Gulf Coast Progressive

2011-09-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

2007-10-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Are Rudy, Mitt and Fred living in your world?

Jim Hightower puts the current GOP Presidental candidates in persective with the work-a-day American with this video. Do the current candidates know how expensive it is to live in America?

2007-10-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

Naomi Kline strikes at the root of the problem of Outsourcing Government over at CommonDreams.org. Is our government an ATM for lucrative contracts or does it exists as an extension of "We the People" to serve the common good?

Outsourcing Government by Naomi Kline

‘We didn’t want to get stuck with a lemon.” That’s what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said to a House committee last month. He was referring to the “virtual fence” planned for the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

If the entire project goes as badly as the 28-mile prototype, it could turn out to be one of the most expensive lemons in history, projected to cost $8 billion by 2011.Boeing, the company that landed the contract — the largest ever awarded by the Department of Homeland Security — announced this week that it will finally test the fence after months of delay due to computer problems. Heavy rains have confused its remote-controlled cameras and radar, and the sensors can’t tell the difference between moving people, grazing cows or rustling bushes.But this debacle points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration’s vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors.

Click HERE to continue

2007-10-17T11:26:00.001-07:00

"Some of the ideas that come from the fringe of the far right are just so implausible that it is hard to take those ideas seriously" -- John Conyers

Michael Medvet is a perfect example of an RWA (Right Wing Authoritarian) personality. The former movie critic turned conservative radio personality is exploring the benefits of slavery, yes, that's right, slavery. He’s taken this charge as a measure of contrast against the "America Hating Liberals" who, “deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation”

Michael’s article exhibits the traits of an RWA (submission to authority, conventionality, and righteous aggression) with the accuracy of a slave ships cargo rouster. It’s astounding to many how a seemingly intelegent man can write such nonsence, but here it is, as bright as the burning midday sun.

Click Here

2007-10-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

The Conservative Yap of Michele Malkin: All Bark and No Bite

The recent Michele Malkin attack on an innocent Twelve year old boy and his family has spawned quite a bit of criticism of the right wing noise machine. Rightly so, but what is her motivation, really? Why would a well educated woman of seemingly high intelligence, and a loving mother, attack a 12 year old boy and his family instead of debating the issue on the merits of reason?

It’s her personality stupid! She simply can't help herself.

This sort of personal attack, the ad homonym abusive technique, typifies the personality profile of the RWA, the Right Wing Authoritarian.

Michele Malkin, like many others in the public spectrum, depicts the traits of an extreme Right Wing Authoritarian personality. It is a personality type which is explained by the research Dr. Robert Altemeyer. His research illustrates that a RWA (right-wing authoritarian) personality can be measured by using a scale, appropriately named the RWA Scale. The RWA Scale states that the authoritarian syndrome consists of three factors: submission to authority, conventionality, and righteous aggression. Michele Malkin has illustrated an Authoritarian Personality and she would likely, in my opinion, score very high on the RWA scale.

We can learn a lot about this personality type from John Dean’s Book, “Conservatives without Conscience”. Here’s an example, from the book, of an RWA (Right Wing Authoritarian):

“The "RWA" trait is measured by an attitude scale aptly named the RWA scale. The first item on the scale goes, "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us." Persons who strongly agree with this are showing a lot of authoritarian submission ("Our country desperately needs a mighty leader"), authoritarian aggression ("who will do what has to be done to destroy"), and conventionalism ("the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us").

I doubt that Michele Malkin has been screened on the RWA scale, but I’m willing to speculate that she, and many others who bark for the extreme right wing, would agree on the first item in the scale with the concurrence of a church choir, can I get an amen?

The hope though is that people can change their personalities, however unlikely that may seem at times.

So when we hear a Michele Malkin, or an Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh bark for conformity to their perscective with the ferocity of an abused junk-yard dog we should know that it’s their personality, not the issues that motivate them. Their aggression is dominated by their need to submit to authority, conventionality and righteous aggression. They simply can’t help themselves. Knowing these tendencies will help progressives in dealing with the lunitic fringe of the far right wing.

2007-10-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

The Truth Behind Disaster Capitalism

For those of you who are interested in knowing what is behind the Milton Freedman economic model, “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Kline is a must read book.

In “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” she explodes the myth of "free market" democracy and shows how neoliberalism in American Government dominates the world with America its lead exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere. Wars are waged, social services cut, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or bludgeoned to object. Klein describes a worldwide process of social and economic engineering she calls "disaster capitalism" with torture along for the ride to reinforce the message - no "New World Order" alternatives are tolerated.

"Free market" triumphalism is everywhere - from Canada to Brazil, China to Bulgaria, Russia to South Africa, Vietnam to Iraq. In all cases, the results are the same. People are sacrificed for profits and Margaret Thatcher's dictum applies - "there is no alternative."

"The Shock Doctrine" is a powerful tour de force, four years of on-the-ground research in the making and well worth the wait. In an age of corporatism partnered with corrupted political elites, it's must reading by an author now firmly established as a major intellectual figure on the left and champion of social justice. Naomi Klein is all that and more. Even for those familiar with her topics, the book is stunning, revealing, unforgettable and essential to know. This review will cover a healthy sample of what's in store for readers in the full exquisitely written text. It's in seven parts with a concluding section. Each will be discussed below starting with a brief introduction – from Znet.org

Naomi Klein is an award-winning Canadian journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and activist. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and London Guardian that's syndicated internationally by the New York Times Syndicate that gives people worldwide access to her work but not its own readers at home.

Click Here for More

2007-10-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

Life Imitates Art?

Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man

HAZELWOOD, MO—Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president's massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener.

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2006-09-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

Taking a Break

I have to take a break from updating this blog for some time. I’m going to be very busy with continuing education and unfortunately this means that my writing time will be impaired for a while.

I’ll get back to updating as soon as possible. In the meantime I’ll visit and comment on other blogs as often as I can.

Thanks for your patients and I’ll see you in the blogisphere.

2006-07-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

U.S. Holds Going-Out-Of-Business Sale

WASHINGTON, DC—In an address broadcast on late-night television Tuesday, President Bush announced that the federal government will liquidate its holdings in a going-out-of-business sale scheduled to begin Friday.

After 200-plus years of service, the U.S. government is closing its doors.
"The U.S. government, America's place for law and order since 1776, has lost its lease, and everything must go, go, go," Bush said. "But our loss is your gain, and make no mistake: You, the people, would be crazy to miss out on these amazing closeout bargains."

The Washington-based government, which hasn't shown a profit in five years and carries the highest debt in its history, was ultimately driven out of business by costly overhead and cheap foreign competitors. As a result, Bush said, everything—from flag stands and Capitol cafeteria flatware to legislation dating from the early days of the republic—will be marked down 30 to 90 percent.

"Get yourself a piece of history, or just stock up on your favorite items—whatever it is, chances are we've got it," said Bush, wearing a 10-gallon hat and standing before a chroma-key background of the National Mall as a list of federal items and their discounted prices scrolled down the screen. "But act fast, because deals like these will not last."

The White House Press Secretary told reporters Tuesday that the millions of "useful and collectible" items on sale will appeal to collectors and office-supply bargain hunters alike.
"Gently used Capitol police vehicles, $899.99," McClellan said. "The American-flag lapel pin, seen on America's hottest legislators—get yours for an incredible $1.99. A beautiful Lincoln Bedroom suite, just $399.00. Multiline desk phones, U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Economic Opportunity Act Of 1964—buy one, get one free. And warehouses full of irregular and discontinued U.S. currency, up to an amazing 40 percent off!"
"See this 'The White House—Washington' doodad hanging behind me?" added McClellan, gesturing at the familiar oval symbol that has graced the White House press-briefing room for nearly two decades. "Only $39.99. And if you want the Pentagon symbol, just $70 for the pair, and we'll throw in the blue drapes for free."

Shoppers at a Minneapolis-area Best Buy watch a commercial for the U.S. liquidation sale.
Portions of the nuclear and conventional weapons stockpile will also be for sale to the public. According to McClellan, the weapons are of "much better quality than those of our former Soviet-bloc competitors."

The 50 states will be sold at auction, the date to be announced.
Beltway observers are expressing surprise at the massive liquidation, recalling that Washington hasn't seen a sales event like this one since President Jimmy Carter's "Metric System Blowout" of 1979. Many have faulted Bush for maintaining a line of inventory that holds little use for most Americans.

"The U.S. government has been on shaky ground for some time, but I think all the fast-depreciating goods President Bush bought to keep it responsive and relevant in the 21st century really sealed its fate," Business Week reporter David Broder said. "I don't see Canada, Japan, or Germany investing in thousands of airport X-ray screening machines. [Bush] will be lucky if he recoups even a tenth of what he paid for them."

While many younger Americans said they consider the U.S. government passé, older residents were wistful about the demise of the longtime institution.
"I just don't know what I'll do when the U.S. shuts down," said Vermont resident and loyal U.S. consumer David Wilson. "Who's going to deliver the mail or put out my house if it catches fire? I guess we'll have to switch to Verizon or something."

Some remain skeptical about the government's claims of insolvency, saying that it's just a ploy to generate fast cash. "I distinctly recall a going-out-of-business sale during the Reagan Administration," New Mexico resident Jim Vernon said. "And even if they do close up, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts they open up again some place like Guatemala or the Dominican Republic under a new name."

While no date has been set for Washington's final day of governance, Bush assured the public that the sale is "definitely it, folks."
"When it's gone, it's gone," Bush said.

(Source)

2006-07-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

If They Can Do It, Why Can't We?

There is a lot of discussion lately about the failure of Social Democracy. As the Conservatives continue in their rise to power, we will certainly see more on this topic.
It's true that the supporters of laisse-fair capitalism are quick to point out that the failures of social programs, yet they never point out the obvious successes.

Here is a story of an obvious success.

Our European neighbors in Scandanavia have a great deal to show the world on the topic of egalitarianism.

United Nations: Nordic Countries Best Place to Live in the WorldThe Nordic countries have the best standard of living in the world, as per the Human Development Report published by the United Nations

Best Standard of Living in the WorldThe Nordic countries are overall the best countries to live in the world, according to the Human Development Report which is published annually by the United Nations. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland figure among the top countries on the UN index because of their high levels of education, democracy, income and public health.

The Human Development Report (HDR) is an annual independent study commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme and published into more than a dozen languages. The HDR measures the wealth of nations by the standard of living of their population and considers several indexes related to life expectancy, education, economy and environment.Economists, philosophers and political leaders have long emphasised human wellbeing as the sole purpose of economic development. A successful community is not that which has one wealthy member and nine living in poverty, but that one where all members of the community have succeeded in achieving a high standard of living.

The HDR measures whether the national income of a nation is creating an environment for its people to enjoy a life with good health services, political freedoms, security against crime, greater access to education and a satisfying leisure time.Norway tops the index for third consecutive year

The Nordic countries have always performed very well in the United Nations' HDR, all figuring within the top 15 countries on the index. Among the Scandinavians, Norway has become the best performing Nordic country in the report after ranking number one in 2001, 2002 and 2003, heading the Development index for the third consecutive year.
In Norway, 99 percent of the population can read and write, there are 413 doctors per 100,000 citizens, the average life expectancy is 78.4 years, and the Norwegians are even wealthier than ever before. The famous Nordic social welfare state remains efficient and provides the Norwegians with a first class health, education and benefits system, which is financed through their taxes.Norway has also topped the lists for being among the most generous countries in the world in terms of foreign aid donations on a per capita basis, and for their green environmentally friendly policies.However the Norwegian society is the most developed in the world, the average Norwegian is still known to complain nonetheless.

The current discussion topics in Norway range among the waiting lists for medical care, the shortage of nursing homes and the cuts in police and school budgets.Quality of Life, Income, Education and Life ExpectancyIf we would only focus on per capita income statistics, we would perhaps be surprised to hear that the inhabitants of the small central European nation of Luxembourg are the wealthiest in the world, with an average salary of $53,780. The average salary in Norway is $45,000 but the Nordic countries are above all known for being an egalitarian society; of the seventeen richest countries in the world, Sweden ranks first as having the fewest people living in poverty and the fewest illiterate people, while other rich countries such us the United States have the the most, showing that stark inequality persists even in middle or high-income countries.

Education is one of the pillars of the Nordic society. Illiteracy is practically non existent from Iceland to Finland, and the free national education systems breed some of the most skilled workforce in the world. Moreover, when it comes to equality between women and men, all the five Nordic countries top the index and score again the highest; Iceland takes the lead in terms of emancipation, followed by Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland on the fifth position.You may now be convinced that people in the Nordic countries live well, but they also live long. The HDR averages life expectancy on the Nordic countries between the 77.7 years of Finland and the 78.9 of Norway. Japan has the longest life expectancy with the average Japanese living up to of 81.3 years.

(Source)

2006-07-06T04:15:00.000-07:00

It's an Illegal Employer Problem
By Thom Hartmann

Every time the media - or a Democrat - uses the phrase "Illegal Immigration" they are promoting one of Karl Rove's most potent Republican Party frames.
The reality is that we don't have an "Illegal Immigration" problem in America. We have an "Illegal Employer" problem.

Yet it's almost never mentioned in the mainstream media, because to point it out could slightly reduce the profits and CEO salaries of many of America's largest multi-state and multinational corporations - who both own the media and contribute heavily to conservative politicians. Republicans would prefer that the "criminals" covered in the press are working people, and that corporate and CEO criminals not get discussed.

As the Busby/Bilray contest showed, "illegal immigration" is a red-hot issue for American voters. The Democrat Busby was way ahead until she committed a faux pas before a group of Latinos, leading to (false) media reports (particularly on right-wing talk radio) that she was encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for her in the upcoming election. Her Republican opponent seized on this and hammered the district with ads for the last few days of the campaign (while voting machines curiously went home at night with some of the poll workers), and now a Republican lobbyist has taken the seat of a Republican congressman convicted of illegal deals with Republican lobbyists.

Encouraging a rapid increase in the workforce by encouraging companies to hire non-citizens is one of the three most potent tools conservatives since Ronald Reagan have used to convert the American middle class into the American working poor. (The other two are destroying the governmental protections that keep labor unions viable, and ending tariffs while promoting trade deals like NAFTA/WTO/GATT that export manufacturing jobs.)
As David Ricardo pointed out with his "Iron Law of Labor" (published in his 1814 treatise "On Labor") when labor markets are tight, wages go up. When labor markets are awash in workers willing to work at the bottom of the pay scale, unskilled and semi-skilled wages overall will decrease to what Ricardo referred to as "subsistence" levels.

Two years later, in 1816, Ricardo pointed out in his "On Profits" that when the cost of labor goes down, the result usually isn't a decrease in product prices, but, instead, an increase in corporate and CEO profits. (This is because the marketplace sets prices, but the cost of labor helps set profits. For example, when Nike began manufacturing shoes in Third World countries with labor costs below US labor costs, it didn't lead to $15 Nikes - their price held, and even increased, because the market would bear it. Instead, that reduction in labor costs led to Nike CEO Phil Knight becoming a multi-billionaire.)
Republicans understand this very, very well, although they never talk about it. Democrats seem not to have read Ricardo, although the average American gets it at a gut level.

Thus, Americans are concerned that a "flood of illegal immigrants" coming primarily across our southern border is, to paraphrase Lou Dobbs, "wiping out the American middle class." And there is considerable truth to it, as part of the three-part campaign mentioned earlier.
But Dobbs and his fellow Republicans say the solution is to "secure our border" with a fence like that used by East Germany, but that stretches a distance about the same as that from Washington, DC to Chicago. It'll be a multi-billion-dollar boon to Halliburton and Bechtel, who will undoubtedly get the construction and maintenance contracts, but it won't stop illegal immigration. (Instead, people will legally come in on tourist and other visas, and not leave when their visas expire.)

The fact is that we had an open border with Mexico for several centuries, and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem. Before Reagan's presidency, an estimated million or so people a year came into the US from Mexico - and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico at the end of the agricultural harvest season. Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

Non-citizens didn't have access to the non-agricultural US job market, in large part because of the power of US labor unions (before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized; today the private workforce is about 7% unionized), and because companies were unwilling to risk having non-tax-deductible labor expenses on their books by hiring undocumented workers without valid Social Security numbers.

But Reagan put an end to that. His 1986 amnesty program, combined with his aggressive war on organized labor (begun in 1981), in effect told both employers and non-citizens that there would be few penalties and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool (and thus driving down wages) with undocumented immigrants. A million people a year continued to come across our southern border, but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall because instead of seasonal work they were able to find permanent jobs.

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

Yet in the American media, Illegal Employers are almost never mentioned.
Lou Dobbs, the most visible media champion of this issue, always starts his discussion of the issue with a basic syllogism - 1. Our border is porous. 2. People are coming across our porous border and diluting our labor markets, driving down US wages. 3. Therefore we must make the border less porous.

Lou's syllogism, however, ignores the real problem, the magnet drawing people to risk life and limb to illegally enter this country - Illegal Employers. Our borders have always been porous (and even with a "fence" will still allow through "tourists" by the millions), but we've never had a problem like this before.

And it's not just because poverty has increased in Mexico - today, about half of Mexico lives on less than $2 a day, but 50 years ago half of Mexico also lived on the equivalent of $2 today. Our trade and agricultural policies are harmful to Mexican farmers (and must be changed!), but we were nearly as predatory fifty years ago (remember the rubber and fruit companies, particularly in Central America?).

Yet fifty years ago we didn't have an "illegal immigration" problem, because back then we didn't have a conservative "Illegal Employer" problem.
As the Washington Post noted in an article by Hsu and Lydersen on June 19, 2006:
"Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.
"In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three."

The hiring crimes of Illegal Employers are being ignored by the law, and rewarded by the economic systems of the nation.
Proof that this simple reality is ignored in our media (much to the delight of Republicans) is everywhere you look. For example, check out a series of national polls on illegal immigration done over the past year at www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm. A typical poll question is like this one from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in June, 2006:
"When it comes to the immigration bill, the Senate and the House of Representatives disagree with one another about what should be done on the issue of illegal immigration.
"Many in the House of Representatives favor strengthening security at the borders, including building a seven-hundred-mile fence along the border with Mexico to help keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States, and they favor deporting immigrants who are already in the United States illegally.

"Many in the Senate favor strengthening security at the borders, including building a three-hundred-and-seventy-mile fence along the border with Mexico to help keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States, and they favor a guest worker program to allow illegal immigrants who have jobs and who have been here for more than two years to remain in the United States.

"Which of these approaches would you prefer?"
The question: "Or would you prefer companies that employ undocumented workers be severely fined or put out of business?" wasn't even asked. The word "employer" appears nowhere in any of the questions in that poll. Nor is it in the CBS News immigration poll. Or in the Associated Press immigration poll. Or in the Fox News immigration poll.
Only the CNN poll asked the question: "Would you favor increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants?" Two-thirds of Americans, of all party affiliations, said, "Yes," but it went virtually unreported in mainstream media coverage.
"Illegal Immigration" is really about "Illegal Employers." As long as Democrats argue it on the basis of "illegal immigration" they'll lose, even when they're right. Instead, they need to be talking about "Illegal Employers."

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a jobs issue, as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.
"Mass deportations" and "Fences" are hysterics and false choices. Start penalizing "Illegal Employers" and non-citizens without a Social Security number will leave the country on their own. And they won't have to confront death trying to cross the desert back into Mexico - Mexican citizens can simply walk back into Mexico across the border at any legal border crossing (as about a million did every year for over a century).
Tax law requires that an employer must verify the Social Security number of their employees in order to document, and thus deduct, the expense of their labor. This is a simple task, and some companies, like AMC Theatres, are already doing it.

For example, Cameron Barr wrote in The Washington Post on April 30, 2006, that: "At one area multiplex owned by AMC, the Rio 18 in Gaithersburg, 11 employees 'decided to resign' this month after they could not rectify discrepancies that arose during the screening, said Melanie Bell, a spokeswoman for AMC Entertainment Inc., which is based in Kansas City, Mo. She said such screening is a routine procedure that the company conducts across the United States."
Not wanting to be an Illegal Employer, the Post noted that AMC "has long submitted lists of its employees' Social Security numbers to the Social Security Administration for review. If discrepancies arise, she [company spokeswoman Bell] said in an e-mailed response to questions, 'we require the worker to provide their original Social Security card within 3 days or to immediately contact the local SSA office.' She said the process is part of payroll tax verification and occurs after hiring."

Easy, simple, cheap, painless. No fence required. No mass deportations necessary. No need for Homeland Security to get involved. When jobs are not available, most undocumented workers will simply leave the country (as they always did before), or begin the normal process to obtain citizenship that millions (including my own sister-in-law - this hits many of us close to home) go through each year.

Republicans, however, are not going to allow a discussion of "Illegal Employers." Instead, they will continue to hammer the issue of "Illegal Immigrants," and tie that political albatross around the necks of Democrats (who seem all too willing to accept it).
Bob Casey, for example, was beating the pants off Rick Santorum in the Pennsylvania senatorial campaign, until Santorum began running an ad that says:
"Bobby Casey announced his support of a Senate bill that grants amnesty to illegal immigrants, shocking hardworking taxpayers all across Pennsylvania. Now Casey's trying to wiggle out of it by saying the bill doesn't offer amnesty and requires illegal immigrants to pay their back taxes. Either Casey didn't read the bill, or he's trying to deceive you. The Washington Times reports the legislation gives amnesty to 11 million who are here illegally, and paves the way for 66 million more immigrants to enter the country. The bill also forgives two of the last five years of back taxes for illegal immigrants, something the IRS would never do for you. This Casey-supported bill even gives illegal aliens Social Security benefits for the time they were here illegally. Fortunately, Rick Santorum voted against the bill, and Rick's leading the fight to make sure it never becomes law. Now you know the advantage of having in our corner a fighter like Rick Santorum."

Casey is still ahead, but the ad is visibly eroding his support. As George Will pointed out in a June 18, 2006 op-ed titled "Calculating Immigration Politics":
"Many Republicans, looking for any silver lining in an abundance of dark clouds, think the immigration issue might be a silver bullet that will slay their current vulnerability. The issue is, as political people say, a 'two-fer.' Opposition to the Senate bill, and support for the House bill, puts Republican candidates where much of the country and most of their party's base currently is -- approximately: 'Fix the border; then maybe we can talk about other things.' And opposition to the Senate bill distances them from a president who, although rebounding recently, has approval ratings below 40 percent in 29 states."
Now even Bush is talking like the Republicans in the House of Representatives - time to "get tough" and give Halliburton a few hundred billion to build a fence.
But still nobody is talking about the real problem here - the Illegal Employers.

Hopefully one day soon a dialogue like this fictitious one may ensue on, for example, Face The Nation:
[Bob Schieffer] Senator, do you really think the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is to offer amnesty instead of building a fence?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, I think you've been drinking some of Karl Rove's Kool-Aid. Illegal immigrants aren't the cause of undocumented workers driving down wages in this country. It's caused by Illegal Employers. We need to do something about these corporate criminals.

[Bob Schieffer (baffled)] Illegal employers? But what about the illegal aliens?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, the aliens wouldn't be here if they didn't think they could get a job. Of course, we need to clean up US agricultural subsidies and trade policies that are causing human suffering in our neighboring countries, but to truly protect the pay standards of workers here in the United States we need to crack down on the Illegal Employers. They're the magnets that are drawing people in from all over the world, many of whom come in as tourists and then overstay because they get illegal jobs. And these Illegal Employers are breaking the law - both immigration laws and IRS laws. I suggest that we need to tighten up these laws against Illegal Employers, adding huge fines for first offenses, jail time for CEOs for second offenses, and the corporate death penalty - dissolve their charters to operate - for repeat offenders.

[Bob Schieffer (stammering)] The, the, er, did you say "corporate death penalty"? You mean against companies?

[Senator Stabenow] Better companies die than human beings. These Illegal Employers, in their quest for ever-cheaper labor, are drawing people to cross our borders in ways that cause many people to die in the deserts of the southwest. These people were executed, for all practical purposes, by the policies of a few greedy and lawbreaking American companies. When companies are repeat offenders, they should be dissolved, their assets sold to reimburse their shareholders, and let other, more ethical companies pick up the slack. We used to do this all the time in America when companies behaved badly. Up until the 1880s, an average of around 2000 companies a year got the corporate death sentence in the US.

[Bob Schieffer (bug-eyed)] But what about the illegal immigration problem?

[Senator Stabenow (patting Schieffer's hand)] It's okay, Bob. You shouldn't listen so much to those Republicans. There isn't really much of an illegal immigration problem - it's an Illegal Employer problem. When we clear up the Illegal Employer problem in this country, we'll be back like we were before Reagan started allowing employers to behave illegally. When non-citizens can't get a job, most of them will go home, as they always have in the past. We don't need a fence, we don't need amnesty, we don't need mass roundups or deportations, and we for sure don't need guest workers. We have as many unemployed citizens in this nation as there are illegal immigrants - in my state of Michigan, for example, Flint and Detroit have massive unemployment since Reagan and his corporate cronies declared war on working people. When we get rid of Illegal Employers, that's one step in helping the job market tighten up so that legal employers will have to pay a living wage to attract legal citizens to work. That and rational labor and trade policies, and we can begin to restore our middle class and put our cities back together.

[Bob Schieffer (nodding)] It makes sense, Senator. An "Illegal Employer problem." Who would have thought of that?

[Senator Stabenow (smiling)] Well, Bob, the Republicans thought about it, back in the 1980s. But they thought it was a good idea. Which is why we have this mess today. Get rid of the Illegal Employers - toss a few CEOs into jail and shut down the outlaw companies - and the rest of this part of the problem will be easy and inexpensive to fix...

2006-07-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

I am preparing for a Cisco certification exam so Blogging is going to be a little light for me for the next month or so, but I'll still have time to add post and reply to comments.

Thank you for your patients.

I ran across this online debate between Tucker Carlson (conservative pundit) and Eric Alterman (liberal pundit) and thought I'd share it with the rest of the class.

The debate is lively and smart. Both men try to penetrate the belief that there is a liberal bias in the media.

Eric Alterman is the author of What Liberal Media. The book confronts the question of liberal bias in the media.

Tucker Carlson has been a long time critic of a proclivity of liberals runing America’s newsrooms.

Here’s the DEBATE.

2006-06-28T05:58:00.000-07:00

Win a Free Vacation by Telling Your Bad Boss Story

A bad boss can drive you nuts! Long hours, low pay. Hard work, no health insurance. The boss gets a golden parachute, you get no pension, no respect. You need a break. Tell us all about it and you could win a much-needed vacation.

Learn more about the contest.

Semifinalist Winners Will Compete for the Grand Prize:
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Grand prize is a one-week condo vacation with round-trip airfare.

Special Mention Contestants also will receive prizes, such as:

"Take This Job and Shove It" CD, by Johnny Paycheck.

A Survival Guide for Working with Bad Bosses: Dealing with Bullies, Idiots, Back-Stabbers and Other Managers from Hell, by Gini Graham Scott.

The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit: An A to Z Lexicon of Empty, Enraging and Just Plain Stupid Office Talk, by Lois Beckwith.

"Nine to Five" DVD, signed by Jane Fonda.

The semifinalists will be determined from the contestants whose stories receive the most votes during these voting periods:

1st Semifinalist Vote:
Wednesday, June 14, 12 p.m. until Wednesday, June 28, 11:59 a.m.

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Wednesday, June 28, 12 p.m. until Wednesday, July 5, 11:59 a.m.

3rd Semifinalist Vote:
Wednesday, July 5, 12 p.m. until Wednesday, July 12, 11:59 a.m.

4th Semifinalist Vote:
Wednesday, July 12, 12 p.m. until Wednesday July 19, 11:59 a.m.

5th Semifinalist Vote:
Wednesday, July 19, 12 p.m. until Wednesday, July 26, 11:59 a.m.

All semifinalists will compete for the grand prize. The voting period for the grand prize is:

Wednesday, July 26, 12 p.m. until Thursday, Aug. 10, 11:59 a.m.

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2006-06-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Jump the Shark

Do you remember when your favorite television show took a fatal turn for the worst, when your beloved half hour of escapism tanked?

When did your favorite show jump the shark?

They all go south at some point, like when Hotlips and Hackeye Pierce of MASH 4077th had a love thing, or the bizarre Miami Vice aliens episode. Both ideas wrecked each show.

The term Jump the Shark? The saying comes from the Happy Days episode where Arthur Fonzerelli (The Fonz) jumped a tank of sharks on his motorcycle. What may have seemed like a good way to generate ratings became a pathetic display of creative idiocy. That moment for most, me included, is when the show, which was mostly about teenage angst and growing up in the 1950’s, flew the coup. The death of Happy Days is when the Fonz jumped the shark. It changed the direction and scope of the show and Happy Days lost it's audience forever.

Now the phrase, “Jump the Shark” illustrates the point where something that was once very successful goes very, very bad. I’m a little now older than the day that the Fonz jumped the shark. In fact, I don’t watch much television nor do I have a favorite television show anymore.

I’m more interested in politics now than in citcoms. And recently I ‘ve seen many politicians jump the shark too. So I thought that I’d ask the question, what is your favorite jump the shark moment in the political realm? For me, the most considerable jump the shark moment of late was just after President Bush won the 2004 election. He pushed for Social Security reform, and lost big. In my opinion that’s when President Bush lost his audience. He stepped on the third rail of politics and went down in flames. Here was a President who just won one of the closest elections in American history, a wartime President with a previous 90% approval rating. He had plenty of political capital. What does he do first? He tries to fix a made up problem based on his person ideology rather than constituent need and capsizes his administration.
He’s been sinking slowly ever since.

So what’s your jump the shark moment? Television or politics, it's your choice.

2006-06-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Now more than ever the need for alternative sources of automobile power is pressing our consciousness. With the price of oil at all time highs and little chance of it dropping anytime soon, those of us who spend much of our time debating at the water cooler are seeking less the conventional answers.
And so as my synapse exchange impulses I wonder; what ever happened to the EV1?

Well, in his new documentary film, "Who Killed the Electic Car", Chris Paine examines the birth, life and untimely death of the modern electric car.
“The film”, says Paine “is about the only kind of cars that we can drive run on oil. And for a while there was a terrific alternative, the electric car”. Paine explores the 1996 GM launch of the EV1. A car like no other, the EV1 was the first electric car which would have given the old tech combustible engine a run for its money. It was fast, powerful, roomy, stylish, and best of all it ran completely on electricity.

In addition to it’s technological advancements, the EV1, according to its drivers, was more of a cohort than a car; it more like a well loved companion. Many relished its efficiency, stylish good looks and ease of use. Yet GM, as represented in the film, intentionally sabotaged its marketing, forced the lease holders to acquiesce their stewardship of the car, then promptly destroyed all of them. Consequently many EV1 lovers held mock funerals for thier former electric cars.
The film itself plays more like a crime drama as it explores the subtle conspiracy as to why the big automakers wanted nothing to do with the emerging electric car market. A market that by 2006 would have been a cash cow for the industry.

For more on the documentary film, “Who Killed the Electric Car” and the conspiracy behind it, visit the PBS news program, Now (Click Here for Show)

To learn more about purchasing alternative automobiles click HERE.

2006-06-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

"Character Matters; Leadership Descends From Character"
A quote from Rush Limbaugh

I happened to be listening to the radio yesterday with a friend and to my dismay my buddy is a Rush Limbaugh fan, it was his radio.
As not to seem like a raving lunatic with a foul demeanor who yells profanities at inanimate objects—the radio, not my friend; I generally ignore most of Rush’s brainless rantings and concentrate on more important things; like who the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are going to sign for the Aubrey Huff trade.

But the other day, Rush the autocrat caught my attention.

He read a letter, and who knows if it is a real letter, from on of his ditto-head listeners who raddled on about the Iraq Occupation and the unfortunate killing of two brave American soldiers. Two soldiers who were murdered and tortured under absolutely unjustifiable and horrible circumstances.

Here’s the email:

"Rush,

Now that two of our own have been tortured and murdered by the terrorists in Iraq will the left say that they deserved it?
I am so sick of our cut and run liberals.

Keep up your great work!"

Rush sounded off, “I gotta tell ya, I perused the liberal kook blogs today and they are happy that theses two soldiers got tortured”
He went on, “They are saying good riddens! Hope Rumsfield and who ever sleep well tonight”

Yet he failed to provide any evidence of any liberal blog which made such an insensitive statement. In fact, contextually, he made it appear as though acerbic rancor is the norm for the left against our soldiers, yet provided no evidence for this either.

This is a far cry from his normal strawman rantings about heroic conservative attempts to demise the spineless liberal. No, this is much worse...
Rush has once again crossed the line from rude stupidity to depraved dishonesty.

Here is a nationally syndicated talk show host using the deaths of two brave men to score political points and attempt to trash the ideals of better than half of all Americans who believe in traditional liberal values. Liberal values which represent equality, responsibility and stewardship.

Shame on you Rush. Shame on you for using the deaths of these unfortunate soldiers to advance your egocentric musings.

2006-06-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

The Truth Always Rises
Another instance where Conservatives and Liberals agree.

There has been a lot of banter on this blog about the benefits and pitfalls of free trade, global capitalism, or what I like to call– turbo capitalism. Turbo capitalism is a form of capitalism that seeks growth at all costs regardless of socio-economic, environmental and personal consequences. I learned the term from a speech given by Naomi Klein and it stuck with me.
Beyond the semantic value, turbo or laisse-fair capitalism is a form of fundamentalism which can be as dangerous to democracy as any of the religious sects that plague our world with violence and intimidation. Terrorists are not the only ones who believe that all of life can be encapsulated into a set of rigid, humanity defying rules. The obvious difference is that turbo capitalists do not use violence to demand our attention. Instead they use trade agreements, the IMF, the World Bank and international treaties to win concessions, to bend their opponents will and impose thier own.

Whether it’s a literal reading of the Koran, the Old Testament or an unmoving fidelity for the tenants of trickle down economics, fundamentalism is dangerous for democracy.
Whether fundamentalism is on the left or on the right, religious or secular, we must always resist its destructive movement.

It’s also argued by many that our economy is changing from an archaic industrial society where our workers make most of the goods that we consume to a society where we use our knowledge of engineering and productivity to create the products that we use but those goods will be assembled and materialized by others off our shores.
If this is true, then we should be witnessing resurgence in the growth rate of engineers. But sadly this is not the case. As many of us in the new economy suspected, our counterparts in Asia, who until recently have only taken orders to make our products, are now designing products for American companies and will soon have total ownership of the innovation process.
There is little reason to suggest otherwise.

A consequence of this shift will be increased competition, rising inflation, a falling dollar and growing disparity due to under and unemployment in the United States.
Americans seem relatively clueless to the coming jobless crisis. Most of us are completely unaware, and uninterested, as to where our products are made, let alone who makes them. As a matter of fact, just last week Congress debated whether or not to increase the corporate friendly H1-B visa from its current 65,000 limit to 115,000 visa’s per year.

The H1-B visa is a program that imports cheap foreign engineers into the U.S. while displacing American workers. The infamous visa has no provisions, at least none with any teeth, to pay the imported talent the prevailing wages. Companies who apply for these visa's are aware of this shortcoming and capitalize on its inadequacy. This program not only erodes our tax base and our national spending power, it altogether discourages Americans from studying engineering.

How can this happen? How can we allow our government to facilitate policies that cause good paying industrial jobs as well as middle-class white collar engineering jobs to vanish or go to the lowest bidder? How can we allow our economy to race to the bottom?

We the people are asleep at the wheel and our represenatives have no fear of reprisal.

The following article will illustrate the imposition that turbo capitalism is having on our economy, our jobs, our college graduates and our children’s future. It’s time we all take a good look at where we are moving as a country and what we expect to accomplish out of theses corporate friendly trade agreements which have more authority on some levels than our own national Constitution.

March 16, 2005
Outscourcing Innovation...And Everything Else
America's Has-Been Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

A country cannot be a superpower without a high tech economy, and America's high tech economy is eroding as I write.

The erosion began when US corporations outsourced manufacturing. Today many US companies are little more than a brand name selling goods made in Asia.
Corporate outsourcers and their apologists presented the loss of manufacturing capability as a positive development. Manufacturing, they said, was the "old economy," whose loss to Asia ensured Americans lower consumer prices and greater shareholder returns. The American future was in the "new economy" of high tech knowledge jobs.

This assertion became an article of faith. Few considered how a country could maintain a technological lead when it did not manufacture.
So far in the 21st century there is scant sign of the American "new economy." The promised knowledge-based jobs have not appeared. To the contrary, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a net loss of 221,000 jobs in six major engineering job classifications.
Today many computer, electrical and electronics engineers, who were well paid at the end of the 20th century, are unemployed and cannot find work. A country that doesn't manufacture doesn't need as many engineers, and much of the work that remains is being outsourced or filled with cheaper foreigners brought into the country on H-lb and L-1 work visas.
Confronted with inconvenient facts, outsourcing's apologists moved to the next level of fantasy.

Many technical and engineering jobs, they said, have become "commodity jobs," routine work that can be performed cheaper offshore. America will stay in the lead, they promised, because it will keep the research and development work and be responsible for design and innovation.
Alas, now it is design and innovation that are being outsourced. Business Week reports ("Outsourcing Innovation," March 21) that the pledge of First World corporations to keep research and development in-house "is now passé."
Corporations such as Dell, Motorola, and Philips, which are regarded as manufacturers based in proprietary design and core intellectual property originating in R&D departments, now put their brand names on complete products that are designed, engineered, and manufactured in Asia by "original-design manufacturers" (ODM).
Business Week reports that practically overnight large percentages of cell phones, notebook PCs, digital cameras, MP3 players, and personal digital assistants are produced by original-design manufacturers. Business Week quotes an executive of a Taiwanese ODM: "Customers used to participate in design two or three years back. But starting last year, many just take our product."

Another offshore ODM executive says: "What has changed is that more customers need us to design the whole product. It's now difficult to get good ideas from our customers. We have to innovate ourselves." Another says: "We know this kind of product category a lot better than our customers do. We have the capability to integrate all the latest technologies." The customers are America's premier high tech names.
The design and engineering teams of Asian ODMs are expanding rapidly, while those of major US corporations are shrinking. Business Week reports that R&D budgets at such technology companies as Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Ericsson, and Nokia are being scaled back.

Outsourcing is rapidly converting US corporations into a brand name with a sales force selling foreign designed, engineered, and manufactured goods. Whether or not they realize it, US corporations have written off the US consumer market. People who do not participate in the innovation, design, engineering and manufacture of the products that they consume lack the incomes to support the sales infrastructure of the job diverse "old economy."
"Free market" economists and US politicians are blind to the rapid transformation of America into a third world economy, but college bound American students and heads of engineering schools are acutely aware of declining career opportunities and enrollments. While "free trade" economists and corporate publicists prattle on about America's glorious future, heads of prestigious engineering schools ponder the future of engineering education in America.
Once US firms complete their loss of proprietary architecture, how much intrinsic value resides in a brand name? What is to keep the all-powerful ODMs from undercutting the American brand names?

The outsourcing of manufacturing, design and innovation has dire consequences for US higher education. The advantages of a college degree are erased when the only source of employment is domestic nontradable services.
According to the Los Angeles Times (March 11), the percentage of college graduates among the long-term chronically unemployed has risen sharply in the 21st century. The US Department of Labor reported in March that 373,000 discouraged college graduates dropped out of the labor force in February--a far higher number than the number of new jobs created.
The disappearing US economy can also be seen in the exploding trade deficit. As more employment is shifted offshore, goods and services formerly produced domestically become imports. Nothink economists and Bush administration officials claim that America's increasing dependence on imported goods and services is evidence of the strength of the US economy and its role as engine of global growth.

This claim ignores that the US is paying for its outsourced goods and services by transferring its wealth and future income streams to foreigners. Foreigners have acquired $3.6 trillion of US assets since 1990 as a result of US trade deficits.Foreigners have a surfeit of dollar assets. For the past three years their increasing unwillingness to acquire more dollars has resulted in a marked decline in the dollar's value in relation to gold and tradable currencies.
Recently the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans have expressed their concerns. According to Bloomberg (March 10), Japan's unrealized losses on its dollar reserve holdings have reached $109.6 billion.

The Asia Times reported (March 12) that Asian central banks have been reducing their dollar holdings in favor of regional currencies for the past three years. A study by the Bank of International Settlements concluded that the ratio of dollar reserves held in Asia declined from 81% in the third quarter of 2001 to 67% in September 2004. India reduced its dollar holdings from 68% of total reserves to 43%. China reduced its dollar holdings from 83% to 68%.
The US dollar will not be able to maintain its role as world reserve currency when it is being abandoned by that area of the world that is rapidly becoming the manufacturing, engineering and innovation powerhouse.

Misled by propagandistic "free trade" claims, Americans will be at a loss to understand the increasing career frustrations of the college educated. Falling pay and rising prices of foreign made goods will squeeze US living standards as the declining dollar heralds America's descent into a has-been economy.
Meanwhile the Grand Old Party has passed a bankruptcy "reform" that is certain to turn unemployed Americans living on debt and beset with unpayable medical bills into the indentured servants of credit card companies. The steely-faced Bush administration is making certain that Americans will experience to the full their counry's fall.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: pcroberts@postmark.net

2006-06-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

The Next SuperHighway

There are many who agree that the North American Free Trade Act, also known as NAFTA, has been disastrous for our economy. More than just an agreement with neighbor trading states, NAFTA is a treaty which supersedes our Constitution and is the root of tremendous job loss in the rust belt; over 600,000 good paying jobs are gone forever.

Our main trading partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement is Mexico. Yet, the Mexican economy has little to offer the United States in terms of bilatteral trade. But the intention was never really free trade with Mexico was it? With over ten years in play, the truth of NAFTA is now obvious. NAFTA was designed to reduce labor costs and environmental obstacles and to bypass other so-called trade barriers such as labor unions and worker safety.

The ultimate dream of neo-liberalism is unfettered free trade without the safeguards of environmental standards and without the unpleasant demurral complaints of labor unions on such topics as labor rights and living wages. So far, the neo-liberals are realizing their goals while America sleeps, unaware of the latest development in the free trade saga.

I submit an article by a well known conservative about the NAFTA Superhighway. The NAFTA Superhigh is a massive public works project which the Bush Administration is secretly promoting. The plan is to build a huge super highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
The project serves as a testimony to the reality that NAFTA is a losing proposition for Americans of most political and socio-economic persuasions and a win game for the wealthy special interests, CEO's and politicians.

What I find most encouraging though is that many conservatives and liberals agree on a central tennent; NAFTA is bad for America.
Our power is in our solidarity. Yet while our is guard down, our representatives in Washington continue to work behind the scenes, behind our backs, to push for cheaper goods at all costs, to replace good paying jobs for lower paying service sector pursuits and to facilitate our ultimate race to the bottom.

Enjoy the article, but most important… DO SOMETHING!

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. CorsiPosted Jun 12, 2006

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.

Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system.

The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City. As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.

Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.

NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.

Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”

The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.

The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration. A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.

Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.

(Source)

2006-06-16T05:10:00.000-07:00

Another Talking Head

Thomas L. Friedman, a NY Times writer and author whose ubiquitous presence on the daily political television circuit has elevated him to rock star status, is once again predicting that the outcome in Iraq will be evident with in about six months.

This prediction would not be so blatantly self-serving if Friedman hadn't been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq War. A review of Friedman's punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer. Still this hasn’t stopped him from spouting his inaccurate forecasts, nor has anyone in the mainstream media caught on to his consistently careless prognostications.

Friedman has stated:

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(NewYorkTimes,11/30/03)

"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR'sFreshAir,6/3/04)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
(CBS'sFacetheNation,10/3/04)

"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile."
(NewYorkTimes,11/28/04)

"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
(NBC'sMeetthePress,9/25/05)

"Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time."
(NewYorkTimes,9/28/05)

"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."
(CBS'sFacetheNation,12/18/05)

"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
(PBS'sCharlieRoseShow,12/20/05)

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
(NewYorkTimes,12/21/05)

"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand."
(OprahWinfreyShow,1/23/06)

"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
(CBS,1/31/06)

"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."
(NBC'sToday,3/2/06)

"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
(CNN,4/23/06)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)

Why any rational person, let alone a major news network, would reward Thomas L. Friedman with the benefit of creditability on the topic of Iraq is completely beyond my imaginative limits.

What we need from our media is a clear picture of what is happening in Iraq, not a false prediction from a demographic friendly populist.

2006-06-09T04:24:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, there must be some truth to an argument when libertarians and progressives agree on an issue.

Here is a commentary by Paul Craig Roberts on the determent of outsourcing and insourcing foreign talent into the workplace.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.

Outsourcing Smarts
The Death of US Engineering
by Paul Craig Roberts

When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept.
The May payroll jobs report released June 2 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the jobs pattern for the 21st century US economy: employment growth is limited to domestic services.
In May the economy created only 67,000 private sector jobs. Job estimates for the previous two months were reduced by 37,000.

The new jobs are as follows: professional and business services, 27,000; education and health services, 41,000; waitresses and bartenders, 10,000. Manufacturing lost 14,000 jobs.
Total hours worked in the private sector declined in May. Manufacturing hours worked are 6.6 percent less than when the recovery began four and one-half years ago.
American economists and policymakers are in denial about the effect of jobs offshoring on US employment. Corporate lobbyists have purchased fraudulent studies from economists that claim offshoring results in more US employment rather than less. The same lobbyists have spread disinformation that the US does not graduate enough engineers and that they must import foreigners on work visas. Lobbyists are currently pushing, as part of the immigration bill, an expansion in annual H-1B work visas from 65,000 to 115,000.

The alleged "shortage" of US engineering graduates is inconsistent with reports from Duke University that 30 to 40 percent of students in its master's of engineering management program accept jobs outside the profession. About one-third of engineering graduates from MIT go into careers outside their field. Job outsourcing and work visas for foreign engineers are reducing career opportunities for American engineering graduates and, also, reducing salary scales.

When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept. Americans are simply being forced out of the engineering professions by jobs outsourcing and the importation of foreigners on work visas. Corporate lobbyists and their hired economists are destroying the American engineering professions.

A country that doesn't make things doesn't need engineers and designers.
American engineering is also under pressure because corporations have moved manufacturing offshore. Design, research and development are now following manufacturing offshore. A country that doesn't make things doesn't need engineers and designers. Corporations that have moved manufacturing offshore fund R&D in the countries where their plants have been relocated.

Engineering curriculums are demanding. The rewards to the effort are being squeezed out by jobs offshoring and work visas. If the current policy continues of substituting foreign engineers for American engineers, the profession will die in the U.S.

2006-06-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

A Short Hiatus

I'll need to ease up on blogging until next week. I'm tenting my home for termites.

For those who don't know, tenting is a process where an exterminator covers your home with a large heavy tent, the fumagation tent usually resembles a circus tent in that it has red and yellow or red and white stripes or some variation of primary colors. But unlike a bigtop circus, it's not a happy place inside.

The exterminator fumigates the home under the canopy for about 24 hours, thereby destroying all and anything living inside.
In my case, we have termites, and yes we're leaving.

But we also have palmetto bugs. Palmetto Bugs are a nasty creature that resembles a cockroach, but it is much bigger, about 2 inches. It fly’s toward you when you try to kill it, meanwhile making a loud ominous flapping noise. Oh yeah, and they bite too.
But we live in Florida, and in Florida everyone has Palmetto bugs.

We own a Craftsman Period bungalow; it's sits on a brick foundation and is therefore elevated by about two feet. The foundation has many openings for air flow, the home was built over 75 years ago when central air was not standard, so naturally we have all sorts of critters living under our house, mostly fruit rats and king snakes, and they’ll be killed too.

Nearly every home owner in Florida has fruit rats. They're called rats, but really they are more like large mice. Fruit rats are attracted to fruit trees. Many Florida neighborhoods are a cornucopia of fruit tress and other tropicals.

Unfortunately tenting is just one of the many hidden costs that we pay to live in Florida.
But it’s worth it.

OR

Maybe I should just get a Pangolin.

Pangolins - large-tongued tanks Digging for ants and termites with their strong claws and large tongue, the pangolins have little to fear, except humans. They can curl up into a ball and their razor sharp claws provide extra defense.

2006-06-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

There is an excellent article over at the Monthly Review written by James Straub, its titled, “What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt”

Straub does a standup job at explaining why a state that throughout Bush’s first term, constantly vied with Michigan for the dubious honor of most jobs lost. Ohio, where hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 were largely high-wage, stable, union jobs, which served as employment multipliers in the larger local economy. A state that since 1950 has lost nearly 50 percent of its population and has one of the poorest cities in the country; Cleveland Ohio. And how a town like Youngstown, once known for its blue collar middle-class mobility, is now called Yompton by the town’s youth. Yompton is in reference to the economic and cultural devastation of South Compton L.A.

Straub also explains the history of the labor movement in Ohio, the influence that the evangelical movement has now on the state , and where Ohio may be heading.
He asks the question; is this what is in store for the rest of the rust belt and the nation?

His conclusions may surprise you.

What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Beltby James Straub

It was a fittingly ironic end to an election full of grotesque twists: When George W. Bush was narrowly reelected president of the United States, it was the electoral votes of the state he had harmed most that gave him the final nudge across the finish line. Ohio went for the second election in a row to the Republican clown prince. But if the first Bush victory was tragedy, the one in 2004 was surely farce: has world history ever turned before on the artful elevation of gay bashing to an electoral tactic?
“In twenty-one years of organizing, I’ve never seen anything like this,” former trucker’s union organizer Phil Burress told the New York Times shortly after the election. “It’s a forest fire with a 100 mile-per-hour wind behind it.” Burress was speaking not of the efforts of unions and community organizations to register and turn out hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls in Ohio to vote against Bush, but of his crusade to mobilize even larger numbers to pass a state constitution amendment prohibiting gay marriage.

The demographics and causes of Bush’s slim victory in Ohio and the country continue to be debated—for instance, while 25 percent of Ohio voters identified themselves as white evangelicals (and 78 percent of them voted for Bush), the Washington Post’s number-crunching later revealed that the percentage of frequent church-goers voting in Ohio actually declined 5 percent in 2004—and Congressman John Conyers has documented evidence of electoral fraud that indicates Ohio my have been this election’s secret Florida. However, it remains undeniable that Bush’s Ohio victory did come in part from a massive outpouring of socially conservative evangelical Christians to the polls. A large majority of these Republican evangelicals were blue-collar Ohioans voting against their self-interest, many mobilized by Burress’s anti-gay marriage amendment.

Click HERE for full article

2006-05-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons Why It Just Doesn't Work
By Mehrun EtebariJuly 17, 2003

We’ve all heard the claims that cutting tax rates for the richest Americans will improve the standard of living for the working class. Supposedly, top-bracket tax breaks will result in more jobs being created, higher wages for the average worker, and an overall upturn in our economy. It’s at the heart of the infamous trickle-down theory.

The past 40 years have seen a gradual decrease in the top bracket’s income tax rate, from 91% in 1963 to 35% in 2003. It went as low as 28% in 1988 and 1989 due to legislation passed under Reagan, the trickle-down theory’s most famous adherent. The Clinton years saw the top bracket hold steady at a higher rate of 39.6%, but under the younger Bush’s tax-cut policies, the rich are once again paying less. The drastic change in tax policy that has taken place since the early 1960s gives us a great opportunity to study and evaluate the claims that lower taxes for the rich translate to more wealth for the average American.

We can compare changes in the top tax rate with the real GDP growth rate (a measure of the growth of the entire U.S. economy), and three measures of how life is for the average working American: annual median income growth, annual average hourly wage growth, and job creation. If cuts for the rich were really the magic elixir for the economy and the middle class that the Republican consensus claims it is, we would see an increase in the four indicators whenever the tax rate dropped. However, this is not the case. Such a trend occurs sometimes, but the opposite happens at other times!

Let’s look one by one at comparisons of key economic indicators to the top tax rate.
1. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth.

This graph shows the fluctuations of the real GDP growth rate over the period, indicating the performance of the U.S. economy as a whole. It is true that growth increased drastically after the 1982 tax cut, reaching as high as 7.3% in 1984. However, as the Reagan-Bush, Sr. administrations went on and taxes for the rich were slashed even further, growth fell to negative levels during 1991, at the heart of the last recession. And, two of the three years with the highest growth were during the 1950s, when the top tax rate was 91%. Overall, there seems to be no close relationship between the top tax rate and the GDP growth rate, and statistical analysis backs this up: the correlation coefficient between the two variables is 0.03, meaning that there is essentially no connection. (If tax cuts were strongly related to GDP growth, we would see a coefficient close to –1.) So much for upper-class tax cuts boosting the economy; now it’s on to median income growth.

2. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth.

Again, we see inconclusive evidence for the power of tax cuts. We do see small peaks in median income growth, a good measure of how the average American household is doing, after top-bracket tax cuts in the mid-1960s and early 1980s, but we also actually see income decreases after the tax cuts of the late 1980s, and strong growth after the tax increase of 1993. It is true that in the year with the worst median income decrease (3.3% in 1974), the top tax rate was 70%. However, it was also 70% in the year with the highest median income growth (4.7% in 1972)! Once again, the lack of connection between the two measures is backed up by a correlation coefficient near zero: 0.06, to be exact. And yes, yet again, the coefficient is positive, indicating that income has gone up slightly (though negligibly) more in years with higher taxes. Two strikes. How about hourly wages?

3. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth.

Not surprisingly, we have mixed results yet again! Growth in average hourly wages did increase during the 1980s following the first Reagan tax cuts, albeit two years after the cuts took effect. But, just like GDP growth and median income growth, hourly wages decreased following the late 1980s tax cuts, and spiked upwards after the 1993 tax increase.
Furthermore, wages grew at a level of at least 1%, and usually much more, all throughout the period when the top income tax rate was 91%. In fact, it isn’t until 1972 that we see a wage growth rate of less than 1%. However, if we look at the 19 years of the study period when the top tax rate was 50% or less, we see that 8 of the years saw an increase in wages of less than 1%. Thus, it seems that hourly wages grew more when taxes were higher – indeed, the correlation coefficient is 0.34, indicating a mild positive relationship between higher taxes for the rich and higher hourly wages. This finding flies in the face of the conservative theory. As if that's not enough, now let’s see about what President Bush claimed would be the biggest result of tax cuts – job creation.

4. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation.

Here, we see the change in the unemployment rate laid against the top tax rate from 1954 to 2002. Thus, negative values signify a decrease in unemployment -- in essence, job creation. Once again, while the top tax rate trends downward over the period, the annual change in unemployment doesn't seem to trend at all! Although the largest increase (2.9%) did occur in 1975, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, three of the four largest decreases in unemployment occurred in years when the top rate was 91%. The mixed results do not bode well for those who see tax cuts for the richest as a sparkplug to incite job growth. The correlation coefficient between the variables here is 0.11 -- meaning that there have been slightly more jobs created in years with lower top tax rates, but this pattern is negligible -- nowhere near strong enough to signify a relationship.

So, can you tell what our conclusion is yet?

Overall, data from the past 50 years strongly refutes any arguments that cutting taxes for the richest Americans will improve the economic standing of the lower and middle classes or the nation as a whole. To be sure, the economic indicators examined in this report are dependent on a variety of factors, not just tax policy. However, what this study does show is that any attempt to stimulate economic growth by cutting taxes for the rich will do nothing -- it hasn't worked over the past 50 years, so why would it work in the future?

To put it simply and bluntly, Bush's top-bracket tax cut is an ineffective attempt at stimulus that will not cause any growth.

(Source)

2006-05-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan in Turmoil: 330+ Killed in One Week, U.S. Bombing Raids Continue, Taliban Seizing Control in Southern Region
- Select hyperlink to listen to full segment.

In Afghanistan, more than 330 people have died over the past week in some of the heaviest fighting since the war began almost five years ago. Taliban have moved out of the mountains and seized large areas in the south.

On Monday U.S. A-10 fighter jets and Apache helicopter gunships bombed homes in the village of Azizi, west of Kandahar.
The air strikes, which lasted for hours, killed about 100 people including as many as 30 civilians. U.S. officials said the raids targeted Taliban fighters who were involved in a series of deadly attacks last week.

The increase in fighting comes just two months before the United States is scheduled to hand over command of southern Afghanistan to NATO forces.
Fighting has greatly increased in Southern Afghanistan as the Taliban have moved out of the mountains and seized large areas of the region.
Last week the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Karl Eikenberry, admitted that the Taliban are now better trained, armed and organized than in the past. He said the Taliban has adopted tactics used in Iraq including suicide attacks and roadside bombs.
(Source)

2006-05-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

Pat Robertson: God Says Tsunami Possible For U.S.

Pat Robertson, God's personal confidant, says that God has told him that storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year.
The founder of the The 700 Club, the Family Chanel and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) claims that the revelations came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat.

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said on May 8.
He later added:
"There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest" .

Robertson has come under intense criticism recently for suggesting that the U.S. Government should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, his exact words were,
"We need to take him out".

He has also been criticized for his assertion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.

He's also suggested that the Hurricane Katrina aftermath was the result of a "sinful nation", and that we should "nuke" the State Department to "shake things up a little"

But that's not where his goofy utterings end, the dopy leader of the 700 Club maintains that he can leg press 2000 lbs.
Yes, 2000 lbs! That's the wight of an average automobile.
Pat Robertson claims that he can leg press a Ford Mustang!
This amazing claim can be found on his CBN Website.

When is America going to catch on to this of this half witted false prophet and stop paying attention to his doltish musings ?

For more of Pat Robert's idioc proverbs, click HE RE

2006-05-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Justice or Profit?

The notion of private prisons as more efficient than public run facilties has an appealing quality to state legislatures and other law makers. But is this a true supposition or a flimsy assumption?
The argument that privatizing our prisions is an advantage to the tax payer has been disuputed by the very government that advocates for it.

According to the U.S. Government Accounting Office, the economic difference between operating a private penal facility and a public one is very small. Therefore, the very existence of private prisons raises an ethical issue:
What are the implications of basing the operation of a prison on a purely profit motivation?

Private prisons are a relatively new phenomenon. They began to appear a little more than twenty years ago, but have rapidly proliferated throughout much of the United States. Their upward surge is the result of ongoing "tough-on-crime policies" that have swollen the population of incarcerated men and women to the near two million mark. Once private prisons are built, states pay the firms to operate them—the two giants are the Wackenhut Corporation and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). It is to the advantage of these companies, and a few others, to keep the prison beds filled. For example, CCA has been a corporate member and a major contributor to ALEC (an influential conservative think tank) and an active member of its Criminal Justice Task Force.

As a result, the task force has modeled bills which , ALEC claims credit the widespread adoption of Truth in Sentencing and Three Strikes/Habitual Offender legislation. It's no wonder, with such lobbying power, that since the inception of private prisions we have seen an explosion in prison population. In 1970, there were approximately 300,000 people in prison and jail in the U.S.; by 2000, that number had grown by over 500% to nearly two million, or 25% of the world’s prison population in a nation that holds just 5% of the world’s people. Along with that enormous growth, we have seen sharp increases in racial disparities, in the number of women and youth behind bars, and in the proportion of people behind bars for non-violent (especially drug) offenses. African-Americans now make up 47% of state and Federal prison populations, but just 12% of the general population. Latinos make up at least an additional 16% of the prison population (not all states count Latinos separately from whites).

Consequently, critics of private prisons have increasingly challenged their use. Marc Mauer, assistant director of the non-profit Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., maintains that private prision actually create an incentive for legislators to promote prison expansion because, “with private corporations building the facilities at their own expense—legislators can bypass having to go to voters for the approval of bond issues to obtain the needed construction funds. As an added incentive for their construction and use, many rural areas struggling with high unemployment rates clamor for prisons, public or private, because they mean jobs; and local legislators are often anxious to gratify these wishes—whether or not another facility is needed”. “By the late 1990s, about forty states had passed versions of truth-in sentencing similar to ALEC's model bill. Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically. The result: more demand for private prison companies like CCA” (Source)

Therefore it is not a coincidence that prison population has exploded since we have allowed privitazation of our criminal system. The prisons populations will continue to expand as long as we allow our legislatures to use our tax dollars to line the pockes of CCA and Wackenhut executives.
This is a system that survives because of our apathy and it feeds on ignorance and greed.

Contact Congress now, only you can stop this feeble, half-baked corrections model.

2006-05-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

The End of Retirement

The baby boomer generation -- they gave us pease, pot and microdots, the turbulence and successes of the 1960’s social movements, the micro-computer, arena rock and Reaganonimics. Love or hate them, they’ll be with us for decades. Now they're a generation facing retirement, and many of them will see that a life of retirement is going to bring new challenges, challenges that Americans have not seen since the Gilded Age of industry when retirement from work was only for the wealthy or the criminally insane.

Those who enjoy good health and longevity will be faced with the sobering conclusion that Social Security is not enough to maintain their current lifestyles and their 401K plans will not fill the disparity gap of income. The burden of deficient retirement funds will not only affect the Baby Boomers, it will have an impact on the American Economy as a whole. The millions of working citizens who will retire within the next ten years will have to drastically decrease their consumer spending and release many of their assets in order to afford the basic necessities of living. They simply will not have enough money to maintain their current lifestyles. The necessary decrease in consumer spending from the boomers could start with a ripple and end with a tidal wave, forcing companies to produce less goods and services and forcing workers out of their jobs. The trend in recent decades to shift the cost of retirement pensions from corporations to employees has forced millions to manage their own retirement plans, and consequently the majority of middle income earners are doing a lousy job at it.

How could this happen?

In 1978 a little know tax clause, the 401K, was amended to the IRS tax code as a measure to protect the retirement investments for executives at the Eastman Kodak company. The 401K, named after the section of the tax code in which it appears, is cash deferment program in which an executive can have his or her pre-tax contributions qualify towards an employer sponsored retirement supplemental plan. In short, the 401K clause was meant to be a supplement retirement plan for business executives.
The plan caught on, and by 1981 the 401K clause was expanded to include all employees who wish to participate, not just the executive staff. The plan that was designed as a suppliment to retirement becamce a release valve for employers, who up until then spent about 8% of payroll on retirement benefits for employees. The new plan put the burden of retirement on the worker, forcing the worker to make much larger contributions for retirement, in most cases the worker inputs 50% of the total retirement contributions, as well as forcing the worker to manage the progress of his or her investments plan - a daunting task for anyone.

Before 1981, employers paid and managed the retirement plans of its workers. But the traditional defined benefit system grew up in a very different socio-economic era. In the old days, American companies had little competition; America was king of the industry. American companies owned very large segments of business markets (market share), so naturally profits were high and the long term commitments of retirement plans were painless. It was, and still is, cost effective to provide subsidies for your employees, as a return the company is repaid with loyalty and dedication, and at that time most American companies were doing the same thing. Then a shift in competition, we were caught off of our guard. Towards the late 1970’s American companies began competing more with overseas firms, and the term "Made in Japan" began to have an imbedded quality previously unknown to us. American companies lost market share. The painless employer contribution retirement plans began to become a liability. Additionally, at this time, and to this day, many of our competitors did not have to provide their employees with long-term retirement benefits as those benefits are provided adaquatly by their governments through higher taxes. So when the opportunity presented itself to release corporations from the burden of the traditional defined benefit system, by and large most companies jumped.
Fast forward to 2006, about 15% of all private employees have a defined benefit (cradle to grave) retirement package, before 1981 the number of workers with a defined retirement benefit was as high as 60%.

Since the 401K plan we've seen a major shift in retirement resource allocation. So how is the 401K system doing? Not so well.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute; fewer than 50% of workers have access to a 401K plan and those who do have access do not set enough money aside required for the necessary returns to fund retirement. There is also the problem of poor fund management; many do not understand the nuances of investing, not to mention that durring the 2001 recession millions of people lost much of thier investments due to stock market fluctuations -- by no fault of there own. There are also are significant differences in pension coverage by gender and by race. According to a new government study, in 2003, only 27% of workers in small companies (less than 25 workers) had plans as compared to 50% at medium-sized companies (up to 99 workers) and 68% at larger companies (100 or more). Black, Hispanic and other non-white workers were less likely than whites to have a plan, and less than 30% of the lowest-income workers has plans as compared to over 70% of the highest-income workers. These inequities will only spell one thing: trouble for retirees.

According to a recent PBS Frontline report there are far too many retiring and far too few with enough money for the essential necessities, housing, food, clothing, utilities. The newer corporate bankruptcy laws which allow corporations to defer their defined retirement packages to the tax payer, coupled with the lack of 401K supplements, is going to spell disaster for the Baby Boomer generation and those of us in their wake. There simply will not be enough money in the economy for the Baby Boomers to relax in their final years. They’ll have to keep working. Will this be the end of retirement? It certainly is the end of retirement as we know it.
In the years to come Baby Boomers will have a lot of unanswered questions about retirement, with the exception of one:
Would you like fries with that?

2006-05-17T04:32:00.000-07:00

Clean Elections - What is it? How does it work?
This post corresponds to a Podcast that I participated with called Citizens Against Lies. The Podcast is titled Spygasm -- Podcast #52 ; to listen click HERE.

The Clean Money, Clean Elections (CMCE) approach is designed to provide a clear alternative to the current system of raising and spending largely special-interest money to finance election campaigns. It allows qualified candidates to run for public office without compromising their independence since they won't have to ask for money from those with a vested interest in public policy.
The system is completely voluntary and candidates who do not wish to participate are able to raise and spend private money for their campaigns, as they do today.

Qualification -- Candidates first must meet ballot access requirements, and then must meet the eligibility threshold for Clean Money funding. Most CMCE proposals require candidates to collect, during a pre-defined qualifying period, a prescribed number of signatures and $5 qualifying contributions from registered voters in their state or district. To cover minor costs during the qualifying period, candidates are permitted to raise a limited amount of seed money from private sources in amounts not exceeding $100 per contributor.

Primary funding -- Candidates who meet CMCE requirements and agree not to raise or spend private money during the primary and general election campaign periods receive a set amount of money from the Clean Money fund.

General election funding -- Candidates who win their party primaries and qualifying independent candidates who agree to the voluntary restrictions receive a set amount of general election funding from the Clean Elections, Clean Money fund.

Non-participating candidates and independent expenditures -- In order to maintain a financially level playing field, Clean Money, Clean Elections candidates who are outspent by privately financed opponents, or targeted by independent expenditures, are entitled to a limited amount of matching funds.

To Learn More About Clean Elections Click HERE.

Thanks Shelly! You're the best!!

2006-05-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

And Now For Something Completely Different

Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are
May 10, 2006

BATON ROUGE, LA—In a breakthrough study that contradicts decades of understanding about the nature of alligator–drunkard relations, Louisiana State University researchers have concluded that people's drunkenness does not impair the ancient reptiles' ability to inflict enormous physical harm.

Alligators exhibit the potential to inflict serious harm, regardless of the blood-alcohol levels of their victims.
"Our data strongly indicates that human intoxication does not transform an alligator into a docile creature that enjoys wrestling," said professor Ryder McCrory, chair of the Wildlife Taunting Department of LSU's prestigious Center For Bullying And Hazing Studies. "Despite its slow-witted demeanor and tendency to bask motionlessly in the hot sun, it's a mistake to believe that an alligator will passively tolerate a half nelson, no matter how much Southern Comfort is fueling it."
McCrory said the study yielded statistics that speak for themselves.

(Full Story)

2006-05-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

How the GOP Became God's Own Party
By Kevin Phillips

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.

The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate.

The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.

President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions.

Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.

I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era."

In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt.
Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God.

The new cohabitation is an unnatural one.
While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington.

This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil.

Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel.
Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.

Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity.
Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened.

When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership.

Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured.

2006-05-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

New CIA Chief?

On May 5th, President George W. Bush dropped the bomb on Washington. No need to worry about depleted Uranium though; this bomb was purely political. Last Friday the President accepted the resignation of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and announced his replacement, Air Force General Michael V. Hayden.
Hayden, Deputy Director of National Intelligence (NSA) and aggressive proponent of warentless wiretaps, will likely be the new leader of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Recently General Hayen had an exchange with a reporter, not atypical for Washington insiders, but this particular exchange is worth revisiting. You can see the video HERE.

Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder’s news service asked General Hayden to comment on his support for the President’s controversial eavesdropping program.

Here’s an excerpt of the exchange:

Landay: "...the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to violate an American's right against unreasonable searches and seizures...

"Gen. Hayden: "No, actually - the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure."Landay: "But the --"Gen. Hayden: "That's what it says.

"Landay: "The legal measure is probable cause, it says."

Gen. Hayden: "The Amendment says: unreasonable search and seizure.

"Landay: "But does it not say 'probable cause'?"

Gen. Hayden [exasperated, scowling]: "No! The Amendment says unreasonable search and seizure

."Landay: "The legal standard is probable cause, General --

"Gen. Hayden [indignant]: "Just to be very clear ... mmkay... and believe me, if there's any Amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. Alright? And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. The constitutional standard is 'reasonable'" ( h/t Dale)

Here’s the Forth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

The letter and the spirit of the Forth Amendment seem very clear. The Constitutional standard is for no "unreasonable searches and seizures" without a warrent, the warrant is the obvious mandate. Yet the Director of the National Security Agency falls flat when defending his position on the Forth Amendment.

As Keith Oberman put it:
“Well, maybe they have a different Constitution over there at the NSA”

2006-05-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

GDP Up - Real Wages Down

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a measure of goods and services produced by an economy; it represents the size and growth of an economy. Essentially, GDP is the market value of goods and services which are produced with in a specific period of time.

The formula for calculating GDP is Consumption+Investment+Government Spending+(Exports-Imports) or Net Exports.

Here’s a news release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:
“Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and propertylocated in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2006, according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real
GDP increased 1.7 percent”. (Real GDP factors in the element of inflation)

So GDP is up by 4.8 percent, which is a significant increase. This should be good news for all of us, however, there’s a chink in the armor.

Real Wages have been down for some time now, and in fact have been declining steadily since the early 1970’s.
More recentlythough, since early 2001, gross domestic product per person in the U.S. has expanded 8.4% after adjusting for inflation (Real GDP). However, the average American family has not benefited from this growth, not yet anyway. The average weekly wage has edged down 0.3%, since 2000. That contrast may explain why so few believe the Bush Administration’s claims that our economy is doing well.

The root cause is simple; the trickle-down theory of economics is not working.

Since the end of the recession of 2001, growth in GDP has translated into profits, not wages. This reflects workers' lack of bargaining power in the face of high unemployment. Another factor holding down wages is employer-paid health benefits, pensions, executive compensation, and payroll taxes; with the lions share of that increase being in employee health benefits.
These components combined are making employers less generous with wages

Historically when unemployment is low and growth is steady, the American family will see its income increase. As that happens Americans' optimism will rise, but until then, Americans will maintain a dim view of our economy.

2006-05-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

What Happens When the Dollar Collapes?

When foreign investors stop investing in dollars, U.S. bond prices will drop, then U.S. interest rates will rise. Mortgage and credit card rates will soar, bursting the housing bubble. Home prices will decrease by 50% or more in a matter of months, bankrupting millions of over-extended, over mortgaged homeowners.

But this is just the beginning, The Treasury will attempt to float the economy by printing more currency, in turn, reducing the value of the dollar even more. Those who have their live savings in CD’s, cash or Bonds backed by the U.S. dollar, will loose it all. While gold and other commodities will rise in value – we are already seeing a steady rise in gold values.
Most U.S. consumer finance companies will be bankrupt as there will be few who can pay the interest rates. Then the crisis goes global. We will no longer be able to purchase foreign goods, they will become far too expensive. At that point the rest of the world has a recession – the U.S. consumer will no longer be able to buy Chinese electronics and Japanise cars, instead we will have to buy cars made in the U.S. However, it’s not likely that we’ll be able to buy anything at all.

Our foreign counter parts will make an attempt to stabilize the global economy. They will cut interest rates and buy dollars with their own currencies, This will flood the world with euros and yen the way the U.S. now floods the world with dollars. The result of these “competitive devaluations” will be the death of the fiat currency,
Eventually European and Japanese bonds will collapse as the U.S. dollar.

Our best hope, and looking less likely, is a gradual decline in the value of the dollar. This will generate a significant drop in exports to the U.S., but may bolster our ability to export abroad. However, anyway that you look at the problem of the dollar, the outcome and recovery are going to be difficult.
Brace for impact!

Four International Articles on the Weak dollar

Once-Dependable Dollar Now Down and Out (Source)
By Yuriy Humber Staff Writer
Confidence in the U.S. dollar has slumped to a new low, as a series of political and economic statements last month questioned Russia's reliance on the world's most convertible currency.
Within a month, the U.S. currency was called "unreliable as a reserve currency" by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, made a taboo word by the Public Chamber and centrist politicians, and ditched by the general public amid reports of its imminent depreciation.
The U.S. dollar has fallen to its lowest rate against the ruble in a year, 27.2424, with signs that further drops are likely, prompting analysts to propose that the time to save or speculate in rubles has come.
"In the short to mid-term, the choice has to be for the ruble," said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist with investment bank Deutsche UFG.

`E. Asia must prepare for possible dollar collapse' (Source)
TOKYO: With the U.S. trade deficit at a record high and global interest rates rising, East Asian economies need to be prepared for a possible `collapse' of the dollar, the Asian Development Bank warned on Tuesday.
"Any shock hitting the U.S. economy or the global market may change investors' perceptions given the existing global current account imbalance,'' said Masahiro Kawai, ADB's head of regional economic integration. "Our suggestion to Asian countries is: do not take this continuous financing of the U.S. current account deficit as given. If something happens then East Asian economies have to be prepared,'' he told reporters on a trip to Japan.
Because of the highly interdependent nature of the East Asian economies, if countries worked together to allow their currencies to collectively appreciate against a tumbling dollar then the cost of adjustment would be spread, he said. "The possibility of a U.S. dollar collapse or sharp decline may be small at this point but it would generate very significant turmoil so East Asian economies... ought to be ready for that,'' Mr. Kawai said.
The Manila-based ADB is working on several indices of Asian currencies that could be helpful to monitor exchange rate movements in the case of a sharp dollar decline, though its main aim is to help develop regional bond markets. — AFP

Dollar continues to weaken against rivals
Canadian dollar reaches 30-year high against U.S. counterpart
E-mail Print Disable live quotes
By Wanfeng Zhou, MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:12 PM ET May 2, 2006
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar remained under pressure Tuesday as investors continued to digest CNBC's day-earlier report about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments and awaited his Wednesday speech for more clues on the U.S. interest-rate outlook.
At the same time, the euro and pound were lifted after solid euro-zone and U.K. manufacturing data.
Strong economic reports out of the euro zone and the U.K. "are fueling gains on the European currencies," said Mike Malpede, senior currency analyst at Man Global Research. "The technical dynamics still are pointing towards a weaker dollar."
In late New York trading, the euro strengthened to $1.2621, up 0.5%. The dollar weakened to 113.25 yen, down 0.4%. The British pound was fetching $1.8406, up 1%, while the dollar changed hands at 1.2368 Swiss francs, down 0.4%.
"The euro/dollar remains grossly overbought in the near term, but the momentum of the trend may carry it higher still before a more serious retracement kicks in," said Boris Schlossberg, senior currency strategist at FXCM, in a note.

Euro Advances After Manufacturing Expands by Most in Five Years (Source)
May 2 (Bloomberg)
-- The euro rose, approaching an 11-month high against the dollar, after an industry report showed euro- region manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in more than five years last month.
The euro has risen 6.7 percent versus the dollar this year as signs of faster growth prompt speculation the European Central Bank will increase its pace of interest-rate increases while the Federal Reserve prepares to end an almost two-year cycle of boosting borrowing costs.
``The European economy is doing better, propelled by Germany's good performance,'' said Masaki Fukui, a senior market economist and currency analyst in Tokyo at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd., a unit of Japan's second-largest lender by assets. ``This will all reinforce expectations of further ECB rate increases, pushing up the euro.''

2006-05-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Published on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 by Media Citizen
McCurry Sells Out to AT&TDeceiving the Public Is Business As Usual for Washington Insider.
by Timothy Karr

How can you tell when corporations are running scared? When they wind up their coin-operated front men to unleash a tide of untruths upon the public.
For evidence, go no further than gasbag-in-chief Mike McCurry. The latest blast from this former Clinton press secretary is a frantic bid to re-align public opinion behind his new bosses at AT&T and Verizon.
The issue in question is whether Congress should preserve a concept called "net neutrality." Net neutrality is the Internet's First Amendment; it's a principle that guarantees that all Web sites and online features have unfettered access to the Internet regardless of the size of their bank accounts.
McCurry -- who is now a partner at the influential DC lobbying firm Public Strategies -- is being paid by AT&T and Verizon to spread bad information about net neutrality. In his Huffington Post piece on Monday, he attempted to paint net neutrality supporters – a left-right coalition of consumer groups, public advocates, small businesses, Internet gurus, and bloggers -- as ranting lefties seeking to smother the Internet with regulation.
"The Internet has worked absent regulation," McCurry huffs, "and now you want to introduce it for a solution to what?"
This sentiment was eerily echoed in a Washington Post online op-ed by Robert E. Litan of the Brookings Institution: "Let's hope our policy-makers in Washington can resist the siren song of 'net neutrality' and keep government out of Internet regulation so that the future that beckons becomes a reality," Litan writes.
Lies and Extortion
Despite these high profile comments, this really isn't about more regulation of the Internet. That's a convenient lie being spun by McCurry and his bosses. In reality, this debate pits economic innovators, free speech advocates and anyone who enjoys Internet freedom (regardless of party) against AT&T, Verizon and their PR henchmen who are seeking government permission to re-plumb the Internet, control online innovation and stifle diversity.
In their commentary, both McCurry and Litan, have buried the lead. They fail to point out that it's precisely because of net neutrality rules that the Internet has become a revolutionary force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech.
We've had this fundamental protection in place to guarantee nondiscrimination in the law since the birth of the Internet. At least, we used to have these rules. In the summer of 2005, an industry-friendly FCC pulled a fast one. Without any fanfare or press coverage, the FCC made a new rule that allows companies like AT&T and Verizon to discriminate, to decide what content and applications go fast, slow, or not at all.
Equality and the free market be damned.
Now, McCurry and his cohorts are attempting to paint efforts to maintain net neutrality as new and excessive government interference. In reality, the most radical regulations to have ocurred over the last year were implemented on behalf of -- not in spite of -- AT&T, Verizon and other network giants.
That's right. In the midst of the online revolution, the FCC gutted the Internet's most fundamental operating principle and handing telephone and cable companies the right to discriminate against Web sites depending on who pays them the most money. In the nine months since, the demise of net neutrality, these network owners have declared that they intend to do just that: Implement a business model based on malfeasance, extorting money from online content and applications providers in order to have their sites operate smoothly via the Web.
Given their near monopoly control of broadband access, content companies will have little choice but to pay up. Those of us who can't afford the price will be shunted to the Internet's side roads.
AT&T and Verizon's predatory scheme has little to do with free market dynamics, writes Columbia Professor Timothy Wu. It's more akin to a mafia shake down. "While it's one way to earn cash, it's just too close to the Tony Soprano vision of networking: Use your position to make threats and extract payments" Wu writes.
The Grassroots Fire
This scam is only now coming to the attention of the American public. And they're letting their elected officials know that Internet freedom cannot be sold out.
As part of a vote on new telecommunications legislation last Wednesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee members defeated an amendment by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) that would have protected net neutrality.
What's remarkable about last week's defeat is the shift that occurred on Capitol Hill in the week prior to the vote. An unlikely coalition has banded together at SavetheInternet.com and sent more than 500,000 letters to Congress. This sparked an Internet revolt among thousands of bloggers who heaped scorn upon any member of the House who dared side with companies like AT&T and Verizon.
As the legislation moves to the House floor and Senate in the coming weeks, every member of Congress has been put on alert by an awakened and angry public: Momentum is shifting away from the corporations and toward the public.
Whereas before, the big telephone companies and their McCurry-men were confident that Congress would simply roll over, today, no member of Congress can vote with the telecom cartel without suffering repercussions.
Playing Favorites, Stifling Innovation
Over the last decade, the telephone lobby has stuffed hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of lobbyists (including McCurry's company) and campaign coffers of politicians in an effort to radically rewrite communications legislation.
Now, companies like AT&T are asking Congress to fast-track a bill that grants them a monopoly right to play favorites with the content that flows online – determining what users do, where they go and what they watch online.
If Congress allows this to occur, the only sites that will enjoy "open" access are the large corporations that can afford AT&T's toll. The Internet's true innovators – small guys working out of their basements on the next big Internet idea – will be shoved aside.
The telco cartel, with the help of industry sock puppets like McCurry, would like to write this extortion into law, gutting the "net neutrality" guarantees that gave all comers equal access to the Internet.
That McCurry has emerged from behind smoke-tinted glass to throw rabbit punches at groups representing the public's interest is testament not only of the success of SavetheInternet.com, but also to the utter bankruptcy of his over-funded position.
Timothy Karr is the campaign director of Free Press.

I urge all of you who enjoy bloging to contact Congress and demand that Net Neutrality stay intact. The Democratic future of the internet depends on your action.

2006-05-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Days Are Here Again?

A recent poll showed Democrats with a gaping 16-point lead over Republicans this fall. Seizing on the issues of corruption and incompetence, the party might even take back the House or the Senate -- or both.

Conventional wisdom in Washington that the Democrats have no idea what they stand for has recently been put to the test in persuasive ways. In the May issue of The Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan demonstrates that the Democrats have in fact become a disciplined and effective opposition party. Strarting with their Social Security victory to George W. Bush’s backing down on his post-Katrina changes to the Davis-Bacon law to the Dubai ports deal, the Democrats have dealt the administration a series of defeats. In addition to that the Democrats do have ideas; it’s just that no one in the media bothers to cover them. The party has developed discipline and a more than respectable roster of policy proposals waiting for debate should Democrats win a majority in the November elections. This is very different from three years ago when the Democrats were fresh out of ideas and tactics.

The most important thing that the Democrats should remember is their own past. They should not become the complacent party that they were from the 1930's to the late 80's. They will need to continue to make government more efficient, while providing the needs for a society to have the mobility necessary to compete in the modern world. The real challenges facing our government will be the War in Iraq, the reimergence of the Taliban in Afgnanistan, the lack of new manufacturing plants and good paying jobs in the U.S., our rising healthcare and education costs and our rising poverty levels.

One thing that we know for sure, which ever party wins in November will certainly have it's work cut out.

2006-04-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Canadian Health Care - Broken or Needs a Tune-up?

I am continuously amazed at how many believe that a single payer healthcare system is too expensive and somehow destructive towards our democracy. The idea that single-payer healthcare is bad is a myth perpetrated by those who, intentionally or unintentionally, misrepresent the facts.

Our healthcare system is in trouble. The rising cost of healthcare is slowing strangling our spending power and causing the average citizen to use more savings and discretionary cash to pay for healthcare. Yet the executive officer of UnitedHealth Group Inc., one of the nation's largest health-care companies has earned $8 million a year in pay and bonuses; and according to United's proxy statement, he has unrealized gains on his company stock which total $1.6 billion. Yes, 1.6 billion dollars.

In 2004 U.S. health-care spending topped $1.9 trillion. About one-third of that is spent on administrative costs, about one-third is profit. The profit and administrative cost (which includes CEO perks, gulfstream jets, gold plated faucets, etc.) is money not spent on healthcare. In the same year, total national health expenditures rose 7.9 percent; that’s over three times the rate of inflation! Total health care spending represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). In 2005, employer health insurance premiums increased by 9.2 percent - nearly three times the rate of inflation again!

The annual premium for an employer health plan in 2005 covering a family of four averaged is nearly $11,000 – this is usually split between the employer and employee. Incidentally these costs do not include the addition expense of co-pays and prescription drugs.
The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,000. U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4 TRILLION in 2015, or 20 percent of GDP.

Source for statistics

In contrast, a national tax-financed system would hold down costs and avoid such excesses. In 2004, Canadians spent $131 billion - a little over $4,000 total per person. In 2003 Canadians spent $121 billion on their healthcare system. In 2005, Canada’s health care spending is expected to reach $142.0 billion. Still significantly lower than the United States. The reason for the lower cost per person is that there is no profit motive in the Canadian system. While there is certainly room for improvement in Canada’s healthcare system; surveys show that 80 per cent of Canadians are satisfied with their access to the health care system. Still many experience long waits to see a specialist. Also, many complain that the wait is too long to get diagnostic tests and undergo elective surgery. And many others find themselves facing huge bills for prescription drugs they need to survive. There is no question that the Canadian healthcare system can improve. In fact, the Canadians are addressing the long wait times and other quality of service issues that pester their citizens.
For more on this go here.

Again the system in Canada is not perfect, but all of her citizens are covered and all have basic healthcare. This is not the case in the United States. The United States has the highest amount of uninsured in all of the Industrialized Nations at 45 million uninsured citizens. That’s more citizen’s uninsured than live in all of Canada.The bottom line is simple, the profit motive in healthcare is killing us slowly. The administrative costs and profits are too high to sustain. For instance every $100 dollars spent in Medicare there is $3.00 is spent on administrative costs. In contrast, for every $100 spent for medical insurance coverage $14.oo is spent on "administration"

Just imagine how our economy will benefit if the average citizen no longer has to pay $11, 000.00 for healthcare. The money saved could improve our savings rate, empower the consumer with more spending cash and improve employee compensation. An injection of this sort will stimulate our economy better than any tax cuts ever could.If our healthcare costs were even half or our current costs per person, all of us would be better off, have more of our money to spend and create more demand for new products and new businesses. However, If the current trends continue, non of us in the United States will be able to afford healthcare insurance; except of course the CEO’s who are compensated because of our lack of foresight.

2006-04-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

Health Care and Poverty

The United States does not have the best health care system in the world. The profit motive has ensured that in the United States health care system there is more profit in a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention. Many believe that the U.S. leads the world in its delivery of health care to its citizens, but this is a false assumption. In fact the United States rates 37th in health care delivery in all of the worlds industrialized nations. While it’s true that the U.S. does lead the world in emergency care, these advancements do not translate into better over all care for its citizens.

The United States does however lead the industrialized nations in poverty and income inequity . The disparity of income is the highest in the industrialized world and the root of the poor health care delivery model. In the simplest terms, many cannot afford the exorbitant cost of health care and without healthcare insurance. A person is completely vulnerable to the enormous cost of health care. This condition, economic disparity, may explain the growing number of American citizens, over 45 million, who do not have health care coverage. And as the number of uninsured citizens grow, the cost of health care delivery rises, in part because the citizens who are covered with a health insurance plan must make up the financial difference of those who are not covered by health insurance.

But the healthcare debate in the U.S. is at a stalemate. While conservatives and liberals decide on a delivery model, the cost of care continues to rise. Conservatives think the U.S. health care system needs reform because there is too much government involvement in health care; liberals because there is not enough. Most of this dissatisfaction stems from the high expense and unavailability of U.S. health care to its most vulnerable citizens. During the 1993 debate on health care reform, polls consistently showed that two-thirds of all Americans supported the idea of universal coverage. Of the 10 largest industrialized nations, the U.S. ranked dead last in health care satisfaction, with an approval rating of only 11 percent.

The root of the problem is poverty. The United States leads the world in emergency care., but we fall flat where health care is most important – prevention and maintenance. It’s not a coincidence that many of our poorest are the ones who suffer the most under our health care system. The link between being poor and living an unhealthy live style has been well established. Political scientist Jeffrey Reiman writes: "Less money means less nutritious food, less heat in winter, less fresh air in summer, less distance from sick people, less knowledge about illness or medicine, fewer doctor visits, fewer dental visits, less preventative care, and above all else, less first-quality medical attention when all these other deprivations take their toll and a poor person finds himself seriously ill”. - The Rich Get Richer And the Poor Get Prison

The European nations have done much to reduce poverty within their borders. In Europe during the last century, life expectancy doubled after governments purified their drinking water, created modern sanitation systems and reduced poverty. In America during this century, the highest cancer rates are found in neighborhoods within the chemical industry, most of those neighborhoods are poor. A healthy diet and exercise provide better health than most medicines in many circumstances, yet our poor continue to eat low cost food which are high in fat, calories and cholesterol. Other nations have realized that factors outside the hospital are more important than factors inside it, and have used this wisdom to lower their health care costs.

If the United States does not want to continue to fall behind our European neighbors in quality of life , then we must pass a universal health care initiative and reduce poverty. According to the University of Michigan Poverty Center, in 2004, 12.7 percent of all persons lived in poverty. In 1993 the poverty rate was 15.1 percent. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years. Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population. In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent, were poor.

The poverty trend must be reversed, or it will continue to grow. The cure for poverty is not going to be easy, there is no silver bullet, but it must begin. We can start by rebuilding our industrial base to provide good paying jobs for those in poverty. There are millions of people who will be left behind as our economy “evolves” into a service driven, education dependent economy. Many have fallen though the cracks already. We must do more to protect our industries from unfair competition and overseas monopolies, both drive our wages down and lower our standard of living for the working poor.

Also, we must make education more available for the poorest among us. This will improve their social standing and job marketability. We must change our perception about health care, health care must be a universal right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.
The cost for these initiatives will not be cheap, or easy to implement. But the side effects of economic disparity will not disappear without intervention. I believe that our government can find compromise on these issues and thereby legislature a solution the problem of inadequate health care and disparity of wealth. As poverty continues to expand, as healthcare continues become out of reach and as more and more people are disenfranchised by globalization; our troubles will grow.

How can we afford not to intervene?

2006-04-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

April 20, 1818 Congress ushers in protectionism

On this day in 1818, Congress heeded President James Monroe's call to uphold the fiscal integrity of domestic industry and gave the green light to sharply protectionist tariff legislation. Not only did the tariff hike duties on iron imports, but it also put the breaks on an anticipated decrease in the levy charged on textiles. Moreover, the tariff legislation marked another chapter in America's long romance with protectionist policies. Indeed, from the time of its birth as a nation, the United States routinely adopted legislation designed to steel its producers' power in the international marketplace.

In the years following the tariff of 1818, America's fondness for tariffs grew especially pronounced; by the 1820s, duties climbed to unprecedented levels. America's proclivity for protectionism faded by the early to mid-twentieth century, when the Depression and World War II prompted U.S. leaders, including President Franklin Roosevelt, to shift to a more liberal fiscal course and open the doors to international trade. ( Source )

Commentary - It's not a coincedence that the United States led the world in textiles and steel production as a result of thses initiatives until the Reagan era. We were able to produce the best, and though expensive, the world wanted our products because of our high quality.We can be competitive under tariffs.The article suggest that the door to "free trade" was opened durring the Depression and the Post World War Two period, but this is not entirly true. The door was cracked open durring the New Deal era. The door to so-called free trade was opened more durring the Reagan / Bush administation, then kicked in by President Clinton when he signed NAFTA, GATT and WTO. Until President Clinton sold us out, an American could earn a decent living at a textile mill ( average $14.35 per hour) , now the mills are in China were a living wage is $.80 per hour.

We cannot possibly compete with this wage differential.

2006-04-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Abstract Economic Growth

A recent Zogby poll about the economy suggest that the American citizen is not quite as optimistic about our economic growth as the Bush Administration or the Republican Party. I've noted in previous posts and comment sessions that the guages which we use to determine the economic growth in our country are misleading. For instance, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate does not accurately measure tightness in the labor market. The unprecedented 26-month decline in new jobs from March 2001 to May 2003 in addition to the sluggish job growth since has caused many people simply to withdraw from the labor force. These people are no longer counted as unemployed.

The employment rate, that is the ratio of employed workers to the country's working-age population, is more indicative of a better measuring tool to the sustainability of the labor market for the 227 million people now of legal age to work. The employment rate in this category fell from 64.3% in early 2001 to 62.8% in late 2005. If the employment rate had recovered to its March 2001 level, an additional 3.4 million people would be employed today.There is also sluggish job growth compared to historical standards. Last year's 2 million new jobs represented a gain of 1.5%; this is far below historical norms.

In fact, it is less than half of the average growth rate of 3.5% for the same stage of previous business cycles that lasted as long. At that pace, the average growth rate, we would have created 4.6 million jobs last year. Despite the fact that 2005 marked the fourth year of an economic expansion characterized by strong productivity growth, the inflation-adjusted wages of most workers' fell last year. The median worker's wage fell by 1.3%. The decline was even greater for those at the very bottom end of the wage scale, who saw their real wages fall by 1.9%. Only those at the very top of the wage scale had wage growth that outpaced inflation. Also the cost of health care has consistently outpaced the rate of wage growth for the past several years. (Source)

And then there are the tax cuts, over 700 billion in tax readjustment since 2000 yet we see little evidence that the tax giveaways provided any significant economic growth or stimulation. In fact, tax cuts, dividend returns and corporate profits do little to create jobs in our economy. What creates jobs is demand, innovation and risk. Demand for a product, innovation to provide the product and the risk to get the product to market. The majority of small business which largely stimulate our economy and provide jobs for the masses were not started with large amounts of capital. Most small businesses are started at a deficit, on credit cards, with mortgage equity loans, personal savings or government loans. In 2005, small businesses received nearly 100,000 U.S. Government small-business loans, according to Small Business Center. Many of our successful large businesses (Microsoft, Macintosh, and Cisco) stared this way – small ventures with high risk. The key motivation is demand, not profit. Profits generate capital, demand creates new jobs. Washington doesn’t seem to understand this dynamic. Our representatives continue to deliver a model (Trickle Down Economics Theory) which has failed to deliver a significant amount of new jobs, innovation or new industry.

What is the cause of the disconnect between the government’s and citizen view of the economy? The lives of millions of working Americans have been affected by the negative side effects of Globalization, corporate downsizing and lack luster economic growth on a personal level - our citizens have negative savings accounts and high consumer debt.
Additionally there are other disconnects which are causing Washington to seem “out of touch” with the average American’s perception of real world- kitchen table economics. Slow job growth, lack of good paying jobs, tax cuts which produce little stimulation and a high cost of living for the majority of working Americans, ie. fuel, health care, energy, etc. The American people are growing tired of supply-side Trickle Down Economics. If our politicians are truly interested in knowing how our economy is performing, perhaps they should ask the average citizen consumer, not the wealthy investor how things are going.

Joke: An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

2006-04-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

This report was produced by the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. It was release in May 2004. Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is a non-profit association of almost 300 pro-consumer groups, with a combined membership of 50 million, which was founded in 1968 to advance the consumer interest through advocacy and education.

An increase in world demand on crude oil aside, the facts of this report are difficult to deny. The Consumer's Union has no reason to withhold the truth of this report nor do they have any interest in manipulating the facts.

RECORD PRICES, RECORD OIL INDUSTRY PROFITS
Consumers Gouged, Oil Industry Enriched, As Gasoline And Natural Gas Prices Increase By $250 Billion Since January 2000 (Source)

(Washington, D.C.) – Domestic petroleum companies have stuck U.S. gasoline and natural gas consumers with about $250 billion in price hikes since January 2000, resulting in an increase in after-tax windfall profits of $50 to $80 billion to the industry, a report released today by the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union concluded. The groups are calling on federal and state authorities to investigate oil company price manipulation as one way to bring prices down to more reasonable levels in the near terms and a strong commitment to increased fuel efficiency in the automobile fleet for the long term.

The report, entitled Fueling Profits: Industry Consolidation, Excess Profits & Federal Neglect, Domestic Causes of Recent Gasoline and Natural Gas Price Shocks, shows While OPEC has taken a bite out of consumer’ pocketbooks, domestic companies have taken about three quarters of the price increases since January 2000. The report attributes about half of the price increases to changes in domestic pricing behavior that was created by a wave of mergers that swept through the industry in the past decade.

“The industry became concentrated in the hands of a few vertically integrated companies and allowed domestic oil companies shut down refineries, reduce stocks, and exploit markets when they become tight,” said Mark Cooper, CFA’s Director of Research. “Since these price increases were about padding the corporate bottom line, not about responding to increased costs, petroleum industry profits have risen to record highs over the period.

“Based on results from the first quarter of this year, domestic petroleum industry profits are headed for another record with refining and marketing profits up about 50 percent compared to the first quarter of 2003, Cooper added.”

The report shows a dramatic increase in household energy bills for petroleum products:

Taken together and averaged across all households, expenditures for gasoline, heating oil and natural gas in 1999 accounted for about $1,400 per year of total household expenditures. Price increases over the past four years for these residential items added about $350 per household per year, meaning that domestic energy price shocks have increased household energy bills by 25 percent.

A comparison between 1999 and 2003 is even more dramatic – a $500 increase in average annual household expenditures for these petroleum products, which represents a jump of over 35 percent.

“Consumers have paid the price for increasing the profitability of the domestic oil industry,” said Adam Goldberg, a policy analyst in Consumers Union’s Washington office. “It’s time for the Bush Administration to step up and take some action to help out consumers at the pump and at home.”
In response, the groups called for :

Federal and state law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute domestic oil companies that violate the law. Such investigations will likely modify the companies’ behavior when it comes to pricing.

Congress to consider instituting a windfall profits tax, thus taking the incentive out of manipulating supplies to increase profits. In addition, policymakers should increase market flexibility by expanding fuel stocks through tax incentives to hold and draw down supplies in the face of price increases, mandatory stock requirements as a percentage of sales, and/or government owned/privately operated supplies.

Congress to increase automobile fuel efficiency standards at the rate achieved in the 1980s, and increase refinery capacity through expansion at existing refineries or redevelopment of the refineries closed in the past decade.

Promote a more competitive industry by preventing further consolidation through vigorous enforcement of the Department of Justice Merger Guidelines. Also, expose those companies that withhold supplies up to intense public and governmental scrutiny through a joint federal state task force of attorney’s general, and prevent manipulation of commodity markets.

“These policies would build a much more competitive and consumer-friendly energy market in this country for a lot less than the $250 billion consumers already have handed over to the oil companies,” Cooper concluded. “The $20 billion that the energy bill would give to the oil industry would be better spent as a down payment on a long- term commitment to reduce demand and increase domestic market flexibility.”

Click here to view a copy of the report.

2006-04-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of time for blogging today. Instead, some well deserved humor.
_____________________________________________

Kerry Makes Whistle-Stop Tour From Deck Of Yacht
February 18, 2004 The Onion Issue 40•07

LANCASTER, PA—Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) began a seven-day, eight-state whistle-stop tour Monday, addressing a group of Frigidaire factory workers from the all-teak deck of his 60-foot luxury motor cruiser.
Kerry waves down to a crowd of supporters.

"George W. Bush put tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests before our economic future," Kerry told the crowd gathered below the starboard side of The Real Deal II. "I will fight to restore the three million jobs that have been lost on the president's watch. It's time America got back to work."
Campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said Kerry's whistle-stop tour is scheduled to take him through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and on to six Midwestern states at an average speed of 26 knots.
Apart from a brief detour into Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago, the yacht will travel exclusively on land, attached to a drydock-mounting slip atop a highway-legal flatbed trailer.
Kerry's stump speech, which he delivered through the yacht's PA system, ignored his Democratic rivals and focused instead on the current administration's economic record.
"Bush has the worst jobs record of the last 11 presidents," said Kerry, his hand draped over the flagpole halyard. "Landing on an aircraft carrier doesn't make up for failed economic policy. The American people need jobs to buy food for their families, to secure health insurance for their children, and to pay the mortgages on their houses."
"Unlike the Republicans, I know it's you, the American worker, that keeps this country running," said Kerry, who then tipped his captain's hat to the crowd.
Federal Election Commission records show that Kerry purchased The Real Deal II in December 2003 for $2.5 million. The Kerry campaign's 2003 fourth-quarter filings show that the yacht required $200,000 of work to prepare it for the Midwest campaign voyage. Repairs included a tune-up of the vessel's twin diesel engine, the installation of a Navman color GPS-plotting navigation system, and the addition of red, white, and blue detailing to the yacht's leather interior.
"John Kerry wanted to get out there, connect with the people, and hear their stories," Cahill said in a press conference held in the main cabin. "Taking his yacht across the Midwest is the best way for Kerry to reach out to all the people who lost their jobs under George W. Bush."
"There's no better place to have a good conversation than on the deck of a fine sailing vessel, out there in the sunshine, with the gentle breeze playing in your hair," Cahill said. "It's beautiful up there."
Cahill said she hopes the yacht will appeal to independent voters, who may decide the election in November.
An additional benefit of campaigning in the craft is that it affords Kerry the opportunity to make unexpected stops along the campaign trail, simply by alerting the convoy with his International Maritime Signal Flags.
"What's John Kerry all about?" said Kerry, addressing a small group of supporters that he spotted at a rest stop on Interstate 76. "John Kerry believes in affordable health care, renewable energy, decisive foreign policy, and economic recovery. I'm putting that message on my yacht and taking it all the way across America."
Kerry continued: "We're going to sail The Real Deal II right up onto the White House lawn and tell them, 'The American people have arrived to take back their government.'"
U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), a Kerry supporter who has been traveling on-and-off with the candidate since January, said that the whistle-stop tour demonstrates Kerry's commitment to the country.
"People tried to write this campaign off last year, but he kept going full steam ahead, because he cares about the proud men and women of this nation," Kennedy said. "He's going to go all the way in November, like the little yacht that could."

2006-04-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

The Rising Fuel Costs - Profits for the Wealthy

This morning I sent this letter to my Federal Congressman (Bill Young) and my two Federal Senators (Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez).
The tone is slightly acrimonious, but I was still angry about paying so much for an essential element - fuel for my car.

I'll post the results as I receive them.

Dear Represenative,

This morning while driving to work I had to make a displeasing pit stop to purchase fuel for my car. My car is relatively fuel efficient so fortunately I only need to purchase fuel about twice a month – lucky for me.

The cost of fuel this morning was over $50.00. Yes, I have a fuel efficient car, with a 17 gallon tank and the cost of fuel is over $50.00. Three weeks ago the cost for filling my tank was around $30.00. The difference may not seem like much to you, given your salary and other benefits. But for us, the working people of America, $20.00 is the difference that keeps our economy moving.

The additional amount that I am spending on fuel this month is coming from my discretionary income. This is money that I would spend in a restaurant, in a department store, for admission to a theatre, zoo or museum. This is money that supports jobs in my local community, money that supports the tax base which keeps our roads safe and our schools functioning efficiently. This fairly small amount of money, when added exponentially by each person purchasing fuel, becomes economically significant at the macro level.

So my questions are:
What are you doing to control the rising fuel prices? Why isn’t Congress doing more as an oversight body to control the rising fuel costs? Why isn’t Congress protecting the American middle and working classes from price gauging?
With the profits in the oil industry breaking records, the CEO of Mobil earning over $69,000,000 last year, and the price of fuel rising with little or no justification; Congress should be as outraged as I am!
Please consider this issue in-depth and consider helping the average American with this additional economic burden. Since it is us who keep this economy moving, not the CEO or wealthy investors, it’s time to act.

2006-04-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

Lesson One:
Do Not Make War Against Abstract Nouns

I find, in my personal experience, that when conservatives and liberals are in agreement on a topic, the truth of that topic is difficult to deny. As America finds itself quagmired by the so-called War on Terror, Liberals and Conservatives are agreeing more, each day that our troops are in Iraq, with the notion that this War on Terror is an ineffective way to destroy and neutralize our enemies. There is a new book on the shelves which supports the position that the War on Terror is an insufficinet, phony attempt at peace and that the Bush Administration is wasting our precious resources by declaring war on an abstract noun - Terrorism.

The author, Angelo M. Codevilla, is not a left wing pundant nor a liberal elitist academic. He's the chief editor of the American Spectator, Professor of International Relation at Boston University, and a true conservative by his own admission.

In his new book No Victory No Peace, Angelo M. Codevilla makes a compelling argument that George Bush does not embody conservatism in any traditional sense. He also illustrates that if George Bush's Foreign Policy and Defense Policy is correct than all of the lessons that every professor of International Relations have been teaching for the last several hundred years is nonsense; which is possible, but is it likely?
For example the notion of war -- war is a violence aimed at killing or destroying a specific person or institution that stands in the way of something you want, whether it is peace, oil, land, etc. In war, the enemy must be known. You cannot win or wage a war against an abstract noun or concept. In order to win, you must have a defined enemy.
Angelo M. Codevilla also maintains that a nation should not make wars while neglecting the fact that the people who insight violence against you are receiving billions of your dollars - yet do nothing to cut them off.
Most important though, he makes a clear argument that you do not make war to attempt to change another people’s society. These criteria cannot be a means of a successful war.

You don't have to take my word for it, below is an essay by Angelo M. Codevilla on the topic of Iraq and the Bush Administration. You can read more of this works here.

His book, No Victory No Pease in available on Amazon.

Postmortem on a Phony War
by Angelo M. Codevilla

"For them, war would consist of fighting as little as possible."—Charles de Gaulle, on Franco-British policy between September 1939 and June 1940.[1]

By spring 2002, the Bush administration's pretense that it was making war had worn thin. The Bush team had declared that September 11 had "changed everything," that "those who are not with us are against us," and that its "war on terrorism" would dispense with latter-day American reticence about foreign engagements and warfare. Nevertheless, the Bush team fought a classic phony war, because its chief priority was to change as little as possible the visions, objectives, assumptions, and modus operandi of late-twentieth-century American elites. This calls for something of a postmortem on the "war" that never was.

The Bush team's chief objective, "stability," was the least possible of things. The vision of an orderly, multicultural, "international community" was as powerful in Bush's Washington as it had been in Woodrow Wilson's—and as far removed from reality. The right of Third World regimes to sovereign existence under housebroken tyrants, America's right and capacity to make peace in places it does not rule, America's unworthiness to stigmatize foreign cultures (much less to kill foreign regimes), the U.S. government's need to heed "the allies," especially "the Europeans," and to restrain the "unsophisticated," "unilateralist" American public—these and a host of other unserious assumptions continued to reign. Moreover, the Bush team employed the same kind of people and modus operandi as its predecessors. They spoke loudly and wasted America's stick on the least significant enemies.

After Arabs had terrorized America on behalf of Arab causes, the Bush team refused to fight or even to indict any Arab entity at all. It did this to shore up "friendly" Arab governments that (it chose not to notice) were in thrall to the terror states of Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority (PA). By mid 2002, the Bush team's war on terrorism consisted chiefly of impotent, counterproductive, and silly security measures at home and, in the Middle East, of restraining Israel.
Rather than forcing others to accept America's version of peace, the Bush policy conveyed readiness to accept others' ever-pricier promises of peace. That is what "peace processes" are about: one side vainly seeks to avoid the reality of war. Bloody, phony peace is the natural fruit of phony war. That is because once the killing starts, one side's reticence is the greatest encouragement for the other to fight. And the longer wars go on, the more possibilities they offer to the bold. Thus any government that stints pursuit of victory to preserve its favorite current arrangements inevitably finds others imposing their own agendas.

(Bad) Ideas Have (Worse) Consequences

The Bush team decided to make war on "terrorism" (an abstract noun), rather than on real people. Rather than destroy regimes whose demise might make the American people safe from terrorist attacks, the Bush team pursued only the "shadowy" al-Qa‘ida, as if a private organization could organize worldwide mayhem from Arab police states without being one of their tools. Why this James Bond-ish fiction? Because the Bush team did not deem the events of September 11 sufficient warrant for going against the predominant views of American elites (which it shares) about real people.

Through most of the twentieth century, American elites have willed to believe that all peoples are created equal and that, if all were ruled by their own kind, a stable, decent, peaceful world would result. Hence in the 1950s in the Middle East as elsewhere, the U.S. State Department and especially Central Intelligence (CIA) fostered nationalism, socialist parties, and the replacement of European colonial rule by native regimes. When speaking to CIA director Allen Dulles, his brother John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, would refer to Egypt's Gamal Nasser as "your colonel."[2] As early as 1958, however, the political ancestors of Saddam Husayn had taken over Iraq and Syria as well as Egypt. Yemen became a Soviet ally. Much of the region (like the rest of the Third World) would be neither peaceful nor decent—much less, pro-American.

America's "best and brightest" tried to maintain their conviction that somehow local rulers would safeguard America's interests in the region: oil, a modicum of peace, as well as safety for Israel. American elites would not use force, would not take responsibility, would continue to believe in their vision of a world of equal, sovereign peoples, and would get their way. They wanted much for little and failed to proportion the ends they sought to the means they were willing to use. Hence U.S. policy has been based on patently false pretenses: that allies in the region would play their assigned roles and that indirect U.S. force would be enough.
So, between 1958 and 1978, U.S. policymakers made Iran's shah the Westernizing paladin of Western interests. But they did not protect the shah from the anti-Western forces to which they had exposed him. After the shah's fall, they imagined that Iraq's Saddam Husayn might be got to play his role—and in addition to contain Iran. They could not believe that Saddam would pursue his own vision of empire. When, in 1990, Saddam surprised them by invading Kuwait and holding hostage the entire region, the U.S. government killed thousands of Iraqis who were irrelevant to the regime. But the reigning ideas in Washington did not allow for destroying Saddam's regime any more than they had allowed the destruction of America's real enemies in Korea and Vietnam. Thus the United States committed the only unpardonable sin in the region: weakness.

Unwilling either to abandon the region to America's enemies or simply to destroy such enemies when they arose, above all unwilling to impose their own order, the State Department officials, policy analysts, successive administrations, and polite opinion formed a consensus that designated the Saudi monarchy as the new representative of Western interests.
They then mistakenly deferred to the Saudis' judgment of their own and Western interests. Knowing all too well the Saudis' internal fragility and external weakness, they built up U.S. military forces in the region. But—and this is the key point—they had no idea of how those forces might save the Saudi regime from internal challenges. When Saudi Arabia became less hospitable, the weight of U.S. policy shifted to the Gulf sheikhdoms. But U.S. forces could no more protect any Gulf potentate than they protected the shah or Egypt's Anwar Sadat (whom his murderers called Shah-dat.) Nor would those forces kill any of the region's regimes. That is one reason why the presence of U.S. military forces since 1990 (despite or perhaps because of their kindness to the local population) has engendered contempt for America.
Another policy is of the same kind. Since the 1970s, through any number of shuttle missions and plans named for officials or conference sites (Rogers, Kissinger, Camp David, Schultz, Baker, Oslo, Ross, Wye, Mitchell, Tenet, etc.), the U.S. government has chosen to promote various forms of a deal to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict: Israel would give more power to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in exchange for the latter's promises of peaceful coexistence.

Note, however, that the United States has limited itself to outlining the deal and to pressures to enter it. President Clinton in 1993, and President Bush in 2002, declared support for a Palestinian state but left the details to be settled later. More important, none ever promised that the United States would enforce any deal. U.S. statesmen have eschewed matching military means to political ends. This insolvent, irresolute U.S. foreign policy has invited those Arabs inclined to do so to exert murderous pressure on the United States as well as on Israel. It does not take the proverbial rocket scientist to notice that increased Arab diplomatic pressure and an increased level of terrorist activity against the United States by Arabs have gone hand-in-hand with increased U.S. pressure on Israel.

The list of terrorist acts by Arabs against Americans aimed at influencing U.S. policy toward Israel is too long and well known to rehash. The list of U.S. military retaliations against an Arab government, however, contains only one small item: President Reagan's 1986 strike on some Libyan army barracks. That Arab governments allied with the United States, never mind the Arab terror regimes of Iraq, Syria, and the PA, support anti-American causes politically and psychologically is obvious to anyone who goes on-line. Equally obvious is that the American foreign policy class nevertheless continues to pretend that Arab regimes in general and even "progressive" organizations such as the PLO and the Ba‘th party are viable partners for peace. Thus U.S. foreign policy supports regimes that support anti-Americanism, even to the point of acting to retain the Iraqi regime while impotently wishing that Saddam himself would go. Yet according to the reigning mentality, the notion that terrorism is the Arab world's principal means of action is racism. Indeed, the U.S. government's official pre-September-11 attitude toward these regimes was, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Cultural relativism shielded from reality what the U.S. government wanted to believe about Arab regimes.

After the surprise of September 11, President Bush's public speeches sounded a different tone: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them,"[3] and "There is no such thing as a good terrorist."[4] But Bush could have uprooted visions, assumptions, and practices so deeply entrenched only if he had dismissed officials who embody both cultural relativism and a disregard for the relationship between ends and means. He did not commission a team more suited to winning a war, rather using the war to entrench the very persons, mindset, and decisions that brought on the nasty surprise. That is the hallmark of phony war.
Here, patriotic rhetoric aside, is how the Bush team really sees the "war."

Although we might prefer that some regimes—Iraq, Syria, and the PA—were other than they are, the problem is the existence of a network of private extremists. Nearly all the world's governments see terrorism as a threat to civilized life and are more or less willing to help root it out. The problem is that the Kuwait war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict misidentified the United States as anti-Muslim and anti-Arab and inhibited modernization and secularization in the Muslim world. The cooperation of governments in the Muslim world is key to defeating terrorism. To get that cooperation, we must first ensure the survival of friendly governments. To do that, we must cool popular ire against them and America. That means that any U.S. attack on Iraq or any Israeli dismantling of the PA would call forth more terrorism than it would prevent and would endanger friendly governments. Hence, the United States must cool the Arab-Israeli conflict, even at the cost of setting up a risky Palestinian state. Once Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and maybe Syria and the PA, too, can afford to be friendly to the United States, then liaison between their intelligence services and ours can leave the terrorists nowhere to hide. Once we have turned the war on terrorism from a political (let alone religious one) into a criminal matter, we can win it by intelligence and police measures. The paramount problem is that the American people may run short on patience.

Phony from the Start

Who to kill is the decision that defines any war. In response to the attacks of September 11 by Arabs from "friendly" Arab countries—on behalf of causes embodied by Iraq, Syria, and the PA—the Bush team decided to do nothing against any Arab entity but rather to kill people in Afghanistan. No one argued that this would make America safe from the rising enmity of the Arab world or avenge the attacks. When pressed, the Bush team did not deny that Arab governments were abetting this enmity. But it deferred the whole matter to an undefined next phase because securing the support of friendly Arab governments was the sine qua non of everything else.

Saudi Arabia conditioned its support of the war, however, on Americans not killing any Arabs at all. Later, it conditioned its support even further. Competent people know that to ask dubious allies to support action that one has shown a willingness to defer and redefine amounts to asking for further pressure to defer, redefine, and derail. Thus, from the outset, this was a war defined in terms of what must not be done and aimed at validating a view of the world according to which the war should never have started —that is, a phony war.
Permanent factors made the temporary permanent. Deference to the Saudi and Egyptian governments had also been the reason why the first Bush administration put off action on Iraq in 1991. For the same reason, the completion of the U.S. war in Afghanistan did not usher in the next phase in which the United States would fight enemy regimes in the Arab world. Instead, U.S. troops would scour the earth for individuals connected to al-Qa‘ida. In January 2002, subsequent to intelligence reports of sophisticated terrorist nerve centers in northeast Afghan caves, U.S. troops stormed them—and found nothing of the sort. But when, in March, Jeffrey Goldberg's article in The New Yorker detailed Saddam's use of al-Qa‘ida to fight the Kurds in northern Iraq, the Bush team showed no interest and deferred consideration of invading Iraq to 2003, if then.[5]

The most impotent, counterproductive, and silly part of the war however, was "Homeland Security."
Since September 11, "security" is everywhere. Police and federal agencies have unprecedented powers. Whether mailing a package, entering a large building, or especially flying commercially, Americans are subject to strictures more reminiscent of a banana republic than of America. Yet note: had all of the new security measures been in effect on September 11, they would not have interfered with the attacks. Moreover, studies have shown that even against the most heavily defended targets, terrorist attacks succeed about 85 percent of the time. Insofar as police measures work at all, they do so by targeting specific ethnic groups while sparing the general population. However, Israel's experience confirms Machiavelli's observation that the world's most stringent security measures can do little against those who are willing to give up their lives to kill. Protecting America's vast society with police measures is nonsense.

The acme of nonsense is President Bush's proposal for reorganizing existing agencies and bureaus into a department of Homeland Security. No one would change their thinking or modus operandi. They would change only their lines of bureaucratic reporting. When companies try to avoid confronting their own inadequacies, they often reorganize.
The Bush team's approach to police measures—officially assuming that anyone is as likely to be a terrorist as anyone else—is counterproductive and silly. It trains Americans to mistrust and to check each other. This approach caused security officers at one airport to detain an elderly holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor for trying to take the medal onto an airplane, and at another airport, as part of a random check, to search former Vice President Al Gore—who got more votes for president than did George W. Bush. Grandmothers from Peoria are searched, while young Arabic-looking men are not. This randomness is less in the service of security, much less of war, than it is a ritual reaffirmation of the ideology of contemporary American elites, most recently expressed by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller: "We are not looking for individuals of any particular religion or from any particular country."[6]

No surprise then, that after an Egyptian with an anti-American and anti-Israeli record gunned down a crowd of Americans and Israelis at the El Al counter of Los Angeles airport, the U.S. government's official reaction was: "There is nothing to indicate terrorism."
In practice, the FBI prefers to seek out terrorists among anti-government people at home than among anti-Americans from the Middle East. Since letters containing anthrax were mailed to Capitol Hill in October 2001, the field offices of the FBI have been busy trying to prove that they were the work of a domestic anti-government scientist (an early FBI source gratuitously added right-wing) rather than of any foreign government. But after 5,000 interviews and 1,700 subpoenas; after officially suspecting 130 individual Americans and 100 companies; after being convinced of the guilt of one American who turned out to be innocent, the U.S. government has zero evidence of domestic involvement. Yet despite evidence that a September 11 hijacker was treated for an anthrax infection, that the hijackers were trying to rent crop dusters, that the anthrax spores were fresh and coated with materials typical of professional laboratories—such as the ones in Iraq—U.S. intelligence looks for domestic dissidents rather than for foreign enemies. What war? For what purpose?

On the Enemy Track

When Arab friends persuaded the Bush team not to fight America's enemies in the Arab world but rather to restrain Israel from striking at its enemies (their friends), the Bush team turned from America's war to the Arabs' war.
By the turn of the century, America's Arab friends, notably the Saudi royal family, were following their fears more than their friendships. Through the 1990s, Saddam Husayn's Iraqi regime had become the leading force in the Arab world. By surviving the Kuwait war to thumb his nose at Washington and denouncing all manifestations of Arab collaboration with the United States, Saddam won the allegiance of the region's most virulent elements. By adroit propaganda, money, and murder, he and the leaders of the other terror states identified Islam with anti-Westernism and with themselves. Moderate Arabs followed or died.
To derail the Bush team from America's war to their own, the Arab terror regimes had to manufacture a war. The spring of 2002 saw a dramatic increase in the attacks by various Palestinian forces against Israel. This made Palestinians immeasurably worse off materially and subjected them to constant danger of execution as collaborators. Saddam's regime and the Saudi royal family as well supplied the money for the family endowments that effectively purchased the war's principal weapon, suicide bombers. Having helped organize the carnage, the Saudis demanded that Bush stop it by making concessions to them.
Bush, the Saudis insisted, must support the creation of a Palestinian state and interpose at least some American bodies between Israel and the Palestinians. In exchange, the Saudis would try to cool the Palestinians and continue their support of the "war" (as amended). Nevertheless, they would continue to please the terror states insofar as might be necessary to ensure their own stability. And wasn't that stability the Bush team's priority? By April 2002, Bush had agreed.
Did the Bush team know or care that all this amounted not to avenging September 11, but to pretending to fight terrorists while giving in to the demands of those who harbor and pay them? Certainly they know—just not enough to change longstanding foreign policy priorities, intellectual habits, as well as the personnel of U.S. intelligence and diplomacy.

Three Monkeys Intelligence

"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," describes U.S. intelligence in the war on terrorism. As in so many other matters, U.S. intelligence searches only in the lighted corners of dark rooms and reflects the priorities of Washington more than it reflects reality.
Nearly a year after September 11, U.S. intelligence still has no idea who most of the hijackers were, where the operation was organized, by whom, or who paid for it. Our professionals concluded that, except for one Usama bin Ladin, the identity of America's enemies is a mystery. Still, they are sure that our enemies are amateurs, unconnected with professional intelligence services. Nonsense.
Start with the Saudi hijackers. The photos and names released by the U.S. government match flight manifests with visa files from U.S. consulates. But the only pictures of the hijackers from security cameras are of persons other than the ones pictured and named. Indisputably, the hijackers used stolen identities. That is a mark of a major league intelligence service. (The Saudi government prevented independent investigation of who the hijackers really were.)
The hijacking itself bore marks of professionalism: the hijackers used sophisticated chemical sprays and methods of rapid entry into the cockpits, they had mastered navigation beyond what had been taught them in their U.S. flight schools, and they had turned off the planes' transponders—which also had not been taught them in the flight schools.
Then there is the $100,000 that financed the U.S. part of the mission. Muhammad Atta, an Egyptian, got it immediately after a meeting in June 2000 in Prague with Ahmad al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer who specialized in handling terrorists. The account from which the money came had been professionally scrubbed of the owner's identity. On April 9, 2001, Atta made a 72-hour trip to see Ani again. Two weeks later, the trained soldiers in the hijacking left Saudi Arabia for America.
From all this, a reasonable person—also knowing that Iraq has a facility where terrorists train to take over Boeing aircraft—might conclude that September 11 had been organized by Iraq, with connections in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
But, the CIA only paid attention to trails that the hijack operation had chosen not to cover. On September 9, Atta wired $15,000 back to a different account. This one had a name on it—an associate of Usama bin Ladin. Usama had done it! And Atta had left his flight manual in a car he had rented in his own name. He only knew what he learned in flight school! See? An amateur operation planned in one of those fabulous Afghan caves.
Note that the CIA gets almost none of its information on terrorism from its own human sources. Much of its terrorist "humint" comes directly or indirectly from the liaison services of friendly Arab governments. The CIA accepts them because of the poverty of its own sources and because what they say pleases U.S. officials. Not surprisingly, the agency's concept of a vast network of Muslim terrorists unconnected with Arab governments comes substantially from Arab governments. Its other major source of "humint," the interrogation of prisoners, is even more flawed. U.S. intelligence officials told The New York Times they were training interrogators for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to lie a lot, that they were happy getting lots of facts that "checked out," although many prisoners' stories turned out to be misleading.[7] Competent people know that true facts can be even more misleading than false assertions and that the sine qua non of successful interrogation hinges on truly knowing more than the person being interviewed. This is not the case with the CIA.
This is not the place to restate the CIA's record of failure and bad faith with regard to the Iraqi opposition, or its longstanding commitment to the fortunes of the PLO-PA. Rather, all this leads one to ask what service it can render in the war on terrorism.
In May 2002, the CIA ran a covert action—in Washington. One of its official sources convinced Newsweek and The Washington Post that there was no solid evidence that Muhammad Atta had ever met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague.[8] But the interior minister of the Czech Republic immediately reconfirmed the fact of the meeting, and the Czech envoy to the United Nations did so again a month later.[9] The CIA had briefly supported the Bush policy of taking no military action against Iraq.[10]
In short, the CIA helps enable the Bush team's strategy.

If Wishes Were Strategy

The Bush team, at least some parts thereof, knows much and wishes well. Vice President Dick Cheney declared, "wars are not won on the defensive. We must battle the enemy wherever necessary to prevent greater stress to our country."[11] The statements by President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the effect that Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction poses an unacceptable threat to America and that somehow Saddam must go are too numerous to list. President Bush finally said that the Palestinian people deserve new leadership. But there is no evidence that the Bush team knows how to translate such wishes into strategy, much less into facts.
The facts of the war on terrorism are as outlined above: in practice, the Bush team is fighting a war to salvage the visions, assumptions, and ways of current elites, not to mention their reputations. Abroad, the "war on terrorism" is of a piece with the Gulf war, the Vietnam war, and the Korean war: America kills lots of people whose deaths do not bring victory. This makes us hated. And America leaves enemy regimes standing. This makes us contemptible. At home, the "war" consists of a fateful combination of bellicose rhetoric and impotent, silly security measures. Thus even more than previous wars, the "war on terrorism" wastes the good will of the American people—the most precious thing of all. The ends of war cannot be achieved by the means of phony war.
Success fuels hope of victory, which fuels effort. By mid-2002, the Saudi government's diplomatic overtures to Tehran and above all to Baghdad, as well as its assumption of the role as their advocate to the West, meant its recognition that it was living at its enemies' sufferance. Any number of people in the region, including members of the royal family, surely saw in this the chance of their lives. When someone seizes that chance, the House of Saud will first split and then fall. That in turn will convince more people in the region to try for power and glory. That is what real wars are made of. As stability—the Bush team's premise and objective—disappears, the Bush team will have to confront the choice that it worked so hard to shun: between paying the price of victory and that of defeat. And it will have to do it from a well-earned position of disadvantage.
Governments bend to those they fear and bite those they hold in contempt. The Bush team's conduct of the war made the Arab world less afraid of America. How could that be, given all the bombs the United States dropped on Afghanistan? Simple. The Arab world knew that Washington could drop those bombs. It wondered, would the United States drop them to alter the balance of power among us? By dropping them on Afghanistan, Washington answered, no. Their estimate of the United States's capacity to protect them from threats foreign and domestic also dropped.
America became fully contemptible when the Bush team recoiled from the Arab world's brandishing of the ultimate terror weapon, suicide bombing. Count on it: the next stage of the war will feature suicide bombings on American streets.
Angelo M. Codevilla is professor of international relations at Boston University, a former naval officer, foreign service officer, and staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Among his books is Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for A New Century (1992). This commentary expands upon an essay in the Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2002).
[1] Charles de Gaulle, Memoires de guerre, Vol. I (Paris: Plon, 1954).
[2] Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).
[3] Bush's address to the nation, Sept. 11, 2001, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html.
[4] Bush's address to the nation, Nov. 10, 2001, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011110.html.
[5] Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Great Terror," The New Yorker, Mar. 25, 2002.
[6] FBI director Robert Mueller, answer to questions by the Senate Judiciary Committee, June 6, 2002, view at http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/jdrive/ter060602_mueller.rm.
[7] The New York Times, May 15, 2002.
[8] Michael Isikoff, "The Phantom Link to Iraq," Newsweek, May 6, 2002; Walter Pincus, "No Link between Hijacker, Iraq Found, U.S. Says," The Washington Post, May 1, 2002.
[9] Stanislav Gross, Czech minister of the interior, quoted by James Pitkin, "Czechs: Hijacker Met with Iraqi Spy," Prague Post, May 8, 2002; Hynek Kmonicek quoted by Edith M. Lederer, "Czech Official Insists Meeting with Terrorists Occurred," Associated Press, June 4, 2002.
[10] William Safire, "Mr. Atta Goes to Prague," The New York Times, May 9, 2002.
[11] Cheney speech to Federalist Society, Nov. 15, 2001, at http://www.fed-soc.org/events/lawyersconvention/cheney.htm.

2006-04-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

Study linking preschool personality to political orientation

This study may explain why conservatives, still a minority in the United States, have grown to such a powerful political movement.

According to the study, liberals are independent to a fault, incapable of single mindedness, while conservatives can be unified and single minded on a variety of topics.

I'm not sure that I agree that conservatives are in general "easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable" The study is not really suggesting that assumption either, but it does maintain that in this control group, the subjects do fit that paticular criteria.

Two of my brothers and many of my friends are conservatives; not neo-cons but conservative. If you called any of them "indecisive, fearful, rigid or inhibited", you would likely get more than you bargained for.

What I get from the study is that liberals need to come togehter on more issues. We're too independent in our thinking.

Here's a synposis of the study:

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations 23 March 2006

BERKELEY – A study linking early childhood personality to political orientation 20 years later has been generating considerable news media attention. The longitudinal study, conducted by Jack Block, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Berkeley, and his wife, Jeanne, now deceased, was published online last October in the Journal of Research in Personality. The Toronto Star ran a story on the study on March 19.

Starting in the 1960s, the Blocks tracked more than 100 young children in two Berkeley area nursery schools as part of a general study of cognitive and ego development. The personalities of the 3-and 4-year-olds were evaluated by the nursery school teachers who knew them.
Twenty years later, the Blocks followed up with more surveys. Data collected for 95 of the original participants found that those "relatively conservative at age 23 were described as feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable." Meanwhile, preschool children who turned out to be liberals were characterized as "developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled and resilient."

In the study, Block says it should be taken into account that the "sample" is limited to those born in the late 1960s and reared in Berkeley and Oakland, presenting "an enveloping cultural context appreciably different from much of America." However, he says, "any sample bias carries no implication whatsoever regarding analyses of individual differences conducted within the sample."

As for whether these characteristics mean liberals are superior, Block points out in the study, "Ironically, the sheer variety of changes and improvements suggested by the liberal-minded under-controller may explain the diffuseness, and subsequent ineffectiveness, of liberals in politics where a collective single-mindedness of purpose so often is required."
Read the full study (PDF file).

2006-04-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, some good news about the economy!
Survey: Grads finding hot jobs market Employers set to hire nearly 15% more college grads this spring, survey says; starting salaries up for many business, engineering majors.

April 7, 2006: 8:29 AM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -
College graduates this spring are seeing the best jobs market since 2000, with many getting larger starting salaries than were being offered a year ago, according to some experts in the field. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows employers hiring nearly 15 percent more recent college grads than a year ago, and a particularly strong market for most business and engineering students. It found accounting degree graduates are receiving an average starting salary of $46,188, up 5.4 percent from a year ago. Right behind are economics/finance graduates, who are getting average offers of $45,058, up 5.3 percent, and business administration/management majors, who are seeing average offers 3.9 percent higher than a year ago at $40,976. (Read More)

Had to repost this one - sorry for any confusion, problem with Blogger.
I reposted all of the comments as best as I could. They're all there, but under a single entry.

2006-04-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

Fruitful Years For The People of This Democracy
A speech by a great President

This is a speech that one can read and apply to our period with certainty. The words of President Roosevelt's Third Inaugural Address transcend time with a strength and dignity as strong as gravity. The speech is as relevent now as it was then.

Democracy is not inherited, it is an earned privilege. President Roosevelt knew this truth as he fought tyranny within our borders and abroad. The gains that the Democratic Party made during the New Deal period were, and still are, in constant jeopardy. The language that President Roosevelt selected for this speech indicates this fact as he used words like "tyranny and slavery" to describe the period before his Presidency. On many levels, he was correct.

Slavery like labor was common in the United States before 1932, people worked for sustenance wages; despair was ubiquitous. The Iron Law of Wages was achieved. But by 1942 our Democratic government had changed the trend of poverty and had begun the golden age of the American middle-class.

Many believe that we are moving in the direction of abstract poverty for the majority once again. This conclusion is reached as we watch our industries become decimated by imbalanced foreign competition and trade, importation of cheap labor for both white and blue collar industries, as our healthcare rises to exorbitant levels of expense, and as our government attempts to open our borders to unlimited amounts of cheap bargan workers while not allowing them, the exploited workers, the privilege of organizing for their rights or becoming citizens. Our middle-class is deteriorating, while the wealthier classes are growing. As President Roosevelt points out, Democracy is fragile; it can be broken, and democracy will not survive with out a strong middle-class.

President Roosevelt died April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He left us the legacy of Social Security, strong labor unions, the strongest and wealthiest economy in our history, healthcare for the elderly and poor and the most educated, politically active middle-class of our time. As then, these gains are in constant danger. We must be careful as - “tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ebbing tide"

Franklin D. RooseveltThird Inaugural Address
Washington, DC
Monday, January 20, 1941

ON each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their sense of dedication to the United States. In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld together a nation.

In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation from disruption from within.

In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its institutions from disruption from without. To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock—to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of inaction.

Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ebbing tide.

But we Americans know that this is not true.

Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the midst of shock—but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.

These later years have been living years—fruitful years for the people of this democracy. For they have brought to us greater security and, I hope, a better understanding that life's ideals are to be measured in other than material things.

Most vital to our present and our future is this experience of a democracy which successfully survived crisis at home; put away many evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact of its democracy.

For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come to naught.

Democracy is not dying. We know it because we have seen it revive—and grow.

We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority. We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.

We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent—for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society. A nation, like a person, has a body—a body that must be fed and clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the objectives of our time.

A nation, like a person, has a mind—a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the needs of its neighbors—all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.

And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that something which matters most to its future—which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present. It is a thing for which we find it difficult—even impossible—to hit upon a single, simple word.

And yet we all understand what it is—the spirit—the faith of America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands—some of high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna Charta. In the Americas its impact has been irresistible.

America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life—a life that should be new in freedom.

Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg Address. Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, and the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them—all have moved forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal which in itself has gained stature and clarity with each generation.

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth. We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land. But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone.

It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit.

Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live. But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished.

That spirit—that faith—speaks to us in our daily lives in ways often unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It speaks to us here in the Capital of the Nation. It speaks to us through the processes of governing in the sovereignties of 48 States.

It speaks to us in our counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages. It speaks to us from the other nations of the hemisphere, and from those across the seas—the enslaved, as well as the free. Sometimes we fail to hear or heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.

The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our first President in his first inaugural in 1789—words almost directed, it would seem, to this year of 1941: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered ... deeply,... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

If we lose that sacred fire—if we let it be smothered with doubt and fear—then we shall reject the destiny which Washington strove so valiantly and so triumphantly to establish. The preservation of the spirit and faith of the Nation does, and will, furnish the highest justification for every sacrifice that we may make in the cause of national defense.

In the face of great perils never before encountered, our strong purpose is to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy. For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America. We do not retreat. We are not content to stand still. As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.

On November 5, 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his THIRD term in office. When Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administered the Oath of Office to him on the East Portico of the Capitol Building the following January 20th, it became the first and only time that a U.S. President gave THREE Inaugural Addresses. Following the traditional Inaugural Parade, the President and his wife hosted a reception at the White House that was attended by several thousand visitors and guests.

2006-04-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

The Truth About Protectism and Trade – Part 2

(Read Part 1 Here)

WTO – Protectionism for the Wealthy

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a Multinational Trade Organization which has the responsibility of setting the rules for the world’s trading system. Also known as a Free Trade Regulator Body, the WTO attempts to resolve disputes between its member states, all of whom are beholden to its trade agreements. Located in Geneva, Switzerland, the WTO has 150 members; the members represent various nation states. Members are required to grant one another most favored nation status, such as with the U.S. and China. Granting favored status hollows out protective tariffs to a meaningless level and attempts to facilitate a free flow of goods. The purpose of tariff free trade is to promote a free trade zone with the most favored nation. In our case, the United States and China, we import more with China than we export. This scheme, tariff free trade, is the root of our trade imbalance with China as China is largely uninterested in our goods.

The WTO was established to “protect” the multinationals and the multinational corporate investor class from the down side of tariff’s and so-called trade barriers – trade barriers have historically protected our industries from direct competition with Third World wages and have guaranteed a middle-class lifestyle in the United States for over two centuries. The beneficiaries from the WTO, although many claim that we all benefit, are the business and investors who facilitate the trade. The cost to the average citizen has been high.

Job losses associated with the trade deficit increased six times more rapidly between 1994 and 2000 than they did between 1989 and 1994. Every state and the District of Columbia suffered significant job losses due to growing trade deficits between 1994 and 2000. Ten states, led by California, lost over 100,000 net jobs. The manufacturing sector, where the trade deficit rose 158.5% between 1994 and 2000, shouldered 65% of the surge in job losses during that period. (Source)

Is the WTO working?

The WTO has been an effective mechanism of capital gains for investors, CEO’s and government officials. The investor protectionist policies imposed by the WTO have benefited these catagories by implementing trade de-regulation, privatization and weakening of collective bargaining (labor unions). Not surprisingly though, they, and their cronies in the media and the academic world, also measure the advancement and success of a globalize world economy according to the pursuits of the investment class. The benchmarks of progress are elements such as rising stock markets, increased volume of trade, lower taxes for the wealthy, and the elimination of investment restrictions, and of course the so-called free flow of trade.
What is the justification behind such a perspective? It is the faith that these policies will automatically create faster growth, greater equality and expand democracy. As I've written before, it is a policy which requires faith.

But in the past 20 years, specifically the last 12, inequality has grown. As Christian Weller, Robert Scott, and Adam Hersh of the Economic Policy Institute have shown , the median income of the richest ten countries was 77 times that of the poorest ten countries in 1980, and 149 times in 1999. The incomes of the richest 10% of the world's people were 70 times that of the poorest 10% in 1980, and 122 times in 1999. Within nations, inequality also seems to have worsened. Accurate global data is not available, but in the countries where the data are most reliable, as the trend is clearly toward more inequality. Even World Bank president James Wolfensohn in 1999 was moved to admit, "At the level of people, the system isn't working."3(Dalpino, Catherine. Fall 2001."Globalization & Democracy." In Brookings Review, Vol. 19. No. 4 Pages 45-48, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.)

Who is benefiting?

It’s easy to find considerable amounts of data on the financial interests of the investor class. Simply read the Wall Street Journal. However, the mainstream media carries little systematic information on what is happening to the huge class of the world's workers. A glimpse into the trends within WTO participating countries shows a general deterioration of the position of labor relative to capital. This can be found in both developing and developed economies.
"Uncontrolled globalization, in one stroke, puts government's domestic policies decisively on the side of capital, not the people" -- writes Jeff Faux in his latest book "The Global Class War". In an economy that is growing based on its domestic market; rising wages help everyone because they increase purchasing power and consumer demand -- which is the major driver of economic growth in a modern society.

But in an economy whose growth depends on foreign markets, rising domestic wages are a problem. Rising domestic wages make it more difficult to compete internationally. In short, the more that the workers earn, the less the investor class gains in profit. This has always been the case, but now with the free flow of goods and services accross national borders, including the resource of labor, the investor class gains a cardinal advantage of worker fear and insecurity. It is in the interest of the investor class to push the wages down for the workers, and the mere threat of moving an operation or importing cheap labor is enought to stifle any worker dissent.

The solution, in principle, is simple. We must organize. We must isolate ourselves from corporate protectionism and gradually move back to a system of protective tariffs as a matter of national policy. We must control the language of the issues and the move the debate to discuss who the beneficiaries of the WTO and so-called free trade really are. This means an alliance of working people -- North and South, East and West -- through a common goal. The goal is a means of negotiating the interests of American workers and the interests of those in developing and developed country whose workers needs are slowly becoming one and the same as ours. This task is difficult, but the world's working majority has two great advantages. One is that we out number the investor class-- in every country. The second is that the world's workers are indispensable. One can imagine a world without multinational investors. It is impossible to imagine a world without workers.

Our strength is our solidarity. There strength is our silence.

2006-04-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

The Assassins' Gate

George Packer, a reporter for the New Yorker Magazine, takes a sobering look at the Iraq War in his book "The Assassins' Gate" and gives us a synopsis’s of why he, and the New Yorker magazine, initially supported the War and now do not. He also examines how the Iraqi people are conflicted over our presence, our mission, our possible early withdrawal -- both positive and negative.
He takes an honest look at the grey areas, not just the black and white of both the stay or leave crowd, while appealing to cerebral and emotional concerns. Packer also examines the shortfalls and successes of our presence in the region.
Finally, he explains the Shi’a / Sunnis struggle from the perspective of the Iraqi citizen; a perspective often ignored by mainstream sources.

Packer is interviewed here by Matt Rothchild of the Progressive Magazine.
The interview and the book speak to the moderate in all of us, and makes clear that the solution to the War in Iraq is not as simple as black and white, stay or go.

The book is worth your time, but if you’re too busy to read, listen to the interview.

2006-04-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

Associated Press
Updated: 6:11 p.m. ET April 4, 2006

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain threatened Tuesday to cut short a speech to union leaders who booed his immigration views and later challenged his statements on organized labor and the Iraq war.
“If you like, I will leave,” McCain told the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, pivoting briefly from the lectern. He returned to the microphone after the crowd quieted. (Read More)

---- I used to like Senator Mccain, but now I see that he’s just like any other proponent of the Iron Law of Wages.
He’s not a candidate that I can endourse in good conscience.

2006-04-07T04:27:00.000-07:00

Iron law of wages

The Iron Law of Wages was an Industrial Revolution law of economics that asserted that wages can never rise above the minimum level that will enable the laborer to survive. Inspired by the French Ideologue period, the alleged law was popularized by the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle around 1813. According to Lassalle, wages cannot fall below subsistence level because without subsistence laborers will be unable to work for long.
However, competition between laborers for employment will drive wages down to this minimal level.
Amid this period of history, wages for both manufacturing laborers and agricultural workers were in large part close to subsistence level.

What drives laborers to subsistance levels is an abundance of labor resources - too many workers. The Iron Law of Wages is acheived by flooding a labor market with resources. Consequently union busting practices are executed with impunity. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for labor has been to reverse the Iron Law of Wages.

The Iron Law of Wages is what's driving the compulsion for a guest worker program, not compasion for the laborers.

2006-04-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

A reply to a letter that I wrote to Senator Mel Martinez.

The topic is immigration.

Thank you for contacting me with your support for homeland security enhancement and comprehensive immigration reform. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.Like you, I strongly believe that one way to safeguard our homeland and halt the flow of illegal immigrants is to work tirelessly to secure our borders. On October 28, 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006 (P.L. 109-90), which includes more than $30 billion to protect our homeland. It specifically sets aside $2.3 billion for the Border Patrol to improve and expand its stations, to install and improve fencing, lighting, and vehicle barriers along the border, and to acquire technologies, such as portable imaging machines, sensors and automated targeting systems that focus on high-risk travelers and goods.

However, this is just a start, as Congress begins to review the President's recently submitted fiscal year 2007 budget request. Please know, I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure substantial additional resources are made available to the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol.There were approximately four million illegal immigrants living in the United States, when Congress last addressed the issue of comprehensive immigration reform in 1986. Today, it is estimated there are more than 11 million. Those immigrants who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. We live in a time where terrorists are challenging our borders, and we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of immigration law. Further, American employers need to take responsibility when determining the immigration status of individuals they hire. Too often illegal immigrants attempt to enter the United States chasing the promise of a job, only to risk survival and face even death crossing the desert or never find a job at all. In the interest of cheap labor, unscrupulous employers look the other way when employees provide fraudulent citizenship documents. This hurts both American workers and immigrants whose sole aim is to work hard and get ahead. It is imperative that we implement a simple, fool-proof and mandatory mechanism for all employers to check the legal status of new hires.

However, I believe to further protect our nation, we must contend with scores of illegal immigrants living and working within our borders without our knowing their identity or background. That is why we need to develop a guest-worker program that will replace the flow of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after a series of checks. This would enhance our nation's security by protecting our citizens from terrorists that may exploit the openness of our society.If we hope to bring the 11 million undocumented immigrants out into the open, we must give them a reason. This means granting those with jobs interim legal status to work with the opportunity, after paying penalties and without amnesty to eventually earn citizenship. We can do this by imposing a hefty fine for having illegally entered out country, and by forcing the undocumented to go to the back of the line in their pursuit of citizenship. The interim status should only apply to those already here, so as to not open the door for others.We cannot claim to have dealt with the problems of illegal immigration if we ignore the illegal resident population or pretend that they will leave voluntarily.

Some of the proposed ideas in Congress provide a temporary legal status and call for deportation, but fail to answer how the government would successfully deport this large amount of people. If temporary legal status is granted, but the policy says these immigrants are never good enough to become Americans, then the policy makes little sense. However, without solving the porous border or incentive problem the population of illegals will only grow.Successful, comprehensive immigration reform can be achieved by combining strong border control legislation with a realistic workplace and an earned citizenship program. These three pillars of immigration reform are found in three separate pieces of legislation I have cosponsored -- the Strengthening Americaâ€™s Security Act (S. 1916), the Employment Verification Act (S. 1917), and the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (S. 1033).

Please know that, I will work with my Senate colleagues to ensure that the ideas included in these important pieces of legislation are incorporated into the immigration reform process.Again, thank you for sharing your views. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

In addition, for more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator

Senator Martinez seems to support a comprehensive approach to our open border issue. I especially like the provisions for cracking down on irresponsible employers who hire undocumented workers. However we must be careful about the language on the matter of a guest worker program.

The importance of safeguarding our industries from inexpensive labor cannot be understated.

Please contact congress to express your opinion on this matter. You’ll find a sample letter here.

2006-04-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Sample Letter to Oppose a Guest Worker Program

Dear Representative,

Guest worker programs in the United States, by their very nature, have subjected the foreign workers and corresponding U.S. workers to poor wages and working conditions. In affected occupations, guest worker status also has contributed to the foreign and domestic workers’ lack of economic and political bargaining power.

This lack of bargaining power arises largely from the foreign workers’ status as "non-immigrants" on temporary visas. They are dependent on the employers for their ability to stay in the country and their opportunity to obtain a visa in the following year. That status effectively prevents workers from demanding better wages or working conditions, forming a labor union, or challenging illegal conduct. In fact, once the Department of Labor certifies an employer’s wage rates as acceptable, a worker who refuses to work at that wage level is considered "unavailable" for work and can be replaced by a guest worker.
Employers often prefer guest workers because they will work to the limits of human endurance and for low wages. Consequently, many employers create artificial labor shortages for themselves by not recruiting United States workers, by offering low wages and poor working conditions so as to deter U.S. workers from applying for jobs, by forcing U.S. workers to quit their jobs, and by firing them. Such conduct is illegal but widespread.

Most guest worker programs are predicated on denying the humanity of the workers who fill those jobs. The guest workers are isolated from others in society and stigmatized. They are denied the right to compete economically for the best available job. They are too vulnerable to ask for better wages. (This would also apply if temporary workers would have to "earn" their immigration status by working for U.S. employers and persuading the employers to give the government proof of that employment.) Families are broken up. The workers are not granted the democratic rights on which this country was founded. It is indentured servitude disguised as a comprehensive solution.

Guest worker programs should not supply this nation’s labor.

Thank you in advance for your correspondence.

Sincerely,

2006-04-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

A Health Care Plan that May Please Liberals and Conservatives

This article, originally written by STEVE LeBLANC Associated Press Writer, outlines in-brief a new health care for all of the uninsured in Massachusetts.
According to the reporter the plan has appeal to both liberals --employer mandate to provide healthcare crowd -- and conservatives --personal accountability crowd.

The bill proposes to insure all of those without healthcare. It passed the state House (154-2) and Senate (37-0) and is expected to be signed into law by the Governor Mitt Romney. This bill may be a model for the rest of the country. You can read about it here.

I'm a little suspicious about a bill which mandates healthcare from private insurance groups, but this may be the start of the ideal that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

2006-04-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

American Theocracy

In 1969 a Republican stratigist, Kevin Philips, wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority. The book, mostly a stratigic policy analysis, offered a Machiavellian dissection of how the GOP could use the issue of race to win over working-class Democrats and ensure future political dominance. The book turned out to be a prophetical, and highly succusful guide for the modern Republican movement.

Since then, Kevin Philips has had a crisis of conscience. And in his recent book, American Theocracy, he examines the unholy allience between modern conservatives, corporations, rising debt and the religious right. In a recent interview on the Lou Dobbs program Philips reveals some insights into his latest offering. The interveiw, published below, is slightly long, but worth reading.

“--------DOBBS: Former Republican Party strategist Kevin Phillips joins us here tonight. His new book is called "American Theocracy." It is a provocative indictment of the administration's foreign and economic policy, and examines, among other things, how the religious right is driving this administration's policy. Kevin, it is going good to have you with us. Mr. Philips political acumen has been correct in the past, let’s hope that it’s not too late to reverse these trends.”

KEVIN PHILLIPS, AUTHOR, "AMERICAN THEOCRACY": Nice to be here.

DOBBS: This is an indictment, clearly and straightforwardly. What drove you to the conclusions that you've reached?

PHILLIPS: Well, there are a lot of, I suppose, launching pads for this. But one, as many years ago I wrote a book called "The Emerging Republican Majority," was sort of the outline of the Republican coalition.

DOBBS: What was it, what, 37 years ago?

PHILLIPS: Ah. 1969 is when it was published. It started before the election. But what's happened to the Republican coalition in the last 10 years especially is it's been moved more and more towards religious yardsticks. People who go to church. People who favor religion defining government. People who have just a whole set of concerns that go beyond economics. One of the reasons I think we have kind of screwed up economic politician in some ways is that a lot of Americans have stopped worrying about the economy because they're waiting for the second coming.

DOBBS: And you mean this quite literally?

PHILLIPS: I mean it quite literally.

DOBBS: You talk about 30 to 40 percent the electorate is caught up in scripture, exerting their influence, even power, over the White House and the Republican party. You're comfortable that it's that large a number of people, and that indeed that influence is felt that strongly within the White House?

PHILLIPS: Well, I think so. And it's partly because a considerable number of Republicans and conservatives and evangelicals believe that religion should guide politics and they have no hesitation about pushing their view on a whole host of issues. Whether it be the biblical aspect of the Middle East or science on the White House.

DOBBS: Kevin, your new book, a very important book, "American Theocracy," got off to a bang up start today because, when the president was being asked questions in Cleveland, this is -- I'd like to show you what happened there along with everyone watching and listening. If we could roll that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse?
BUSH: I haven't really thought of it that way. (END VIDEO CLIP)DOBBS:

The question was specifically about Kevin Phillips' new book, "American Theocracy," in which you postulate as we have just said, the influence of -- it's interesting. The answer by the president went on for five minutes. And as one of my colleagues said, a simple yes or no would have done it, it seemed to him. That isn't what we got.

PHILLIPS: He can't. A survey by "Newsweek" several years back found that 45 percent of American Christians believed in Armageddon, that it was coming. And about the same percentage thought the anti- Christ was already on Earth. Now, if you were to take the religious Christians, and the Republican coalition includes most of the religious Christians, you probably have about 55 percent of the Republican coalition that believes in this. He can't answer the question weather or not he believes in Armageddon or it's happening in the Middle East. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

DOBBS: As a matter of fact, the questioner went on to say, do you believe in this, and if not, why not. Literally, as you put it, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. We don't mean that in a sectarian way. Let's turn to the other aspect of this. The influence, the capture, not only of this White House, but the country by debt. The financializaion, if you will, every word you wrote has a ring of truth to it in that we think of all the debt. We look at the explosion in Wall Street. We look at the explosion in financial instruments. What doesn't go away is that four and a half trillion dollars in trade debt.Now we can go up to nine trillion dollars with ease because Congress has made it convenient for the treasury to do so. We have unfunded liabilities in Medicare and Medicaid. Trillions of dollars in Social Security. The impact on this country in monumental and it is lasting, isn't it?

PHILLIPS: Unfortunately, it's hard for me to see, short of some panic, that goes into a financial crisis, how you really lessen this and lessening it that way with the vulnerability of housing would be a disaster. But what's happened in a nutshell is that since the 1970s, you have seen manufacturing in this country slide as a percentage of the GDP from a very large lead back then. And during the 1990s it was passed by financial services, the FIRE sector: finance, insurance and real estate. By 2003, you basically had 21 percent in the FIRE sector, GDP. And you had 13, 14 percent in manufacturing. Now what's pushed up the roll of financial services in that sector is in most part, debt. In the sense of public, international, private, mortgage, credit cards, huge.

DOBBS: And I don't even dwell on the possibilities or the prospects for panic. Because one can hope against hope that we'll make policy adjustments. But what is clear is that our working men and women in this country, their families, our middle class is at huge risk here. And I have got to ask you. How hopeful are you that we can see this become once again become a government that represent the people who count, who make the country work?

PHILLIPS: I wish I could say I thought that would happen but if you look at two previous leading world economic powers, Britain, 100 years ago, and the Dutch after New Amsterdam, but they were considerable. In each case what happened was an erosion of actually making things, as the society shifted towards trading things and moving money around and all of that sort of stuff. Once you start to make that transition, there doesn't seem to be any way to go back because you create an elite that is then a set of vested interest in the new way of doing things. And they don't much care whether or not they're still making steel in Sheffield, or in Pittsburgh.

DOBBS: We do have to one advantage. And that is a Constitution and 200 years of tradition and values that have served us well. Maybe it's -- I'm going to be an optimist, Kevin, and I know in your heart you want to be as well, or you couldn't have written such an important examination of the crisis that confronts us. Kevin Phillips, the book is "American Theocracy." It's terrific -- it's an important read. We thank you for being here. Come back soon. Thank you. Still ahead, we'll have more of your thoughts. And President Bush answers unscreened questions from the public. And I'll be talking with three of the countries' top political and legal analysts about -- well his message skills. Stay with us”

-- End Interview

In fairness, there are some who say that Kevin Philips has taken his notions of emminant danger too far. Slate Magazine published a review of his latest book, and while Jacob Weisberg may agree that some of Philips’ assesments are true, his overall message, states Weisberg, may be too alarmist to take seriously.
I’ve read the review. I find that Jacob Weisberg is more intersted in attacking Kevin Philips character rather than his argumet, but you be the judge.

2006-03-31T05:18:00.000-08:00

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Today's Immigration Battle - Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)
by Thom Hartmann

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America.

Both the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some jobs Americans won't do." It's a lie.
Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.
The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers' Union (UFW) founder Caesar Chávez fought against illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in illegals during his tenure as president, was because Chávez, like progressives since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor rises and falls in price as a function of availability.

As Wikipedia notes: "In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valley to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of illegal aliens as temporary replacement workers during a strike. Joining him on the march were both the Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale. Chávez and the UFW would often report suspected illegal aliens who served as temporary replacement workers as well as who refused to unionize to the INS."
Working Americans have always known this simple equation: More workers, lower wages. Fewer workers, higher wages.

Progressives fought - and many lost their lives in the battle - to limit the pool of "labor hours" available to the Robber Barons from the 1870s through the 1930s and thus created the modern middle class. They limited labor-hours by pushing for the 50-hour week and the 10-hour day (and then later the 40-hour week and the 8-hour day). They limited labor-hours by pushing for laws against child labor (which competed with adult labor). They limited labor-hours by working for passage of the 1935 Wagner Act that provided for union shops. (Select for full story)

While I do not agree with broad stroking conservatives who are concerned about immigration as racist or corporatist, I do find that this article is informative and useful in pointing out how labor has struggled to avoid work force saturation. --Van

2006-03-29T06:59:00.000-08:00

A Limited Labor Force is a Strong Labor Force

The struggle for labor rights in the United States has been less of a struggle for equality and more of a struggle for limitation; a limitation of workforce. It distresses me how little progressives know or remember about the labor movement in the United States. The struggle, the fight for a higher living standard, was aimed at limiting the amount of workers in the job market. This has always been the goal of labor. Although Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) raised awareness about deplorable working conditions of children, the momentum behind the child labor laws was to limit the amount of workers in the market. An excessive workforce is a benefit to managment, not the worker. A limited work force will push the wages up and improve the standard of living for those who toil for the profit of the business owner. It's the simple law of supply and demand; as there are less workers in the work force the pay is high; as there are more workers in a work force, the pay is lowered. A work force flooded with cheap labor is precisely what the business community desires. A flooded workforce makes a strike, the only real negotiation that a worker owns, very difficult to organize. Who would strike while there are 10 others waiting to take your job for lower pay? A strike is self defeating without a job to return to. A work force brimming with cheap labor pushes wages down and increases worker insecurity. If there are 10 people desperate for the same job, the employer can, and should, lower the wage to benefit his bottom line - profit.

Caesar Chavez , the founder of the United Farm Workers of America and recipient of the Presidental Medal of Freedom, was acutely aware of this fact and took harsh measures against a fluid labor market. Ruben Navarette Jr. writes in the San-Diego Union Tribune, “Despite the fact that Chávez is these days revered among Mexican-American activists, the labor leader in his day was no more tolerant of illegal immigration than the Arizona Minutemen are now. Worried that the hiring of illegal immigrants drove down wages, Chávez – according to numerous historical accounts – instructed union members to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and demand that the agency deport them. UFW officials were even known to picket INS offices to demand a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the immigration issue, specifically with Mexico, as a problem of race. This claim seems to be an attempt by the pro-open borders crowd to muddy the waters of the debate and move the argument from the heart of the issue –- access to labor -- to the shadows -- racism. The argument for a limited workforce is valid. I certainly do not think that Caesar Chavez was a racist, nor would any rational person. What we need to do as a nation is to take a serious look at where we, our work force, wish to be in 10 years. For instance, the construction industry , once a middle-class trade, is spiraling downward on the wage scale. It’s no coincidence that there is %15 to %20 immigrant labor in the field of construction pushing down or stagnating the wages. The natural question beckons, where will the labor flooding end? There are very few industries safe from worker saturation. In fact worker saturation, a byproduct of skyrocketing population growth, is a root of poverty in many third world nations.

As more immigrants enter our country they will move up the pay scale and saturate each job category with inexpensive labor, slowly lowering the standard of living for all of those citizens in a paticular industry. The trend of illegal and cheap labor is expanding. Illegal immigrants are no longer just on the outskirts of migrant farm work; they are building our homes, driving our trucks and repairing our roofs. In fact there is no good reason to believe that they will not move up the payscale to our white collar industries . There are millions of highly trained professionals in South American, many with great adulation for our job markets, who will eagerly come to the U.S. and work for less than scale. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) was designed, in part, to facililate the movement of professional workers from South American to the U.S. The main problem with a porous border or a guest worker program is that they will not limit the supply of labor – we will receive a continuous flow of cheap labor, lower wages, and therefore, lower living standards. Do we want to have so many people looking for work in the U.S. that living standard will be equivalent to that of the third world? Or do we want negotiation power in the job market and the ability to demand higher wages due to less worker supply? If it’s the latter, then a limited supply of labor is the true answer. If you support a flooded labor market, lower standard of living for millions, eroded tax base, and weaker labor unions then you should support a guest worker program, or better stated, support the status quo.

2006-03-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

The Truth About Protectionism in Trade

Often when I speak to people about our growing trade deficit, and the negative implications of unbalanced trade, I get the thousand- yard- stare. I catch the same stare when I talk about the Infield fly rule of Major League Baseball - both are equally confounding. So I thought I’d take a moment to give an explanation, about the Trade Imbalance that is, the infield fly rule is far too difficult to decipher.

We’ll start with the basics - A tariff.

A tariff is a fee or tax on imported goods. There are several types of tariffs. The Ad Valorum tariff is calculated by a percentage of the value of the shipped goods, say 20% of the cargo. A Revenue Tariff is a set of rates designed primarily to raise money for a government. A tariff on banana imports, for example (by a country that does not grow bananas) raises a steady flow of revenue. And finally, a Protective Tariff is intended to artificially inflate prices of imports and "protect" domestic industries from foreign competition. For example, a company in China makes tennis shoes, so does a company in the Unites States. The unit of labor in China for the same shoe is $.10, in the states the unit of labor is .$90. A protective tariff would tax the import by the difference of labor, $.80. The competition between the two companies would be based on quality, not just price.

Why the hullabaloo over tariff’s?

The Protective Tarrif is the most critical to our economy. It protects our industries from direct competition with third world markets and wages. Obviously it is more expensive to live and work in the United States than say, Banglor India; this tariff ensures that our way of live is preserved and that our industries are protected from an influx of cheap imports. Without the Protective Tarrif Americans will be forced to accept wages which may be equilivant to that of India or China. The advancement of this tariff is the only way that American manufactures can remain competitive or they must give Americans pay equal to their overseas competitors, or they must move the manufacturing process offshore. Either option is disastrous for the American worker. The proponents of free trade (buzz words for eliminating Protective Tariffs) call the inevitable wage adjustment of tariff free trade "leveling the playing field". But a worker affected by this inequity would call the wage adjustment a catastrophe and a crisis.

It is the elimination of the Protective Tariff that promotes "dumping” of cheap goods into our economy ( goods made with cheap labor, lower environmental and safety standards), thereby destablizing our consumer markets and facilitating the race to the bottom - a term used to express a significant drop in wages, lifestyle, and economic status. Protective Tariff's have been used as a measure against this race to the bottom. What's more, when a country's major industries lose traction to unfair foreign competition, the loss of jobs and tax revenue can severely impair parts of that country's economy and its ability to sustain a living wage, increase living standards and sustain a tax base necessary for military and social spending.

In addition to the loss of living standard; the elimination of Protective Tariffs has been the major cause of our rising trade deficit, national debt and the loss of manufacturing industries. The cost benefit of moving a factory away from the U.S. and re-importing the goods without the tariff fee far outweighs the cost of the actual move and the cost associated in importing the goods back to the U.S.. The protective tariff protects an industry, its labor, and its ability to pay taxes, and therefore protects the American worker, the American middle-class and the American government from economic failure. In fact, it's elimination is a reverse form of protectionism. The disposal of this tariff protects companies from fair trade policies; policies which for centuries have been a cushion for American industries from cheap overseas labor and product "dumping" into our markets. Eliminating the protective tariff puts profit over principle, it hurts our economy and benefits the a few over the many.
Which is more important, an inexpensive television or a good paying job?

The Solution.

The ultimate goal of a nation should be a positive Balance of Trade. A Balance of Trade, called a Trade Surplus, occurs when a nation has more exports than imports. The excess of traded goods increases the wealth of a nation and boosts the value of currency. However, a negative balance of trade, known as a trade deficit or a trade gap, occurs when a nation imports more than it exports. This is our current direction. The formula for determining a trade deficit is straightforward; simply subtract the amout of exports from the amount of imports - the remainder is the trade deficit; the amount of money that we owe the world for trade. According to the Commerce Department our Trade Deficit for 2005 was $804.9bn.

The continuance of the trade imbalance has resulted in a decline in American manufacturing and export industries and a rise in imported products from countries such as China, as well as foreign investments in property such as our shipping ports. Since the U.S. currency is held in significant quantities by many governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves it also tends to be the international pricing currency for products traded on a global market, such as oil, gold, etc, these inclinations have been working to our advantage, but this could change at any time. The world could lose interest in the dollar, and as our currency devalues due to our deficits, they will. We are running a very delicate balance.

Our economy is growing, but this is in part because there is a high demand for American investment assets and other debt financing mechanisms such as Treasury Securities. In other words, we are selling our hard assets (ports, bridges, toll roads, bonds, etc.) and our currency to maintain our government and our lifestyles. Traditionally the United States has earned revenue with the assets that we are now unloading; we sell these assets to keep our country unanchored from the impending payback of decades of poor asset management. To put this in terms that can be appreciated; imagine a household with an enormous credit card debt. The bank wants a security, not just a promise to pay, so the bank offers to purchase the households front yard, the driveway and the front door. This is why the dollar is stays afloat, we are selling our assets. But this behavior cannot last, our assets are not infinite.

In the case of the UAE ports deal, the people may have been able to stop a foreign company from purchasing a United States asset, albeit for the wrong reason, but we cannot stop every foreign entity from taking this course. Foreign entities flush with U.S. currency have every right to purchase real assets. To solve this problem we must look at the heart of the issue, rather than at the shadows. The only way to improve deteriorating export and financial indebtedness conditions are to rebuild our industrial base. We must start making more products for export, and gradually implement protective tariffs once again to protect all of our industrial assets. The alternative is a to continue to lose our good paying jobs and our middle-class lifestyle for the ability to purchase cheap goods from abroad.

2006-03-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

UNITE-Here pushing for decent conditions for military garment workers
- 03/20/06

Bruce Raynor, head of UNITE-HERE, says his union will continue to push for the Pentagon to require decent work standards for the 20,000 garment workers making U.S. military uniforms. UNITE-HERE says these workers are working in sweatshop conditions right here in the U.S. making uniforms worn by U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.
[Bruce Raynor 1]: "For the U.S. military - spending procurement - is the largest employer of garment workers, single employer of garment workers, in the United States. Yet the military refuses to set any standards for wages and benefits, safety and health. And therefore the workers in many of those factories are working in sweatshop conditions.
Raynor says the Pentagon contracts require that the uniforms are made in the USA and he says the Pentagon can also set decent working standards.
[Raynor 2]: "Fortunately there are many members of Congress - both Democrats and Republicans - that find it outrageous that mothers of soldiers serving in Iraq have to be on food stamps to make uniforms for their sons. Both Democrats and Republicans find it outrageous."

Contact Congress and demand a living wage for Pentagon garment workers.

Related Article: U.S. POVERTY WORST IN INDUSTRIALISED WORLD

Sample Letter:

Dear ( Represative)

It has come to my attention that the working standards for the garment workers who make our U.S. military uniforms are similar to sweatshop conditions. This is completely unacceptable for one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Don't you think that the mothers of soldiers who are serving in Iraq should earn enough money to afford at least the basic necessities of survival? I certainly think so, and I'll bet that the majority of your constituents do too.

If Pentagon contracts require that United States military uniforms are made in the USA, then the Pentagon should also set decent working standards and a decent wage for the over 20,000 garment workers who make our soldiers uniforms.

I urge you to introduce legislation that will set a living wage for the garment workers who toil for the benefit of our troops. As a nation that spends over half of a trillion dollars on a defense budget annually, not including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it's obvious that we can do better.

Sincerely,

2006-03-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

"Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation." -- Coretta Scott King (1927-2006)

The struggle for a representative democracy where the people, and not just the corporations and special interest groups, are heard is real. Throughout our nation our elected representatives are beholden to donors with deep pockets, and, most often, the needs of the many are brushed aside to accommodate the needs of the wealthy elite.

For those who think that there is no hope; there is. The Clean Elections system is dynamically changing the landscape of corruption in American politics.
It's time to get this movement in gear. Contact your local and Federal representatives to demand a Clean Elections initiative.

Here is a sample letter.

FIRST LEGISLATIVE CANDIDATE RECEIVES PRIMARY CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Clancy Jayne is First Participating Clean Elections Candidate to Receive Primary Funding

PHOENIX (March 7, 2006) – The Citizens Clean Elections Commission (Commission), the state agency that administers the Citizens Clean Elections Act, announced today that Mr. Clancy Jayne has been certified to receive his primary election funding for the 2006 election cycle as a participating Clean Elections candidate. Jayne is the first legislative candidate to receive campaign funding and will collect $11,945 for the primary election.
“It is exciting to see that the process continues to work, allowing more candidates to seek office who might not have been able to” said Todd Lang, executive director of the Clean Elections Commission. “Mr. Jayne did the work as prescribed in the statute, and will now have funding for his campaign without the task of finding private donors being the determining factor.” To date, the Commission has approved a total of 111 participating candidate application – 90 legislative candidate applications and 21 statewide candidate applications. These candidates are eligible to collect the required $5 contributions to be certified as “participating” Clean Elections candidates for the 2006 election cycle. (Source)

Here's a sample letter.

Your silence is their strength.

2006-03-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sample Letter for Clean Elections Campaign

Dear (Represenative)

I am writing to you to support the Clean Money/Clean Elections (CMCE) Bill in (Your State). I am concerned about the problems of private money corrupting our public political system.

CMCE will limit campaign spending and campaign contributions. Under CMCE, candidates voluntarily agree to limit their spending and contributions will receive a fixed and equal amount of public funds.

Clean Money Clean Elections give more access to the political system for those who cannot afford to do so now. It will stop the influence of private interests groups, and most of all it will restore the principle of “one-person-one-vote.” As the current system stands, we have a “one-dollar-one-vote” electoral process. In addition, politicians will be able to devote more time to voter concerns rather than raising money for their political campaign.

Voters in Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona, and Vermont, Conneticute and North Carolina have approved CMCE on the ballot. Now it’s time for Clean Money, Clean Elections in
(Your State) and the nation!

I urge members of the (Your State) Legislature to sponsor and work for passage of CMCE legislation. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Concerned Citizen

2006-03-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

"Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation."
-- Coretta Scott King (1927-2006)

The stuggle for a represetative democracy where the people, and not just the corporations and specialial interest groups, are heard is as real. Throughout our nation our elected representatives are beholden to donors with deep pockets, and, most often, the needs of the many are brushed aside to accomodate the needs of those .

For those who think that there is no hope, there is. The Clean Elections system is dynamically changing the landscape of corruption in American politics, the Clean Elections movement is turning over state assemblies all over our nation. There are more than 10 states participating.
It's time to get this movement in gear. Contact you local and Federal represenatives to demand a Clean Elecions initiative.

FIRST LEGISLATIVE CANDIDATE RECEIVES PRIMARY CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Clancy Jayne is First Participating Clean Elections Candidate to Receive Primary Funding

PHOENIX (March 7, 2006) – The Citizens Clean Elections Commission (Commission), the state agency that administers the Citizens Clean Elections Act, announced today that Mr. Clancy Jayne has been certified to receive his primary election funding for the 2006 election cycle as a participating Clean Elections candidate. Jayne is the first legislative candidate to receive campaign funding and will collect $11,945 for the primary election.

“It is exciting to see that the process continues to work, allowing more candidates to seek office who might not have been able to” said Todd Lang, executive director of the Clean Elections Commission. “Mr. Jayne did the work as prescribed in the statute, and will now have funding for his campaign without the task of finding private donors being the determining factor.”
To date, the Commission has approved a total of 111 participating candidate application – 90 legislative candidate applications and 21 statewide candidate applications. These candidates are eligible to collect the required $5 contributions to be certified as “participating” Clean Elections candidates for the 2006 election cycle.

2006-03-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Stick It

In difficult times often many of us feel despair and indifference towards those who chose to ignore the obvious. We can feel as a ship in the night, adrift with no barings or instruments. Yes, I've felt this way, I struggle not too. I know that many others have felt these things as well.
While it's true that, "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little" - Edmond Burke - we who do a little, what we can, can feel as though no one is listening. But to my excitement, there are those who listen, and more, there are those who speak the gospel with elegance and purpose and volume.

The "Stick it" speech from the television program Boston Legal fits this latter column. To my surprise, James Spader's character, in his closing arguments for a first amendment trial, completely and eloquently articulates the attrition of our personal freedoms, the intrusion of our government into our personal lives, and the totaltalarian opposition to those who speak out against our government’s gigantic blunders - both Democratic and Republican.
I found his speech, although fictional, a temporary allay to the indifference I sometimes feel towards my fellow citizens.

It's worth a listen. The segment is titled, “ Stick It: closing arguments”.

2006-03-20T08:38:00.000-08:00

Bush insists outsourcing to India has its benefits
By Jim Puzzanghera

Mercury News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - To people in Silicon Valley and around the country concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to India, President Bush on Wednesday offered something to make the practice more palatable.

Pizza.

It's just one of the U.S. products that India's rapidly growing middle class is developing an appetite for, Bush said in a speech to the Asia Society as he prepares for a trip to India and Pakistan next month. While acknowledging the individual trauma of Americans who lose jobs when companies move operations abroad, Bush said India's economic growth is an overall plus for the U.S. economy. ``India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut,'' Bush said to laughs from the audience at a Washington hotel. ``Today, India's consumers associate American brands with quality and value, and this trade is creating opportunity at home.''

Outsourcing is a delicate issue for the Bush administration. Its top economic adviser came under fire in 2004 for calling it ``just a new way to do international trade,'' comments that Democrats often cited during the presidential campaign as evidence Bush didn't care about workers. Bush acknowledged the difficulty of the outsourcing debate Wednesday. ``It's true that a number of Americans have lost jobs because companies have shifted operations to India. And losing a job is traumatic. It's difficult. It puts a strain on our families,'' he said. But instead of responding with ``protectionist policies,'' Bush said the United States needs to improve education and job training for displaced workers.

Commentary:
I am always astonished, it’s a Sisyphean stigma, when the ruling class (our elected officials) make a speach such as the President's address in India. Perhaps my delimited view is a result of a stubborn persistence that We the Rabble live in an egalitarian society. I find this reality evaporating; vanishing like the antiquated wisdom of our fathers who would "never work without a contract". Truth is heavier than fiction and the real the truth, the new reality, is that of inequality. It is the reality of a separate but parallel universe for the ruling minority and the work-a-day majority; seperate but not equal. This fact, that Washington is out of touch, is descending into my conscienceness, slowing and deliberately, with the same dauntless advance as the Condi Rice oil tanker cutting through the open seas. Yes, I am committing the cardinal sin. I am bringing up the old class warfare beef. But with a ruling class completely disconnected from the average citizen, it is an appropriate squawk.

The president of the United States, perhaps the figure head of a new American Oligarchy, is seeking support for Offshore Outsourcing, and tariff free trade. Free Trade, as some call it, is the new religion of the wealthy elite. And like most religious movements there is a lofty degree of superstition. While addressing the Indian Parlement, President Bush stated, "`India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States" However, most of the facorty jobs with these corporate giants are being created in China, not the U.S. So really, who is benefiting from Free Trade?

Since the year 2000 the US economy has experienced a net loss in good paying manufacturing jobs. The entire job growth from then to now is in service-providing industroies, primarily credit intermediation, health care, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government and finally, retail sales. Manufacturing in the United States has lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. This wipeout is in very large scale and not a single manufacturing payroll classification has created a new job catagory The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during a war than with a super-economy that is "the envy of the world." Writes Paul Krugman (Secretary of Labor Under the Reagan Administration). He continues, "Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs"

The knowledge jobs, specifically the IT Sector, that were supposed to take the place of the lost manufacturing base in the "new economy" appeared for a brief time, but now are threatened by Offshore Outsoucing - another scheme which places the American worker in direct compition with the wages of the third world. The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago. We are losing our shirts so that we can purchase cheap shirts. Yet, the only beneficiaries in this trade imbalance are the Share holders, the CEO’s and our so called leaders in Washington. As data gathered in the real world of worker insecurity and instability continues to show, an expanding U.S. trade deficit will likely hit $700 billion this year (up 100 billion from last year).

Meanwhile a great wailing is heard from the Defenders of Free Trade. Their libertarian economic faith is immune to facts. Their new secular religion who’s god is capital and CEO’s the high priests (Supermen - with the infalabililty and supposed efficiency Niche would admire) is re-making our world to fit their want. Their deciples, the Economists, like evangelical preachers, can be seen on the ubiquitous financial television broadcasts, telling us that "all is well, not to worry, these are normal growing pains". Our politicians ask us to align ourselves with this movement while they vilify those who oppose the new world order with rhetoric like, "obsturdtionist" and "protectionist!" Let's face it, no one likes a label, so we aquiesse.

However, this new religion requires us to believe, it requires faith, not just complatency. I t requires our cooperation. This is our strength, our only strength. The superstition and ignorance that its adherents resort to, the falsehoods to defend its dogma, are weak and penatrible. Our elected officials, asleep as they are to our needs, must hear from us about these economic conditions. Corporations controll the purses, but we controll the elections. I urge you to contact Congress and demand that we walk away from the trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT, WTO, CAFTA) that facilite these corrupt policies. If our government can divorce itself from the Keoto Treaty and the Anti Balistic Nuclear Weapons Treaty, then we can abandon the trade agreements which are destroying our economy.

Your silence is their strenght.

2006-03-16T05:54:00.000-08:00

Report: Many Jobs Lack Benefits To Cut

NEW YORK—According to a report published in the February issue of Forbes magazine, employers are reporting difficulty finding job benefits to eliminate. "Health insurance, matching 401(k) contributions, lunch breaks, and various allowances and reimbursements are all fair game for cost-cutting—that is, when they are offered by employers in the first place," staff writer Jason Smills wrote. "By not extending these perks to their employees in the first place, however, American business owners find themselves lacking the crucial ability to take them away." Smills noted that 97 percent of the possible benefit cuts in American jobs had already been made, reducing the potential for greater company profits and executive-level benefits to "alarming" lows. (Source)

2006-03-13T04:52:00.000-08:00

Thomas Frank on the failure of liberalism
Oh Kansas fools! Poor Kansas fools!The banker makes of you a tool.

These lines from a populist song of 1892 are the epigraph for Thomas Frank's new book, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. They are a small reminder that Kansas, Frank's "homeland," the state where he grew up, was once part of the great progressive heart of this country. Going home again, he observes a simple fact of the voting map: "The more working-class an area is, the more likely it is to be conservative." His observation: "This situation is the opposite of what it was thirty years ago. And it is the complete negation of the Kansas of one hundred years ago, when those in the hardest-hit areas were the most desperate -- and the most radical."
How, Frank asks, could this have happened? His book is an exploration of just how hard hit Kansas has been in an era of ever more right-wing Republican administrations and ever-rightward drifting Democratic ones; of how a right-wing war against a fantasy "liberal power elite" was successfully waged, and why it is that people seem to vote against what once would have been considered their interests. It's really a must-read. (By the way, for interesting poll results on America as a nation "desperate for change," see Michael Scherer's The Unhappy Majority at Mother Jones magazine on-line.)
Below in a piece adapted by Frank for Tomdispatch from part of his book's conclusion, he considers the fall of liberalism in America. A final note: Frank's book has been causing a little storm of media controversy. Recently, for instance, Barbara Ehrenreich ("The notion of a sinister, pseudocompassionate liberal elite has been rebutted, most recently in Thomas Frank's brilliant new book…") and Nicholas Kristof both praised his book in columns in the New York Times, while George Will took out after it full frontally in a recent column of his own ("Frank is a formidable controversialist… He says, delusionally, that conservatives have 'smashed the welfare state'… etc."). Don't miss it yourself. Tom
Red-State America Against Itself
By Thomas Frank
That our politics have been shifting rightward for more than thirty years is a generally acknowledged fact of American life. That this rightward movement has largely been accomplished by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is a less comfortable fact, one we have trouble talking about in a straightforward manner.
And yet the backlash is there, whenever we care to look, from the "hardhats" of the 1960s to the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s to today's mad-as-hell "red states." You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America -- "going out of business" signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush. (Read More)

2006-03-07T04:43:00.000-08:00

Here's one for the good guys
A Victory for Clean Elections

Testimony that the Clean Elections system is effective at cleaning up the legislature, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled against State Rep. David Burnell Smith's attempts to hold his office after violating the Clean Elections campaign rules. David Burnell attempted to stay in office after over spending his public campaign funds; however, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an injunction to remove the bull-headed representative. Smith pursued the argument that the law was unconstitutional and threatened to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but after hearing numerous objections from his constituency, Smith now says that a higher court battle is unlikely. (Source)

This is an absolute example of government accountabilty. The citizens of Arizona will no longer tolerate inept management of the public trust. The voice of the people is blaring and the sweet aroma of Democracy is irrevocably eminationg from the Phoenix State Houses.
Arizona's motto, Ditat Deus, meaning God enriches, is an apt declaration for a people ready to guide their own destiny.

Your state could be next.

2006-03-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Army Of Identical Scientists Demands Legislative Support For Cloning
February 20, 2006 Issue 42•08

WASHINGTON, DC—Thousands of identical scientists traveled to the nation's capital this week to urge lawmakers to lift restrictions on the cloning of human beings and increase funding for cloning experimentation and research.

Dr. Gene Krupkauer (right) speaks to the House Committee on Science.
"Ladies and gentlemen of Congress, we stand united before you today to speak with one voice," said Dr. Gene Krupkauer, founder of the lobbying group Like-Minded Scientists For Cloning Advancement, in testimony before the House Committee on Science Tuesday. "We implore Congress to fund this important research and acknowledge the growing support of many who share our views."

The benefits of human cloning touted by the LMSCA include ease of organ transplants and possible organ regeneration, mass telepathy, and coordination between pod brothers.
Krupkauer and his colleagues' testimony and its unified delivery brought the little-known lobbying group to the attention of many lawmakers who might otherwise have been politically opposed to their cause.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that after a Monday-morning meeting with one of the scientists, he encountered the same man at more than six functions that day. McCain said he also spotted the scientist around the city—once at a convenience store and twice at an area Chili's. Each time, the man took the opportunity to speak with McCain in the hopes of earning his support.
"Dedication like that gets my attention," McCain said. "I'm still cautious regarding issues of human cloning, but that man has certainly succeeded in putting a distinct human face on the issue."
The scientists credit the group's remarkable coordination to their leader, Dr. Gene Krupkauer, who first achieved prominence in the late '70s as an innovative geneticist at MIT, where his early research demonstrated the viability of large-scale human cloning. A protégé of MIT's late Dr. Gene Krupkauer, Krupkauer said his advanced studies on human cloning under Krupkauer generated enormous public furor and caused the revocation of his university funding. Undaunted, the duo cofounded the Krupkauer Institute For Genetic Research, where they were soon joined in their work by 256 male students of like build and facial features. (Full Story)

2006-03-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

David Horowitz: "There are 50,000 professors ... [who] identify with the terrorists"
Summary:

On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, right-wing activist David Horowitz claimed that "there are 50,000 professors" who are "anti-American" and "identify with the terrorists."

There are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer (Source)

In the 1960’s David Horowitz was a Marxist, now he is a Neocon. Given his inability to make a cohesive argument, his departure from the absurd tenants of Carl Marx to a half- baked, myopic Neo-liberal dogma is not suprising.
Once you hear this dolt articulate his illogical, obtuse ravings, you'll likely agree - the Marxists are better off.
But don’t take my word for it, his musing are well documented - Also, here, here and here.

I apologize in advance for my use of Ad Hominem, but I couldn't help myself with this drone.

2006-03-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

An Introductin to Clean Elections

Clean Elections, also called Clean Money is a term given by its proponents to describe a system of public financing of political campaigns (a form of campaign finance reform), which is currently being advocated and implemented on the state level in the United States. Some form of Clean Elections legislation has been adopted, mostly through ballot initiatives, in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, and Massachusetts (though in the latter two it has been weakened or repealed).

Clean Elections was passed by the Connecticut state legislature and signed by the Governor in December of 2005. Two municipalities in 2005, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Portland, Oregon have also passed Clean Elections for municipal elections.Under a Clean Elections system, candidates hoping to receive public financing must collect a certain number of small "qualifying contributions" (often as little as $5) from registered voters. In return, they are paid a flat sum by the government to run their campaign, and agree not to raise money from private sources.

Clean Elections candidates who are outspent by privately-funded opponents may receive additional public matching funds.Because the system is voluntary, it appears not to run afoul of the United States Supreme Court's Buckley v. Valeo decision, which struck down mandatory spending limits as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.

Impressive Statistics Latest accomplishments of Clean Elections Nationwide, especially in Maine and Arizona (based on the November 2002 election, which was Maine and Arizona's 2nd statewide clean election, the first being in 2000).

Clean Election Essentials How Do Full Publicly Funded (Clean) Elections Work?

Who Endorses Clean Elections? "Clean Elections" is endorsed by these individuals and organizations.

Other Organizations Links to Organizations Working To Advance the Cause of Clean Elections

Cost Analysis This is the cost analysis done by Just6dollars.org, showing that full public financing of federal elections for just $6 per US citizen.

2006-03-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

The Problem with the UAE Port Deal

When Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III in the Declaration of Independence,

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation…"

he just as easily could have been writing of the World Trade Organization, which now has the legal authority to force the United States to overturn laws passed at both local, state, and federal levels with dictates devised by tribunals made up of representatives of multinational corporations. If Dubai loses in the American Congress, their next stop will almost certainly be the WTO. (Read More)

2006-02-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

The Art of Manipulation

If you’ve ever been to a sporting event of any kind, you know that the referee has at least three options when listening to objections. He can consider the objection and be mindful for future calls, she can completely ignore the objection or the referee can follow the advice of the objecting party, and essentially give in. In my experience the ref will likely ignore the objection and uphold the ruling, that is unless the referee is the news media and the objectors are conservative media pundants. As indicated in a recent study, the news media is listening to the objections of the conservatives and making concessions’ which attempt to counter the perceived vast liberal bias. A new study from the people at Media Matters has highlighted the trend of the American Media of moving to the right, in particular, the Sunday morning talk shows.

On the Sunday Morning political talk shows the conservatives show up in droves and pronounce a liberal bias at every opportunity, but in reality, you’ll find liberal representation on these Sunday shows is slim to none. Conservatives regularly appear but not one mainstream liberal has ever been a regular. You're not likely to see E.J. Dionne, Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, Hendrik Hertzberg or Molly Ivins, however; Bob Novak, Fred Barnes, Tucker Carlson, Tony Blankley or Pat Buchanan are as ubiqutes as air. Indeed, with the exception of Alan Colmes, one is hard pressed to come up with a single journalist or pundit appearing on television who is even remotely as far to the left of the mainstream spectrum as most of the conservatives are to the right.

An extensive study from the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests that there is a liberal media bias, however the study only looked at the mainstream news outlets. In particular the study looked at the major news programs, ABC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, etc. The examination looked at cable news too, with Brit Hume’s (right of center) evening program on the Fox Network examined (no other Fox News programs were analyzed). Conversely the study looked at The News with Aaron Brown on CNN and found a slight liberal tilt. The Quarterly Journal study is a good start at analyzing the landscape of American journalism, but not as thorough as necessary to uncover the broad picture. The Study did not examine the recent trend of CNN's move to the extreme right by hiring Glen Beck. Mr. Beck is hardly moderate or right of center analyst. Still many on the right side of reality are suggesting a crude liberal bias, all the while the conservatives are gaining ground and the liberals are taking heavy casualties. The root of the problem is this, the conservatives are manipulating the media, “working the refs" , and the media is acquiescing.

Ever since the days of the Goldwater presidential campaign, the conservatives have been complaining about the actions of the referees (the American media) in their struggle to dominate American politics. The refs (the media), according to the conservatives, are biased against them and want the other side (the liberals) to win the game. But recent attempts at fairness, ie. CNN hiring Glen Beck, while not giving equal time to the left, is not going to solve the any part of this issue, it’s only creating another problem - another media bias.
The media does not want to be bias or perceived that way so in usual knee jerk fashion they are moving to the right - far right. This is a way of saying, “ok we’ve done what you want, now leave us alone”. However, a move to the far right is only going to exacerbate the problem, and I seriously doubt that the hardcore conservatives will be satisfied anytime soon. We must learn to expect more from our Media.
Is it too much to ask that our news be delivered without editorial influence and that the editorial influences be balanced by a doctrine of fairness?
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Media Contact Information

2006-02-27T04:30:00.000-08:00

William F Buckley, one of the country's leading conservatives and former undercover CIA agent, takes a soboring look at the war in Iraq.
His obserations may surprise you.

February 24, 2006, 2:51 p.m.
It Didn’t Work

"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries. (Please select for entire article)

This post is not an attempt at, “I hate to say it but I told you so”. It’s more like a, “So where do we go from here?”
As I’ve said before, the only way that an insurgency will survive is by having the support of the masses. We have seen the Iraqi insurgence grow from a small elite group of foreigners and former soldiers, to a massive homegrown rebellion of the people. This is happening because the majority of people in Iraq believe that the U.S. is an occupying force. Whether or not this is true is beyond the perceived reality. General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.” General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.”

So how do we take the wind out of the insurgencies sails? We tell the Iraqi people that we are leaving, and we tell them when. We give the Iraqi’s an end date to the occupation. Simply put, if there is no occuping force, then there will be no support for an insurgency. A recent ABC poll drew the conclusion that “while the lives of individual Iraqis are improving, over Two-thirds now oppose the presence of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, 14 points higher than in February 2004”
They want us to leave so why should we stay?

2006-02-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

The Sunday-morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are where the prevailing opinions are aired and tested, policymakers state their cases, and the left and right in American politics debate the pressing issues of the day on equal ground. Both sides have their say and face probing questions. Or so you would think.

In fact, as this study reveals, conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices on the Sunday talk shows. Media Matters for America conducted a content analysis of ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and NBC's Meet the Press, classifying each one of the nearly 7,000 guest appearances during President Bill Clinton's second term, President George W. Bush's first term, and the year 2005 as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive, or neutral. The conclusion is clear: Republicans and conservatives have been offered more opportunities to appear on the Sunday shows - in some cases, dramatically so.
Among the study's key findings:

The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton's second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush's first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.
Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton's second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush's first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent -- nearly three times as large.
In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.
In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats/progressives than with Republicans/conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans/conservatives.

The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has appeared 124 times. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003.
In every year examined by the study -- 1997 - 2005 -- more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many righttitled panels as left-tilted panels.
Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.
In short, the Sunday talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are dominated by conservative voices, from newsmakers to commentators. The data from the Clinton years indicate that the disparity cannot be explained simply by the fact that Republicans currently control the government.
Click here to read the full report.

(This article was not penned by Gulf Coast Progressive, the souce can be found at the Media Matters Website.)

2006-02-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

Don’t Shoot the Messenger; But Question His Motives!

On February 15, 2006 the ABC News program Night Line ran a story about the latest evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The program aired excerpts form a group of 12 hour audio recordings which spanned from the early 1990’s to the year 2000. The tapes were given to Night Line by Bill Tierney, a former Army Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector. In the story there was a featured recording from 1996 in which the former dictator Sadam Husain warned that the U.S. will be attacked by terrorists, quote:
“In the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction."
Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop.
"In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."
According to Bill Tierney the tapes have been interpreted by the State Department, de-classified and released

However, Tierney, a credentialed Iraqi interpreter, has depicted the tapes from a different angle. Bill Tierney is suggesting that Sadam was going to facilitate a terrorist attack on U.S soil. He goes on the say on the Sean Hannity show: “I disagree completely (with the ABC airing), because Saddam also says in other tapes that the war is ongoing," Tierney said, "And when I was there [in Iraq] as an inspector, what struck me is that these people were still in the fight. There was no change of heart like you had in Germany after World War II. They were still in the fight. It makes perfect sense."

Tierney’s interpretation and the State Department’s are at odds on this point. A spokeswoman for John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said information contained in the transcriptions of the tapes was already known to intelligence officials: "Intelligence community analysts from the CIA, and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating, from a historical perspective the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their post-war analysis of Iraq's weapons programs nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey group report," she said in a statement.
"The tapes mostly date from early to mid-1990s and cover such topics as relations with the United Nations, efforts to rebuild industries from Gulf war damage and the pre 9/11 situation in Afghanistan."

Since the interpretations are so variegated and Bill Tierney has had such an unusual propensity to be atypical, I find that it’s important to consider the source in this particular case. By this, I in no way assert that Bill Tierney is incapable of being objective, I am merely suggesting that he has a colorful past, such that, he may be coloring the issue with his own bias.

Tierney is on record as saying, “There was no question that Iraq had triggering mechanisms for a nuke, the question was whether they had enriched enough uranium. Given Iraq’s intensive efforts to build a nuke prior to the Gulf War, their efforts to hide uranium enrichment material from inspectors, the fact that Israel had a nuke but no Arab state could claim the same, my first-hand knowledge of the limits of UNSCOM and IAEA capabilities, and Iraqi efforts to buy yellowcake uranium abroad (Joe Wilson tea parties notwithstanding), I believe the TWELVE years between 1991 and 2003 was more than enough time to produce sufficient weapons grade uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. Maybe I have more respect for the Iraqis’ capabilities than some.” However there is no evidence for a post 1991 nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Tierney has also fused his personal ideology with his professional mission. He appeared on Coast to Coast, a few weeks before the war in Iraq began; an excerpt: "Bill Tierney... was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night's show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability ... Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. 'You can't put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,' Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence.
Tierney's methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,' he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend's clairvoyant dream, where he was able to find the location on a map. 'Everything she said lined up. This place meets the criteria,' Tierney said of a power generator plant near the Tigris River that he believes is actually a cover for a secret uranium facility."

Tierney is the only former UNSCOM member who also put in some lengthy protest time outside Terry Schiavo's hospital and as an Iraqi’s interpreter he was relieved of duty for praying with a detainee during an interrogation. Again, these events do not indicate that the former UN weapons inspector is incapable of being objective or telling the truth on certain levels. Nor do these events suggest that he is in some way mentally unstable. However I am suggesting that his propensity towards the extreme may be suiting his view about Sadam and WMD’s. I’m interested in seeing how this develops as a news story and how the press deals with the facts of his interpretation. I hope that the press will make an attempt to get to the bottom of this, if Tierney is correct, then a war with Iraq may be justified. But given his track record, he may just be another crackpot attention junkie. I’m leaning towards the latter at this point.

2006-02-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

Children in the South face higher health risks

“GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Children living in the South are up to three times more likely to battle poor health and its consequences — including obesity, teen pregnancy and death — than those in all other regions of the United States, even if they receive the same medical care, a new University of Florida study reveals.“Hurricane Katrina gave the world a glimpse of the disparities in the South,” says Dr. Jeffrey Goldhagen, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of community pediatrics at the UF College of Medicine – Jacksonville. “Our research documents just how profoundly these disparities impact the health of children in the region.”The study, published recently in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to statistically relate region of residence to measures of child health, Goldhagen says.“In fact, we now believe that where a child lives may be one of the most powerful predictors of child health outcomes and disparities,” he says.” - Source

The poor health outcomes researchers documented include low birth weight, teen pregnancy, death and other problems such as mental illness, asthma, obesity, tooth decay and school performance. In the midst of this finding, last week Governor Bush proposed a $71 billion dollar spending bill that would boost spending on several fronts, but also provide nearly a half of a billion dollars in tax cuts. Currently the State of Florida is flush with a budget surplus of $3.2 billion. And in an election year, Republican legislators want to turn one week in August into a high dollar item shopping spree by suppressing state sales taxes for the first $5,000 on most items. Republicans want to lift the statewide sales tax of 6 percent on items such as computers, furniture and TVs, as well as the first $5,000 of more expensive items such as cars and boats. The tax break would begin July 31 and end Aug. 6 and would benefit individuals, not businesses. The plan already has tacit approval of House leaders. If implemented it would be the biggest single tax cut ever in Florida with an estimated saving of half of a billion dollars.

As House Democrats called the Republicans' tax cut a "gimmick," they offered a counterproposal of a $100 check to every Florida family that takes a $25,000 homestead exemption. The total cost for the Democrats' plan would be about $430-million. . The Democrats have stated that the recent growth in the tax burden has fallen hardest on homeowners, who are paying higher property taxes, mostly for public schools. Those homeowners also are struggling with ever-increasing electric bills and insurance premiums. "Think about whom in our community is under the gun right now. Who's feeling the squeeze?" said Rep. Dan Geber, D-Miami Beach. "We could give every single homeowner in the state of Florida a check from Florida for $100. ... This is the right thing to do." However, the Democratic plan is simply another imposture posing as a solution. It does nothing to solve our long-term predicaments.

I submit that before squandering excess state revenue with tax breaks, lawmakers should make sure their giveaways will serve taxpayers' long-term interests. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to improve our future and our future generations? In a time when we are faced with low birth weight, teen pregnancy, death and other problems such as mental illness, asthma, obesity, tooth decay and school performance, wouldn’t a long term stratgedy or an attempt to solve these problems seem a more suitable conclusion to a 3.2 billion dollar surplus. The financial benefits of solving our long-term enduring problems will eminently out way any immediate tax relieve and help ensure a strong economic future for our the great state Florida.

As a home owner, I would rather see a resolve to poor school performance for example rather than receive check for a $100.00. Maybe our government is attempting to divert our attention. Maybe Gov. Jeb Bush and lawmakers are trying to cut down on the need to build new schools. Maybe the legislature thinks that universities can meet some of their short-term needs next year by increasing tuition by 5 percent, as the governor has recommended. Maybe they think we the Rabble are not paying attention to our long term problems? Or that they can throw us a bone and divert our sense of long-term vision.
I urge the Floridians who read this blog to contact our representatives in Tallahassee and demand a better solution to the budget surplus. The last thing that our state needs is a gimmick, an attempt to appease tax payers in an election cycle, rather than an attempt to solve the difficult issues which face us and our children’s generation.

2006-02-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

Published on Wednesday, June 4, 2003 by CommonDreams.org

Midnight Ride of the Rabble
by Thom Hartmann

To every Middlesex village and farm, A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear.-- From Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863

Emerson

told us, in his lecture Angloam, that in America "the old contest of feudalism and democracy renews itself here on a new battlefield." Perhaps seeing our day through a crack between the skeins of time and space, Emerson concluded, "It is wonderful, with how much rancor and premeditation at this moment the fight is prepared."

Let's be blunt. The real agenda of the new conservatives is nothing less than the destruction of democracy in the United States of America. And feudalism is one of their weapons.
Their rallying cry is that government is the enemy, and thus must be "drowned in a bathtub." In that, they've mistaken our government for the former Soviet Union, or confused Ayn Rand's fictional and disintegrating America with the real thing.
The government of the United States is us. It was designed to be a government of, by, and for We, the People. It's not an enemy to be destroyed; it's a means by which we administer and preserve the commons that we collectively own.

Nonetheless, the new conservatives see our democratic government as the enemy. And if they plan to destroy democracy, they must have something in mind to replace it with. (Yes, I know that "democracy" and "democratic" sound too much like "Democrat," and so the Republicans want us to say that we don't live in a democracy, but, rather, a republic, which sounds more like "Republican." It was one of Newt's efforts, along with replacing phrases like "Democratic Senator" with "Democrat Senator." But Republican political correctness can take a leap: we're talking here about the survival of democracy in our constitutional republic.)
What conservatives are really arguing for is a return to the three historic forms of tyranny that the Founders and Framers identified, declared war against, and fought and died to keep out of our land. Those tyrants were kings, theocrats, and noble feudal lords.
Kings would never again be allowed to govern America, the Founders said, so they stripped the president of the power to declare war. As Lincoln noted in an 1848 letter to William Herndon: "Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our [1787] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
Theocrats would never again be allowed to govern America, as they had tried in the early Puritan communities. In 1784, when Patrick Henry proposed that the Virginia legislature use a sort of faith-based voucher system to pay for "Christian education," James Madison responded with ferocity, saying government support of church teachings "will be a dangerous abuse of power." He added, "The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves."

And America was not conceived of as a feudal state, feudalism being broadly defined as "rule by the super-rich." Rather, our nation was created in large part in reaction against centuries of European feudalism. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his lecture titled The Fortune of the Republic, delivered on December 1, 1863, "We began with freedom. America was opened after the feudal mischief was spent. No inquisitions here, no kings, no nobles, no dominant church."
The great and revolutionary ideal of America is that a government can exist while drawing its authority, power, and ongoing legitimacy from a single source: "The consent of the governed." Conservatives, however, would change all that.

In their brave new world, corporations are more suited to governance than are the unpredictable rabble called citizens. Corporations should control politics, control the commons, control health care, control our airwaves, control the "free" market, and even control our schools. Although corporations can't vote, these new conservatives claim they should have human rights, like privacy from government inspections of their political activity and the free speech right to lie to politicians and citizens in PR and advertising. Although corporations don't need to breathe fresh air or drink pure water, these new conservatives would hand over to them the power to self-regulate poisonous emissions into our air and water.
While these new conservatives claim corporations should have the rights of persons, they don't mind if corporations use hostile financial force to take over other, smaller corporations in a bizarre form of corporate slavery called monopoly. Corporations can't die, so aren't subject to inheritance taxes or probate. They can't be put in prison, so even when they cause death they are only subject to fines.

Corporations and their CEOs are America's new feudal lords, and the new conservatives are their obliging servants and mouthpieces. The conservative mantra is: "Less government!" But the dirty little secret of the new conservatives is that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so also do politics and power. Every time government of, by, and for We, the People is pushed out of administering some part of this nation's vast commons, corporations step in. And by swamping the United States of America in debt with so-called "tax cuts," they seek to force an increasingly desperate government to cede more and more of our commons to their corporate rule.

Conservatives confuse efficiency and cost: They suggest that big corporations can perform public services at a lower total cost than government, while ignoring the corporate need to pad the bill with dividends to stockholders, rich CEO salaries, corporate jets and headquarters, advertising, millions in "campaign contributions," and cash set-asides for growth and expansion. They want to frame this as the solution of the "free market," and talk about entrepreneurs and small businesses filling up the holes left when government lets go of public property.
But these are straw man arguments: What they are really advocating is corporate rule, and ultimately a feudal state controlled exclusively by the largest of the corporations. Smaller corporations, like individual humans and the governments they once hoped would protect them from powerful feudal forces, can watch but they can't play.

The modern-day conservative movement began with Federalists Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, who argued that for a society to be stable it must have a governing elite, and this elite must be separate both in power and privilege from what Adams referred to as "the rabble." Their Federalist party imploded in the early 19th Century, in large part because of public revulsion over Federalist elitism, a symptom of which was Adams' signing the Alien and Sedition Acts. (If you've only read the Republican biographies of John Adams, you probably don't remember these laws, even though they were the biggest thing to have happened in Adams' entire four years in office, and the reason why the citizens of America voted him out of office, and voted Jefferson - who loudly and publicly opposed the Acts - in. They were a 1797 version of the Patriot Act and Patriot II, with startlingly similar language.)
Destroyed by their embrace of this early form of despotism, the Federalists were replaced first in the early 1800s by the short-lived Whigs and then, starting with Lincoln, by the modern-day Republicans, who, after Lincoln's death, firmly staked out their ancestral Federalist position as the party of wealthy corporate and private interests. And now, under the disguise of the word "conservative" (classical conservatives like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower are rolling in their graves), these old-time feudalists have nearly completed their takeover of our great nation.

It became obvious with the transformation of healthcare into a for-profit industry, leading to spiraling costs (and millions of dollars for Bill Frist and his ilk). Insurance became necessary for survival, and people were worried. Bill Clinton was prepared to answer the concern of the majority of Americans who supported national health care. But that would harm corporate profits.
"Do you want government bureaucrats deciding which doctor you can see?" asked the conservatives, over and over again. As a yes/no question, the answer was pretty simple for most Americans: no. But, as is so often the case when conservatives try to influence public opinion, the true issue wasn't honestly stated.
The real question was: "Do you want government bureaucrats - who are answerable to elected officials and thus subject to the will of 'We, The People' - making decisions about your healthcare, or would you rather have corporate bureaucrats - who are answerable only to their CEOs and work in a profit-driven environment - making decisions about your healthcare?"

For every $100 that passes through the hands of the government-administered Medicare programs, between $2 and $3 is spent on administration, leaving $97 to $98 to pay for medical services and drugs. But of every $100 that flows through corporate insurance programs and HMOs, $10 to $24 sticks to corporate fingers along the way. After all, Medicare doesn't have lavish corporate headquarters, corporate jets, or pay expensive lobbying firms in Washington to work on its behalf. It doesn't "donate" millions to politicians and their parties. It doesn't pay profits in the form of dividends to its shareholders. And it doesn't compensate its top executive with over a million dollars a year, as do each of the largest of the American insurance companies. Medicare has one primary mandate: serve the public. Private corporations also have one primary mandate: generate profit.

When Jeb Bush cut a deal with Enron to privatize the Everglades, it diminished the power of the Florida government to protect a natural resource and enhanced the power and profitability of Enron. Similarly, when politicians argue for harsher sentencing guidelines and also advocate more corporate-owned prisons, they're enhancing the power and profits of one of America's fastest-growing and most profitable remaining domestic industries: incarceration. But having government protect the quality of the nation's air and water by mandating pollution controls doesn't enhance corporate profits. Neither does single-payer health-care, which threatens insurance companies with redundancy, or requirements for local control of broadcast media. In these and other regards, however, the government still holds the keys to the riches of the commons held in trust for us all. Riches the corporations want to convert into profits.
For example, an NPR Morning Edition report by Rick Carr on 28 May 2003 said, "Current FCC Chair Michael Powell says he has faith the market will provide. What's more, he says, he'd rather have the market decide than government." In this, Powell was reciting the conservative mantra. Misconstruing Adam Smith, who warned about the dangers of the invisible hand of the marketplace trampling the rights and needs of the people, Powell suggests that business always knows best. The market will decide. Bigger isn't badder.

But experience shows that the very competition that conservatives claim to embrace is destroyed by the unrestrained growth of corporate interests. It's called monopoly: Big fish eat little fish, over and over, until there are no little fish left. Look at the thoroughfares of any American city and ask yourself how many of the businesses there are locally owned. Instead of cash circulating within a local and competitive economy, at midnight every night a button is pushed and the local money is vacuumed away to Little Rock or Chicago or New York.
This is feudalism in its most raw and naked form, just as the kings and nobles of old sucked dry the resources of the people they claimed to own. It is in these arguments for unrestrained corporatism that we see the naked face of Hamilton's Federalists in the modern conservative movement. It's the face of wealth and privilege, of what Jefferson called a "pseudo-aristocracy," that works to its own enrichment and gain regardless of the harm done to the nation, the commons, or the "We, the People" rabble.

It is, in its most complete form, the face that would "drown government in a bathtub"; that sneers at the First Amendment by putting up "free speech zones" for protesters; that openly and harshly suggests that those who are poor, unemployed, or underemployed are suffering from character defects. That works hard to protect the corporate interest, but is happy to ignore the public interest. That says it doesn't matter what happens to the humans living in what a national conservative talk show host laughingly calls "turd world nations."
These new conservatives would have us trade in our democracy for a corporatocracy, a form of feudal government most recently reinvented by Benito Mussolini when he recommended a "merger of business and state interests" as a way of creating a government that would be invincibly strong. Mussolini called it fascism.
In a previous Common Dreams op-ed, I pointed out how media and other corporations will suck up to government when they think they can get regulations that will enhance their profits. We see this daily in the halls of Congress and in the lobbying efforts directed at our regulatory agencies. We see it in the millions of dollars in trips and gifts given to FCC commissioners, that in another era would have been called bribes.
These corporate-embracing conservatives are not working for what's best for democracy, for America, or for the interests of "We, The People." They are explicitly interested in a singular goal: Profits and the power to maintain them. Under control, the desire for profit can be a useful thing, as 200 years of American free enterprise have shown.
But unrestrained, as George Soros warns us so eloquently, it will create monopoly and destroy democracy. The new conservatives are systematically dismantling our governmental systems of checks and balances; of considering the public good when regulating private corporate behavior; of protecting those individuals, small businesses, and local communities who are unable to protect themselves from giant corporate predators. They want to replace government of, by, and for We, the People, with a corporate feudal state, turning America's citizens into their vassals and serfs.
Only a public revolt in disgust over this unconscionable behavior will stop these new conservatives from turning America into a corporate-based clone of Mussolini's feudal vision. As Longfellow reminds us, "In the hour of darkness and peril and need/The people will waken and listen to hear.."

2006-02-14T06:03:00.000-08:00

Of the $3500.00 you may have paid in Federal taxes:

$1048.89 goes to the military
$651.10 goes to pay the interest on the
$709.58 goes to health care
$230.36 goes to income security
$128.45 goes to education
$120.32 goes to benefits for veterans
$94.10 goes to nutrition spending
$75.03 goes to housing
$60.36 goes to environmental protection
$32.80 goes to job training
$368.03 goes to all other expenses

How can we possibly reduce the federal deficit and find enough money for high-quality public services without raising everyone's taxes? We cannot. With our current tax structure we cannot have both guns and butter.

The Internal Revenue Service recently released a report estimating that taxes owed but not collected in 2001 (the last year studied) ranged from $312 billion to $353 billion. That didn't even count much of the tax evasion by US firms offshore.

Last fall, Citizens for Tax Justice examined federal taxes paid by 275 of America's largest corporations. On average, they paid a rate of 17.3 percent -- lower than the rate paid by nearly everyone who is reading this column.

The statutory corporate rate is 35 percent. The fact that the taxes actually paid were less than half that amount reflects a blend of special-interest laws, shelters, and outright tax-cheating. As McIntyre observes, in the 1950s, US corporations paid 4.8 percent of the gross domestic product in taxes. By 2004 that had fallen to 1.6 percent.

We the Rable have two choices, we can lobby collectively to demand that corporations pay their fair share of the tax burden or we can pay more of our hard earned dollars so that wealthy businesses can pay less. There is of course a third option. This would be to allow our Republican lead government to "starve the beast". If we continue on our present course of tax cuts and increased spending, our government will eventually bankrupt and we will have no other option but to abandon the social programs that have made us an egalitarian society. In short, the citizens that need the most help would receive the least. This trend is gaining momentum in Washington, as reflected in the last budget cuts, and is largely going unnoticed by the majority of Americans. What's more important to you? Tax cuts for wealthy corporate citizens or pre-kindergarten care for less fortunate children?

Famous Quotes:
Only the little people pay taxes. - Leona Helmsley

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. - John Maynard Keynes

2006-02-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Offensive Cartoons in the Arab World

As documented by Palestinian Media Watch, the Arab Press exercises almost no self-censorship in the publications of cartoons which involve gross stereotypes of Jews.
Not a week goes by in the Arab world without a "political" cartoon portraying Jews as either blood-suckers, Nazis, or the indiscriminate killers of Palestinian children.

And for those cretinous nitwits who minimize or deny the atrocity of the Jewish Holocaust ; I say this:

"Lack of education is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive”

2006-02-07T04:24:00.000-08:00

The Depiction That Caused Bloodshed

The Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, suffered bomb scares a day after apologizing for cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed. The negative image of the Prophet prompted protests from Muslims and a boycott of Danish products in a dozen nations. The offices of Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen and Arhus were evacuated as the storm continued over its publication last September of a series of 12 satirical cartoons regarded by many Muslims as blasphemous.
The Danish economy has numerous ties to the Middle-East and is expected to lose 1.5 million per day in revenue.

The depiction of the Prophet Mohamed, above, has caused destructive riots, and destruction of property throughout the Middle East. In Beirut, where religious tensions have fueled generations of political violence, the rioting dragged on for hours in the Christian neighborhood of Achrifiyeh. During the protest in 30 people were injured and one person killed.

The Danish Premier said that “the newspaper Jyllands-Posten had not intended to insult Muslims when it published the drawings.” The Danish government has broad public backing for it stance on the cartoons. An opinion poll showed that 79 percent of Danes think Fogh Rasmussen should not issue an apology and 62 percent say the newspaper should not apologize. So far, the Danish Premier has only apologized for the unrest that the cartoons have caused, and not for publishing the cartoons.

As a person who lives in an open society it's difficult to understand why so many Muslims are enraged over this cartoon. Admittedly the depiction is in poor taste. The Associated Press refused to distribute the images; there are 12 in all, because it did not meet their standards in taste. But a cartoon in poor taste should not provoke such arrant outrage. I can only conclude that the violence is emblematic of a deeper issue - intolerance.

The Europeans have expressed concerns that Islamic values are incompatible with their increasingly secular ones. The Europeans are going to have decided whether or not they can accept intolerance. Can their society remain free and open if freedom of expression is expected to be silenced by a steady intonation of antagonism and fear? They likely know the answer. This is presumably why the Danish government is not apologetic for its support of free speech. I just hope that the Europeans have the moral fortitude, courage and fearlessness required to win the war on culture. A the rate the Muslim population is growing in Western Europe, it's going to be a long conflict.