For The Trees

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

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About the Authors:
Dave Johnson
John Emerson
Richard Reich
Thomas Leavitt

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Dean Meetups Wednesday

The next Howard Dean for President Meetup day is this coming Wednesday, June 4. If you have heard about Governor Dean and want to learn more, or already know enough and want to get more involved, or just want to go spend a couple of hours with other people who feel the way you do, then this is your chance.

When you arrive at your Meetup location you'll probably see a sign or someone with a Dean t-shirt on, maybe a sign-in table. Often these days you'll see a crowd. Usually they're at a coffee shop or somewhere that serves beer and can accommodate enough people. Usually Dean Meetups involve spending a bit of time mingling with other Dean supporters, then one or two people making a few announcements, and then showing a Dean speech or other video. After they finish people are asked if they want to join a committee to work on organizing, or perhaps to have a house party.

You can find out where your nearest meetup is at Dean2002.Meetup.com. At this website you can sign up, find a local Meetup, read messages from other local Dean supporters and learn more about the Meetup process. Meetup is not part of the Dean campaign, it is a commercial service that the Dean campaign is using for this purpose. Dean is currently the largest of Meetup's clients.

Go. You'll enjoy it and you'll feel like you are helping the country.

--- Posted at 5/31/2003 06:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Bush Lied People Died

Bush Lied
People Died

--- Posted at 5/31/2003 03:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Getting Our Message Out

I have a piece at Smirking Chimp today. It's an improved version of a recent piece posted here. (Edited to make me look better.)

Go leave a comment.

--- Posted at 5/30/2003 09:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Voting Machines Petition

Working For Change has a voting machines petition.

Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election
Computers threaten accountability of voting system

Today, there is a new and real threat to voters, this time coming from touchscreen voting machines with no paper trails and the computerized purges of voter rolls.

You can join SCLC President Martin Luther King III and investigative reporter Greg Palast in opposing the "Florida-tion" of the 2004 Presidential election by signing this petition. A complete copy of the petition will be delivered by Working Assets to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

I think it's more about publicizing the problem than getting anything done. Imagine - giving a petition to Ashcroft and thinking anything is going to get done! But publicizing is good, so sign the petition and pass the word.

--- Posted at 5/29/2003 02:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Nothing But Lies

I'm loaded down today reading weblogs and pundits complaining about hypocrisy from the Bush administration on one issue after another. Altercation writes, "The hypocrisy of this administration is absolutely mind-boggling and the mainstream media are its unindicted co-conspirators." because the Bushies have been claiming they're doing a lot of help AIDS in Africa, when they are actually doing nothing. Tbogg is upset that the Bushies are lying about WMD, contracting out the federal workforce, saving Private Lynch, etc. Democratic Veteran says they say they want to win the "Hearts and Minds" of Iraqis but aren't DOING that, and saying we won in Iraq when we're still fighting, and going after Iran, etc. In the New York Times Bob Herbert writes about the Bush tax bill saying it's about job growth but having nothing in it that will grow jobs. And I just heard someone on a ieAmericaRadio.com show say "and it just turns out that everything they were saying was lies."

Come on! Don't you get it? This is not hypocrisy or stupidity or incompetence - this is laying down a smokescreen of words to cover their real agenda. Get used to it - they just lie. Everyone gets worked up about the illogical arguments they make, and spends so much time and energy arguing with what the Bush people are SAYING and not much time effectively fighting what they are DOING. Gosh, do you think that's part of their plan for getting things done?

Eschaton shows that he has a clue when he writes today, "At what point will our media just accept that they get nothing but lies?"

I'll be writing about the influence on the right wingers of philosopher Leo Strauss soon. He taught that deception is necessary in politics - leaders should tell the people what they need to tell them to keep them calm and then do what they think is best. Oh yeah, there is a lot more. Here's a good place to study up: Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

--- Posted at 5/29/2003 11:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Corporate Share of Cost of Government

I was looking into what has happened to the share of taxes paid by corporations, and came across this interesting article, The 50-Year Swindle. Here are a few excerpts:

Year by year during the last half of the twentieth century, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service have shifted the national tax burden away from corporations and onto the backs of individuals and families.

The numbers are painfully simple. After World War II, corporations and individuals carried the tax burden together. Year by year, this has been altered until the corporate-individual split is now closer to 20-to-80--and guess who pays the 80 percent?

In 1953, if you count only income taxes, not various other excises, sales taxes, and special duties, individuals and families paid 59 percent of federal revenues and corporations 41 percent, according to The Statistical Abstract of the United States. By the latest confirmed figures in the Abstract, the corporate share has dropped from 41 to 20 percent, while that of individuals has increased from 59 to 80 percent.
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On the flip side, it has made corporations steadily larger and more powerful. This has led to the "legal corruption" of huge campaign contributions that accelerated the ability of corporations to avoid more and more of their responsibility for keeping the country's civic system in decent economic health.

The half-century of stealth attacks have had the insidious effect of conditioning most of the public to accept seemingly unconnected annual changes that, with time, look like acts of God or some force of economics beyond human intervention.
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The big swindle that shifts taxes from corporations to individuals is concealed by another myth that politicians keep drumming into the American consciousness: The citizens of the United States are being crushed by ever-rising tax burdens. We are told that we're all taxed to the eyebrows and this must be changed. It is almost mandatory rhetoric in every election campaign.

But, according to the Century Foundation (formerly the middle-of-the-road Twentieth Century Fund) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of all the industrialized democracies, the United States is near the bottom in paying taxes when calculated as a percentage of the country's total wealth, its Gross Domestic Product. Our total taxes as percentage of our GDP are 29.7 percent, Britain's are 33.6 percent; Canada's are 33.6 percent; Germany's are 39 percent; and Sweden's are 49.9 percent. If that makes us feel lucky, we need to add that all those other countries provide health, housing, and other services we do not.

Some ammunition for any of you who still bother to argue with right-wingers instead of just realizing that what they do is lay down a smokesreen of lies to cover what they are really doing... Much of this article does that -- it refutes the arguments of the right-wingers point by point. Of course, by the time the article had been written all the arguments had shifted, because they were never meant as serious arguments at all.

Anyway, the article has some good numbers to help you understand what has been happening to the tax structure over time, and some good stories. A good read.

--- Posted at 5/29/2003 10:39:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Welcome

Welcome BadGimp.

--- Posted at 5/28/2003 04:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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The Mood of Intimidation In Bush's America

Here's a story about a teachers being punished for not supporting Bush enough. One was suspended for not taking down posters done by students - the pro-war posters were not "pro-war enough." Another was suspended because a student on the school's poetry-slam team read an anti-war poem. The poetry-slam team has also been disbanded. Four more were suspended for having anti-war posters in their classrooms. Most are terminated as of the end of this school year. All have letters inserted in their files which will make it difficult to find another job. And this is just in Albuquerque.

"Meanwhile, pro-war, militaristic signs, posters and bumper stickers abound at many Albuquerque and Rio Rancho schools."

Has Bush spoken out condemning these violations of people's rights? Has he spoken out against the mood of intimidation that is spreading across America? After you're done spitting your coffee out of your nose and laughing, please remember to read the rest of Seeing the Forest.

As I wrote below in Agents of The Party, "This is not a man condemning thuggery, this is a man gratefully utilizing it."

--- Posted at 5/28/2003 01:35:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Space - For Americans Only

tendentious brought to my attention that the U.S. is now talking about denying all other countries the use of space for intelligence gathering satellites. They're talking about total military domination of the planet.

If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have 'no veto power.'

See PENTAGON: SPACE IS FOR AMERICANS ONLY at Defense Tech.

--- Posted at 5/28/2003 10:48:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Another Stealth Bill

It looks like the new Defense Department authorization bill has a hidden surprise in it - it ends civil service protection for Pentagon employees! This means the loss of almost half the civil service union jobs in the country! Apparently the House has passed this but the Senate has not yet passed it. The American Federation of Government Employees has more information.

Please visit their website, and then call your Senators right away!

--- Posted at 5/28/2003 10:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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"Starving the Beast"

Read this, Stating the Obvious from Krugman today.

It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.

Then read this, Taxing Credibility by Bruce Bartlett from the LA Times Sunday, arguing from the right that yes this is exactly what they are doing, and for good reason.

Neoconservatives thought that attacking massively popular spending programs was both counterproductive and politically hopeless. Congress would never vote to cut such programs directly, and would not even restrain their growth unless under enormous political pressure.

And so, they approached things differently. First, they concluded that it is the relative size of government, not its absolute size, that is most important. In other words, government spending as a share of the gross domestic product was what mattered. For neocons, increasing the GDP is as important as lowering spending. Earlier conservatives had concentrated almost exclusively on controlling spending, assuming that increasing GDP was beyond government's grasp.

Second, neoconservatives absorbed the insights of Public Choice, an economic school led by Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan. One of Buchanan's theories, developed in academic papers and books during the mid-1970s, held that the size of government is better controlled on the tax side than the spending side. Cutting spending directly, while desirable, was often impossible in the absence of special circumstances, because the beneficiaries of spending were well organized and motivated, while those favoring lower spending were disorganized and diffused.

Neoconservatives saw tax cuts as a single solution to both problems. Lower tax rates would spur economic growth. If growth increased faster than spending, then spending's share of GDP would fall without the necessity of cutting spending directly. At the same time, they reasoned, budget deficits resulting from lower taxes would mobilize movements advocating reduced spending.
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When California's Proposition 13 came along in 1978, Kristol saw another way in which tax cutting was useful. By denying government its fuel, tax cuts forced politicians to cut spending. In this sense, supply-side economics echoed the thinking of conservative economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in a 1978 column that "the only effective way to restrain government spending is by limiting government's explicit tax revenue — just as a limited income is the only effective restraint on any individual's or family's spending."
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Starving the beast and increasing incentives for work, saving and investment are still good reasons to cut taxes today.

Yes, it's obvious, especially when they clearly say that their intent is to bankrupt the country IN ORDER TO get rid of Social Security and Medicare They call it "starving the beast" and they are proud to be bankrupting the country, because that brings the desired goal of getting rid of all of our pensions and health care.

If you asked the average Bush voter if they think Bush is trying to get rid of Social Security or Medicare they'll look at you like you are a crazy conspiracist. But how do you get through to them, when all of AM radio is a 24/7 Republican party ad, the TV networks replace Phil Donahue with Michael Savage, and most people won't go near a newspaper? Well, I've been writing about how to do that.

--- Posted at 5/27/2003 11:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Search is Gone

I got rid of the search capability becuase it sucked too much. One of these days Blogger will have its search working.

Update - Maybe one of these days Blogger will get Blogspot working, too!

--- Posted at 5/27/2003 10:55:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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So Much for That Idea

The huge Bush tax cut was supposed to immediately lift the stock market, creating a "wealth effect" which would then boost consumer confidence and revive the economy.

Well, the tax cut passed Friday night. This is Tuesday morning (markets were closed yesterday), and the stock market opened ... down. Down 45 as I write, 5 minutes after the open.

Oops. Oh well, so much for that idea. Sorry about that HUGE increase in the deficit.

Update -The market went up later, because of consumer confidence and housing numbers. But the initial movement, in response to passing the tax cut bill, was down.

--- Posted at 5/27/2003 06:41:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Who Is Responsible?

I'm reading this NY Times story about the Democrats trying to find a message, etc. I don't agree that the problem is that the Democrats don't have a message, or that it is their responsibility to develop one. Politicians RESPOND to the public. That's their job. A while back I wrote a piece about this, Don't Blame the Democrats. I'm going to repeat and expand on that piece here, and tell you who I blame - who I challenge to step up to the plate and fix this problem.

I have written about how the right has in place a broad, extremely well-funded "idea development and communication infrastructure" and how this has successfully moved the public to the right. This infrastructure consists of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute (the people who brought you the Iraq war) to develop and refine their ideology, and a communications infrastructure that pumps their message out. This is the "message amplification infrastructure." Some of the communication channels are Rush Limbaugh and all of AM radio, Fox News and most of the TV pundits, the Washington Times and other newspapers, various magazines, various book publishers, and numerous organizations endlessly repeating the ideological messages to the public.

As I wrote before: "After the public has been barraged with the messaging from The Mighty Wurlizter, the Republican politicians step in and harvest the results." In other words, politicians respond to the public. To change the country don't rely on the politicians, instead you must change the public. This is how the right has accomplished so much. They have been pumping their ideological message to the public, following a long-term strategy, and over time succeeded in moving the public to the right. Only then would the public vote for their candidates.

As one example of this process, let's look at the right's movement to get rid of public schools. For so many years the right-wing infrastructure has been pumping out the message that "public schools are failing." After some time, hearing this message over and over, a consensus grows that there is a problem with public schools. Right-wing politicians can then promise "solutions," like vouchers, and their message resonates with a public that is primed to believe there is a "problem" requiring a solution. This public is also primed, through repetition of other messaging, to believe that private companies are more effective than government, etc. So the environment for accepting private schools as a "solution" to the "problem" of failing public schools has been set up. (It doesn't matter if there really is a problem, as long as a large enough share of the voting public believes there is.)

Now contrast this with the progressive approach to the health care problem. A progressive politician can come to the public saying we need "single-payer health insurance" or even the shorter "universal health care." The response from the public is going to be, "What?" because so few of the public have heard of these terms, much less been pounded with progressive messages about the problems with the health care system. So the way things work now, progressive politicians have to come in explaining from scratch the problems, and trying to educate the public with their detailed solutions. This is because the support base for their ideas was not developed in advance by a comparable ideological infrastructure.

Do we blame the Democrats for this? The Republican Party "harvests" the environment set up by the well-funded "idea development and communication infrastructure." But it wasn't the Republican Party that set up this infrastructure. So I don't think we can blame the Democratic Party for the absence of a comparable infrastructure on the left. The right-wing infrastructure was set up by a few right-wing philanthropists with a vision and not by the Republican Party.

So when looking for someone to "blame" perhaps we should look to someone other than Democratic politicians. Perhaps we should look to the people who FUND moderates and progressives. Let me explain what I mean.

Here's how the right manages to have such an infrastructure in place, while progressives and moderates are left struggling with each other and barely getting their messages out to the public. There's a lot of money out there on the right, but there's also a lot of moderate and progressive money out there. The difference is that the right uses its money to provide general operating funding to "advocacy" organizations that exist to come up with ways to convince the public to vote Republican. The organizations on the right are funded just to exist, and the money continues year after year, so they do not have to spend so much of their time raising money, instead concentrating on effectively carrying out their ideological objectives.

On the other hand, moderate and progressive philanthropists have traditionally provided money for specific programs with the intent of doing good in specific ways. This system of "program funding" evolved as the best way to apply scarce resources to projects with goals for which there was a general public consensus of support. This system evolved at a time when helping the poor, protecting the environment were all widely supported by the public.

But now the right's ideology machine has eroded that public support, and the programs funded by this system are less effective. The right uses their machine to get politicians elected that will carry out their agenda of dismantling almost everything that the moderates and progressives have been funding. When this happens, the moderate and progressive money is wasted. The example I like to use is a program to protect a redwood grove, costing $500,000 a year for the last 10 years. But now an elected official issues a decree that the best way to protect forests from fire is to remove the trees, or an ideological judge rules that trees are better used for industry -- and just like that the redwood grove is gone, and the $5,000,000 spent over 10 years is completely wasted. AND on top of that the local radio stations are mocking the funders as "evironmental whackos" or "eco-terrorists," and perhaps people are picketing their offices with signs saying they are "anti-capitalist."

Program funding was not designed to counter the current destructive opposition from the right. Moderate and progressive funding must start taking this into account, and start building an infrastructure that reaches the general public with messaging that moves underlying attitudes back toward moderate and progressive principles. This would provide an environment where moderates and progressives can get public support to protect the programs that are so important to all of us.

Moderate and progressive philanthropists must step up to the plate. As with anything that has been in place for a long time, program funding is an entrenched system, with bureaucracies in place, and lots of careers depending on the system staying just the way it is. But moderate and progressive philanthropists and foundations must recognize that this is no longer the most effective use of their money. Moderate and progressive philanthropists and foundations must step up to the plate and begin providing general operating funding to advocacy organizations who will work to move the public back away from this right-wing ideological nonsense that we have been subjected to for so long! This will provide an underlying base of support for the programs we all care about. This will help persuade the public to elect candidates who will protect the programs they care about. This will persuade the public to support the organizations that are trying so hard to protect the environment and help the poor and all the rest. We all need the work done to strengthen the underlying public attitudes of support for these goals, to strengthen and build the base of support upon which the organizations and programs rest.

If you are fortunate enough to have possession of so much of the resources, you have the responsibility to use them in the best possible way. You have the duty to see that there is a threat from the right that must be countered. It is not the job of a political party - politicians respond to the public. It is your job to use your resources to educate the public, to move them back from the right, to counter the ideological propaganda that the right is bombarding us with, to defend the programs we all care so much about.

--- Posted at 5/26/2003 02:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Endorsement?

Is this an early endorsement of Dean?

--- Posted at 5/25/2003 03:30:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Bill To Fix Voting Machines

I just learned that Congressman Rush Holt has introduced legislation to require a voter-verified paper trail for electronic voting machines. There is a description of the bill here.

--- Posted at 5/24/2003 01:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Agents of "The Party"

You can see the controversial commencement speech where Chris Hedges was "booed off the stage" online now. You'll see that while some people stood and turned their backs it was actually just a few of the typically nasty and disruptive right-wing thug types who were shouting and blasting air-horns, even sneaking up and pulling the plug on the microphone. Most of the crowd was sitting calmly, wishing the ruffnecks would shut up. Some were shouting back at them "freedom of speech!" When the Dean asked the disrupting Party Members to allow the speaker to continue the crowd clapped and cheered. When Hedges finished there were as many people clapping as booing. Then some of the thugs rushed the state to threaten Hedges. (Keep in mind as you watch this that Hedges' message was simply, "war is bad.")

The message-amplification organs of The Party, fresh from their corporate-sponsored national trashing of the Dixie Chicks, trumpeted this event as another triumph for Bush and The Party, encouraging more of this sort of activity.

So here we have another example of what I'll call "agents of The Party" using thuggery - violating the rights of the rest of the crowd, shouting down a speaker for opposing The Party, and disrupting the graduation ceremony of a college - only to be praised in the media as heroes. Why do I call them "agents of The Party?" Because this behavior is occurring more and more in Bush's America, encouraged by "The Wurlitzer." Drudge shouts headlines of another pansy liberal "booed off the stage." Rush and Sean and all of AM radio talk about the elitist limousine liberal speaker out of touch with or hating America. Fox tells viewers of the heroes of Rockford patriotically rejecting the anti-American rant. Certainly no one from The Party has spoken up to denounce this type of behavior!

Bush's failure to condemn this signals his support and understanding of how it benefits his agenda. And occasionally he goes beyond silent approval, as he did with his endorsement the organized, coordinated campaign of intimidation against countries threatening to vote against us at the U.N.

While Bush said he did not expect "significant retribution from the government" against Security Council member nations that didn't line up with the United States, he pointedly left open the possibility of a popular backlash.

This is not a man condemning thuggery, this is a man gratefully utilizing it.

--- Posted at 5/23/2003 02:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Blog Hero - Slactivist

I want to announce another Seeing the Forest Blog Hero award. Go read this by Fred Clark at Slacktivist, and you'll know why weblogs are important.

Thanks to Atrios for pointing to this.

--- Posted at 5/23/2003 10:40:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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A Short Poem

It just doesn't seem
that God's chosen one
would be a creature of
lies and arrogance and privilege
and secrecy and war

--- Posted at 5/23/2003 08:46:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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These Things MATTER!

An excellent column in today's NY Times, by Bob Herbert, Dancing With the Devil. Companies like Haliburton do business with America's enemies, and cheat our government. Meanwhile, the Dixie Chicks (and France and so many others) are subjected to an orchestrated campaign of derision from agents of The Party, with the press playing along.

All this energy and public attention focused on political protection of The Party. So little energy and attention focused on actually protecting the country and its people. No probe of the failures of our government to prevent the 9/11 attack, and how we can improve the government's efforts to stop such attacks, and the relevant documents all classified. No press coverage of The Party blocking the probe. But Haliburton and others are left alone, even rewarded with huge government contracts.

Here's what I think. 9/11 did "change everything." 9/11 showed why these things matter. 9/11 showed that the people of our country are vulnerable to attack and why we don't have time for this political nonsense that the right is subjecting us to. Before 9/11 we got used to orchestrated character assassination campaigns, like that conducted against President Clinton. After 9/11 we should all understand that it is important to stop this kind of nonsense, and restore a free press, because a REAL free press looks into the weaknesses of our government's efforts to protect us! But instead we get a double dose of propaganda and ass-covering. We get an administration with "no policy apparatus at all" -- only political manipulation.

For example, here is why it is important to know if the lack of WMD in Iraq is the result of an intelligence screw-up: If they could screw up that bad on such an important issue, then we have absolutely no assurance that they are effectively protecting us from terrorist attack.

These things MATTER! There ARE people attacking us, and right now we need an honest government and an honest press more than ever.

--- Posted at 5/22/2003 11:28:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Today's Google Experiment

Anyone else old enough to remember just after Reagan took office, one of his "kitchen cabinet" was revealed to be involved in an orgy scene with a model who was later killed with a baseball bat? It's an intriguing story, and reveals a lot about the history of right-wingers campaigning on "morality" to get votes, then once in office divide up the loot from the US treasury.

For today's Google experiment let's search on "bloomingdale vicki morgan baseball bat" and see what turns up.

--- Posted at 5/22/2003 09:46:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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No WMDs

The right wingers now say that the reason for invading Iraq was to topple the dictator and liberate the Iraqi people.

OK, fine. So, in answer to the pre-war question, "Won't any Iraq war be a distraction from the war on terrorism, taking necessary resources from the battle to protect the country from al-Queda?," their answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

In the middle of this "war on terrorism" they took time out "free the Iraqi people." Great. What about US?

--- Posted at 5/22/2003 09:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Savage Sleaze

A friend of mine has a website, www.savagestupidity.com. From the website:

Stuck Listening to the Savage Nation,
Even Though You're a Liberal (or Leftist)?
Or Just a Conservative Fed Up With Michael Savage?
This web site is for you!

Well, he's getting SUED by Michael Savage! Savage is also trying to take away his domain name savagestupidity.com as a trademark infringement! Go to the savagestupidity website for details.

He needs some help. He doesn't have the money to get a lawyer to defend himself and to get organized, contact organizations, etc. If you have even an extra $5, please go to his site and donate to help him out! Of course a larger amount would help even more.

I'll post more as I find out more information.

--- Posted at 5/21/2003 03:50:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Oops

Remember the tax cut that passed the Senate because Republican gimmicks made it appear to be "only" $350 billion, which the Democrats had already been tricked into approving? Well, oops, it was really $420 billion. But it's too late to be stopped now because it has already passed out of the Senate.

And the reason for the oops was that the amount was calculated as if the dividend tax cut applied only to dividends paid out of "current-year earnings." But, from the same story, "Due to a drafting error, the tax cut actually covered dividends based on accumulated earnings." This is a BIG oops here. It means that companies like Microsoft can issue a huge dividend out of the $40 billion they are sitting on with NO TAXES paid by the recipients! By making this apply to money already saved up in corporations this is just a huge windfall with no policy incentives whatsoever, because whatever reasons for encouraging corporations to start to operate in a way that causes them to start paying dividends certainly doesn't apply to however they operated in the past, when they saved up the accumulated earnings. Oops. An accident. Right.

A previous "accident" made the tax cut cover companies that do not pay any taxes - meaning the money is never taxed - as well as companies that do pay taxes. This makes the "taxed twice" argument out to be a lie.

Se everything about this dividend tax cut has been a lie or a trick! They just say a bunch of stuff, and then go ahead and do something entirely different.

--- Posted at 5/21/2003 03:02:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Creating Jobs

How about this? We launch a Federal program to hire people to retrofit federal, then state, then municipal buildings to be more energy efficient. Then start on private commercial buildings, then homes. Just think about the incredible benefits this would bring to all of us. Lower payments for energy, meaning more to spend on other priorities, public and personal. Lower costs for all U.S.-produced goods because all businesses would be paying less for energy. Lower overall demand for energy, bringing the costs down for the remaining amounts purchased. Lower demand for oil from the Middle-East. Not to mention the boost to the economy from hiring everyone who needs a job (and giving them a good wage and health insurance.)

Pay for this with a tax on wealth. The tax would be, perhaps, 10% of holdings over $100 million. Shucks! A person with $100 million would "only" have $90 million left! But that would quickly be made up by the incredibly boosted economy.

--- Posted at 5/21/2003 09:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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DLC Increases Attack on Dean

The DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) increased their attack on Governor Dean today with a memo saying that the "intensity of their favorable reaction" of union members to hearing Dean speak proves that Dean is unelectable because union members "reflect views that are vastly different from those of rank-and-file Democrats around the country, not to mention the Independents who often dominate not only general elections but even primaries."

I think that says a LOT more about the DLC than it says about Dean.

--- Posted at 5/19/2003 03:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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The "Aspirin Factory"

How many of you have heard (and possibly even repeated) the story that President Clinton "bombed an aspirin factory" to distract the public from the Monica Lewinsky story? I just heard it repeated on the Peter Werbe radio show.

In light of current events I think it's a good idea to let people know what really happened. On August 7, 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by al-Queda, killing 257 people. In response, on August 20, 1998, President Clinton ordered a massive cruise missile attack on an al-Queda training camp in Afghanistan, and an attack on a chemical plant in Sudan. The attack missed killing bin Laden by a very short time. Here is a USA Today story on the attack. Here is a 1999 BBC roundup of stories about this.

From President Clinton's statement to the public, at the time -- remember, this is 1998, three years before 9/11:

Our target was terror. Our mission was clear -- to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden, perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today.
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Earlier today, the United States carried out simultaneous strikes against terrorist facilities and infrastructure in Afghanistan. Our forces targeted one of the most active terrorist bases in the world. It contained key elements of the bin Laden network's infrastructure and has served as a training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe.

We have reason to believe that a gathering of key terrorist leaders was to take place there today, thus underscoring the urgency of our actions.

Our forces also attacked a factory in Sudan associated with the bin Laden network. The factory was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.

So when you hear that Clinton "bombed an aspirin factory," think about how this fits into the pattern of Republican lies claiming that President Clinton did little to fight terrorism and WMD (it was a chemical plant that they thought was making nerve gas components for bin Laden) in general and bin-Laden in particular. Think about how Republican criticism of Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts actually helped al-Queda and helped keep us unprepared for what happened on 9/11. And think about how their furthering this story is part of an attempt to cover up their own share of the responsibility for what happened.

--- Posted at 5/19/2003 11:55:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Making the Integrity of Electronic Voting Into a National Issue

The Commonweal Institute, (http://www.commonwealinstitute.org) is launching a project to publicize the problems with electronic voting machines, and to make this a national issue.

For a description of this project please see "Making the Integrity of Electronic Voting Into a National Issue," online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/VotingMachinesProject.htm.

Also, Commonweal is introducing a collection of links to articles and resources on this subject. This collection is online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/VotingMachineLinks.html. This is a good collection to refer people to if they want to learn about this issue.

You can help bring this important issue to the attention of the public by making a tax-free donation to help launch this project online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/youcanhelp.html.

If you are in a position or know someone who is in a position to contribute a substantial amount to help launch this project, please contact Kate Forrest at Commonweal at 650-330-1395 or by e-mail at kforrest@commonwealinstitute.org.

Please consider copying this and sending it as an e-mail message to people who you know who are aware of this issue.

--- Posted at 5/19/2003 10:05:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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They Get It!

Here is a voting machines op-ed piece,"Voters must have faith in the vote count," by my local chief elections officer, in San Mateo County, California. I recommend printing this out and mailing it to the elections official in YOUR county! (And the link is to the version formatted for printing!)

The answer is so that California can have an accurate vote count and avoid the chaotic election scenarios that other states have experienced. The verification of the vote can help ensure the integrity of election results.

The way a voter would check his or her vote is simple. After he or she completes the electronic ballot, a paper summary prints out, and the paper record is compared to the electronic record. Once satisfied, the voter pushes a button, and the ballot is cast. The electronic ballot gets stored in computer memory, and the paper ballot is deposited into a locked ballot box.
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The choice of providing voters an opportunity to check their votes is upon us. The consequences are serious. One computer scientist has said, ``Touch-screen voting systems have fatal security flaws so dangerous that they could allow people with access to the software to modify election results on a national level, and without detection. It is a matter of national security that we fix these flaws.''

And here is the San Jose Mercury News' editorial today on the subject.

Dozens of computer scientists, led by Stanford University Professor David Dill, have been calling for this reform. It's disappointing that most county election officials have been defensive instead of open-minded. They don't want to admit that they've been bamboozled by vendors' claims that the touch-screen systems are infallible. They don't want to concede that the software glitches and malfunctions that impeded elections in Florida last year and elsewhere could happen here.

Slocum has suggested how a paper audit might work. After you voted electronically, the machine would print out a copy of your ballot for you to look at but not touch. The printed ballots would be machine-readable (no more hand recounts), in large print and capable of being printed in many languages. If you or the touch-screen machine made a mistake, you'd catch the error and fix it before casting a final ballot.

Hooray for the San Jose Mercury News! They get it!

--- Posted at 5/19/2003 07:36:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Dean on C-SPAN

I'm watching Governor Dean doing a town meeting in Iowa, on C-SPAN right now. It's on again at 6:30pm tonite Pacific time. This guy is great! I can't imagine any Democrat watching this and voting for anyone else.

Update - I can't wait to see the next Iowa poll!!!

Update - You can now watch it online here.

--- Posted at 5/18/2003 04:26:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Dean Interview at Liberal Oasis

Liberal Oasis has an interview with Presidential Candidate Governor Howard Dean,

--- Posted at 5/17/2003 10:27:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Republic and Empire

Gary Hart just posted Republic and Empire.

--- Posted at 5/16/2003 04:57:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Help Me Understand

Read this, then tell me what the "endgame" of currency rebalancing will be? If the dollar plunges, which our massive current-account deficit demands, what happens to our economy? If that forces Europe and Japan into recession and deflation, then how much boost will the lower dollar give us, since they'll have trouble buying things from us? It WILL stop our deflation, which is good, but what else does it do for us? Help me out.

And how much effect is the widening gap between rich and poor having on all of this? If the general public has no savings, lots of debt, and less and less of the overall wealth, then how can "stimulus" do much good? It seems that most of the "stimulus" winds up going to fewer and fewer rich people. Seems to me that the rest of us gotta get rid of some of that debt and get a bigger share of the wealth before we can increase their consumption.

Help me out, leave a comment.

--- Posted at 5/16/2003 04:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Senate Democrats Tricked Again

Do you remember when the DEMOCRATS in the Senate voted for a $350 billion tax cut? At the time I wrote, "The country has massive deficits, we are at war, programs that help the public are being slashed - and Democrats vote for another tax cut!"

But this was portrayed as a "victory" - the Democrats blocking an even bigger tax cut. Some "victory," huh?

Well guess what? The Senate today passed a mix of gimmicks designed to get around this $350 billion limit. For one thing, they eliminate taxes on dividends, but only until 2007. This trick keeps the bill within the already-agreed-to $350 limit, which means that it cannot be filibustered. So even though only three Democrats voted for this today, their previous "victory" means they can do nothing to block this sham that will further bankrupt the country. (Actually, the bill lowers taxes on the rich by $420 billion, but makes up for it by increasing taxes on middle-class workers, for example, increasing taxes on Americans working overseas.)

Meanwhile, Bush started today working to get all these limiting gimmicks made permanent. The Democrats, with their "victory," fell RIGHT into this trap. They should have had the integrity to simply vote against ANY tax cut at a time of massive deficits. I wonder if they ever heard the expression, "too clever by half?"

Update - It's much worse than it looks!

Vowing to tax income only once, Bush had said dividends should be tax-free only if they were paid out of fully taxed corporate profits. But for the sake of simplicity, the Senate bill breaks from that principle. Investors who own shares in corporations that pay little or no federal taxes would pay no taxes at the corporate or individual level.

"This kind of gives the lie to the argument that what this is all about is eliminating the double taxation of dividends," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Got that? You own a million shares in a company that moves to a mailbox in Bermuda to avoid paying ANY U.S. taxes. They company sends you a dividend and you never pay taxes on that either. The money is NEVER taxed. How long will it take for all the rich fucks to buy a zillion shares of these companies, or move their companies to Bermuda, and never again pay ANY taxes. This is a HUGE incentive to pull all money out of any company that pays any U.S. taxes, or to get your company to stop paying U.S. taxes. AND it is a huge incentive to pull your money out of any investment of any kind that does not pay dividends, and out of any company that reinvests profits in things like research, employee benefits, pensions, etc. The ONLY thing that matters now will be dividends. NO taxes at all!

Update - Certain companies that have been sitting on huge, huge hoards of cash can issue dividends now, and get it out of the way before 2007. I think this could save Gates about $8 billion in taxes.

--- Posted at 5/16/2003 12:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Zizka Moved

Zizka has a new URL. Always, always worth reading! Go read his twelve reasons why he isn't much fun anymore.

--- Posted at 5/15/2003 11:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Molly!

Molly Ivins: "If it makes no difference whether the government lied, why is Friedman a journalist? Why does journalism exist at all?"

--- Posted at 5/15/2003 10:08:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Electronic Voting Machines Story in NY Times

This story, To Register Doubts, Press Here in the NY Times today.

But not everyone likes the switch to electronic balloting. Some of the loudest opposition, in fact, is coming from computer experts who say the new technology could prove more troublesome than its predecessors. They warn of equipment malfunction, unchecked tampering and the lack of secure proof for each vote.

A group of more than 100 technologists, led by David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, has called for tighter security measures on electronic voting apparatus and a "voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election. (The group's "resolution on electronic voting" is at verify.stanford.edu/evote.html.)

Without such a trail, Dr. Dill warned, if a machine is tampered with or malfunctions, "then the votes in question are corrupted and you have no option but to hold another election or accept bad results." Thus the only reliable backup, the group contends, is for the machines to print out paper ballots after each vote, which can be hand-counted if necessary.

Dr. Dill and his counterparts, who in- clude computer science experts in academia and Silicon Valley, also assert that unlike more mechanical machines, electronic systems cannot be opened up to the public for verification. And the only people who know what is encoded on them are computer experts. "I think it's unreasonable for the public to be asked to accept the security of these machines on blind faith," he said. "There's no question the technology is open to tampering."
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Paul Terwilliger, director of product development at Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic systems, said that while no one disputes the need for safeguards, complaints about machines like his company's were uninformed. "I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid," Mr. Terwilliger said. "However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."

Mr. Radke of Diebold added that voters have more, not less, confidence in electronic machines. He pointed to a study conducted in February at the University of Georgia that found that 70 percent of voters in the state's November 2002 elections, which were conducted on Diebold machines, reported being very confident that their vote was accurately counted. When this question was asked in September 2001, before electronic voting was in place in the state, only 56 percent of Georgia voters reported being very confident.
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Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. "We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with," he said. "It is now almost impossible." Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. "We've hit a brick wall," he said.

Along with Dr. Dill, endorsers of the resolution include professors from Yale, M.I.T., Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins, as well as industry experts from Apple, Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Unisys. Dr. Mercuri has written substantially on electronic voting and is one of the group's most outspoken members. She worries that no electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of federal government or international computer security standards, nor has any been required to comply with such.

Dr. Mercuri said the machines had had problems in some elections. In March 2002, for example, in Wellington, Fla. (in Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the 2000 dispute), there were 78 unrecorded ballots in a City Council election conducted with electronic machines. That represents about 3 percent of the total votes.

"Computers are good for many things, but at the same time we need to be cautious. If a machine's not functioning, then it might not be able to shut itself down," Dr. Mercuri said.

I'll tell you what. If you think I'm going to go into a voting booth and touch a screen and leave the booth without some way of knowing what that machine recorded as my vote, then you've got another think coming. If I don't see for myself where that machine put down that I did not vote for Bush, then I do not believe that the machine didn't and that's all there is to it. You can substitute Hillary Clinton's name there and pretend you're hearing this on the Rush Limbaugh show, because there's no reason for them to trust this, either. It's suspicious that they aren't complaining.

Here is my question. Why are the voting machine companies working so hard to defend what they are selling? They would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold systems that also printed out a voter-verifiable ballot that could be used as a backup and for recounts! So it doesn't make sense that they aren't pushing for that. Unless...

Note - I am quoting more extensively than I usually would because of the NY Times new policy of making readers pay to see stories after a month or so.

--- Posted at 5/15/2003 08:32:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Domestic Political Espionage By Dept. Of Homeland Security

The first documented use of the Department of Homeland Security by the Republican Party for domestic political espionage against Democrats. The first, but surely not the last.

Are you surprised? Shocked? WHY? That's what the Department of Homeland Security is FOR! Remember how it was formed? Remember the fight over allowing unions or not? This is an entirely political operation from its very founding. Along with the FBI it is the political espionage arm of the Republican Party. Don't any of you remember Richard Nixon? This is what Republicans DO.

Are you also going to be surprised if John Poindexter's Office of Information Awareness is used for political espionage? Why do you think they put convicted criminal John Poindexter in charge of it?

--- Posted at 5/14/2003 03:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Stop the FCC

As a blog reader you are probably already aware of the issue of media consolidation. This is one of the most important issues there is right now and you should be active. Here's a brief explanation from MoveOn:

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace -- and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy.

Be sure to sign MoveOn's petition!

--- Posted at 5/14/2003 01:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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What's The Point?

Why do so many bloggers from "the left" write about what Andrew Sullivan says? Why should anyone care what he says? Why should anyone be reading him, to know what he says? Why promote him by using his name? When you write about what he says, you're telling your readers that what he says matters. It doesn't.

This is the first and hopefully last time I ever use his name here. I don't read him. I wrote this about this issue once before:

Blog readers may have noticed that there are certain popular blog topics that I have avoided. I have specifically avoided ever mentioning a certain writer whose initials, if you add an 'S', would be "ASS."

The piece was titled Journalistic Integrity.

--- Posted at 5/14/2003 12:49:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Something's Up

There were only 62 spams in the e-mail this morning. Something's up! Yes, I know I'll get approx. 300 more during the day but usually there's usually more than 62 in the morning.

--- Posted at 5/14/2003 07:48:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Next Corner After That

This at CNN: Poll: Consumer confidence is fading.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Consumer confidence continued to fade last week, following a brief spike during the war in Iraq.

The ABC News/Money magazine Consumer Comfort Index, based on ratings of current economic conditions, stands at -24 on a scale of positive-100 to negative-100 for the week ended May 11. The index surged by 13 points from March 23 through April 20, reaching a seven-month high.

Remember when Bush said his tax cuts would make the economy recover? This time the public was told that the war would restore the economy. It didn't. It has been one promise after another. My feeling is that this was about the last time the public is going to listen to a "prosperity is just around the corner" message.

I suspect that THIS time they aren't going to be so easily led around by the nose by the ever-optimistic business press. We'll see.

The stock market is up HOW much since the war started?

--- Posted at 5/13/2003 08:27:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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My Blogroll

My blogroll has gotten out of hand. I'm going to do something about it, just not sure what. I hate to divide it into "daily reads" and "other blogs", or something like that -- I don't want people to know whether I read them daily or not. But it is just too long - just too many good blogs. Any suggestions?

--- Posted at 5/13/2003 04:50:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Moral Politics

TomPaine.com has an interview with George Lakoff. If you read nothing else today, please read this. I think Lakoff's view of how people use family metaphors as a basis for their political thinking is very important for understanding what is going on in the minds of conservatives and liberals. It boils down to "Strict Father" and "Nurturing Parent" viewpoints. (Which are you?)

Update - Here is part 2 of the interview.

--- Posted at 5/13/2003 11:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Media Consolidation

Please go to Ruminate This and read everything on the FCC and media consolidation. Ruminate has been following this story and agitating with some suggestions for actions.

--- Posted at 5/13/2003 09:32:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Sick Today

I'm sick today - bad cold. Not much blogging probably.

--- Posted at 5/12/2003 05:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Your Privacy

Reading this Joe Conason piece in Salon, about Bush's latest right-wingnut judicial nominee, I came across this line,

"Evidently Kuhl didn't regard these outrages as an invasion of the patient's privacy."

Yesterday, reading this from BuzzFlash, The Karl Rove PR Machine Keeps All the Right Wing Shills on Message Point, Even Jerry Falwell, I come across this, written by Jerry Falwell about the judicial nominee standoff,

"For the past two years - two years! - two of President Bush's judicial nominees, Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen, have been maligned and smeared by Senate Democrats who have ignored their superb and celebrated legal careers.

The reason? Neither nominee has endorsed the ambiguous "right to privacy" that abortion supporters declare is to be found in the U.S. Constitution."

That is Jerry Falwell complaining that Democrats are trying to block judges who don't think we have a right to privacy.

And the other day I wrote this piece, It's Privacy They Have A Problem With, which pointed out that Senator Santorum was not only against gays having the right to have consensual sex, he opposed the idea that ANY Americans have a right to privacy.

How many people remember that one of the main reasons Robert Bork was rejected as a Supreme Court nominee was that he held that there is no "right to privacy" under the Constitution?

The reason that the wingnuts have such a problem with the idea of Americans having a right to privacy dates back to the 1965 Griswold vs Connecticut case, which overturned a Connecticut statute which made it a crime to use devices or materials to prevent conception. The Court said that a married couple has a right of privacy that cannot be infringed upon by a state law. This led to the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that held that the right of privacy encompasses a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

In order to make abortion illegal again, they have to get judges into the court system who will rule that we do not have a right to privacy. This will, of course, lead to other areas where the government no longer leaves us alone, including going back to banning birth control. Who knows what else this will open up? And this is serious shit -- they really ARE trying to go in this direction.

--- Posted at 5/10/2003 03:34:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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End Limited Liability!

Op-ed in the NY Times today, Reward but No Risk.

The public does not generally understand that the owners of corporations are not liable for the things that the corporations do, and the debts they run up. But corporations are granted limited liability by our government, which means that the owners shielded from responsibility for what the corporation does, and from its debts. This is a HUGE benefit, and is something that we the public are free to change.

Under current law, if I invest in an incorporated company, the only money I risk losing is that with which I bought the shares of stock. So if Exxon destroys a sizable section of Alaska's coastline; if R. J. Reynolds directly contributes to the astronomical health care costs of smoking; or if Enron goes belly up, leaving many unpaid accounts, the most their victims can retrieve is the value of the corporation's assets. Once the value of the company — and thus the shares — is driven down to zero, creditors and litigants are out of luck.
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Fair is fair: let's get rid of the dividend tax, but only in exchange for a real free market.

YES YES YES!!! Why should the shareholders be granted HUGE benefits through limited risk, at the same time as they are handed HUGE tax breaks, and the corporations are granted huge power? A corporation, under current law, is considered a "person" and has the rights of a "person," including free speech - which is why it is so hard to change the campaign finance laws. But the owners of the corporation do NOT have the same responsibilities as a "person" when it comes to paying debts.

It is finally time someone is bringing this to the attention of the public! If the owners of corporations want all these financial benefits and power, then they should be asked to actually compete in a free market! YES! Why should they be shielded from the responsibilities the rest of us "persons" have while enjoying the benefits of being "persons?"

Learn about this, become active, write to your Congressional representatives asking that the benefit of corporate limited liability be ended.

Update - This op-ed was there this morning. I found it in the archives and updated the link here, but it is no longer linked from the online NYTimes Op-ed page. Can someone explain to me where it went?

--- Posted at 5/10/2003 01:13:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Ass-Kicking Meanies

Ted Rall:

The lesson: besieged Americans want to be led by ass-kicking meanies, not mild-mannered milquetoast moderates.

Democratic leaders ought to select their nominee in a smoke-filled room, call off the expensive and divisive primary process and order all other comers to stand down. Forget the union rallies, the badges and the buttons--whoever wins the nomination should invest every dime he can raise on the cruelest TV attack ads this country has ever seen.

Go after Bush's ultimate Achilles' heel: run countless loops of the inarticulate Resident's clashes with the English language. "Too dumb to talk," a sinister voiceover reads. "Too stupid to trust." Use time-proven Republican methods, like name-calling: Extremist. Out of touch. Tax and spender. Hates workers. Racist. Homophobe. Corrupt CEO coddler. Idiot. Drunk. Cut to the post-pretzel-incident photo: "America needs a sober president."

Forget ideas--voters respond to the personal stuff. Dwell on the two years Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. "Brave Americans gave their lives in Vietnam," a 30-second spot should intone as the camera pans over names of the fallen on the black wall in Washington. "Rich kid George W. Bush deserted. This coward snorted coke and drove drunk while other kids died." Who doubts that if Gore had played up Bush's DUI arrest, he would have picked up an extra 500 votes in Florida?

Oh, that feels good!

Update - On reflection (and reading the first comment) I guess I don't that good about this because some of this is a personal attack. Perhaps a similarly hard-hitting attack that is not personal? So I would take out the words 'idiot' and 'drunk'. Maybe change the 'dumb' and 'stupid' but I would certainly emphasize that Bush lies and lies, and world leaders mock his abilities.

--- Posted at 5/09/2003 12:16:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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From Scaife's NewsMax?????

Prez Wannabe Graham Eyeing Evidence That Bush Blew 9/11:

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Graham is reportedly sitting on damaging evidence that the Bush administration could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks - but he hasn't released the information yet because it's classified.

"I think Bob Graham has a smoking pistol on the Bush administration," Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford told WABC Radio's John Batchelor and Paul Alexander late Tuesday.

Crawford explained that Graham's mystery evidence has to do with "their failures, particularly intelligence failures, before 9/11."

Did Bush piss someone off? Maybe the NRA? OK, maybe not, as the article continues:

If Graham does indeed have evidence implicating the administration in 9/11-related negligence, it would be doubly ironic for the Bush White House, which has gone out of its way not to point fingers at the Clinton administration for its role in leaving America vulnerable to a 9/11-style attack.

Or maybe they just can't help themselves, throwing in a lie like that. Or maybe it's just policy over at NewsMax that they can't write an article that doesn't smear Clinton somehow.

--- Posted at 5/09/2003 12:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Everything

Read everything over at Whiskey Bar.

--- Posted at 5/09/2003 12:01:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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What's The Use Of Telling People?

I know I'll be accused again of being a wild-eyed radical who just makes thing up, but the Republicans in the House forced through a bill yesterday allowing organizations to refuse to hire Jews and Muslims and to receive Federal money.

--- Posted at 5/09/2003 08:32:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Best Find of the Day

Bush nominated for Nobel peace prize ... by ....

--- Posted at 5/08/2003 09:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Clearing Up A Few Things

I want to clear up some things that I've been reading in the media.

Bush did not land the airplane on the carrier. He was a passenger. He was in an airplane that landed.

Bush did not have to wear the pilot's getup. He could have worn a business suit. The flight suit was for the cameras.

Bush did not win the war. The military won the war. Bush started the war. ("Getting us into a war" used to be considered a bad thing to do - a major screwup.)

Back to our regular programming.

--- Posted at 5/08/2003 01:39:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Pope vs Bush

Well THIS is certainly an interesting article! Vatican Concerned By Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult has some intersting things to say:

Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.

According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.

The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution.

Well I guess he can count out the Catholic vote. On the other hand, if the Wurlitzer can convince the public that war is a good thing, maybe they can convince Catholics to vote for the anti-Christ against the Pope!

Thanks to Suburban Guerrilla for the link.

--- Posted at 5/08/2003 10:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Intimidation

From Indian Country, Intimidation punditry - A disservice to discourse"

Over the past 10 years, it has been the right wing that has steam-rolled the media. Its organizations, publications and think tanks - particularly Bill Kristol’s "Weekly Standard" group - are wielding significant influence in U.S. foreign policy. Right wing punditry, however, tends to drive its points of view with sledgehammers. It fields a style of verbal attack that is very harsh and insulting of the opposition. Often, the intent now is openly to damage reputations and to seek to destroy the careers of anyone who might dare question the right wing ideology that drives so much of the coverage these days. Public discourse is deteriorating in the process.

On national channels and especially cable programming, all talk shows have hard-right commentators and while there are many right wing talk shows, there are virtually no moderate or liberal talk shows evident. They are a dying breed, perhaps vanquished with the scuttling of Phil Donahue’s most recent show, which attempted to voice a liberal, and when set against the current climate, a forceless, response.

It is pretty obvious that the liberal or moderate mindset in reporting is in a retreat stampede. Always skittish, like long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs, woe now the reporter who would even dare ask the tough questions, or pursue a line of thinking that would question motivations and even official practices of the conduct of an American war. Woe to the man or woman in public life who dares disagree with the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Ann Coulter, Shawn Hannity or Laura Ingraham, among quite a few others. Woe the wrath of the far right. [emphasis mine - DJ] The intimidation factor has grown fangs in American public life, particularly through the phenomenon of talk radio and yell TV. It is a whole way of being in media. Aggressively going after people who disagree with your idea of what is "American," which in this case, coincides with the point of view of the Republican party. Patriotism becomes label and sword. When investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh dared publish a controversial conflict-of-interest story about Richard Perle, a major pro-war policy figure, Perle labeled journalist Hersh, "a terrorist."

Thanks to Cursor for the link.

--- Posted at 5/08/2003 08:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Maybe It Will Sink In

Wow. This from Brad DeLong:

Kevin Drum is extremely unhappy about the Iraqi WMD situation. It seems to me that there are three possibilities:

1. We suffered a truly massive intelligence failure: Iraq had next to no WMD around.
2. Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon failed to realize what its mission was, and Iraq's WMD are now in the hands of guys who (unlike Saddam Hussein)cannot be deterred--guys who don't like to live in palaces, and don't hope to die in bed--and we are in much bigger trouble than before.
3. President Bush deliberately lied to the Congress about Saddam Hussein in order to get a resolution authorizing the attack on Iraq.

It seems to me that the grownups in the Republican Party need to find out--and find out quickly--which of these three possibilities is correct. If (1) is correct, they need to tell us so and need to fix the "intelligence community" and fix it now. If (2) is correct, they need to tell us so and need to fix the NSC and the Pentagon, and fix it now. If (3) is correct, they need to tell us that George W. Bush needs to be impeached and needs to be impeached now.

These are the options, and this might just sink in with the public at some point. 1) They were completely criminally incompetent. 2) They were worse than incompetent and let terrorists get ALL of those weapons of mass destruction to use against us in the future. 3) They lied in order to get support to invade another country. Let me know if you see any other possibilities here.

Update - My mother came up with a valid fourth possibility - mental imbalance. Hypothesis: Bush is mentally imbalanced and paranoid, so even with no evidence of a threat they concluded there was a threat anyway. I say not likely that all the relevant people in the administration and military could be mentally imbalanced in the same way, but logically it is a valid fourth possibility.

--- Posted at 5/07/2003 05:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Cost Of The Bush PR Carrier Stunt

From David J. Sirota, Communications Director, U.S. House Appropriations Committee - Minority:

With President Bush's circus stunt photo-op last week reportedly delaying the return of the U.S.S. Lincoln and its crew by at least a day, Democrats have demanded a formal inquiry into how much the Pentagon and U.S. taxpayers were forced to cough up to sponsor the event. According to our preliminary estimates, one day of aircraft carrier steaming (aka. energy to power the boat at sea) costs roughly $800,000 to $1 million. This does not include the added huge costs of running regular air patrols over the carrier for the extra day, deploying the regular sea-based protection for the boat for the extra day, paying extra costs to keep the crew fed at sea, security for the President, the cost of flying the President out to the boat by jet, etc.

Attached you will find a one-page Adobe PDF document produced by the House Appropriations Committee using these newly released figures.

I posted the PDF file here. It's certainly worth a look!


--- Posted at 5/07/2003 04:06:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Any Day Now?

Whoa! Go check out this site. Be sure to check the Rapture Index.

--- Posted at 5/07/2003 02:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Which Is Worse?

Bush claimed there were tons of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, and on his word we invaded the country. But now they can't find any WMD.

Which is worse? That Bush was lying, using WMD as a pretext for war, terrifying the American public to achieve his own personal, political and financial goals? Or that Bush was telling the truth, and there were WMD -- and Bush's invasion was bungled -- not securing the WMDs -- allowing the Iraqis to give them all to terrorists, who will use them against us?

Which one is stronger grounds for impeachment?

--- Posted at 5/07/2003 11:29:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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This One Will Make You Just Want To Cry

Over at AlterNet, Why Ecocide Is 'Good News' for the GOP. Scroll down to "A Higher Power":

Nevertheless, beyond all these more obvious anti-environmental motivations there lies a more deep-seated inspiration. Difficult as it may be to believe, many of the conservatives who have great influence in the Bush administration and now in Congress are governed by a Higher Power.

In his book "The Carbon Wars," Greenpeace activist Jeremy Leggett tells how he stumbled upon this otherworldly agenda. During the Kyoto climate change negotiations, Leggett candidly asked Ford Motor Company executive John Schiller how opponents of the pact could believe there is no problem with "a world of a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas available on the planet?" The executive asserted first that scientists get it wrong when they say fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for eons. The Earth, he said, is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the age widely accepted by scientists.

Then Schiller confidently declared, "You know, the more I look, the more it is just as it says in the Bible." The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett, predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the "End Time" and return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action, but as God's will. In the religious right worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News! [emphasis added - DJ]

Some true believers, interpreting biblical prophecy, are sure they will be saved from the horrific destruction brought by ecosystem collapse. They'll be raptured: rescued from Earth by God, who will then rain down seven ghastly years of misery on unbelieving humanity. Jesus' return will mark the Millennium, when the Lord restores the Earth to its green pristine condition, and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

One powerful fringe group, the Reconstructionists, doesn't speak of the "End Time" at all, Bokaer notes. They put the onus for the Lord's return on their own political activism. Reconstructionists say that Christ will return only when a righteous nation acts to purge unrepentant sinners and applies biblical law to its populace. They want to spread the Gospel in a political context, making the Bible the foundation of U.S. jurisprudence. That includes an end to environmental regulation.
...

Such misinformed viewpoints would be of little import except that, in the 1980s, they began permeating the Republican Party. That's when Republican strategists – eager to broaden the party's narrow base of wealthy corporate supporters – partnered with religious right leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who agreed to politicize their followers and bring them into the GOP, according to Bokaer.

Working through fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches, the Christian Coalition has promoted right-wing Republican candidates by mailing voter guides at election time – 30 million in 1994; another 45 million in 1996; and 70 million in 2000 to support candidate Bush, reports the watchdog group People for the American Way.

There is so much more in this article, and it rings true because it agrees with much that I have been reading about these right wingnuts in my research. I'm a little shaken up so instead of saying anything about it I'll ask you to go read the whole article. Oh yeah, by the way, some of the wealthier Reconstructionists are buying up some of the voting machine companies. (If blogspot doesn't scroll to the right piece, search for 'CNP' and 'Ahmanson'.)

Update - While researching the right's web of anti-environmental organizations and their funding would be a lifetime career in itself, I came across this group, Interfaith Coalition for Environmental Stewardship (ICES), one more right-wing organization claiming God gave the planet to humans for "stewardship." If you want to see where they're "coming from" check out the organizations they link to. They have a subtle message that translates to the usual right-wing line: environmentalists are socialsts who are trying to destroy capitalism, which is God's law.

--- Posted at 5/06/2003 02:45:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Dean Meetups Tomorrow

I have been through several Dean days. I'm talking about former Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, who is running for President in the 2004 election. Saturday a week ago I attended two Dean house parties, each of which involved conference calls of approximately an hour, with Governor Dean answering questions from groups in different cities. Then I saw Dean speak in San Francisco last Tuesday evening. His speech was an order of magnitude refined from the California Democratic convention speech you may have seen online and the crowd was yelling and cheering. Before the event there was a pretty good crowd of "Meetup" members gathered out front to greet him. There was such a feeling of energy and hope.

This last Saturday I went to a local Democratic Party event. In private discussions on the upcoming Democratic primaries, Dean seems to be the main subject. There were Kerry supporters present, but they are taking more of a pragmatic than an enthusiastic position – they're betting that Kerry will be the nominee and they want to be "on board" early. These Kerry supporters have nothing bad to say about Dean. Most will tell you they agree with Dean more than with Kerry on issues. (The Lieberman supporters I have met appear to be well aware of where things are going, and complain about how "liberal" the primary voters are.)

Several old-time Democrat pros have told me that they haven't seen anything like Dean in a long time. Three different individuals have said that his speech at the Cal. Dem. Convention was one of the best they have ever seen, and the way it inspired the crowd there tells them that this is a different kind of candidate. They see an energy and detect an ability to attract not just base Democrats, but to reach out to "swing voters" and even Southerners. Many mentioned a feeling that Dean will be able to draw young people back into the election process. I'm talking pragmatic jaded state-wide professionals, and you do not see this kind of enthusiasm from this crowd very often. Usually it's pragmatic and cynical talk but this time I am hearing optimistic, enthusiastic support. This is what is special about Dean's candidacy. Dean already has a large (20,000+) Meetup volunteer network operating nationwide because of this ability to inspire enthusiasm. Now this is almost year before the first primary, and we're seeing this kind of energy and numbers.

I think that after you have actually seen Dean speak, you're a believer, and this is why the numbers are growing so fast, so soon. This ability to make a personal impression through a speech is important. I was a Kerry supporter until I met Kerry, and will still support him if he gets the nomination, but I have to say that Dean is bringing out an enthusiasm in so many people I am talking to. Kerry doesn't have an enthusiastic, inspirational, energizing style. He does have credentials and can challenge Bush on National Security as well as making an issue of Bush's AWOL service record, and I hope he does this before the election even though Dean will be the nominee.

There is an energy around Dean's candidacy and I think Dean has the message and personality to win the nomination and the national center, too. I haven't seen anything like it and I've been around long enough to have gone to see Gene McCarthy in Detroit in 68.

Click here to locate a Dean Meetup in your area.

--- Posted at 5/06/2003 10:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Funding The Message Amplification Infrastructure

Seeing the Forest and other weblogs have been writing about the need for a "Message Amplification Infrastructure" to counter the Wurlitzer of the right. Developing these infrastructure organizations will take a lot of money, so we need to look at how this can be done.

The core funding for the right's Wurlitzer comes from a group of philanthropic foundations controlled by right-wing zealots. These funders provide general operating funding to ideological advocacy organizations. This means the money is given to the organizations to use in any way that supports the overall efforts of "the movement." In the report The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, Sally Covington traces this use of funds by right-wing foundations.

There is actually more money available on the moderate/progressive side, but it is used in a different way. Moderate/progressive philanthropists have evolved a system of "program funding" -- providing money for specific programs with the intent of doing good through specific, measurable, accountable individual projects. The idea is that this program money is more results-oriented. Moderate/progressive foundation funding is rarely provided for general operations use, especially by the kind of advocacy organizations we are talking about building.

I have been researching and am going to be writing about this problem of persuading moderate/progressive philanthropic foundations to provide funding for general operating expenses for advocacy organizations – the organizations that will function as a message amplification infrastructure for our side. Stay tuned.

--- Posted at 5/05/2003 02:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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BuzzFlash - Daschle Resign!

BuzzFlash says Tom Daschle should resign.

--- Posted at 5/05/2003 01:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Learn To Ignore Their Words

By now we should have learned that the Bush people lie. They use words to cover their actions. They use words to divert attention, to confuse and distract people so they won't see or understand what is being done.

By now we should understand that we need to look at their actions instead of their words.

Let's take a look at Iraq and see what was done and not done. Some things done: The PR for the Iraq operation began in earnest in September 2002, timed to correspond with the election and used effectively to manipulate voters and intimidate opponents. Then we invaded a country that had not attacked us, had not even threatened us, and did not even appear on the surface to have the means of doing any harm to the United States should they decide to try.

On the ground, the invasion operation immediately secured the oil fields and infrastructure -- even the oil ministry building. This was carefully planned, and the troops and equipment necessary to accomplish this were in place at the beginning of the invasion. The oil was flowing again within weeks.

This is what was done.

The Iraq operation did not secure suspected WMD sites. We did not plan for this, and did not provide the troops necessary and resources necessary to accomplish this. In fact, we still have not sent the necessary forces or equipment to secure suspected WMD sites.

The Iraq operation also did not plan for or provide the forces necessary to secure and protect the people of Iraq and their heritage. We still have not sent the necessary forces or other resources.

This is what was not done.

I read somewhere that the U.S. "Public Diplomacy" operation for the Iraq war was the largest PR operation in history. This should provide us with a clue about how to understand what is happening. We are being subject to a massive PR operation, which means that a fog of words is being laid down to obscure actions, and to "soften us up" to accept what is occurring. The very words "Public Diplomacy" and "PR" themselves are used to confuse people. The words mean "propaganda", but propaganda is a word that people understand and, to some degree, are prepared to defend against – when people hear that word they know that they are about to hear lies intended to confuse people. "Public Diplomacy" and "PR" are substituted as a way around that defense.

We KNOW the Bush people lie and we know they are very good at it. This means we should learn to step back, cover our ears, not listen to what they SAY and stop being confused and distracted by the fog of words they lay down to obscure what they DO. The WORDS are just a tactic - ANYthing the Bush people SAY - their words are just smoke and fog laid down to cover what they DO.

And we must teach others to do the same - to learn to look at what they do and not be confused by what they say.

The world has learned some lessons from past regimes that relied on deception to mask their agenda. The Stalinists/Soviets were masters of the use of propaganda, and the world learned to look at their actions not their words. The Nazis were expert liars. They mastered the art of lying – propaganda – and used it effectively to confuse and conquer all of Europe. The Nazis were finally defeated only after enough people came to understand this. People came to understand that the Nazis were liars, and that they used techniques designed to influence and confuse people. People eventually learned to ignore what the Nazis said, and to just fight them. The fight against the propaganda of these regimes is the origin of why people today understand that they must put up their defenses when they hear the term "propaganda." They learned to say, "Oh, that's just propaganda, we should ignore it and look at what they are doing instead."

Now we have another crowd that is willing to lie and use even more sophisticated psychological techniques to confuse and divert people. The people behind the words now are the same people who marketed tobacco -- they are REALLY GOOD at using words -- they managed to get much of the public to give them their money and then kill themselves! They are that good. They are better at this than we can even understand.

Again: We invaded and secured the oil fields and the oil ministry. We did not secure WMD or bring order to the country. If you look at what was DONE and ignore what was SAID I think it becomes obvious what this was all about – it becomes clear that Iraq's oil was the only goal. Everything else is just words.

--- Posted at 5/05/2003 12:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Prediction

I predict that the Republicans are going to start accusing the Democrats of exploiting 9/11 for political gain. The Wurlitzer is going to be talking about nothing else all through summer 04 until the election. If they do it right, it will be the major issue in the campaign: those horrible, despicable, un-American, treasonous Democrats using 9/11 to try to win the election.

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 02:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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A Good Statement Of What Happened To Us

An op-ed piece in the LA Times the other day, Media Monopolies Have Muzzled Dissent, has a good quote that shows what has happened to us:

The transformation of active citizens into passive consumers was enabled by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan's Mark Fowler, who declared "the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants."

Community replaced by market. One-citizen-one-vote replaced by one-dollar-one-vote. That kind of sums it all up.

From the piece:

TV's Fox could not get away with its shameless shilling for the White House if the Fairness Doctrine were still in place, and radio's Clear Channel monopoly would not be able to impose wall-to-wall Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, etc., on the public if broadcasters were accountable to public opinion rather than the dictates of plutocrats.

If Republicans try to tell you that the media is liberal, ask them why they oppose the Fairness Doctrine.

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 12:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Rigged Election In Florida

South Knox Bubba writes about the rigging of the 2000 election.

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 12:49:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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An IM Conversation This Morning

A conversation on IM this morning. (Exactly as typed, except where I edited it to make me look better -- and literate.)

tendentious: you're not a liberal, you're a pansy!

forest: what?

tendentious: something a caller to mike malloy said.

forest: \oh

tendentious: not about mike.
tendentious: about YOU

forest: This is the core of the conclusions of the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff, examining the metaphores that liberals and conservatives use in their internal cognitive processes of how they see the country

tendentious: that you're a pansy?

forest: Conservatives use "strick father family" metaphore for the country. Liberals use "nurturing parent family" metaphores

tendentious: right. you're a pansy!

forest: They believe this is the best kind of family and use that as a metaphore for how the country should be run

tendentious: you should post this conversation

forest: you should blow me

tendentious: shut up shut up shut up

forest: blow me blow me blow me

tendentious: liberal vs conservative!

forest: in that case it's spank me spank me spank me
forest: nurture me nurture me nurture me

tendentious: debate in 14 minutes
tendentious: on cspan

forest: I'm watching it on tape right now.
forest: I'm not happy with any of them but Dean.

tendentious: well, yeah. what about the darling of the left, kucinich?

forest: he's OK
forest: and sharpton, actualy

tendentious: i think sharpton should be the press guy for the democratic nominee!

forest: I need you to tell me if it's going to rain

tendentious: ok, i'm a liberal, "it's going to rain"

Yeah, that's where my time goes.

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 10:16:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Quotes For Bush To Use

I'm going to write soon about Howard Dean, and the South Carolina Democratic candidate gathering last night. But my first impression is that Leiberman handed the Republicans more than a few quotes to use against the eventual Democrat candidate in the next election. For example, he complained about "big spending" programs like health care.

Update - in the debate Leiberman proudly says he's one of the Democrats who came out against Clinton. Isn't that just great.

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 09:34:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Who Did "We" Hire?

See this story, U.S. Hires Christian Extremists to Produce Arabic News.

The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for mostly Muslim Iraq. It is being produced in a studio – Grace Digital Media – controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel. That's grace as in "by the grace of God."

Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner, Cortes Randell. Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting, brought her in as an investor in Federal News Service, and then she forced him out of his own company.

Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network. When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service." According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today."

"Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims.
...

But Mower said she couldn't get us a copy of the contract between BBG and Grace Digital Media. Nor could she say how Grace Digital was chosen as the production studio. [emphasis mine - DJ]

Grace News Network proclaims that it will be a "unique tool in the Lord's ministry plan for the world," according to the company's mission statement. "Grace News Network provides networking links and portals to various ministries and news services that will be of benefit to every Christian believer and seeker of truth."

Just how DID they get this contract? Was this an open bidding process or more corrupt insider cronyism from the Bush gang? Funneling government money to the Christian far-right wingnuts.

Hiring this company doesn't fit at all with the WORDS the Administration is using. In fact, it contradicts those words. So many of their actions contradict their words, and so few support them. If you look at what they are DOING instead of the fog of words they are spreading around, you'll see that they appear to be following an Ann Coulter foreign policy, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

--- Posted at 5/04/2003 09:31:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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It's All About The WORDS

NY Times today, Taking the 'Victory' Out of City's Victory Parades

While Bush administration officials say they welcome the offer, they also say they worry about how such events may be perceived around the world and are urging a different kind of parade for a different kind of war fought in a very different era.

Rather than victory parades that might appear to be gloating, the Pentagon would prefer celebrations that emphasize the recognition of fighting forces' accomplishment in toppling a dictator.
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The Bush administration, which has shown great discipline in preparing its public message during the campaign against terror, wants the world to see an America honoring liberation, freedom and democratic ideals, and not gloating over a fallen adversary in the Arab world.

They're not allowed to use the word "victory." And now it was about "toppling a dictator" instead of saving the United States from the imminent threat posed by Iraq's massive weapons of mass destruction programs?

It's all about the WORDS to this crowd. It's all psy-ops, here and abroad. Lean to look at what they DO, not what they say. The words are just a cloud of smoke and fog and are designed to obscure what is happening.

Since they can't use "victory" they should just use the correct word, "OIL."

--- Posted at 5/03/2003 05:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Bush's Resume

tendentious found a link to Bush's resume, and it's just great!

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 08:55:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Understand Social Security

If you want to understand the Social Security Trust Fund and the charges by Republicans that it is a sham - and how Bush's tax cuts for the rich are really paid for with your retirement money - read this over at P.L.A.

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 08:40:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Democracy Dies Behind Closed Doors

Gary Hart's weblog has a great piece up, titled, Democracy Dies Behind Closed Doors . He asks, "Why is this administration so afraid to deal openly and honestly with the American people?"

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 04:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Kerry

I received an e-mail from the Democratic Party yesterday. (No this is not a big deal secret insider getting-my-instructions thing - you can sign up at their website and get the e-mails, too.) In the e-mail they have this from Sen. John Kerry:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
"President Bush has made it a top priority to stack the federal court with judges that represent the far right wing of his party. He will not miss an opportunity to nominate ultra-conservative judges to the nation's highest court, putting our most precious rights at grave risk. A retreat on our freedoms will affect all Americans. Everyone must get involved now in the fight to prevent Bush from stacking the Supreme Court with ideological extremists."

This is great to hear. I heard him speak on this subject at a fundraiser in December. When asked about Bush's extreme judicial appointments he said he would NOT oppose right-wing judicial appointments based on their ideology, only on their qualifications. I don't remember the exact words but I have verified this with someone else who was in the room at the time.

In yesterday's statement Kerry still does not clearly say he will personally vote against right-wing judicial nominees. (Kerry's campaign website issues page does not list this as an issue.) It's great to hear that Sen. Kerry might be coming around and I'm not criticizing him if he is changing his position. I will, however, credit Governor Howard Dean for putting on the pressure that Kerry is (sort-of) responding to.

Sen. Kerry, think about this -- How many of the Supreme Court 5 did Gore vote for? Did you vote for far-right judges Richard Leon and Karen LeCraft Henderson who today struck down campaign finance?

I was an enthusiastic Kerry supporter until I met him. I'll still support him if he is the nominee. But...

Note - I called the Kerry campaign for clarification on his position this morning but the call was not returned as promised before 5pm EST, so I assume they went home. I've had this experience of the Kerry campaign not calling back before.

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 01:55:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Words

In the speech last night President Bush very clearly said that the Iraq war was part of his 'pledge' to bring to justice the terrorists responsible for Sept. 11:

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on.

That terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology, gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America.
...

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals and educate all of their children.
...

Nineteen months ago I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight nearly one half of Al Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.
...

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding.

And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.
...

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th, the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.
...

The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland and we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike. "

Tom Daschle said yesterday Bush deserved "great credit" for his leadership during the war.

I have something to say to the Democratic leadership. What Bush is doing is dishonest, immoral, illegal and extremely dangerous. Please take a step back and look at what has been happening to our country and the world. Bush has made WAR on another country without provocation of any kind, using lies like those in this speech to redirect America's anger to serve his own financial and political purposes. There is no greater crime than making unprovoked war on another country. Their fog of propaganda and lies has obscured your vision. You must get past the words and look at what they did -- I'll say it again, the United States has illegally invaded another country! There is no way to get around that. All the words about liberty and freedom and our mission and good and evil are just talk. Read the transcript of the speech and look at what is really being said -- reading the words will help you get past the sophisticated psy-ops tricks that are being used. Compare what is being said to what has really occurred. If you let Bush get away with this you are allowing this precedent to stand, abdicating your responsibility to all of the people of the United States and the world. This must be about more than just your re-election.

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 01:13:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Thom Hartmann

I hope everyone listens to Thom Hartmann's radio show, available over the internet.

Update - Now Peter Werbe's show is on. I hope everyone listens to Peter Werbe's radio show, available over the internet.

Update - Now Mike Malloy is on. I hope everyone listens to Peter Werbe's radio show, available over the internet. (Scroll to "Live Program Stream" and click.)

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 10:52:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Okay, Okay

Okay, okay, I know you're probably already seen this, but I think it is such an important piece that I'm going to point to it, too. William Greider has a piece in The Nation titled, Rolling Back the 20th Century. Greider details the goals of the right, and I think it is worth reading the whole thing. I read it a few days ago and have been thinking about it a lot. Here's just a little bit.

The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

Please read this important piece. I think Greider is right-on with his analysis.

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 10:46:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Who Will Be The First?

Quaker in a Basement asks the question, "Who Will Be First? (and When?)" As I read the posts on this site, this blogger sounds a lot like me! Must be brilliant! (You have to scroll down to that entry because blogspot links aren't working today - as usual...)

--- Posted at 5/02/2003 09:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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What's The Number?

The official unemployment rate measures people who are actively looking for work (about 8.5 million?). But we are in an unusual situation because so many people have been out of work for so long that they have given up (1.6 million), taken part-time jobs (another 4.7 million?), or are "underemployed" -- working at a lower level or for less pay than before -- former execs working at Wal-Mart, etc. I haven't seen a good statistic for how many people are really out of work or underemployed. And I would usually know where to look for a number like this. I think I read somewhere that 75 million people are not working now. That includes students, stay-at-home wives, elderly, etc. Plus we have 2 million in prison now. Does anyone know where to look for the real unemployment number?

--- Posted at 5/01/2003 03:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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More Lies?

As well as not finding and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - or anything else except oil to justify our invasion - the Times of India asks where are all the Saddam "doubles?" The whole story is good, and funny.

--- Posted at 5/01/2003 10:01:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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