated obligation to 'get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film," they said.

ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan defended the miniseries as a "dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews."

"Many of the people who have expressed opinions about the film have yet to see it in its entirety or in its final broadcast form, " Hogan said. "We hope the viewers will watch the entire broadcast before forming their own opinion."

The letters also pointed to a fictional CIA character in the series, "Kirk," played by actor Donnie Wahlberg, and how he is ordered to abort a mission to kill bin Laden. Berger complained that "no such episode ever occurred — nor did anything like it."

"The fabrication of this scene (of such apparent magnitude) cannot be justified under any reasonable definition of dramatic license," Berger wrote.

The series reportedly cost about $40 million to produce, and is to be aired both nights without commercials as a public service.

This is not the first time political pressure has been exerted against a TV film. CBS dropped a four-hour miniseries about the Reagans in 2003, after Republican and conservative groups complained about its portrayal of the former president and first lady. “The Reagans” later aired on cable's Showtime channel.

The TV Watch

Laying Blame and Passing the Buck, Dramatized
Peter Stranks/ABC
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: September 8, 2006

The first words spoken on “The Path to 9/11” are at check-in at Logan Airport at 7:13 a.m. “O.K., Mr. Atta,” an American Airlines agent says over the clickety-clack of computer keys. “One way, nonstop to Los Angeles, no return.”

Moments before American Airlines Flight 11 hits its target, ABC’s mini-series pivots back 8½ years to a Ryder rental van that blew up in the parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993.

And the events leading up to disaster unfold like a spy thriller. The two-part narrative, which ABC is scheduled to broadcast Sunday and Monday night, follows a few men and women who took the Osama bin Laden threat seriously and devoted their careers to battling it. Many are real, like the former F.B.I. counterterrorism expert John P. O’Neill, who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is played by Harvey Keitel. A few are composites, like an intrepid C.I.A. officer with the code name Kirk (Donnie Wahlberg).

The terrorists are ruthless and implacable. Some foreign informants and obscure civil servants turn out to be inspiringly tough-minded and smart: low profiles in courage. But “The Path to 9/11” is an unsparing, and at times hyperbolic, portrait of bureaucratic turf wars, buck passing and complacency. Senior managers at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. are overwhelmed and quicker to protect their own hides than national security. It’s always the enemy within that nettles the most.

ABC has been under assault by bloggers and former officials who claim the film paints an unfairly censorious portrait of the Clinton administration, with a lobbying campaign reminiscent of the one that drove CBS to cancel “The Reagans” biopic in 2003. (CBS’s parent company, Viacom, kicked it to the cable channel Showtime.) Some kind of reaction was inevitable this time.

All mini-series Photoshop the facts. “The Path to 9/11” is not a documentary, or even a docu-drama; it is a fictionalized account of what took place. It relies on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the King James version of all Sept. 11 accounts, as well as other material and memoirs. Some scenes come straight from the writers’ imaginations. Yet any depiction of those times would have to focus on those who were in charge, and by their own accounts mistakes were made.

The first bombing of the World Trade Center happened on Bill Clinton’s watch. So did the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. The president’s staff — and the civil servants who worked for them — witnessed the danger of Al Qaeda close up and personally. Some even lost their lives.

In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal. It’s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student’s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better. (It’s safe to assume that any future mini-series about American foreign policy will not delve flatteringly into Mr. Bush’s march to war in Iraq.)

The outside pressure was intense enough to persuade ABC to re-edit one of the more contested made-up scenes in the film. In the version sent to critics, it depicted C.I.A. operatives and their Afghan allies armed with guns and night-vision goggles creeping in the dark to snatch Mr. bin Laden from his compound in 1998. The men are told to stand by, in harm’s way, as the C.I.A. director, George J. Tenet and the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, cavil by videoconference. Rather than take a firm decision, Mr. Berger flips off his videophone, and Mr. Tenet aborts the mission. (Among other things, ABC agreed to excise Mr. Berger’s hissy fit.)

In reality the C.I.A. got close, but never that close. In May 1998 Mr. Tenet scrapped a heavily rehearsed raid to kidnap Mr. bin Laden from his compound before it was mounted. “No capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation,” the Sept. 11 commission report said. “Working-level C.I.A. officers were disappointed.”

The international manhunt for the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Yousef, is thrilling, but those early successes, led by local F.B.I. agents, district attorneys and the New York Police Department, also fed public complacency. It was easy for people to dismiss the terrorist threat as real but manageable.

“We’re not safe yet,” Mr. O’Neill laments after he has been sidelined at the bureau by rivals. “And nobody seems to care.”

Lingering serenity collapses in the second part, which opens once again with ominous fragments of Sept. 11: military pilots ordered to scramble — “Is this real world or exercise?” — and a flight attendant on Flight 11 shakily saying over a plane phone, “We’re flying way too low.”

As the terrorist threat mounts, one of the more jarring moments is a real-life clip of President Bill Clinton addressing the nation about Monica Lewinsky.

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that the sex scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat. But in hindsight, surely the right-wing groups who drove for impeachment must look back at their partisan obsession with shame, like widows sickened by the memory of spats about dirty dishes and gambling debts.

The inserted news clips of Mr. Bush are not exactly inspiring. He is shown sweaty and dismissive in jogging shorts, dodging questions about tax cuts. Condoleezza Rice — who is impersonated by Penny Johnson Jerald, who played the conniving wife of David Palmer in “24” — cannot be too thrilled with her moment on screen either. She humors, but does not heed, the counter-terrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke; actually she demotes him.

Madeleine K. Albright has also objected to her portrayal, and Mr. Clarke, who is the Cassandra of Al Qaeda and one of the film’s heroes, has complained about factual distortions.

But there is no dispute that in 2000, the destroyer Cole was attacked, Washington dithered and Mr. bin Laden’s men kept burrowing deeper and deeper into their plot to attack America on its own soil. The film ends where it began, only the morning of Sept. 11 is finally shown, with slow, elegiac music, in its full horror.

Dramatic license was certainly taken, but blame is spread pretty evenly across the board. It’s not the inaccuracies of “The Path to 9/11” that make ABC’s mini-series so upsetting. It’s the situation on the ground in Afghanistan now.

The television movie about the rise of Al Qaeda comes at a time when the Taliban is flaunting a resurgence in Afghanistan. Sept. 11 drove the United States to clean out that terrorist hole-in-the-wall, once and for all. After all the lessons learned from Sept. 11, the Taliban is back and growing stronger while the American military there seems as bogged down as it is in Iraq, powerless to check the spiraling violence.

Hindsight is heartbreaking and disturbing to watch, even in a made-for-television movie. But it’s even harder to take when those steps continue to contaminate the present.

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Note: 'The Path to 9/11'
ABC, Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central.
Directed by David L. Cunningham; written by Cyrus Nowrasteh; Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Nowrasteh and Hans Proppe, producers; Marc Platt, executive producer. Produced by UHP Productions and distributed by Touchstone Television.

WITH: Harvey Keitel (John P. O’Neill), Stephen Root (Richard A. Clarke), Donnie Wahlberg (Kirk), Barclay Hope (John Miller), Patricia Heaton (Ambassador Bodine), Shaun Toub (Emad Salem), Amy Madigan (Patricia Carver), Dan Lauria (George J. Tenet), Penny Johnson Jerald (Condoleezza Rice), Shirley Douglas (Madeleine K. Albright) and Nabil Elouahabi (Ramzi Yousef).

Families of 9/11 Respond to ABC Docudrama: "The Path to 9/11"

September 7, 2006
Statement of Families of September 11:

"As we mark five years since 9/11, we are inundated with the media’s portrayal of that tragic day. Television miniseries, Hollywood films, comic books and countless “documentaries” are dramatizing and sometimes distorting the events leading up to and happening on 9/11.

Families of September 11 believes the best way to honor those who were lost is to make sure that what happened to them never happens again. As such, we must understand exactly what took place, and not allow “entertainers” to promote misleading or incorrect information as fact to the public.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Any depiction of 9/11 that is not accurate and factual propagates myths, myths that may cause us future harm. In order to make our country safer and more secure, we owe it to those who were lost to acknowledge that which took place, so that we can ensure it never happens again."

Note: Families of September 11, Inc. (FOS11) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the interests of 9/11 victims and their families and advocating for public policies that respond to terrorism. The organization has more than 2,200 members worldwide representing over 1,600 family members and 500 concerned citizens, survivors, and witnesses of the attacks interested in advancing FOS11's goals.

SMALLER GOVERNMENT, HIGHER TAXES.

Posted by Ezra Klein on August 30, 2006 12:47 PM @ http://www.prospect.org

"Occasionally, you see arguments over whether the conservative movement sees smaller government as an end or a means, that is, whether they support the privatization of public services only when it results in cheaper and more efficient outcomes or whether they'll allow greater expense and inefficiency in order to satisfy an ideological distaste for government. Over at the IRS, we're seeing evidence for the latter:

Unless Congress steps in to stop it, the IRS is set to begin implementing a wildly inefficient plan to outsource the collection of past-due taxes from those who owe $25,000 or less. IRS employees could collect these taxes for about three cents on the dollar, comparable to other federal programs' collection costs. But Congress has not allowed the IRS, which is eliminating some of its most efficient enforcement staff, to hire the personnel it would need to do the job. Instead, the agency has signed contracts with private debt collectors allowing them to keep about 23% of every taxpayer dollar they retrieve. Employing these firms is almost eight times more expensive than relying on the IRS, but, according to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, it fits in with the Bush administration's efforts to reduce the size of government.

Over 10 years, the companies hired are projected to collect overdue taxes totaling $1.4 billion, $330 million of which the companies keep as fees. According to the IRS' own estimates, over those same 10 years, the agency could collect $87 billion in unpaid taxes at a cost of just under $300 million — if allowed to hire sufficient personnel. In total, utilizing the private sector instead of augmenting IRS personnel would leave in the hands of delinquent taxpayers more than $85 billion owed to the federal government.

This is really a rather important test case: I've no particular investment in whether IRS employees or outside firms conduct tax enforcement. I would, however, like to save money and collect taxes. Similarly, I'd happily support a health care system expanding private options and offering vouchers for private insurance, if I'd seen any evidence that such a structure would offer cheaper or better care. The problem is there are too many examples of conservatives outsourcing government functions simply because they loathe government, and seeking ways to rationalize or justify the added expense and inconvenience because they're unwilling to deviate from the ultimate goal of a reduced public sector. The changes underway at the IRS are merely one example.

Pay close attention, also, to the news that Congress simply won't appropriate the funds to fully staff the IRS. We're seeing this at the Patent Office, the FDA, and a variety of other government agencies as well. The right refuses to allocate the necessary money for them to function properly, and then points to the inevitable mistakes or inconveniences of an understaffed, underfunded department as proof that their duties should be handed over to the private sector."

Some thoughts on ABC's Special: "The Path to 9/11"

Note: There is considerable chatter going on in the blogsphere about the ABC special 9/11 program entitled: "The Path to 9/11 ", which is scheduled to air shortly.

One of the first thoughts I have is a survey of the timeline: ie, G.W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States in Jan 2001. Eight months later, on August 6th, 2001 he received information in his daily briefing that 'Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States'.

The daily briefing stated Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers were already in America. There were reports from the CIA that they had received information in the UAE that an attack was eminent. Bin Laden had already stated his desire to hijack an airliner to obtain the release of Sheik Rahman, had already stated his hatred of the Jews, and had already assisted in the bomb plot against the WTC in 1997.

Also, the FBI had been informed by at least three different parties beginning in the Fall of 2000 that an inordinate number of suspicious Arabs were taking flight training.

The FBI also had an Al Qaeda trainee in custody in the Spring of 2000 who provided testimony that he had been in Pakistan training for a terrorst episode on an airliner, whose training had striking similarities with the methods used by the 9/11 hijackers.

So what did Pres. G.W. Bush do in August 2001? He went on a month-long vacation to his ranch in Texas.

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Richard Clarke Blasts Key Scene In ABC’s 9/11 Docudrama

On September 10 and 11, ABC is planning to air a “docudrama” called Path to 9/11, billed by writer Cyrus Nowrasteh as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”

The first night of Path to 9/11 has a dramatic scene where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded. Rush Limbaugh, who refers to Nowrasteh as “a friend of mine,” reviews the action:

So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.

So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”

Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

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Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 30 August 2006

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is less than two weeks away, but the avalanche has already begun. Oliver Stone's film "World Trade Center" has been advertised in all corners and is being screened across the nation. CNN has announced that it intends, on the 11th, to rebroadcast all of the coverage of the attacks from 8:30 a.m. until midnight. If you don't have cable, they say, you can watch it for free on the CNN web site.

ABC intends to mark the occasion in far more grand a fashion. Starting September 10th and ending September 11th, the network will show a miniseries titled "The Path to 9/11." According to reports from early screenings, the writer/producer of the miniseries, Cyrus Nowrasteh, has crafted a television polemic intended to blame the entire event on President Clinton.

Nowrasteh, an outspoken conservative of Persian descent whose family fled Iran after the fall of the Shah, spoke last year at the Liberty Film Festival, described by its founders as Hollywood's first conservative film festival. Govindini Murty, actress, writer, and co-director of the Liberty Film Festival, wrote a review of "The Path to 9/11" for the right-wing online news page FrontPageMag.com.

In the review, Murty states, "'The Path to 9/11' is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible. This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama bin Laden."

FrontPageMag, it should be noted, held a symposium back in May to argue that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which were never found despite being the main reason for invasion, were actually spirited out of Iraq by Russia on the eve of the 2003 attack. So it goes.

Leaving aside the wretched truth that the far right is once again using September 11 to score political points, the facts regarding the still-lingering effort to blame the Clinton administration for the attacks must be brought to the fore. Nowrasteh, at several points in his miniseries, rolls out a number of oft-debunked allegations that Clinton allowed Osama bin Laden to remain alive and free before the attacks.

Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the period 1999-2001, responded to these allegations in an article for the Washington Times in 2003. "Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda," wrote Cressy. "As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden. The current administration faces many of the same challenges. Confusing the American people with misinformation and distortions will not generate the support we need to come together as a nation and defeat our terrorist enemies."

Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton's 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion. The following is a partial list of the initiatives offered by the Clinton anti-terrorism bill:

* Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 million
* Screen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 million
* Passenger Profiling: $10 million
* Screener Training: $5.3 million
* Screen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 million
* Deploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4
million
* Provide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 million
* Explosives Detection Training: $1.8 million
* Augment FAA Security Research: $20 million
* Customs Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 million
* Anti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 million
* Capacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 million
* Improve Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 million
* Critical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 million
* Additional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 million
* Firefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 million
* Public Building and Museum Security: $7.3 million
* Improve Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 million
* Critical Incident Response Facility: $2 million
* Counter-Terrorism Fund: $35 million
* Explosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 million
* Office of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million

The Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence community itself. Within the National Security Council, "threat meetings" were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure.

Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.

In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.

Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them "totalitarian."

In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.

Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al-Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed, and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement.

According to Time magazine, in an article entitled "Banking on Secrecy" published in October of 2001, Bush economic advisors Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard were urged by think tanks like the Center for Freedom and Prosperity to opt out of the coalition Clinton had formed. The conservative Heritage Foundation lobbied Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, to do the same.

In the end, the lobbyists got what they wanted, and the Bush administration pulled out of the plan. The Time article stated, "Without the world's financial superpower, the biggest effort in years to rid the world's financial system of dirty money was short-circuited."

ABC's miniseries skates right over this, and likewise refuses to address the myriad ways in which the Bush administration failed completely to defend this nation from attack. All the efforts put forth by the Clinton administration were cast aside when Bush took office, simply because they wanted nothing to do with the outgoing government. Condoleezza Rice, by her own admission, did not even bother to look at the massive compendium of al-Qaeda data compiled by Sandy Berger until the morning of September 11.

After the attacks, virtually every member of the Bush administration put forth the talking point that, "No one could have anticipated anyone using airplanes as bombs." The facts tell a different story.

In 1993, a $150,000 study was undertaken by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of airplanes being used as bombs. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee invaded the cockpit of a DC10 with the intention of crashing it into a company building. Again in 1994, a pilot crashed a small airplane into a tree on the White House grounds, narrowly missing the building itself. Also in 1994, an Air France flight was hijacked by members of a terrorist organization called the Armed Islamic Group, who intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower.

The 1993 Pentagon report was followed up in September 1999 by a report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism." This report was prepared for the American intelligence community by the Federal Research Division, an adjunct of the Library of Congress. The report stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaida's martyrdom battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."

Ramzi Yousef was one of the planners and participants in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Yousef's right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, was captured and interrogated in 1995. During that interrogation, Murad described a detailed plot to hijack airplanes and use them as weapons of terrorism. The primary plan was to commandeer eleven commercial planes and blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. The secondary plan was to hijack several planes, which would be flown into CIA headquarters, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower, the White House and a variety of other targets.

Ramzi Yousef eluded capture until his final apprehension in Pakistan. During his 1997 trial, the plot described by Murad resurfaced. FBI agents testified in the Yousef trial that, "The plan targeted not only the CIA, but other U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon."

Abdul Hakim Murad described plans to use hijacked commercial airplanes as weapons in 1995. Ramzi Yousef's trial further exposed the existence of these plans in 1997. Two reports prepared by the American government, one from 1993 and another from 1999, further detailed again the existence and danger of these plots. The Federal Express employee's hijacking attempt in 1994, the attempted airplane attack on the White House in 1994, and the hijacking of the Air France flight in 1994 by terrorists intending to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower provided a glaring underscore to the data.

This data served to underscore the efforts made by the Clinton administration to combat international terrorism and attacks against the United States. Unfortunately, the data and the work that inspired it was not followed up on.

A mission statement from the internal FBI Strategic Plan, dated 5/8/98, describes the FBI's Tier One priority as 'counterterrorism.' The FBI, under the Clinton administration, was making counterterrorism its highest priority. The official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Janet Reno to department heads, dated 4/6/2000, detailed how counterterrorism was her top priority for the Department of Justice. In the second paragraph, she states, "In the near term as well as the future, cybercrime and counterterrorism are going to be the most challenging threats in the criminal justice area. Nowhere is the need for an up-to-date human and technical infrastructure more critical."

Contrast this with the official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General John Ashcroft, dated 5/10/2001. Out of seven strategic goals described, not one mentions counterterrorism. An internal draft of the Department of Justice's plans to revamp the official DoJ Strategic Plan, dated 8/9/2001, describes Ashcroft's new priorities. The areas Ashcroft wished to focus on were highlighted in yellow. Specifically highlighted by Ashcroft were domestic violent crime and drug trafficking prevention. Item 1.3, entitled "Combat terrorist activities by developing maximum intelligence and investigative capability," was not highlighted.

There is the internal FBI budget request for 2003 to the Department of Justice, dated late August 2001. This was not the FBI's total budget request, but was instead restricted only to the areas where the FBI specifically requested increases over the previous year's budget. In this request, the FBI specifically asked for, among other things, 54 translators to transcribe the backlog of intelligence gathered, 248 counterterrorism agents and support staff, and 200 professional intelligence researchers. The FBI had repeatedly stated that it had a serious backlog of intelligence data it has gathered, but could not process the data because it did not have the staff to analyze or translate it into usable information. Again, this was August 2001.

The official Department of Justice budget request from Attorney General Ashcroft to OMB Director Mitch Daniels is dated September 10, 2001. This document specifically highlights only the programs slated for above-baseline increases or below-baseline cuts. Ashcroft outlined the programs he was trying to cut. Specifically, Ashcroft was planning to ignore the FBI's specific requests for more translators, counterintelligence agents and researchers. It additionally shows Ashcroft was trying to cut funding for counterterrorism efforts, grants and other homeland defense programs before the 9/11 attacks.

Along with these new priorities, which demoted terrorism significantly, there were the warnings delivered to the Bush administration about potential attacks against the United States. Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the months before September 11th a blizzard of warnings delivered to the Bush administration from a number of allies.

The German intelligence service, BND, warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar plot to use airplanes to attack Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa in June of 2001. This warning was taken so seriously that anti-aircraft missiles were deployed around Columbus Airport in Italy.

In August of 2001, Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered "in the strongest possible terms," specifically regarding threats to airports and government buildings.

In that same month, the Israeli security agency Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and the CIA that up to 200 bin Laden followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable targets. The Los Angeles Times later confirmed via unnamed US officials that the Mossad warnings had been received.

On August 6, 2001, George W. Bush received his Presidential Daily Briefing. The briefing described active plots to attack the United States by Osama bin Laden. The word "hijacking" appeared in that briefing. Bush reacted to this warning by continuing with his month-long vacation in Texas.

Richard Clarke, former Director of Counter-Terrorism for the National Security Council, has worked on the terrorist threat for the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. administrations, amassing a peerless resume in the field. He became a central figure in the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. Clarke has laid bare an ugly truth: The administration of George W. Bush did not consider terrorism or the threat of al-Qaeda to be a priority prior to the attacks.

Clarke, along with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who as a member of the National Security Council was privy to military strategy meetings, indicated that the Bush administration was obsessed with an invasion of Iraq from the day it arrived in Washington. This obsession continued even after the attacks, despite the fact that the entire intelligence community flatly declared that Iraq was not involved.

Five years later, the questions surrounding what exactly happened on September 11, and why they were allowed to happen, remain unsettled. A recent national poll conducted by Scripps Howard/Ohio University states that more than one third of Americans believe that Bush's government either actively assisted in the 9/11 attacks, or allowed them to happen so as to create a justification for war in the Middle East.

The New York Post, reporting on this poll, stated, "Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they've become angrier with the federal government than they used to be."

"Thirty-six percent of respondents overall," continued the Post, "said it is 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them 'because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.' 'One out of three sounds high, but that may very well be right,' said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also called the 9/11 Commission). His Congressionally-appointed investigation concluded that federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al-Qaeda five years ago. 'A lot of people I've encountered believe the U.S. government was involved," Hamilton said. 'Many say the government planned the whole thing.'"

The passage of time will, in all likelihood, finally expose the truth behind exactly what happened on September 11, and why. Until the moment of final revelation comes, however, we are all best served by a systematic analysis of the facts surrounding that dark day. Efforts such as this ABC miniseries to use 9/11 as a partisan club should be shunned, and hard data should be highlighted instead.

Back in 2003, CBS was forced to pull its miniseries "The Reagans," after conservative groups lambasted the network for crossing the line into advocacy against the Reagan administration. A similar effort should perhaps be undertaken to compel ABC to pull "The Path to 9/11." At no time should a conservative producer with an anti-Clinton axe to grind be allowed to use public airwaves to broadcast a rank distortion of the truth, especially on the anniversary of the worst day in our history.

"Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?"

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 05 September 2006

It is to our deep national shame-and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret - that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies - or even question their effectiveness or execution - to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 - without ever actually saying so - the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."

Make no mistake here - the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the "media."

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word - "media" - the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President's re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

"In the 1920's a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews," President Bush said today, "the world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price."

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek - a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

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Note: The last line, in the Fifties HUAC Committee spoken by Mr. Welch to Sen. McCarthy is not directly to the point of Mr. Olbermann's piece since Sen. McCarthy had smeared the reputation of one of the lawyers on Mr. Welch's staff. The Bush Administration misuse of a juxtaposition of Osama Bin Laden to the Nazi Regime is full of logical fallacies including the "Undistributed Middle":where two separate entities are said to be connected because they share a common property; and argumentum ad baculum where the listener is told that unpleasant consequences will follow if they do not agree with the speaker.

There are more similarities between a frog and a fish than between Osama and Hitler. Attempting to link them, even on the basis of "appeasement" is ludicrious. The Bush Administration cannot explain, defend, cajole, or convince an audience with logically precise statements...so it's left with the whole grab-bag of propaganda efforts that can no longer carry the day, even among those who drank the cool-aid.

Fool me twice...

The Essential Krugman: Compensation Statistics: A Note From Paul Krugman

"Are wages really surging? ...Today (Wednesday, Sept. 6) the Labor Department released revised estimates on compensation. And these numbers seem to show a wage explosion: the rate of increase in unit labor minus productivity growth is at its highest level in 16 years.

So, are workers making out like bandits? Don't be surprised if you start seeing opinion pieces claiming that they are.

But here's the thing: We have evidence from three different sources that tells a very different story. First, wages of non-supervisory workers, as measured by the Employment Survey, a survey of employers, are lagging slightly behind inflation. Second, median weekly wages, as measured by the Household Survey, a survey of (duh!) households, are lagging well behind inflation. Third, profits ... are growing much faster than G.D.P., which has to mean that labor costs are growing slowly.

Oh, and one more piece of evidence: polls showing that people are unhappy with the state of the economy suggest that most people can't be seeing big wage gains.

So what's going on? The best guess is that something is wrong with the numbers. Dean Baker ... suggests that some capital gains, such as income from cashing in stock options, may be erroneously showing up as wage income.

The moral of the story? Beware: Interpreting economic data can sometimes be tricky. Above all, don't believe what a number seems to say if it conflicts with all of your other information.

An Honest Government, A Hopeful Future

Monday, August 28, 2006
University of Nairobi
Nairobi, Kenya
Speech by Sen. Barak Obama

...The history of Africa is a history of ancient kingdoms and great traditions; the story of people fighting to be free from colonial rule; the heroism of not only of great men like Nkrumah and Kenyatta and Mandela, but also ordinary people who endured great hardship, from Ghana to South Africa, to secure self-determination in the face of great odds.

But for all the progress that has been made, we must surely acknowledge that neither Kenya nor the African continent have yet fulfilled their potential - that the hopefulness of the post-colonial era has been replaced by cynicism and sometimes despair, and that true freedom has not yet been won for those struggling to live on less than a few shillings a day, for those who have fallen prey to HIV/AIDS or malaria, to those ordinary citizens who continue to find themselves trapped in the crossfire of war or ethnic conflict.

One statistic powerfully describes this unfulfilled promise. In early 1960's, as Kenya was gaining its independence, its gross national product was not very different from that of South Korea. Today, South Korea's economy is forty times larger than Kenya's.

How can we explain this fact? Certainly it is not due to lack of effort on the part of ordinary Kenyans - we know how hard Kenyans are willing to work, the tremendous sacrifices that Kenyan mothers make for their children, the Herculean efforts that Kenyan fathers make for their families. We know as well the talent, the intelligence, and the creativity that exists in this country. And we know how much this land is blessed - just as the entire African continent is blessed - with great gifts and riches.

So what explains this? I believe there a number of factors at work.

Kenya, like many African nations did not come of age under the best historical circumstances. It suffers from the legacy of colonialism, of national boundaries that were drawn without regard to the political and tribal alignments of indigenous peoples, and that therefore fed conflict and tribal strife.

Kenya was also forced to rapidly move from a highly agrarian to a more urban, industrialized nation. This means that the education and health care systems - issues that my own nation more than 200 years old still struggles with - lag behind, impacting its development.

Third, Kenya is hurt from factors unique to Africa's geography and place in the world -- disease, distance from viable markets and especially terms of trade. When African nations were just gaining independence, industrialized nations had decades of experience building their domestic economies and navigating the international financial system. And, as Frederick Douglass once stated: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." As a result, many African nations have been asked to liberalize their markets without reciprocal concessions from mature economies. This lack of access for Africa's agriculture and commodities has restricted an important engine of economic growth. Other issues, such as resource extraction and the drain of human capital have also been major factors.

As a Senator from the United States, I believe that my country, and other nations, have an obligation and self-interest in being full partners with Kenya and with Africa. And, I will do my part to shape an intelligent foreign policy that promotes peace and prosperity. A foreign policy that gives hope and opportunity to the people of this great continent.

But, Kenya must do its part. It cannot wait for other nations to act first. The hard truth is that nations, by and large, will act in their self-interest and if Kenya does not act, it will fall behind.

It's more than just history and outside influences that explain why Kenya lags behind. Like many nations across this continent, where Kenya is failing is in its ability to create a government that is transparent and accountable. One that serves its people and is free from corruption.

There is no doubt that what Kenyans have accomplished with this independence is both impressive and inspiring. Among African nations, Kenya remains a model for representative democracy - a place where many different ethnic factions have found a way to live and work together in peace and stability. You enjoy a robust civil society; a press that's free, fair, and honest; and a strong partnership with my own country that has resulted in critical cooperation on terrorist issues, real strides in fighting disease and poverty, and an important alliance on fostering regional stability.

And yet, the reason I speak of the freedom that you fought so hard to win is because today that freedom is in jeopardy. It is being threatened by corruption.

Corruption is not a new problem. It's not just a Kenyan problem, or an African problem. It's a human problem, and it has existed in some form in almost every society. My own city of Chicago has been the home of some of the most corrupt local politics in American history, from patronage machines to questionable elections. In just the last year, our own U.S. Congress has seen a representative resign after taking bribes, and several others fall under investigation for using their public office for private gain.

But while corruption is a problem we all share, here in Kenya it is a crisis - a crisis that's robbing an honest people of the opportunities they have fought for - the opportunity they deserve.

I know that while recent reports have pointed to strong economic growth in this country, 56% of Kenyans still live in poverty. And I know that the vast majority of people in this country desperately want to change this.

It is painfully obvious that corruption stifles development - it siphons off scarce resources that could improve infrastructure, bolster education systems, and strengthen public health. It stacks the deck so high against entrepreneurs that they cannot get their job-creating ideas off the ground. In fact, one recent survey showed that corruption in Kenya costs local firms 6% of their revenues, the difference between good-paying jobs in Kenya or somewhere else. And corruption also erodes the state from the inside out, sickening the justice system until there is no justice to be found, poisoning the police forces until their presence becomes a source of insecurity rather than comfort.

Corruption has a way of magnifying the very worst twists of fate. It makes it impossible to respond effectively to crises -- whether it's the HIV/AIDS pandemic or malaria or crippling drought.

What's worse - corruption can also provide opportunities for those who would harness the fear and hatred of others to their agenda and ambitions.

It can shield a war criminal - even one like Felicien Kabuga, suspected of helping to finance and orchestrate the Rwandan genocide - by allowing him to purchase safe haven for a time and robbing all humanity of the opportunity to bring the criminal to justice.

Terrorist attacks - like those that have shed Kenyan blood and struck at the heart of the Kenyan economy - are facilitated by customs and border officers who can be paid off, by police forces so crippled by corruption that they do not protect the personal safety of Kenyans walking the streets of Nairobi, and by forged documents that are easy to find in a climate where graft and fraud thrive.

Some of the worst actors on the international stage can also take advantage of the collective exhaustion and outrage that people feel with official corruption, as we've seen with Islamic extremists who promise purification, but deliver totalitarianism. Endemic corruption opens the door to this kind of movement, and in its wake comes a new set of distortions and betrayals of public trust.

In the end, if the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost. And this is why the struggle against corruption is one of the great struggles of our time.

The good news is that there are already signs of progress here. Willingness to report corruption is increasingly significantly in Kenya. The Kenyan media has been courageous in uncovering and reporting on some of the most blatant abuses of the system, and there has been a growing recognition among people and politicians that this is a critical issue.

Among other things, this recognition resulted in the coalition that came to power in the December elections of 2002. This coalition succeeded by promising change, and their early gestures - the dismissal of the shaky judges, the renewed vigor of the investigation into the Goldenberg scandal, the calls for real disclosure of elected officials' personal wealth - were all promising.

But elections are not enough. In a true democracy, it is what happens between elections that is the true measure of how a government treats its people.

Today, we're starting to see that the Kenyan people want more than a simple changing of the guard, more than piecemeal reforms to a crisis that's crippling their country. The Kenyan people are crying out for real change, and whether one voted orange or banana in last year's referendum, the message that many Kenyans seemed to be sending was one of dissatisfaction with the pace of reform, and real frustration with continued tolerance of corruption at high levels.

And so we know that there is more work to be done - more reforms to be made. I don't have all the solutions or think that they'll be easy, but there are a few places that a country truly committed to reform could start.

We know that the temptation to take a bribe is greater when you're not making enough on the job. And we also know that the more people there are on the government payroll, the more likely it is that someone will be encouraged to take a bribe. So if the government found ways to downsize the bureaucracy - to cut out the positions that aren't necessary or useful - it could use the extra money to increase the salary of other government officials.

Of course, the best way to reduce bureaucracy and increase pay is to create more private sector jobs. And the way to create good jobs is when the rules of a society are transparent - when there's a clear and advertised set of laws and regulations regarding how to start a business, what it takes to own property, how to go about getting a loan - there is less of a chance that some corrupt bureaucrat will make up his own rules that suit only his interests. Clarifying these rules and focusing resources on building a judicial system that can enforce them and resolve disputes should be a primary goal of any government suffering from corruption.

In addition, we know that the more information the public is provided, the easier it will be for your Kenyan brothers and sisters out in the villages to evaluate whether they are being treated fairly by their public servants or not. Wealth declarations do little good if no one can access them, and accountability in government spending is not possible if no one knows how much was available and allocated to a given project in the first place.

Finally, ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one's family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good. It stifles innovation and fractures the fabric of the society. Instead of opening businesses and engaging in commerce, people come to rely on patronage and payback as a means of advancing. Instead of unifying the country to move forward on solving problems, it divides neighbor from neighbor.

An accountable, transparent government can break this cycle. When people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country, people will work hard, and the entire economy will grow - everyone will benefit and more resources will be available for all, not just select groups.

Of course, in the end, one of the strongest weapons your country has against corruption is the ability of you, the people, to stand up and speak out about the injustices you see. The Kenyan people are the ultimate guardians against abuses.

The world knows the names of Wangari Maathai and John Githongo, who are fighting against the insidious corruption that has weakened Kenya. But there are so many others, some of whom I'm meeting during my visit here - Betty Murungi, Ken Njau, Jane Onyango, Maina Kiai, Milly Odhiombo, and Hussein Khalid. As well as numerous Kenyan men and women who have refused to pay bribes to get civil servants to perform their duties; the auditors and inspectors general who have done the job before them accurately and fairly, regardless of where the facts have led; the journalists who asked questions and pushed for answers when it may have been more lucrative to look the other way, or whip up a convenient fiction. And then there are anonymous Kenyan whistleblowers who show us what is, so that we can all work together to demand what should be.

By rejecting the insulting idea that corruption is somehow a part of Kenyan culture, these heroes reveal the very opposite - they reveal a strength and integrity of character that can build a great country, a great future. By focusing on building strong, independent institutions - like an anti-corruption commission with real authority - rather than cults of personality, they make a contribution to their country that will last longer than their own lives. They fight the fight of our time.

Looking out at this crowd of young people, I have faith that you will fight this fight too.

You will decide if your leaders will be held accountable, or if you will look the other way.

You will decide if the standards and the rules will be the same for everyone - regardless of ethnicity or of wealth.

And you will determine the direction of this country in the 21st century - whether the hard work of the many is lost to the selfish desires of a few, or whether you build an open, honest, stronger Kenya where everyone rises together.

This is the Kenya that so many who came before you envisioned - all those men and women who struggled and sacrificed and fought for the freedom you enjoy today.

I know that honoring their memory and making that freedom real may seem like an impossible task - an effort bigger than you can imagine - but sometimes all it takes to move us there is doing what little you can to right the wrongs you see.

As I said at the outset, I did not know my father well - he returned to Kenya from America when I was still young. Since that time I have known him through stories - those my mother would tell and those I heard from my relatives here in Kenya on my last trip to this country.

I know from these stories that my father was not a perfect man - that he made his share of mistakes and disappointed his share of people in his lifetime.

As our parents' children, we have the opportunity to learn from these mistakes and disappointments. We have the opportunity to muster the courage to fulfill the promise of our forefathers and lead our great nations towards a better future.

In today's Kenya - a Kenya already more open and less repressive than in my father's day - it is that courage that will bring the reform so many of you so desperately want and deserve. I wish all of you luck in finding this courage in the days and months to come, and I want you to know that as your ally, your friend, and your brother, I will be there to help in any way I can. Thank you

The Essential Krugman: "Health Policy Malpractice "

The Essential Krugman: "Health Policy Malpractice"

by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Sept 5th, 2006

"Let me tell you about two government-financed health care programs. One, the Veterans Health Administration, is a stunning success — but the administration and Republicans in Congress refuse to build on that success, because it doesn’t fit their conservative agenda. The other, Medicare Advantage, is a clear failure, but it’s expanding rapidly thanks to large subsidies the administration rammed through Congress in 2003. ...

The key to the V.A.’s success is its long-term relationship with its clients: veterans, once in the V.A. system, normally stay in it for life. This means that the V.A. can ... make much better use of information technology than other health care providers. ... which reduces both costs and medical errors. The long-term relationship ... also lets the V.A. save money by investing heavily in preventive medicine, an area in which the private sector — which makes money by treating the sick, not by keeping people healthy — has shown little interest.

The result is a system that achieves higher customer satisfaction than the private sector, higher quality of care by a number of measures and lower mortality rates — at much lower cost per patient. Not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of veterans have switched from private physicians to the V.A. The commander of the American Legion has proposed letting elderly vets spend their Medicare benefits at V.A. facilities, which would lead to better medical care and large government savings.

Instead, the Bush administration has restricted access to the V.A. system, limiting it to poor vets or those with service-related injuries. And as for allowing elderly vets to get better, cheaper health care: “Conservatives,” writes Time, “fear such an arrangement would be a Trojan horse, setting up an even larger national health-care program and taking more business from the private sector.”

Think about that: they won’t let vets on Medicare buy into the V.A. system, not because they believe this policy initiative would fail, but because they’re afraid it would succeed.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is pursuing a failed idea from the 1990’s: channeling Medicare recipients into private H.M.O.’s. The theory was that H.M.O.’s, by bringing private-sector efficiency and the magic of the marketplace to health care, would be able to do what the V.A. has achieved in practice: provide better care at lower cost. But ... [y]ears of experience show that H.M.O.’s actually have substantially higher costs per patient than conventional Medicare...

In 2003, however, the Bush administration pushed through the Medicare Advantage program, which offers heavy subsidies to H.M.O.’s. According to the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, Medicare Advantage plans cost the government 11 percent more per person than traditional Medicare. Oh, and mortality rates in these plans are 40 percent higher than those of elderly veterans covered by the V.A. But thanks to the subsidy, membership in Medicare Advantage plans is surging.

On one side, then, the administration and its allies in Congress oppose expanding the best health care system in America, even though that expansion would save taxpayer dollars, because they’re afraid that allowing a successful government program to expand would undermine their antigovernment crusade and displease powerful business lobbies.

On the other side, ideology and fealty to interest groups make them willing to waste billions subsidizing private H.M.O.’s.

Remember that contrast the next time you hear some conservative going on about excessive spending on entitlements, and declaring that we need to cut back on Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

The Essential Krugman: "The Big Disconnect"

by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times, Aug. 31st, 2006:

"There are still some pundits out there lecturing people about how great the economy is. But most analysts seem to finally realize that Americans have good reasons to be unhappy with the state of the economy: although G.D.P. growth has been pretty good for the last few years, most workers have seen their wages lag behind inflation and their benefits deteriorate.

The disconnect between overall economic growth and the growing squeeze on many working Americans will probably play a big role this November, partly because President Bush seems so out of touch: the more he insists that it’s a great economy, the angrier voters seem to get. But the disconnect didn’t begin with Mr. Bush, and it won’t end with him, unless we have a major change in policies.

The stagnation of real wages ... goes back more than 30 years. The real wage of nonsupervisory workers reached a peak in the early 1970’s, at the end of the postwar boom. ... Meanwhile, the decline of employer benefits began in the Reagan years, although there was a temporary improvement during the Clinton-era boom. The most crucial benefit, employment-based health insurance, has been in rapid decline since 2000.

Ordinary American workers seem to understand the long-term disconnect between economic growth and their own fortunes better than most political analysts. Consider, for example, the results of a new poll of American workers by the Pew Research Center.

The center finds that workers perceive a long-term downward trend in their economic status. A majority say that it’s harder to earn a decent living than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and a plurality say that job benefits are worse too. ...

[W]orkers’ concern about worsening benefits is new. In 1997, a plurality of workers said that employment benefits were better than they used to be. That made sense... Workers felt, rightly, that benefits were pretty good by historical standards.

But now the health care crisis is back, both because medical costs are rising rapidly and because we’re living in an increasingly Wal-Martized economy, in which even big, highly profitable employers offer minimal benefits...

The latest Census report on incomes, poverty and health insurance, released this week, shows that in 2005, four years into the economic expansion, the percentage of Americans with private insurance of any kind reached its lowest level since 1987. And Americans feel, again correctly, that benefits are worse than they used to be.

Why have workers done so badly in a rich nation that keeps getting richer? That’s a matter of dispute, although I believe there’s a large political component: what we see today is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have systematically reduced workers’ bargaining power.

The important question now, however, is whether we’re finally going to try to do something about the big disconnect. Wages may be difficult to raise, but we won’t know until we try. And as for declining benefits — well, every other advanced country manages to provide everyone with health insurance, while spending less on health care than we do.

The big disconnect, in other words, provides as good an argument as you could possibly want for a smart, bold populism. All we need now are some smart, bold populist politicians."

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Comments in Reply:

PK Said Why have workers done so badly in a rich nation that keeps getting richer?

Because most people do not have the awareness that "it" can be better by design; do not fully understand that they are responsible for changing it (or culpable for NOT changing), and have been persuaded by demagogic interests - preying upon their ignorance - that their best interests are served by they, and the State, DOING NOTHING.

Having lived more than half my life abroad, I am always amazed that my even my post-grad educated siblings and parents, ostensibly well-informed (and reasonably well-travelled), are mostly clueless about what defines "the public interest" in social democracies elsewhere - be they Western Europe of Asia.

The communist bugaboo still seemingly haunts the spectre of almost anything that smacks of overt collective action, irrespective of how obvious the economic benefits and positive the social externalities may be, and that's even before considering how practically (and easily!) such social policies have been implemented elsewhere.

That globalization is exerting enormous dislocative stresses upon society and expectations is increasingly being understood. Yet America, rather than trying to soften the impacts of adjustment (which is not the same as trying to fight against globalization) through effective redistributive social policies (from Universal Single-payer Healthcare; income supplements to wage-workers/families; reliable pervasive public transport; universal availability of "free" childcare; general income social safety net), have instead chosen, by free-will, to widen disparities amplifying the stresses at precisely the time when "the people" are in need of greater stability.

Unfortunately for Krugman's "disconnect", it seems that only an immense social and economic crisis is capable of overcoming the ignorance, poor consumptive choices, ideological prejudices, greed, misinformation, and emphatic culture of individualism that currently stand between America and a viable, more equitable, working social democracy as experienced by all of our OECD peers.

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Overheard yesterday in the Oval Office

Rumsfeld: "Mr. President, OIF continues to be progressing according to our plan of bringing freedom, democracy, and security to the people of Iraq; however last night three Brazilians were killed in Bagdad."

Bush: "Ok, we have to expect mixed results; but please tell me Mr. Secretary, how many exactly is a bazillion?"

Security

From: Six Non-Lectures by e.e.cummings - 1953

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"As it was my miraculous fortune to have a true father and a true mother, and a home which the truth of their love made joyous, so - in reaching outward from this love and this joy - I was marvelously lucky to touch and seize a rising and striving world; a reckless world, filled with the curiosity of life herself; a vivid and violent world welcoming every challenge; a world worth hating and adoring and fighting and forgiving; in brief, a world which was a world.

This inwardly immortal world of my adolescence recoils to its very roots whenever, nowadays, I see people who've been endowed with legs crawling on their chins after quote security unquote. "Security?" I marvel to myself "what is that? Something negative, undead, suspicious and suspecting; an avarice and an avoidance; a self-surrendering meanness of withdrawal; a numerable complacency and an innumerable cowardice.

Who would be 'secure'? Every and any slave. No free spirit ever dreamed of 'security' - or, if he did, he laughed; and lived to shame his dream. No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for, 'security'.

How monstrous and how feeble seems some unworld which would rather have its tools than eat its cake."

He's not even making potentially reasonable statements any more

Pres. Bush's speech in Salt Lake City, Aug 31, 2006

"If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities," Pres. Bush said in Utah.

"The security of the civilised world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq".

Note: The comments come as more than 60 per cent of the US population is against the Iraq war, according to polls. Only about 33 per cent support Mr Bush's handling of the war, which has cost more than 2600 US lives and, along with operations in Afghanistan, more than $400 billion. The polls also indicate that a majority of Americans - 51 per cent, according to a CBS/New York Times poll - now believe the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the wider war on terror.

Do you have property in New Orleans?

August 29th, 2006 was the last day property owners in New Orleans were allowed to have non-remediated/repaired property due to damage from Katrina/Rita left alone. After that date, the city of New Orleans could declare the property a nuisance and act accordingly...by assessing fines to the owner, by razing of unsound buildings, or by outright seizure. Read more about it here from the official ordinance.

Labor's Pains

American Action Progress Report: Sept 1, 2006

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, one of the original founders of the American Federation of Labor, called Labor Day "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed." This Labor Day, U.S. workers have many grievances that deserve attention. The New York Times reported recently that the median real hourly wage for American workers has declined two percent since 2003, despite the fact that productivity has been steadily rising. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent. Among the reasons economists offer to explain this phenomenon are that workers' bargaining power is being slowly eroded and "trade unions are much weaker than they once were." The trends have left U.S. workers feeling bleak about the future. A poll of laborers conducted recently found that 63 percent of the workforce believes the country and the economy are on the wrong track; a majority now believe their children are going to be worse off economically than they are. The Progress Report details some of the problems facing today's workforce:



WORKING HARDER, EARNING LESS: "Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947." A majority of today's workers say the number one issue they face is that the wages they are paid are not keeping up with the cost of living. Aug. 20th marked 10 years since the last time the federal minimum wage has been raised. Frozen at an unlivable $5.15/hour, the minimum wage is at the lowest buying power it has been in 51 years. Workers earning above the minimum wage are struggling as well. According to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, "Real median earnings for men working full-time and year-round were lower in 2005 than in 1973. In inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars, a typical man working full-time in 1973 earned $42,573. Thirty-six years later, this figure has fallen to $41,386." Yet, productivity -- as President Bush likes to frequently point out -- remains high. "What jumps out at you is the gaping hole between productivity growth and earnings," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). People are "working harder and smarter but not really seeing remuneration that they ought to be seeing."
The wage crunch isn't affecting the entire labor force, however. The top one percent of earners -- including many corporate CEOs -- received 11.2 percent of all wage income in 2004, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than six percent three decades ago.



SICK ABOUT HEALTH CARE: According to new Census data released this week, the number of people living in the United States without medical insurance rose 2.9 percent -- 1.3 million people -- to a record 46.6 million over the last year alone as health-care costs climbed three times as fast as wages. The statistics indicate 6.8 million people have lost coverage since 2001, and this total has climbed every year since Bush has been in office. The Census Bureau also reports the percentage of uninsured children rose from 10.8 percent in 2004 to 11.2 percent in 2005 due to state budget struggles. This reverses a trend that started in 1998 of declining uninsured rates for children. "Due to the rising cost of health care and health-care insurance, you see a continued decline in workers accepting coverage when it's offered and employers offering it," said Emory University Professor Ken Thorpe. Indeed, three million people have lost employer-based insurance, while the rate of uninsured, full-time workers has increased by 13 percent since 2000. The bottom line is sadly simple: "
Uninsured workers can't afford to get sick." Ultimately, this is a moral question -- it is wrong for anyone who works hard and plays by the rules to go without health coverage. "People who don't have coverage, can't afford preventive care, and don't see a doctor until a disease has progressed often suffer needlessly, drive up the cost of care, and lower the nation's productivity."



ORGANIZED VOICES BEING REPRESSED: In a recent report on the boom in profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote plainly, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor's share of national income.” “If I had to sum it up,” said Bernstein,“it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.” Wal-Mart, America's largest employer and heralded as the corporate model for today's economy, has opposed every effort of its employees to form a union. (Ironically, Wal-Mart has given its approval to its China-based workers organize.) "According to Cornell labor relations professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, at least 5 percent of workers
involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees." Today's labor movement faces union-busting law firms and consulting agencies which are increasingly enlisted by union-wary employers to keep labor from organizing. Today, the vast majority of union members -- 84 percent -- live in only 12 states, leaving workers with little
organized power in much of the country. But despite internal struggles in the past, union leaders are now making moves to unite and mobilize workers around “pocketbook” issues.



NO FRIEND IN THE WHITE HOUSE: The Bush administration has consistently sent signals to the labor movement and the general workforce that they do not have an ally in the White House. In the wake of the Sago mine disaster that called attention to the administration's lack of safety enforcement, President Bush nominated Richard Stickler, a coal industry executive who managed coal mines with injuries that were double the national average, to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). When the Senate blocked the nomination, Stickler was hired by MSHA as a "consultant" to advise the agency on mine safety issues. Just yesterday, Bush announced he would recess-appoint Paul DeCamp, a former lawyer for Wal-Mart "with a long paper trail outlining his opposition to the Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA's) overtime pay and other provisions, to run the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD)." Also, labor leaders are concerned that the National Labor Relations Board -- composed of five Bush appointees -- is weighing a series of cases that "could make it easier for companies to declare certain workers supervisors and thus ineligible for union membership." Union activists fear that employees who could possibly be reclassified as "supervisors" -- such as nurses and teachers -- would be forced to do so by employers trying to prevent the formation of unions. Business groups are pushing for such authority, arguing as Elizabeth Gaudio with the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation did, that the "bottom line" is to be profitable.

The Militarization of the American Language

By Vicki Gray
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 30 August 2006

"Once was a time when we used to joke that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. You musicians get the point. Trouble is, military justice is no longer a joking matter. And we have moved apace in other regards. Now we must add: military language is to language as ... well ... Orwellian "newspeak" is to reality. And unfortunately for those in the "reality-based community," military newspeak has replaced standard American English as the lingua franca of the United States, thanks to the spinmeisters in the White House and a pusillanimous press corps eager to lap up whatever Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and Ken Mehlman feed them.

What is military newspeak? It is a mumbling, numbing speech by an Al Haig or a George W. Bush. More subtly, it is a TV ad by Boeing - soft music and soothing voices over images of bombers gliding noiselessly through the clouds. Their mission? To defend our freedoms. How? We don't need to ask. We know. They will soon be dropping bunker busters on un-shown apartment blocks, producing ... well ... "collateral damage" - all off-screen of course. Military newspeak is, in short, a mèlange of obfuscating euphemisms designed to hide the truth, desensitize our sense of morality, and re-image reality. Like that Boeing ad, it can manifest itself in non-verbal, sometimes subliminal, forms such as that little American flag that keeps flapping in the upper left hand corner of the Fox News screen or the steady drum beat (literally) that opens each CNN newscast, virtually shouting "War, War, War! Terror, Terror, Terror! Fear! Fear! Fear!" It's all designed to jangle your nerves, disorient you, instill fear ... and conflate fear with patriotism.

One danger of military newspeak is that it conditions the mental muscles in much the same way that video games do - to react instinctively, violently to perceived threats. Enemies are not to be understood or reasoned with. They are to be bombed - killed - as quickly as possible. No questions, no regrets. The worst danger of all, however, is how it creates obstacles to clear thinking. For clear thinking - critical thinking - is necessary to a well-functioning democracy. And, in the current circumstance, our democracy is crumbling under the weight of military newspeak just as surely as Lebanese democracy has been battered by American-made bombs. Our capacity to resist has been dangerously eroded by the rapidity and thoroughness with which the militarization of the American language has proceeded, and there is no Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite out there to shout "Wake up, America! Before, it's too late, wake up!"

None of this is to say that, to one degree or another, we haven't experienced such things in the past. Remember that Strangelovian Cold War doctrine Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD? Funny thing, it was so mad, it was sane, allowing us to traverse a nearly half-century-long nuclear standoff. Closest we came to losing it was Cuba 1962, when we called a blockade - an act of war - a quarantine and, doing so, averted war. Then there was Vietnam, where we used to throw about terms like "vertical envelopment," "pacification," and "free fire zone," the latter being an enemy-controlled area where anything was a "legitimate" target. You could kill anything that moved - a water buffalo, the farmer directing a plow behind it, or a child playing in the nearby village. It was a misuse of language that clouded our thinking and numbed our morals to the point of producing a My Lai ... and countless other My Lai's from the air.

In the current circumstance, however, the abuse of the American language has reached pandemic proportions. If we are to resist, we must recover some sense of what's happening. Let me give just a few examples to encourage you to look more closely at - and behind - the now steady diet of obfuscating euphemisms we are being fed. It's called the hermeneutic of suspicion.

Where to start? How about a simple word like "war?" We used to know in our bones what that meant. You know, opposing armies - in uniform, carrying flags, representing countries, taking territory, attacks and retreats marked by shifting lines on a map. To be sure, there were always fuzzy exceptions to the rule. There were, for example, civil wars, brother fighting brother to be king of the hill within a country. And there were always guerrilla wars - literally, little or demi-wars - in which oppressed local inhabitants, often lacking uniforms, fought more powerful outside armies. In many ways, the American Revolution was a guerrilla war. Much later, after a conventional war with Spain, we became the powerful outside army pitted against Filipino guerrillas fighting for their independence. And, throughout the Cold War, there were any number of limited wars - as opposed to total, hot, or world war - and, lest we forget, a "police action" in Korea.

In many ways, the Cold War overlapped and merged with the anti-colonial wars of the fifties and sixties, usually against our British and French allies. Vietnam was one such war. There were others: in China, Malaya, Algeria, Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Angola, the Congo, to name a few. As a class, they became known as wars of national liberation. The Cold War being what it was, we normally sided with our colonial allies in seeking to thwart these local struggles for self-determination, while the Soviets usually provided support to the home-grown "freedom fighters."

Lacking the resources of the occupying colonial armies, many of the "freedom fighters" adopted terror, the "poor man's bomb," as a weapon and a tactic in increasingly unconventional, always "asymmetrical" wars. Thus, in the eyes of the "civilized world" - i.e., the colonial metropoles of Europe - "freedom fighters" became "terrorists." But, as we saw in Algeria and Central America, the colonial armies learned well how to be terrorists themselves; witness the "Contras" in both Nicaragua and Algeria and the death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador. And it was in Algeria that the French elevated the use of terror and torture to an art form, transforming their vaunted "civilizing mission" into a grotesque caricature. In this regard, I highly recommend General Paul Aussaresses' memoir, The Battle of the Casbah. And, too bad our leaders watched "Patton" rather than Pontecorvo's masterful "Battle of Algiers" before invading Iraq. Had they learned their French lessons, they might have learned how much such warfare can corrupt the would-be overlords ... and we would not have to learn how to pronounce such words as Abu Ghraib and Haditha.

So what is the nature of this new "asymmetrical war" we're involved in. No, I don't mean Iraq, which began as a conventional limited war and has now deteriorated into an equally conventional guerrilla or civil war. No, Iraq is an unfortunate sideshow to what the president and his secretary of defense (Hard to believe Rumsfeld's still there!) insist is a "Global War on Terrorism" or GWOT. Oh, it's real enough. Too many people have died already. But, in the minds and mouths of our leaders, it takes on an other-worldly air of fantasy. As we try to wrap our minds around the concept, we find ourselves adrift in a sea of newspeak, on shifting ground, increasingly unsure of what is real and what is unreal, our fear approaching panic. And our leaders are no help, as they rush to feed the fantasy and the fear.

How is it a war? Where is "terrorism?" What is its capital? How is it "global?" Have disparate, unrelated grievances merged into what the Newt Gingriches of the world see as "World War Three," into a cataclysmic "clash of civilizations," or into some millennialist Armageddon? To be sure, there are some on the religious right who pray for Armageddon and are cheered by each new manifestation of death and destruction. Others, on the secular right, have their own Bible: Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.

Huntington's is a truly dangerous book, a sort of Mein Kampf for the GWOT. Written in the mid-nineties, when the military-industrial complex was searching for a new "enemy" to replace the collapsed Soviet Union, it depicts the by-definition culturally superior West in a "civilizational war" with Islam and, to a lesser degree, China. All is black and white, life and death, kill or be killed ... good and evil. No need for nuance. No need for understanding beyond "they" are bad, we are good. Simple minds latched on to such simplicity as an explanation for all the bad happenings in the world, missing even Huntington's recognition of the causative tension between modernization and fundamentalism.

In the hands of our leaders, Huntington's thesis was fashioned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the wake of September 11 - the work of a fanatic spawned by the fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia - we faced, we were told, an "axis of evil" comprised of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, none of whom (save perhaps Iran) had anything to with the attack on the World Trade Center. A nice pre-election catch phrase, it bore, however, no relationship to the real nature of the threat we faced from the Middle East. Arabs - and Iranians - don't "hate our freedom" or our "way of life" (save perhaps the coarseness of our materialism). They hate a century of deception, colonialism, occupation, exploitation, and humiliation visited upon them by the West.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, we properly attacked Afghanistan to root out al-Qaeda (which had attacked the World Trade Center and other American targets around the world, such as the USS Cole and the American Embassy in Nairobi) and to take down the Taliban, who harbored al-Qaeda. An irony - lost on the American public - was that the Taliban had, a bare two decades ago, comprised the mujaheddin or "freedom fighters" that we had armed and trained to resist the Soviet invaders of the time. Fighting us, they became terrorists.

Unfortunately, we quickly lost interest in Afghanistan, never deploying enough boots on the ground, allowing Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership to slip through our fingers at Tora Bora, and allowing the Taliban to reconstitute itself as a credible fighting force in what has become a forgotten war and a side show in the GWOT. Equally unfortunately, the deaths of American soldiers there continue: four last week, three the week before, forgotten - worse yet, never noticed - except by their families.

For still unfathomable reasons, our Commander in Chief and self-styled Decider (formerly known as the president), who, he allows, doesn't think much about Osama bin Laden, decided it was time to move on. It was time for a "war of choice." So he decided to invade Iraq. We opened this pre-emptive war (formerly known, in places like Nuremberg, as aggressive war) with an aerial campaign of "shock and awe." Despite our best use of smart bombs, this surgical strike produced extensive collateral damage in the form of thousands of civilian dead in a burning city. Stuff happens!

Within two months, however, the Commander in Chief could declare the "end of major fighting." Mission Accomplished! And, over the next three years, we succeeded in transforming Iraq into the Central Front in the Global War on Terror - another singular accomplishment requiring the recruitment and importation of thousands of foreign fighters to bolster the Saddamist dead-enders who have been in the last throes for the last year or so ... ever since the Decider issued his "Bring 'em on!" challenge and pinned those Medals of Freedom on the architects of success - George Tenant, Tommy Franks, and Jerry Bremer. For nearly that same time we have been "on the verge of civil war." Freedom is on the march! The progress is palpable. Only last month, for example, we posted a new monthly record for Iraqi civilian dead - 3,438! And the total of young American soldiers killed in Iraq now approaches the number of deaths on September 11. All we need do now is stay the course. Now, there's a winning strategy!

So steady has been our progress into sectarian violence (aka civil war) that, by early summer, a clear majority of Americans had lost interest in the project, many entertaining "cut and run" as an antidote to their boredom. We no longer wanted to hear about IEDs and car bombs, and even the diversions of Paris Hilton, Baby Suri, airborne pedophiles, and assorted serial killers proved to be insufficient distractions. Even such Republican patriots as William Buckley, George Will, Pat Buchanan, Chuck Hagel, John Warner, and John McCain started to yearn for something more than "stay the course." And, despite the stalwart "Democrat Party" support from Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, and others, the need to change the subject became clear to Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and, through them, the Commander in Chief.

Enter a welcome deus ex machina in the form of Hamas, Hezbollah, and a neophyte government in Israel intent on proving its collective manhood. Down in Gaza, some Hamas hotheads took hostage a hapless Israeli soldier, while up north, Hezbollah kidnapped two other members of the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF, and started lobbing World War II-era Katyusha rockets into the Galillee. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister Amir Peretz, who was still in the midst of his on-the-job training, were faced with several choices: launch commando raids to rescue the captured soldiers, negotiate for their release (as had been done on several occasions in the past), unleash some limited proportionate response, such as destroying the offending rocket launchers ... or do what they had apparently been itching to do for some time (even, according to Sy Hersh, going so far as to tout their plans at the Pentagon): impress the world, especially the Arab/Muslim world with the crushing power of "asymmetrical deterrence," the Israeli version of shock and awe. A strategy designed by Ariel Sharon, asymmetrical deterrence demands a wildly disproportionate response to impress upon an aggressor and future aggressors the ability of the IDF to inflict unacceptable pain at will. As the Israeli Defense Minister put it, he would insure that the Lebanese "will remember the name of Amir Peretz."

Despite the fact that such disproportionate response is generally viewed as immoral and illegal (cf. Just War theory and the rules of war), the temptation proved too great. Thus, with not only another green light but active support from Washington, the Israeli Air Force was unleashed by IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz on the whole of Lebanon and a hapless Gaza. In Lebanon, within days, whole neighborhoods and towns were turned into rubble, the country's infrastructure destroyed, more than a thousand civilians killed, and the "Cedar Revolution" left reeling - the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." In Gaza, the entire population was thrown into darkness in the middle of the sweltering summer with the destruction of the main, American-financed power plant, and some twenty members of the democratically-elected Palestinian government were arrested to join the 10,000 or so other Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners already in Israeli jails. (Allow me here an aside on the power of words as illustrated by treatment of these captives in the American media. Good guys are "kidnapped" or "taken hostage." Bad guys are "captured" or "arrested.")

As the destruction proceeded, the American left went mute, the media, by and large, became cheerleaders for the IDF, and neo-cons like Bill Kristol declared this "our war." And George W. Bush made it "our war" by air-lifting to Israel re-supplies of bunker busters and the cluster bombs, thousands of which remain scattered around southern Lebanon in what a UN mine-removal expert called "an angry and very volatile state." More importantly, he ordered Secretary of State Condi Rice and our interim-appointment UN ambassador John Bolton to thwart efforts to secure a cease-fire ... even a humanitarian 48-hour cease fire to remove refugees and provide medical assistance. The Decider had decided that it was the role of the United States to provide Israel time to "finish the job," to destroy Hezbollah once and for all.

This time, however, the IDF was not up to the job. In the twenty-four years since its last real war, an ill-trained, poorly equipped, ineptly led IDF - seventy percent of which is composed of reservists - was not up to the job. Occupation duty does not translate easily into combat competence. This came as a surprise to the Israelis and to us. Even now, we are scrambling to cobble together a face-saving cease-fire and wondering aloud who "won" - Hezbollah? Iran? Syria?

More important questions are "Who lost?" and "What did we lose?" The Lebanese lost - not only in their deaths, but in the destruction of their infrastructure and the damage to their "Cedar Revolution." The Israelis lost - not only in their deaths, but also in the damage done to the IDF's aura of invincibility. Above all the United States has lost. We have lost our preciously guarded role as an "honest broker," leaving the "peace process" and the "road map" in shambles. We have deepened the hatred, throughout the Middle East, of the United States and increased the numbers of young men willing to act on that hatred. And, by allowing the strengthening of Hezbollah, Syria, and, above all, Iran, we have weakened our ability to defend our interests in the area and to prosecute our vaunted Global War on Terror.

Five years after September 11 - five years full of babble about "Homeland" Security, yellow and orange shades of fear, and the "ideology of terror" - we are far less secure than we were before. Our military is hollowed out, demoralized, just plain broken. It is no longer capable pursuing our most basic - and most worthy - interests, much less the grandiose dreams spun of the White House's overblown rhetoric. And no amount of words, newspeak or otherwise, is going to change that reality.

Words, however, retain meaning, because they reveal a culture's understanding of the world, attitudes toward it, and sometimes serve as predicates to action. For these reasons we should study how others use them. And we should be far more careful about how we use words, for they are being studied by those "others." And subtly and over time they work their effect on us. They can incite, in their heat, unwise actions or, in their subversive softening where clarity is needed, can benumb us and weaken our resistance to the same unwise actions.

Take a word like "torture," which must - for the sake of our souls - remain clear in its meaning. It finds meaning not so much in the eye of the beholder - eyes do not easily lie - as in the mind of the beholder, for the mind always entertains the possibility of rationalization. John McCain knows what torture means. Unfortunately, Alberto Gonzales and Donald Rumsfeld do not, or will not. They stretch the limits of grammatical parsing, declare "quaint" settled standards of morality, and allow the president to append an unworthy signing statement to his signature on the tough anti-torture legislation sponsored by Senator McCain. No wonder we've become inured to Rush Limbaugh's and Bill O'Reilly's high school humor about "Club Gitmo." No wonder we fail to protest when General Geoffrey Miller - Miller of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - retires "honorably" with a Meritorious Service Medal on his chest.

And take our easy acceptance as "robust" such phrases as "regime change" and "pre-emptive war," un-American phrases that have found their way into the pages of the National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Take also the president's embrace of so offensive a term as "Islamo-Fascist," a term popularized by a hate-mongering talk show host and softened only to Islamist-Fascist in the president's mouth. Does he know how that sounds in the Middle East? Does he care? I doubt it. For in the closed mind of our Decider, there is no need to understand or talk with our growing number of real and potential enemies in the Middle East. Iran? Syria? No need to talk with them. "They know what they have to do." We've told them.

And, if they don't do what we've told them? In our militarized lexicon, they'll "suffer the consequences." We'll bomb them. We'll kill them. We know how to do that. That's all we know any more. Trouble is, we can no longer follow through on our threats. It's time to stow the "newspeak" and to start speaking truth to our friends, our enemies, and, above all, to ourselves.
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Note: Vicki Gray, a retired Foreign Service Officer, served as Director for Northern Europe in the Department of State and as International Cooperation Director at EPA. A political scientist, Dr. Gray has taught at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and written extensively on national security affairs. She is also a candidate for ordination in the Episcopal Church.

Blinded by a Concept

By George Soros
The Boston Globe
Thursday 31 August 2006

"The failure of Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates ``us" from ``them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel - which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front.

That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace.

Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror.

The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political - as distinct from the military - wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach.

Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

Full text version of Pres. Bush's Aug 31st speech at the Salt Lake City American Legion convention

Note: Wherein Mr. Bush again asserts that terrorists hate us "because of our freedoms"; rather than the plainly articulated justifications provided by Bin Laden which said it was because of America's actions in the Middle East. From a baseline protest against the partitioning of Palestine, the installation of the Pavlavi regime in Iran, support for regional tyrants allied with America's interests at the expense of their general population, quartering of Ameican troops in the Islamic holy lands, economic sanctions against Iraq, unjustified military, economic, and political support for Israel, and America's claim of hegemony over world affairs.

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Another Video clip by Olbermann from MSNBC on Donald Rumsfeld's Aug. 30th speech in Salt Lake City

"The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve."

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Full text version of Olbermann's commentary is here

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Rumsfeld's speech is here

Rumsfeld - who long has contended the American media is failing in its reporting of the so-called global war on terrorism - used his speech to itemize his discontent with journalists, who he says deliberately exaggerate negative news about Iraq. He ripped the media for focusing more attention on the misdeeds of some troops than on the first soldier to receive the Medal of Honor in this now three-year conflict.

He also slammed Amnesty International for criticizing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, calling it "inexcusable."

And he asked members of the American Legion to join him in a campaign to set the record straight.

"Our roles are not to allow distortions and myths to be repeated without challenges," he said. "So at least the second and third draft of history will be more accurate than the first quick allegation."

While acknowledging that every war has its setbacks, Rumsfeld said Iraq will become a democracy.

"Iraq, a country that was brutalized by a cruel and dangerous dictatorship, is now traveling the slow, the difficult, bumpy, uncertain path to a secure new future," he said. "The question is not whether we can prevail, it's whether we have the will to persevere to win."

But he warned that fluctuations in public opinion, spurred by what he considers media manipulation, harm the war effort. "Any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere," he said. "Our enemies know this. They design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion."

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Olbermann quoted Edward R. Morrow:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”