Volunteers for a Better America

Cellphone call records for Sale?

The major newspapers around the country ran stories last July on something that hasn't seemed to make the local news--the ready availability of individuals' phone records for the right price.  See, for example, this story in the Chicago Sun-Times and this one in the Washington Post.

Some states are beginning to take action.  Illinois governor Blagojevich plans action, as noted in the Chicago Tribune, here, earlier this year.  And bloggers are urging further attention to the matter.  See this story on AMERICAblog.

This loss of privacy is a concern for us all, because once these records become easily accessible, commercial companies and nosy neighbors will be able to spy on every person.

But if that doesn't frighten you enough, what about the Defense department's goals.  Consider this story from CBS in 2003, regarding  DARPA's plans for a database that can track intimate details of individual's lives.  This Big Brother project has immense ramifications for privacy.  Then of course, there is DARPA's "Terrorism Information Awareness" (TIP) database.  See this Heritage Foundation article supporting creation of the DARPA database, this American Library Association site discussing the defunded program, and this 2003 story about Congress's effort to end the TIP program by cutting off funding.  They have said they are no longer developing it, but can we be confident that this database does not exist? 

Defense has already developed, with a private marketing firm, a database of high school and college  students, supposedly for recruiting purposes.  The database will include significant information about each students, including birthdate, social security number, subjects studies, grade point average and ethnicity.  The database could well be a small start to something much bigger, if the information is retained and added to over the person's lifetime.   See this June 2005 Washington Post story.  As the story notes, information on children is already required by law to be provided by schools to the military under the so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act.

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources, including information already held by the military.

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The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.  Id.

These efforts have to be taken into consideration in connection with Bush's claims of "super-presidential" powers under the "unitary presidency" theory to override national laws when he deems it appropriate.  Claiming such powers, he has ordered warrantless spying on Americans outside the process for checks and balances.  Claiming such powers, he has held American citizens in military brig without due process rights.  What more may he have already done, or what more might he be planning?  These are issues of grave Constitutional concern for every single American citizen.

These growing efforts by the executive branch to compile personal information on individual citizens represent a grave threat to privacy.  Individuals may well feel concern about expressing dissent if they know that the military maintains a database that includes personal data about them and their loved ones.  Our local media should be writing and broadcasting about these serious issues every day.  To do less is to permit an unchecked presidency and the bloated military that supports it to gain enormous power that threatens our democracy.

Alito: Extreme Conservative

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee may vote on the Alito nomination for the Supreme Court.  It is likely to be a party line vote, in which moderate Republicans like Arlen Specter vote to put on the bench a right-wing ideologue who will undoubtedly vote to turn back the clock on many of the advances in civil liberties and human rights made in the 20th century.  Altio apparently ascribes to the view that property is the only "liberty" right that the Constitution cares about.  His opinions in 311 court cases reveal a judge who tends to side with corporations against employees and intrusive law enforcement rather than protection of individual rights.  See this Independent Court website for specific information about Alito's opinions. 

Just as discouraging as his legal opinions are his memberships and statements in the past.  In his 1985 personal statement, Alito indicated his views on criminal procedure, church-state separation, federalism and abortion.  See excerpt of statement on FindLaw (scroll down to read the actual statement).   He mentions specifically two groups that he has joined, impliedly asserting that his membership in those groups evidences his "bona fides" as a die-hard Republican.  The right-wing Federalist Society has been funded by millionaires and is intent on putting an end to entitlements for the poor, scornful of individual liberty, argues for emasculating Congress (especially its powers under the Commerce Clause and under the civil war amendments) and beefing up the presidency so that privileged propertied classes can have greater power, disdainful, and against Roe v. Wade, which was a significant step in liberating women from gender role confines.  The even more radically right-wing Concerned Alumni of Princeton was organized in 1972 to fight the admission of more women to Princeton (the group wanted a favorable quota guaranteeing at least 800 male members of each class) and against affirmative action for minorities.  See this article from the 1974 New York Times.

Alito has pursued that vision of the country in his decisions.  See Alliance for Justice's discussion, here.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of Alito's philosophy is his acceptance of the "unitary presidency" theory which declares that the function of Commander-in-Chief gives the person holding that role the right to override any act of Congress deemed necessary for national security purposes.  Mr. Bush signed the anti-torture ban with a statement indicating that he would interpret it in light of the unitary presidency theory--in other words, reserving to himself the right not to follow the law making even more explicit the prohibition against torture that was already the law of the land.  One can be fairly confident that a Justice Alito will find no problem finding Constitutional Bush's executive overreach in ordering domestic wiretaps in violation of specific national law.

Let us hope that Democrats and moderate Republicans will have the courage to vote against Alito's confirmation. Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court would be a terrible blow to individual liberties in this country.

EPA and Pesticide Testing

YOu may want to listen to this story on NPR radio about the EPA's position on pesticide testing in humans.  Chemical companies want to test their pesticides directly in humans, including children, like they did back in 1998 when volunteers were paid several hundred dollars to swallow a capsule of pesticide.  This will save companies money, rather than doing tests first on laboratory animals and then adjusting dosages downward from there to compensate for the uncertainty whether human responses would be the same.

This is another one of those stories that has legs, if only the regular media would cover it.

Wiretaps, the Patriot Act, and Judge Alito

Bush is now engaged in a media blitz to bolster his call for renewal of the so-called Patriot Act, which he claims is necessary to assist the military and intelligence agencies in the effort to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks in the United States.  He brought 19 federal prosecutors into the Roosevelt Room last week to claim that "the enemy has not gone away--they're still there. And I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war."  See this story by Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times.

Similarly, in response to the outcry over the illegal wiretapping of Americans revealed two weeks ago by the New York Times, Bush claimed that the exposure of his authorization of extralegal wiretapping was shameful and would put Americans at risk by revealing our espionage approaches to the enemy.  See David Sanger, In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying, NYTimes, Dec. 18, 2005.

It is hard to accept this claimed need for perpetual extraordinary powers to combat a threat of terrorism that has been a part of human civilization since the beginning.  In particular, the White House cries of concern about the exposure of the illicit wiretapping sound more like a diversionary attempt.  As Frank Rich notes in an op-ed (The Wiretappers that Couldn't Shoot Straight, NYTimes, Jan. 8, 2006, at WK 15), terrorists can be expected to be as cunning as ordinary television show writers, who easily imagined even prior to the leak about the illegal wiretaps that a cellphone conversation may be monitored.  The existing program for warrants from the special national security court provided for full secrecy, so it is simply ridiculous for Bush to assert that revelation of a secret wiretapping program could give anything away to terrorists.

The broadcast media should be covering this story on a daily basis.  If they do not, they will have failed to keep ordinary Americans informed of the way their government is conducting itself--and the way it is slowly encroaching on the most basic fundamental rights of its citizens. 

the Eavesdropping Leak

Bush's approach to the leak of the secret prisons has been nothing like his hands off approach to the Valerie Plame leak.  With the Plame leak, he just raised his arms like a cowboy surrendering to the local sheriff and disclaimed any information or particular interest in the matter.  The prisons are different. See this article in the Dec. 27 Washington Post, here.   He apparently sees the leak of their existence as a national security threat, and has called in editors of the nation's finest newspapers to let them know his concern.  He may well be applying subtle pressure.  It is as though he is afraid of what the American people might do given that knowledge, for surely the mere fact of their existence cannot give any solace to terrorists or provide any information that will be of use to them.

The media hasn't done much.  After a flurry of stories in the press, and barebones discussion on the major broadcast networks, it has already died down.  It is as though the broadcast media cannot keep anything other than a celebrity murder trial in their heads at once. Anderson Cooper kicked Aaron Brown out by emoting on screen during the worst of Katrina, and now he emotes on every occasion.  But we don't hear much from him about these issues and certainly no extensive reports on surveillance, secret sites, or even the Padilla case or how our privacy rights have diminished in recent years.   Bush's sudden deep interest in leaks compared with his lighthearted treatment of the Plame affair strikes me as posturing.  He is attempting to use his status to convince editors to do even less to go after the stories that are not being told about the Iraq occupation.

Wal-Mart--more legal problems

For those who have seen the Wal-Mart Film:  the High Cost of Low Price, you will remember that Wal-Mart has been involved in several kinds of litigation.  There are claims of employment discrimination, in one of the largest class action lawsuits in the country.  There are claims of knowing use of cheap but illegal employees, through hiring subcontracting firms that use undocumented workers.  There are safety issues, as Wal-Mart installs cameras in its parking lots to surveil union activism but doesn't use them to protect its customers.  (One way that it is getting around that at a new store in Urbana Illinois is to have the city build and maintain the parking lot as an enticement to get Wal Mart to open its third (or is it fourth) store in the metropolitan area.  That means, of course, that city dollars will subsidize the Wal-Mart heirs multi-billion dollar fortunes.....)

And there are even criminal probes of Wal-Mart's treating of its toxic wastes.  See Kris Hudson, Wal-Mart Faces Criminal Probe over Waste Rules,  Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21, 2005, at B3.  Seems that retailers are supposed to designate materials that constitute hazardous waste and package and transport appropriately.  Wal-Mart has apparently been taking a cheaper way out.  It delays the sorting and special packaging.  Instead, it ships its returned paints, aerosol cans, cosmetics, pool chemicals, and fertilizers on trucks from its various California stores to its Las Vegas warehouse and only then does it consolidate and examine the goods to comply with the hazardous waste rules.  Federal and California officials are investigating these practices.

Shouldn't this be making the local news?  Instead of another discussion with somebody who knew something about Laci Peterson's murder, why don't we hear more about what Wal-Mart is doing with its immense power as the largest corporation in American with more than 1.2 million employees?  What are its hiring and buying policies?  What are included in the many subsidies that it gets from local governments?  What happens when it builds a mega store and then abandons that site to build an even larger store just a few blocks away? 

These are important issues that affect how communities thrive and how individuals work.  It is incumbent upon the local and national media to delve into these questions and pay much more attention to them.

Religious Bullying (2)

In an earlier posting, here, we reported the effort, fostered by Fox media and others, to create a campaign against a straw-man "war on Christmas."  See information about Fox host John Gibson's book called "The War on Christmas", here, and a Media Matters for America summary of the Fox effort to beat this particular war-drum to produce good Christmas season viewing numbers, here. 

Of course, there's a veritable smorgasbord of conservative-backed groups pushing this "war on Christmas" and using both the mass media and the internet to do so.  It galvanizes the ultra right and it detracts attention from other issues--like the fact that the majority-party tax proposals provide Christmas gifts to the wealthy but bundles of sticks for the poor, or the fact that the Administration has managed to so bungle its occupation of Iraq that two years after the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing Americans are dying at increasingly high rates while the Iraqi resistance continues apace. 

For one example of the groups pushing this "war on Christmas," see the WorldNetDaily postings, here.  At the top of the home website is one article after another decrying public schools' neglect of Christian hymns and commercial establishments' decisions not to impose "Merry Christmas" greetings on shoppers who may not in fact celebrate Christmas.  The site also links to a story from "Whistleblower Magazine",  here, that purports to reveal the growing criminalization of Christianity. Joseph Farah (editor and founder of WorldNewsDaily) claims there is a "seasonal witch hunt by the ACLU" and

"The attacks on Christianity in America are alarming. We are witnessing more than religious bigotry now. We are entering the early stages of what could become persecution and outright criminalization of Christianity."  [emphasis added]

Another of the groups active in this creating this pre-emptive war of Christians on minority religions is a conservative Republican group, GOPUSA.  See its mission statement, here.  For an example of GOPUSA's attempt to stir up ire over a fabricated "war on Christmas", see here.  Note not only the featured "I'm offended that you're offended--Merry Christmas, anyway" story repeated from the 2004 holiday season, but also the link at the left for a poll on whether readers are offended by the White House choice of a holiday card. The "I'm Offended" piece is a good example of the conservative right's intolerance of dissent, willingness to use its clear majority status to impose its views on those who disagree with it, and general insensitivity to people in our country who practice a minority religion.  Quoting from the article:

"I'm sorry folks, but the only person I'm concerned about "offending" during this Christmas season is the Lord himself."

[From somewhat further on in the article]: " I cannot be concerned that "Merry Christmas" offends you. If I'm not careful, the day will come when saying I'm a Christian will offend you. I'm offended that you're offended. How about that? "

[And even further on]:"The most recent Newsweek survey shows that 82% of Americans believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, in trying not to offend a few, you've offended many."

In other words, the writer of the article is literally bragging about imposing her religious views, which she quite explicitly notes represent the views of the vast majority of people in this country, on others that the writer knows do not agree with her and not giving a hoot whether that is offensive to the religious sensibilities of those others or not. 

Another example is the American Family Association--another group claiming to defend families (only traditional Ozzie, Harriet and kids need apply) and Christians from the encroachments of modern multicultural civilization.  On their website you can find various stories, such as the AgapePress story about the Alliance Defense Fund that claims decisions by public schools not to use Christian hymns in their programming during the holiday season is government censorship.  See here.

Invented rationales, bullying use of majority power and damning of those who dissent, my friends, are typical of pre-emptive wars of choice.  Those are the signals that should send up red flags to journalists reporting on this fabricated war (and readers, as well).  Giant warnings should appear:  "Beware!  The views you are about to hear may be white-washed and pre-washed for approval by a self-selected, agreeable constituency.  They may not reflect either reality or the practical necessities of living in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic world."

These efforts confuse freedom of a religious group (no matter its majority or minority status) to practice the religion of its choice with freedom of a religious majority to impose its particular religious choice on others.  The first is a most sacred right to all Americans:  it is the reason that religions (especially Christianity) flourish throughout the country.  The second is the epitome of bigotry and persecution:  avoiding it was one of the reasons America was established.

For an example of journalists who have been able to see past the subterfuge of the fabricated war on Christmas, you can sample the commentary by Leonard Pitts (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, section 1, page 13).  He uses a dose of good humor and a few apt phrases to say what needs to be said.

"They're putting so much energy into defending Christmas that one feels downright churlish for pointing out that no one's attacking it."

"What's offensive--also surreal and absurd--is the notion that Christianity, a faith claimed by 76 percent of all Americans, is somehow being intimidated into non-existence."

"[T]he  AFA [American Family Association] is feeling persecuted because a salesclerk says "Happy Holidays"?  That's not persecution.  It's a persecution complex."

A number of readers also contributed letters to the editor of the Tribune on the topic as well, in response to earlier letters complaining about "discrimination" against Christians when Christian preferences were not observed by store owners.  They uniformly note that religious freedom is not challenged when a store decides to use one greeting rather than another.  But I like best a letter from Patrick Brennan of Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, at Section 1, page 12, partially excerpted below (with condensed formatting).

"It is absurd to tie the marketing of material goods to religious freedom.  Perhaps her confusion  [that of Loree Kowalis, the writer of a letter bemoaning discrimination against Christians] would lessen if she reread her letter.  In her closing statement, she recites a litany of the various holidays people observe in December and wishes that gaggle of celebrants good cheer.  While not as verbose, a store that wishes its customers 'happy holidays' is doing the exact same thing."

Religious Bullying

The media is picking up the bullhorns on another pet issue--the claim that political correctness is taking "Christmas" out of the holidays, from Target's use of "Happy Holidays" as a greeting to the Bush's sending a "Happy Holidays" card to their hundreds of contacts, made most directly and often by Bill O'Reilly on Fox. Let's examine this for what it really is.

First, Christmas is by no means a dirty word either commercially or on the public square.  Christmas trees, Christmas lights and other Christmas symbols are everywhere in every store, on every street and in almost every public office.  Ruth Marcus does a good job of debunking the claim of the banishment of Christmas from mall and square in her Washington Post editorial, here.

Second, those Christians who are answering Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson's calls to arms in this so-called "war against Christmas" should perhaps stop to consider the proper relationship between church and state.  Christians should be the ones most concerned about government use of Christian religious symbols and most eager not to have any sect's particular religious beliefs adopted by the state.  Most persecution of religious sects comes when a government is identified with one sect and uses the power of government to discriminate against other sects.  That was the fate of Christians for many years in countries with established, non-Christian religions.  That is one of the problems at the core of undemocratic countries in the Middle East that apply religious muslim law instead of secular law.

Third, the celebration of Christmas--candlelights, trees, reindeer, and Santa--has become so prevalent that even those who practice different religions now often celebrate the holiday, to the extent possible without betraying their own religious underpinnings, in order to prevent their children from feeling excluded from the social life around them.  It is entirely appropriate that commercial establshments like Target and Wal-Mart should try to reach out to this group by being all inclusive rather than excluding them in the way they handle the holidays.  Having greeters say "Happy Holidays" includes Christians and Jews, Muslims and agnostics, Kwanzaa-celebrators and non-believers.  Having greeters say "Merry Christmas" excludes everyone but Christians.  Isn't the former better, especially for a commercial establishment that sells goods related to events for all those faiths?

Fourth, the  secular "holiday" part of the Christmas holidays is something we can all share and enjoy without worrying that it is taking away from the sacred "Christmas" part of Christmas, which is something much more personal and spiritual and non-commercial.  We should be thankful that stores realize they cannot be the locus for Christmas, and that there is a difference between the commercial "holiday" and the religious "Christmas" celebration.  See this column by Charles Madigan, here, in the "Can you believe it" perspective of Sunday's Chicago Tribune.  Madigan notes that "the last thing in the world I want is for somebody to imply that Christ will be happy if I use my credit card to buy some dandy power tools for my sons."

Why, then, this concerted attack on the attempt to make public parts of holiday celebrations more inclusive and less religio-specific?  The claim that it is necessary because Christians are the victims of religious prejudice in this country is simply wrong. It is really an attempt to impose a religious majority's own religious views on all aspects of commercial transactions.  Plainly said, it appears to be an un-Christian bit of bullying. 

The media participation in rallying this victimless cry of victimization may be an effort to spur a mass movement based on emotional reactions (that come, no doubt, from heartfelt beliefs) to detract attention from other issues.  We saw that in connection with the 2004 elections--pitting people who believe in the traditional family against the many different faces of family life today, pitting people who want the right to own guns against families worried about the danger to their children in communities where assault weapons are more numerous than pets, pitting people who believe that conception should be treated as marking the onset of a separate, rational life against people who believe that viability is that point.

This emotional use of deepfelt values issues detracts from real conversations we should be having about poverty, racism, violence, and the actions our current government is taking to change the boundaries between government action and private action, between church and state.   It is another example of an area where the corporate-owned media have failed in both the issues they bring to attention and the way the issues are discussed.

Are you on the list?

Here is a little something not much covered in the U.S. media--the growth of the terrorist watch list since 2001.  In pre-9/11 days, there were fewer than two dozen names on the list.  Today's length?  80,000 names.  Read more about it here.

Should we be concerned at the number of names on the list?  Each of these people will be subject to more intensive searches or may be refused access to airline travel.  It is not clear what evidence exists, if any, to support these governmental restrictions on movement.  What is clear is that the names are being added at an extraordinarily rapid pace, and could easily be subject to human error and intelligence error. 

It would be a story worth reading to see how names are added to this list and how those individuals are treated at airports and elsewhere.  Maybe a real journalist will look into it someday.

9/11 Commission: a poor report card

The former 9/11 Commission issued its report card scoring the Bush Administration's handling of the 41 recommendations in the report produced a year earlier.  See the report here and a newspaper article describing the report here.  (The release of the report received very little coverage.  The Washington Post story ran in the Chicago Tribune and Seattle paper, but there little or no individual followup by journalists.  In a press release by the chair and vice-chair of the commission, the two state that it is "scandalous" that funding for anti-terrorism measures is still meted out to states evenly without regard to the terrorist risks posed, while police and other emergency responder units still have not been provided a dedicated part of the spectrum to ensure adequate communications during an emergency.

More about the 9/11 commission's "public discourse project" is available at its website, here.

House Cleaning

David Broder provides a good summary,  here, of the Obey, Frank, Price and Allen proposals to make a clean sweep of the rampant influence-peddling in the House.  Their proposals include the following:

• disallow reimbursed travel connected with lobbying--no travel  with lobbyists, no trips sponsored or paid for by lobbyists
• restrict the privilege provided to former members of the House to prevent their using it to gain extraordinary lobbying access
• limit the period for roll-call votes to 20 minutes, unless leaders on both sides of the aisle agree to an extension
• limit earmarks
• require a bill to be in print for 24 hours before a vote can be called on it
• require conference committees to meet and vote in open session.

If changes such as these can be enacted, the House could become once again the pillar of democracy and an appropriately deliberative body acting in the common good.  Until then, it looks like special interest groups can essentially bargain for the legislation of their choice.

US use of depleted uranium in ordinance?

The New York Times revealed something unexpected in a brief article on Iranian nuclear plans hidden on pageg 13 of the international section of the Sunday, November 27, paper entitled "Iranian Attacks West's Efforts to Cut Back Nucler Plans".  According to the story, Iran's president objected to Bush administration pressure on Iran to drop its nuclear program.  Iran claims that it is developing nuclear energy, but the US claims the program is part of an effort to develop nuclear weapons.  Iran's president Ahmadinejad suggested that the U.S. should be "tried as war criminals in courts" because it has "used uranium ordinance in Iraq."  The Times goes on to state that "[s]ince the Iraq war started in 2003, American forces have fired at least 120 tones of shells packed iwth depleted uranium, an extermeloy dense material used by the United States and British militaries to penetrate tank armor." 

The mainstream media has not reported much about the US use of depleted uranium  (DU) weapons at all.  It is not on Fox News or other programs.  It has not been covered in the LA Times or the Washington Post.  The Salt Lake Tribune covered it last year, here, when it reported on Envirocare's lobbying for a DU clean up job.   It is covered in much more detail on websites such as counterpunch , webcom (scroll down to DU section, mostly covering the first Gulf War), International Action Center, TruthOut.org or the cutting edge or, of course, foreign news outlets such as this story in 2003 about the first Gulf War's use of DU ordinance and this story in the Herald about the health dangers from DU in Iraq and this story in the Herald about the illegality of use of DU ordinance.   As Professor Rokke notes in the last Herald story cited,

'There is a moral point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves.' He added: 'Such double-standards are repellent.'

The US used about 300 tons of DU weaponry in the first Gulf War and 120 tons inthe second.  The US military also used considerable DU ordinance in Afghanistan, including a new "bunker-buster" weapon.  See a detailed story about depleted uranium ordinance use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the increased cancers likely to result, here.

So why have mainstream media outlets decided that information about use of DU ordinance in Iraq and Afghanistan and explanations of the level of radioactive contamination to which Iraqi civilians and US troops are exposed do not merit considerable attention?  Just think what might happen if Americans understood that our own military used WMDs against Saddam Hussein's country, even though Saddam did not have WMDs.   The media should make information about DU ordinance use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the health effects it is likely to cause for Iraqis and US soldiers, a continuing subject of their reports.  Americans should understand the extended harm that the military is causing through this war and occupation of choice in Iraq.

What Do Iraq, the Budget Bill, and the Spate of Scandals Have In Common?

These are bad times.  Young men and women in their primes die needless deaths in occupying a country that is splitting apart at the seams, Shi'ia against Sunni, Kurd against Shi-ia.  We watch each day as more suicide bombs take more lives senselessly and insurgents (or should we call them the resistance?--even our generals now admit most are not foreign fighters) fight to the death from town to town and cave to cave.  We hear about precision targeted bombs destroying homes the military claims are occupied by insurgents but Iraqis gather bodies of their four-year-old children for us to see, in death, and judge for ourselves.  We are reminded of another war, in another time, when we were younger and more hopeful that we could end the insanity. 

Mark Twain, in his War Prayer, depicts a people asking God to "help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells, ...help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire, ...help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land."  That is what war is--each side claiming to have God on its side as it lays waste to the other side.

Remember that we began this war of choice on the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction AND that he posed an imminent threat to us.  Bush's first charge to his national security group was to consider an invasion of Iraq.  After 9/11, Richard Clarke has told us how Bush pressed for a connection with Iraq. Rice and Cheney. strident spokespersons for the neo-con group including also Feith, Hadley, and Wolfowitz who had been planning an invasion of Iraq for a decade, claimed certain knowledge about those weapons, and used suggestions of connections with Al-Queda and the image of mushroom clouds, that oppressive symbol of the cold war era, to draw us into a fear-inspired resolution to displace Saddam.  This was a war that was eagerly sought after with an impatience that refused to let the apparently successful inspections thwart the war plan, and the intelligence that was used to hype the war was itself distorted, as we know from the Downing Street memo and Defense Department memos that we now know revealed considerable doubt about sources of information about Saddams purported WMD.  Yet none of that doubt made it into Mr. Bush's or Mr. Cheney's speeches.  There was a mission to engage in war, and they foolishly (and incompetently) expected the Iraqi people to welcome them with roses.   Bush flew onto a carrier deck to claim "mission accomplished" when fewer than 200 of the more than 2000 brave troops had yet died.   

Now people are asking the questions they should have asked then, and some effort is being made--haltingly, and only against the best effort of Republicans to stifle it--to investigate the beginnings of this war.  Part II of the Senate investigation may finally take place.  We need to know, because we need to understand what went wrong.  Was it purely the incompetence of a politicized intelligence agency setting out to please its master at all costs?  George Tenet's behavior (eager to please the neo-cons by providing the intelligence analysis they wanted and calling the WMD case a "slam dunk") suggests that possibility.  Or did the pressure from the most powerful vice president in our history lead to distortions?  Did Cheney intentionally distort the truth when he repeatedly claimed that he had intelligence that we hadn't seen that made him certain of Saddam's WMD, and that he was sure our troops could waltz into Baghdad.  It is hard to think of all the speeches made by Bush and Cheney and Rice about Iraq without suspecting manipulation. 

The current wave of charges and indictments suggests a ruling party that has lost all sense of decency and is so intent on maintaining power and enriching itself and its friends at the public trough that it cannot recognize the depths into which it has sunk.  Abramoff, lobbyist and friend of the most powerful in Washington, propositioned one African leader for a multi-million dollar contract based on access to Mr. Bush through use of Abramoff's ties with connected Republicans.  Scanlon, Abramoff's one time sidekick, is apparently going to turn state's witness against Abramoff.   

Cheney's former chief of staff has been indicted for obstructing justice in the investigation of the outing of Joe Wilson's wife Valerie Plame, and now it appears that Bob Woodward at the Washington Post was told about Plame by a senior White House official even before Libby told Judith Miller.  This new information makes the existence of a White House plot to do anything in their power to smear Wilson seem even more credible.  Regrettably, it also makes Bob Woodward look a lot like Judith Miller--the two of them seem to have become so embedded, in their eager use of proximity to power, that they were incapable of any longer serving their original role of investigative journalists.  Miller agreed with Libby to misreport his function (a former Hill staffer rather than a current senior White House official), and Woodward had gotten to the point that pieces of secret information could be casually dangled without his recognizing that his access was being used.  Note that Woodward appeared in the media and made strongly derogatory comments about the Fitzgerald investigation several times during the two years after a White House official told him about Plame and before he told anyone--even his editors--that he had been part of the very situation that Fitzgerald was investigating!

The Fitzgerald investigation is continuing, with a new Grand Jury.  It is quite possible that Bush's right-hand man, Karl Rove, may still be indicted.  At the least, we now know that even earlier than Libby's talk with Miller a senior White House official was revealing information to reporters about Plame.  It may not have been an intentional smear campaign, but it sure looks and smells like one.

How does all this connect?  Our troops are over in Iraq, fighting a war we cannot win in a situation where our very presence exacerbates the growing tensions between the various ethnic groups.  The executive branch of our government appears intent on responding to criticism and dissent with blame rather than developing a practical plan for removing our troops from Iraq.  This is not new, and it has worked well for them in the past.  But it is a bankrupt strategy that ignores the importance of assessing what went wrong in the leadup to Iraq and disrespects American citizens' right to know about executive use and abuse of power.  The majority in Congress is in another form of denial--parceling out more tax subsidies for business (Gulf Opportunity Zones that will do almost nothing for the poor victims of Katrina) and tax cuts for the wealthy (especially if the House passes a bill to extend the capital gains and dividends rate cut) while pulling the rug out from under the poor. 

The factor that ties all these tragedies of the Bush Administration together is sheer hubris.  The hubris of a government that is so focused on its desire to undo the functionning of the New Deal state that it doesn't care who is hurt in the process is the same as the hubris of a government that is so focused on exercising military might to control oil resources that it doesn't understand that we will be hurt in the process.  It's time to let this ruling party know that we don't like their arrogance, we don't like their policies, and we don't want them giving away our country to their big corporate buddies.

Wal-Mart Film Showing Dec. 16

Volunteers for a Better America and IBEW will host a free showing of the Wal-Mart film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, produced by Brave New Films on December 16, 2005, at 6:30 at the union hall 2901 N. Mattis in Champaign, Illinois.  Refreshments will be available before the film and a panel of speakers will host a question and answer session immediately after.  Speakers will include Mike Herbert of IBEW, Professor Ron Peters of the University of Illinois, Larraine Cowart, and other community leaders from local churches and government (to be updated as invited speakers are confirmed). 

The Hall seats about 150 persons and admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.   To sign up for the film so we have some idea how many to expect (and whether we need to arrange another showing), please RSVP at this site, here.  The film runs about one hour and a half, and we expect the panel discussion to last about 45 minutes (or as long as there are questions from the floor). 

We hope that you will join us for the film and the interesting discussion afterwards.  If  you would like more information about activism about Wal-Mart's labor, management, and purchasing practices and the impact of those practices on all of us, check out these sites:  Wal-Mart Watch  and Wake Up Wal-Mart.  If you would like more information on showings of the Wal-Mart Film and other activist groups that are involved, go to Brave New Films website here.

Judicial Nominations: is Alito like Ginsburg?

The talk in all the media these days is about Bush's third Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.  As we learn more about Alito, it is clear that his ideology runs to the extreme right.  He explicitly asserted an anti-abortion right position in 1985.  His views tend to be to the right of even the conservative members of his current court.  He would undoubtedly move the Supreme Court to the right, in decisions dealing with fundamental issues of extreme importance to the country at this time.  It appears clear that corporatist viewpoints would be furthered; individual rights (other than property rights) would be whittled away.

The right-wing is claiming that it would be inappropriate to consider his ideology in making the decision to confirm.  This claim is almost laughable in the context of their consideration of Harriet Miers, who was rejected by them primarily on ideological grounds as not being conservative enough.  Remember that Harriet Miers was also pressured to withdraw her naming, demonstrating that the commitment to an "up or down" vote applies only to those candidates that the right-wing already has decided will get an up vote.

Even during the Roberts confirmation process, the right-wing talk was busy bringing up Ruth Bader Ginsburg's nomination as an example of the Republican's willingness to confirm any Democratic president's nominee.  To hear them tell it, Justice Ginsburg's confirmation came even though Republicans considered her an extremist on the left. This "Ginsburg Fallacy" was brought up again on the night of Alito's confirmation, by Sean Hannity. The facts, however, are otherwise.  Ginsburg was--and is--a centrist whose selection was pushed by Republicans.  See the Washington Post account, here. 

Let's hope the rest of the media take guidance from the Post's approach.  They should set the record straight rather than permitting the right-wing to spin the American people a yarn yet one more time.

Globalization and Market Economics

Economic theory has recently exploded as a means of assessing appropriate policies from foreign policy to tax policy and tort laws to environmental policy.  Even elementary school children are familiar with cost-benefit analysis, and may at times employ it successfully to inveigle something out of their parents (the benefit of providing us this treat now will be far greater than the cost of not doing so.....)

Interesting, then, was the news in the October 29, 2005 New York Times Business Section, that the efficient market hypothesis is dead.  The paper covers a breakfast at Columbia Business School hosted by Bruce Greenwald, Robert Heilbrunn professor of finance and asset management.  See Joseph Nocera, The Heresy That Made Them Rich, New York Times, Oct. 29, 2005, at B1, here. 

"Most business schools emphasize modern potfolio theory, which has as its central tenet that the market is so efficient it can't be beaten with any regulatory.  Portfolio theory stresses ... diversification as the best way to spread market risk. ...As [Warren] Buffet [said] recently, "You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat.""

"[T]he value investing program that Mr. Greenwald runs preaches something else ... that the market can be beaten. ... A 'value' stock is, at bottom, a cheap stock.  And a value investor is someone who has the facility to ferret out cheap stocks that don't deserve to be cheap. ... "For a value investor, the only relevant questions are: Is it a good business?  And will it be a better business in five years?" "  Id. 

In essence, value investing claims that the "[e]fficient market theory is basically dead." Id.   That statement is particularly interesting given the way claims of efficient markets drive free-market arguments for government not to regulate in order to let the markets determine how best to handle problems.

Similar claims are made for globalization.  Just let companies have a free hand to globalize their business, the claim goes, and everyone's boat will float higher.  The rich will get richer, but the poor will have work and do better as well.  Interestingly enough, another prominent academician is contesting that theory as well.  Dani Rodik has recently written about the problems presented by poor workers from globalization, as promoted by many of the huge multinational corporations.  See this article in Harvard Magazine.  An excerpt from the beginning of the article appears below.

"Globalization has brought little but good news to those with the products, skills, and resources to market worldwide. But does it also work for the world's poor?

That is the central question around which the debate over globalization—in essence, free trade and free flows of capital—revolves. Antiglobalization protesters may have had only limited success in blocking world trade negotiations or disrupting the meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but they have irrevocably altered the terms of the debate. Poverty is now the defining issue for both sides. The captains of the world economy have conceded that progress in international trade and finance has to be measured against the yardsticks of poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

[Many countries have failed to benefit from globalization.]   Latin American countries were buffeted by a never-ending series of boom-and-bust cycles in capital markets and experienced growth rates significantly below their historical averages. Most of the former socialist economies ended the decade at lower levels of per-capita income than they started it—and even in the rare successes, such as Poland, poverty rates remained higher than under communism."

Scanlon's Scams

It will be interesting to see whether the broadcast and print media publish information about former Tom Scanlon, Jack Abramoff's former business partner and Tom DeLay's former aide, that was revealed in Senate Indian Affairs hearings.  The hearings are investigating the pair's apparent conning of Indian tribes for millions of dollars.  It appears that a memorandum related to their lucrative casino ventures also reveals a great deal about their lack of respect for the people they were manipulating by raising "values" issues.  The following is from a report on Salon.com here.

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

If the media would cover this kind of information, maybe it would make it harder for con artists  to abuse people's confidence so easily.

Why did Libby Do It?

We now know a good bit about the Plame affair and the way that various officials in the Bush White House used their insider positions to smear Joe Wilson in the public's eyes. Libby, Cheney, Rove--they all discussed Wilson in the context of their participation in the Iraq war council whose objective was to convince Americans that pre-emptive war (imperialistic war) in Iraq was necessary to protect us from terrorism. As the events of the summer and fall wound down, with Matt Cooper testifying about his sources, and finally Judy Miller revealing some of what she knew, we discover that Libby was in the thick of the Plame affair and, if the information included in the indictment is true, that Libby claimed to have gotten whatever information he had on Plame from journalists even when his own notes indicate that Vice President Cheney informed him that Wilson's wife was at the CIA.  Rove is also on record as indicating that he was informed by Libby.  See the Washington Post story here and a story in the Village Voice here.

What any thinking person has to ask is this--why would Libby have lied so many times as he apparently did before the Grand Jury, about conversations he had with multiple people who would also undoubtedly be testifying at some point before the Grand Jury?   Libby is a very smart man, and these events were close in time to the actual conversations, so lapse of memory of this magnitude is simply not credibly possible.  The timing, however, is suggestive, as E.J. Dionne suggested in a recent Washington Post editorial.  If the information that we know now had been available before the 2004 elections, Cheney, as well as Libby and Rove, would have been substantially harmed.   It looks very much as though Libby fell on his sword (lying to obfuscate and obstruct the normal processes of justice) in order to protect his boss Cheney and his boss's pet project--the deceiving of Americans about the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Cheney, Rove and Libby cast cast themselves as the defenders of America, but this leak shows them for what they really are--petty, scheming, blindly partisan manipulators of the press and of ordinary people, intent only on accomplishing what they have decided to do whether or not ordinary Americans support them.  They are not willing to subject their policies and ideas to the open discussion that is the hallmark of a sustainable democracy, but instead have consistently attempted to manipulate the American people into supporting their policies on innuendo, misinformation and possibly outright lies and deceit.   

It is entirely appropriate that Libby has left the White House in disgrace.  What is not appropriate is the speech that Bush gave (and Cheney also) praising this man who treats truth as an unimportant detail that gets in the way of political objectives.  The person holding the office of President owes us better than that.  Bush should have noted the appropriateness of the departure of Libby due to his active involvement in a leak that could only have been intended to get even with Wilson (even if not intended to "out" a CIA operative), and he should have demanded the immediate resignation of Karl Rove.  That is the only just ending to this sad and disgraceful affair.

And the media?  Broadcast and print journalists should continue to pursue this story.  They must ask the questions--what did Cheney know, and when did he know it?  What did Bush know, and when did he know it?  All the evidence so far suggests a concerted effort from the White House, and it is the job of the media to ferret out the details for the benefit of the America public.

Is the media performing its job?  Clearly not.  Newscasters and print journalists have treated the indictment as though it were as petty as Clinton's philandering!  You can read about the way the story was presented on Friday on the FAIR website here.  It shows that Tucker Carlson made light of Libby's lying about items that affect the public's right to know the truth about a war of choice!  Ted Koppel implied that the indictment was only a big story for journalists and not of much consequence for ordinary Americans. 

"Scooter Libby's indictment today is indisputably a major story. It was the lead on all the television network news programs earlier this evening. It will be the object of banner headlines in all of your morning newspapers tomorrow. As for its real impact on the lives of most American, though, not much. Not really. That's the strange thing about our business, the news business. Often, what seems so important to us, reporters that is, is of little or no consequence to many of you."  Id.

The media, in other words, often treated the story as though learning that one of the top officals in the federal government had likely committed perjury, provided fraudulent statements, and intentionally obstructed justice is a minor affair.  The media was worried about defending Judy Miller, who admits having agreed to lie to her readers in order to protect the identity of Scooter Libby in his campaign to undermine the credibility of a government critic in order to manipulate Americans' view of the White House's campaign for war.  It is telling that America's journalists and broadcasters do not seem to understand that those actions by Libby are indicative of a deep disrespect for the democratic process

Covering the Occupation of Iraq

While the Bush administration implodes from the various scandals, the war in Iraq continues to claim American and Iraqi victims.  The resistance has become fierce, with a number of massive bombings in Iraq on the 24th.  Our media cover the bombings, the number of U.S. soldiers killed (rapidly nearing 2000), and the new military propensity to reveal "body counts" of Iraqi dead (claiming insurgents killed, while Iraqis frequently claim they are women and children).  But they do not tell us much about Iraqis' attitudes towards the U.S. occupation.

The British Sunday Telegraph revealed a purported British military survey of Iraq in their Sunday edition here.  According to the paper, the poll revealed the following:

• "[U]p to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country."

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

It will be interesting to see whether the media in this country pick up the story from the British press.

Budget Reconciliation Bill

Congress is poised to act soon on budget reconciliation bills that contain numerous provisions destined to cause harm, not good. 

One would allow giant cable and telecommunications corporations to acquire the public airwaves and make it impossible for communities across the country to establish universal wi-fi access as a public utility for pennies on the dollar of the cost when provided by the media giants.  A few communities have already provided wireless services for all their citizens, but the cable and telecommunications companies have fought those services tooth and nail, lobbying states to pass legislation to make it illegal for communities to provide wireless for their citizens!  Pennsylvania's legislature recently passed such a bill, though luckily Philadelphia was able to be grandfathered in since it had already begun its wireless experiment.

Another atrocity in this budget reconciliation process is the plan to cut back on services for the middle class and lower income people in order to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.  On the cutting block are billions of dollars in Medicare/Medicaid and student loans.  On the giveaway list are more focused tax breaks for the super-rich who make most of their money in capital gains and dividends.  Congress plans another $70 billion of tax cuts--such as making permanent the very low tax rates on capital gains and dividends. 

Finally, the budget reconciliation bill will likely contain a provision permitting Big Oil to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, resulting in pipelines and damage over thousands of acres scattered throughout the refuge.  This is the last chance to stop this action that will degrade ANWR forever.   

The House vote on the budget reconciliation may take place any day.  CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND ASK HIM OR HER NOT TO VOTE FOR THIS BILL.  If you are in Illinois' 15th Congressional District, call Tim Johnson and tell him his vote on the Pombo bill was wrong and that he should vote against any budget reconciliation bill that includes ANWR, that cuts Medicaid and student loans to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, or that fails to reserve public air space for communities to provide their own wireless networks.  http://alaskawild.org/campaigns_artic.html

Congressman Tim Johnson's phone numbers are: Washington D.C.: 202-225-2371, Champaign, IL: 217-403-4690

A site recommended by PrairieRivers and Sierra Club for background information on ANWR is:

A site that provides a For a summary of the Budget Bill:

http://alaskawild.org/takeaction_alaskawild_update.html

Internet Access--for all or for the big companies?

One of the drivers of the economy in the 21st century is access to information, which depends more and more on access to high-speed internet.  Television channels are switching to digital technology, and cellular phones are becoming multimedia outlets.

As these developments take place, is Congress appropriately considering the best way to provide these information and technology services to ensure that all people, whether rich or poor, will have access?  At this point, it appears that Congress will sell the public airwaves to big corporate interests and at the same time make sure that local communities--our cities and towns--never have the right to establish community wireless internet projects like the one that Philadelphia has set up.

Very few American households have access to high-speed internet today.  In many cases, the private companies are not willing to invest in their areas to build the necessary infrastructure.  In other cases, internet access is available, but it is simply too expensive for many households to purchase.  Here in Champaign, cable costs about $45 a month, and high-speed internet from the cable company adds an additional $30 a month (their "guaranteed for one year low price"!).  That $75 investment would be well beyond many a household in the bottom half of the income distribution.

High speed internet is increasingly important for communication, information, and education purposes.  Whereas people in the 1950s and 1960s thought they should have a set of encyclopedias as an educational tool for their children, people today need high-speed internet access to open the world to their children's computer.  Not just encyclopedias, but the entire google/yahoo/Ask Reeves world of exploring new information and seeking old information is waiting there at the edge of the ethernet.  ithout broad access to the internet, this necessary educational tool will be out of reach for those without the means.  And children will grow up without the skills that they need to compete. 

That's why it is terribly important that Congress not give our public airwaves to the giant media, cable and telecommunications corporations.  They are lobbying heavily at the state and federal level, though, to try to grab those airwaves for themselves and prevent communities from providing internet access as a public utility, on the grounds that pubic goods create unfair competition with their monopoly services!  Consumer Union, one of the groups raising awareness about the need to fight for retention of public control of the airwaves, notes, "That's like banning cities from building public libraries because there are book stores in town (or worse yet, banning public libraries even if there are no book stores in town!)"   Follow the following Consumer Union links for more information.

Tell Congress to protect local community wireless projects!

Learn what else consumers should know about the switch to digital.

Misinformation

Parade magazine is generally mostly fluff and no substance and hence not usually a topic of a blog like this one.  In a way, that makes the discovery of the infiltration of right-wing propaganda into its society pages even more alarming.

Here is something worth noting, for those of you who haven't seen this elsewhere.  Someone using the name Walter Scott writes a column about people in the news. The word is that Walter Scott is none other than Ed Klein, the well-known journalist who wrote an unflattering portrait of Hillary Clinton.  Not unexpectedly, his column reveals his opinions about people in the news.  The problem is that some people who are not as well informed as they should be may mistake his opinions as statements of fact.

The most recent example, appearing in the Oct. 9 issue of Parade and available online here after October 17, is a misinformative slur against the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.  The statement is in the form of a Q/A, reproduced below.

"Q: I'm interested in where Fidel Castro gets the dough to shore up his bankrupt regime. Can you illuminate? -- Robert Henry, Los Angeles, Calif."

"A: In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, which bankrolled him to the tune of $4 billion a year, Castro has turned to Hugo Chavez, Marxist president of Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil-exporter. In addition to shoring up Castro, he's funding revolutionaries and terrorists throughout Latin America."

The errors in the Parade item are multiple.  First, Chavez has stated that he is not a Marxist but does want to see that capitalism serves all of his people and not just the wealthy.  He describes himself as a follower of Simon Bolivar, the South American leader who fought for the region's independence from colonialism and for the rights of the indigenous peoples to govern themselves.  Aren't those the same values that we as Americans hold dear?

Second, Venezuela's relationship with Cuba is much more sophisticated than indicated in Klein's piece.  Venezuela certainly provides assistance to Cuba, as it is fully entitled to do, but Cuba also provides assistance--in the form of medical personnel--to Venezuela.  That is a neighborly quid pro quo that we would do well to emulate instead of mocking. 

Third, there is no evidence that Chavez funds "terrorists" in Latin America.  True, Venezuela has considerable oil wealth, and Chavez has used that clout to tell oil companies that they should pay higher royalties so that Venezuela's oil actually benefits Venezuela's people.  In that sense he has supported the indigenous peoples who have demonstrated against Big Oil as major polluters of their country who exploit the natural resources in return for precious little benefit to the natives. And when the upper class staged a coup against Chavez, which he claims with some evidence was supported by the United States, the population of Venezuela rose up and reclaimed their democratically elected president.  That is not terrorism, but the People speaking with a strong voice as it must when its right to choose its own leader is threatened, whether from outside or inside. 

Various commentators have noted the inaccuracies in this Parade statement.  See, for example, this piece from FAIR, this piece from AlterNet, and this piece from Democratic Underground, and this piece from Blog for Democracy.   The last link also provides a letter that the author wrote to the CEO of Parade Magazine.  In the letter is included the following paragraph, worth quoting in its entirety.

"I was appalled by the answer to this week’s Personality Parade question regarding Fidel Castro. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a democratically-elected, hugely popular, hardworking leader. Even after decades of oil wealth, Venezuelans suffered horrific poverty prior to his administration. Since elected, President Chavez has worked tirelessly to bring education and health care to his citizens. He has a vision for all of Latin America that includes improvement in education and health care across the region, which includes Cuba. There is no factual evidence that “he’s funding revolutionaries and terrorists throughout Latin America”. To suggest so is irresponsible and implies a lack of journalistic credibility affecting your entire magazine. "

The author goes on to suggest that Parade consider doing an in-depth feature on Chavez and his goals for Venezuela.  Chavez does not pretend to be big buddies with Big Oil, but he is trying to make his country a better place for all of its people.  Now that's an idea worth endorsing. 

There is an interesting film about the attempted coup in Venezuela, called "Esta Revolucion No Se Televisara" (This Revolution Won't be Televised).  It is live coverage of the coup, as it actually occurred, filmed by a crew that just happened to be in the Presidential Palace that day.  It is worth seeing, if you get a chance.

DeLay Indictment (2)

Last week, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Republican from Texas, was indicted by a Texas grand jury for campaign finance violations.  He was charged in connection with solicitation of contributions from corporations (not permitted under Texas law) and essentially running those contributions through the national party in order to send them back to the Texas Republicans for which they were intended.  This week, the indictment has been expanded to cover additional charges for money laundering.

On Sunday, Bob Sieffer's CBS news program FAce the Nation discussed the DeLay indictment.  Remarkably, the CBS program  invited only DeLay's fellow Republicans David Dreier of California, John Shadegg of Arizona and Jim Leach of Iowa.  Midway through the program, it was explained that the DeLay indictment is just a Republican problem, so there was no need to invite anyone that might not share the partisan Republican viewpoint.  FAIR quotes Schieffer as stating:

"Let me just point out, I didn't invite any Democrats to be on this morning because I thought this was a Republican problem and wanted to give you a chance to talk about it."

This struck FAIR as incredible, especially since Face the Nation has typically included both Democrats and Republicans when discussing controversies involving Democratic politicians, such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal (interviews with Republican Trent Lott as well as Democrat Leon Panetta) and the Gore fundraising issue (interviews with Republican Thad Cochran as well as Democrat Joe Lieberman).  FAIR sent a newsletter out to its participants alerting them about this one-sided approach and asking them to write CBS to complain about this perspective on DeLay.  You can contact Face the Nation at 202-457-4481 or ftn@cbsnews.com or you can contact the CBS "Public Eye" ombudsman at publiceye@cbsnews.com.

We agree.  DeLay's behavior--including the behavior that is the subject of these indictments and a series of ethical lapses that have already been the subject of reprimands from the House Ethics Committee and travel problems involving a too close relationship with lobbyist Jack Abramoff (already indicted on other charges), as well as a series of actions to attempt to eviscerate the power of the House Ethics Committee--is a matter of concern to everyone.  Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, we should all care very deeply about the appearance that our Congress is merely a playing field for wealthy corporate lobbyists who are invited to write the legislation that they want into law.  The very credibility of our government is at stake.  Ethics is not a partisan matter, but a concern to anyone who hopes to trust in government functionaries putting the American people above their petty partisan purposes.

DeLay Indictment; Blunt Ascent

Tom DeLay was one of the most powerful men in America until Wednesday, when he was indicted on charges alleging campaign financing violations in Texas.  As Republican Majority Leader in the House, he has used his corporate and political connections to raise huge sums for himself and fellow Republicans, cementing both the Republicans' control of the federal government and of the Texas state government by a brassy redistricting effort that even attempted to use the power of the federal government to herd reluctant Texas Democrats back to town.   He was already ethically challenged before the indictment, called before the House Ethics Committee on three different issues last year and up for another grilling on his golfing outing paid for by lobbyist Jack Abramoff (who is facing his own criminal woes).

At the base of his power are two organizations--Texans for a Republican Majority (Trmpac) and Americans for a Republican Majoirty (Armpac).  With Trmpac, DeLay is described as "[writing] a new chapter, which was exporting the federal power of his office back to his state."  How a Tested Campaign Tool Led to Conspiracy Charges, New York Times, Sept. 29.  The Times goes on to quote Fred Wertheimer, a long-time promoter of improved campaign finance laws, as saying:

"This was a classic example of the DeLay system at work, because you had corporations who really weren't interested in Texas politics giving large sums to Trmpac because they were interested in the power of House Majority leader DeLay."

The enormous political stakes and the coziness of large corporations and powerful Congressional positions suggests that the influence that corporations can gain with their contributions to campaigns is enormous.  It may not be that they are simply buying laws in their favor, but it looks and smells like something awfully close to it.  That is the reason that many are calling for politicians who have received some of the DeLay largesse to turn it back.  See, for example, this blog on Illinois 15th Congressional District Representative Tim Johnson.

The Republicans' pick as DeLay's successor is not much of an improvement.  While stylistically different from DeLay (described as approachable while DeLay is an in-your-face "Hammer"), Blunt has the same ties to the corporate lobbying bankrolls that DeLay exploits and came to his post on Mr. DeLay's coattails. He seems little likely to recognize the need to turn the Congress from their current  agenda for the wealthy to one that pays attention to the needs of ordinary Americans.   A Times editorial notes that the Republicans' talk of having selected a conciliatory personality suggests that Congress thought its challenge was to find "their own intramural peace rather than the nation's fraying commonweal."

Surely at some point the politicians who control the White House and both houses of Congress must realize that they are supposed to be governing for all Americans, and not just serving as lackeys for the wealthy corporations and owners who got them into office.  Governing for us all requires listening to the concerns we are expressing more strongly day by day--our belief that the loss of more lives and more billions in Iraq is meaningless and it is therefore time for an honorable exit so that the Iraqis can determine their own future without the terrorism that followed in the wake of our invasion and occupation; our desire to salvage what we can of this beautiful earth to share with future generations, rather than permit it to be ravaged for cheap, unsustainable profits that will merely line the pockets of the already wealthy; our conviction that we are morally required to care for the least among us as though they were the greatest among us, whether they are gay or lesbian, single mothers or proud families of four, poor and black or wealthy and white.   

Are they listening?  The appointment of Blunt, with everyone tacitly acknowledging that DeLay will retain his influence from the wings, suggests that they are not.

Militarism

As the post-Katrina investigations, lobbying, and tax bills go forward, we ordinary Americans must be ever vigilant.  It is clear that the Republican-run investigation, that does not even provide subpoena power to the opposing party, cannot provide an adequate review of the Katrina bungling, especially at the federal level under the supervision of Michael Chertoff's Homeland Security and Michael Brown's FEMA.  Moreover, lobbyists are using Katrina's surge to mount their own takeover of the Capital to demand more relief from pesky regulations that ensure our safety and well-being and more handouts from the government. Even the wealthy casinos are expecting FEMA handouts to help them rebuild, in spite of their national operations and ability to draw on funds from one place to make up for losses in another.  The federal government is talking gleefully about giving Big Oil all the goodies it has been wanting for years--access to the pristine Artic National Wildlife Refuge to stamp the imprint of oil pipelines across the caribous herding grounds; access to the fragile coastal shelf where whales and dolphins and all of earth's wonderful ocean creatures will be at risk from their operations; tax breaks for building more refineries instead of  tax measures that incentivize conservation.  All of these things are worrisome, and the media should keep a watchful eye on them, rather than letting the next big story sweep the detritus of Katrina out to sea and out of memory.

But an even bigger story is the growing presence of the military across the country.  The New York Times reported today that the Pentagon has resisted Congress' effort to oversee the gathering of intelligence.  The Pentagon has begun to conduct various intelligence-related activities in hidden programs, so that Congressional oversight cannot find them.  The Pentagon, in other words, is setting itself up as an empire unto itself not accountable to the people through Congress.  Read the story here.

That is perhaps what we might expect of a war machine that has been fed and nurtured to think of itself as the savior of mankind, even when invading and occupying Iraq to impose democracy by force.  A military that has been successful in avoiding the Geneva Conventions by creating its own country that is no man's country at Guantanamo.  A military that has tortured prisoners around the world and rendered its detainees to countries that are known to torture their prisoners.  A military that has punished the privates taking pictures of the humiliating torture of military prisoners but has not subjected a single top military brass to punishment for letting such rampant wrongdoing occur over and over and over again.  A military that disregarded the complaints about similar behavior in the 82nd Airborne until the captain making them went to Human Rights Watch and they could no longer be ignored.

Yet Mr. Bush says he thinks we should think about putting the military in charge whenever there is a disaster in this country like Katrina or 9/11.  Now that is truly worrisome.  Our freedoms are already eroded through the disgraceful Patriot Act, that someday will be viewed in the same way as the reviled Seditions Acts now are.  Military control whenever there is a natural or man-made disaster smacks too much of nearness to military dictatorship.  That is why we long ago enacted the Posse Commitatus, to prevent military intervention in the civic affairs of the state. 

This is a time when we especially need a fair and probing media--journalists and editors and reporters who dare to ask the hard questions.  Will they follow up on the Downing Street Memos--that story should not be lost but rather remain in our focus as we demand an accounting of the actions of this Administration leading to the war.  Will they pursue the uses and abuses of the Patriot Act, so that Americans can be better informed about its provisions?  If so, maybe Americans will tell Congress that they must repeal the atrocity.  Will they investigate and report on the way they themselves were bamboozled by being embedded, so that stories that come out of war zones are tailored to the taste of the military?  Will they spend the time and effort necessary to search out what is going on in the Department of Defense?  Where is its money being spent?  What are its organizations doing that replicate the CIA within the military?  Who is in the know and how much does any civilian know?   

One of the most important things that the media should be doing in America today is reporting on the military.  The vastness of the military budget is overwhelming.  The reach of the interconnections between big business, big oil, the military and officials in government is enormous.  These should be discussed and analyzed daily in the news.  Those stories are necessary to keep us informed, and to keep our democracy intact.

Corporate Feeding at the Katrina Trough

It is now a month since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and evacuees from the Big Easy are scattered all over the country, living off the bounty of friends, family and relief organizations.  Their future is in doubt, and their connections with each other and with their home have been severed.  We cannot forget that people are continuing to suffer terribly as they try to find their way in the post-Katrina world.

It is in that light that the gathering of the corporate lobbyists and greedy contractors in DC is all the more unseemly.  As the Washington Post noted in a September 27 story, the lobbies are lined up for relief riches.

"The oil lobbyists, like so many others, are using the storms as an excuse to win long-sought legislation, even when their plans relate only tangentially to the hurricanes.   Earlier this week groups as diverse as the American Institute of Architects and the American Petroleum Institute were freshening their requests for tax breaks and other favors.  [Airlines] are telling lawmakers that the fuel price hikes in the wake of Katrina have made [relief from their pension obligations' more necessary." 

The Post story notes that the Air Transport Association is lobbying for a cut in the tax on jet fuel--at a cost to the federal fisc of $600 million.  The big (and wealthy) insurers are hoping Katrina can give them cover to get what they've long wanted out of Congress--an agreement for taxpayers to bear the burden of most terrorism losses. For-profit hospitals want taxpayers to pay for their rebuilding whenever there is a natural disaster. 

The list goes on and on, of profit-making companies who want to keep their profits for themselves and have taxpayers pick up the tab for a bundle of their expenses, all using the cover of Katrina to ask for more goodies.  These corporations are the same ones that holler "free market" as a defense every time the government tries to impose a new regulation needed to protect Americans--whether providing better safety, environmental protection or transparency in the markets.  Yet now they want the taxpayers to step up to the plate and dole out more money for them.  The fact that the result will not do anything to help the people who need it most--the poor black people pushed out of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast by Katrina--seems not to be much on their minds. 

The most sobering part of this is the conclusion of the article--"they will likely get much of what they want." More spending, and more tax cuts, for the corporations and not for the people of New Orleans, because Congress doesn't "want[] to be seen as uncaring." 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are planning bills to let the big oil companies, that are already enjoying some of the biggest profits ever, get more tax cuts for constructing refineries and have access to fragile lands along the coasts and in the Artice National Wildlife Refuge.  Read this story in the Washington Post.   Measures included in these bills, put forward by Joe Barton of Texas and Richard Pombo of California, have been sought by the oil industry for years and resisted for good reason--the little bit of oil isn't worth the harm to the coasts and wilderness areas.  Barton says his bill will remove "cumbersome procedures" for new refineries and make building oil pipelines easier.  This is right after we saw how fragile the current pipelines are--bursting as so many did on the seabed under the onslaught of Katrina, t o release their gobs of tar onto marshlands and birds and homes.  The oil industry will bear none of the cost of the environmental destruction those pipelines caused.  INstead, Congress apparently intends to reward it by allowing it to build even less defensible pipelines!  It is almost as if Katrina unleashed a frenzy of mad feeding animals at the Congressional trough. 

Will there be enough brave souls in Congress to step back and stop Big Oil from bulldozing the whole country to its ugly, polluted ways? 

Anti-War March on DC

The March on DC involved many people from all over the country.   Nick Mann has his photos displayed here. 

One of the most moving stories was Cody's, an eleven-year-old who sat behind me on the bus trip.  Cody had found out about the anti-war march and decided that he had to take action.  He talked his mom into making the trip, and brought along a friend as well.  Here's a photo of Cody Bralt-Kelly and his friend Micaela at the rally.   (You can right click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

Ken Yates shared several of the pictures he took of the rally early on, showing the many different posters and costumes that protestors wore to make their point about the ignominy of war.

                                                                                 

Chuck Minne got a good shot showing the support for the anti-war movement from all across the spectrum.

And Ireka Carney took several photos of the crowd.

The March on Washington--The Media Fail Again

When hundreds of thousands of Americans streamed into DC on Saturday to voice our dissent from the outrageous war and occupation of Iraq, we knew that we were legion.  Already, at rest stops and restaurants along the way, we'd encountered busload after busload of similar pilgrims making the journey to DC to tell the man in the White House and the mostly men in Congress that this arrogant cowboy war has got to end.  A restaurant waiter asked me what was going on--he said they were running out of food because so many people had stopped!  A woman in one of the lines told me proudly about 17 buses coming from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  Another noted that seven buses were coming from a very small town in the middle of the Heartland--they'd come through our town of Champaign-Urbana, in fact, enroute to DC! 

We, too, were proud.  We'd started out expecting 35 or maybe 50 people to be able to go.  We ended up with two buses loaded with 98 people making the hard 13 hour trip down throughout the night Friday night, standing for hours at the rally and in line to march before the White House Saturday afternoon, and then loading up at 8pm for the hard and tiring ride back to Illinois.  But we were proud.  We represented scores more whose hearts were with us but who could not make the trip.  We sang folk songs and talked and felt the bonds of camaraderie that bring people from different walks of life together to give voice to America's distaste for a needless, preemptive war that denigrates all that is good about our country and wastes the billions of dollars that could be invested in the poor here and around the world.

When we got to DC, we could look around and see the numbers of us sitting, standing and talking.   We carried signs, saying "Bush lied; soldiers died", "Impeach Bush", "Support our troops--bring them home now". "Make peace, not war", and on and on.  We saw mimers dressed as Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest of the war-hungry White House gang, going in chains and prison robe to their proper reward for violating international law.   

When we got to DC, we could see buses at one Metro stop after another.  We could see the line of marchers, starting out at the appropriate time, w