Today's Google Experiment - Why Are We Going To War?

I was listening to a talk show on local station KGO, and the guest William Clark was talking about a paper he has written describing how Iraq switching their sale of oil from dollars to Euros imperils our economy. Here is the paper, The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth, by W. Clark and it is well worth reading.

During the radio show, they said that the URL for finding this paper was too long to give over the air, but that listeners can go to Google and search for "The real reason behind the Iraq war". They said it would be the first that comes up. (It isn't.)

This morning I searched, and it turned out that it wasn't the first item found (in fact I never found it that way). But Google found hundreds of items when searching for the real reasons we are going to war, and this is what I want to write about. In fact, the first item found by Google was very good and summed up the problem. This was an editorial from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.

The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing."

Here is what I want to say today: Everyone understands that we are going to war for other reasons than those stated by the Bush administration. Everyone!

In this morning's San Jose News, as usual, most of those letters to the editor favoring this war had the premise that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Most of the people I have talked to who favor the war cite this as their reason. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, they reinforce this repeatedly. President Bush implies, but does not say, that Iraq was behind 9/11. (I've learned that to understand what right wingers are saying, look to what the intended audience hears.)

Also in today's San Jose News is this front page story, Key advisers see Iraq war as test case.

Long before he branded Iraq part of the "axis of evil," when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were standing and the White House was Democratic, Iraq was a potential target on George W. Bush's radar screen.

``I am very worried about a Saddam Hussein who's not held to account,'' then-Texas Gov. Bush said in a television interview in January 2000. ``And if I'm president, and catch him in any way, shape or form building weapons of mass destruction, they'll be taken out.''

Now, galvanized by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and undeterred by the strong objections of longtime allies, President Bush is poised to make good on that vow. Iraq has emerged from the shadows of the 2000 campaign to become the bull's-eye for America's military as it prepares to act for the first time under the Bush administration's policy of pre-emptive attacks.

The looming war with Iraq has been brewing for several years, analysts said, advocated by a coterie of conservative foreign-policy specialists who were among Bush's top campaign advisers and now hold key positions in the administration -- among them Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

They view Iraq not only as a significant national security threat, but also as an ideal proving ground for the full military might of the United States and a perfect test bed for democracy in the Middle East.

On the day that the war is likely to start, a major newspaper is still trying to find the real reason we are going to war.

The President says we are going to war to protect Americans from the imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But in reality, everyone understands that we are going to war for other reasons than those stated by the Bush administration. Everyone!

Those opposed to this war pick apart the publicly stated justifications. We know that there is no valid evidence that Iraq is currently engaged in developing nuclear weapons - that the evidence presented by the Bush administration has turned out to be phony. Then over time, we were presented with different reasons and justifications, many clearly developed using focus groups. "He gassed his own people" is a focus-group phrase, for example. As each new reason was shot down by facts, new reasons were presented. Then the facts were shot down.

Those supporting this war also understand that there is another, hidden agenda. But like so much of the right-wing agenda, they understand that the public face must be separated from the real agenda. They understand and agree that the public must be deceived. They wink and nod, and it is understood by all. How many right wing pundits, webloggers and other spokesmen have recently switch to the "war is to free the people of Iraq" rationale? But the President says that this war is necessary because of the imminent threat to Americans from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Are these right wingers calling the President a liar? Yes, and with the full understanding that they are supporting the right's real agenda.

David Brock, in his book Blinded by the Right, writes from the inside about this shared sense of purpose among "movement conservatives," and the shared understanding that the ends justifies the means. He also writes about how they were taught that lying is not only allow, but necessary.

One booklet on political tactics published by the Weyrich organization [Free Congress] included a section saying that for the right reasons lying was to be regarded as a permissible "mental reservation." (Moon, too, taught that lying is necessary, even under oath, when one is doing "God's work.")

As I said, NO ONE believes that we are going to war for the publicly stated reasons - that Iraq has refused to disarm and that this represents an imminent threat to the safety of the American public. Very often I see this wink-and-nod "other hidden agenda" understanding at work in thew writings of the right wingers, and I urge the reader to look for this and point it out as well. ANY time you read or hear a right winger saying that this war is to "free the people of Iraq," or any reason other than the imminent threat to Americans from weapons of mass destruction, ask them why they are calling the President a liar!

Update - Illustrating my point, this vomitous story, with vomitous headline Bush Scrutinizes Final Iraq Battle Plans:

Bush himself sent Congress formal notice that he had determined "further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone" would not be enough to contain the "threat posed by Iraq." Bush has contended that Saddam possesses chemical and biological weapons that he could use on his enemies or slip to terrorists.

This is the official reason, given to Congress to justify this war.

Mystery Disease Not As Bad As It Could Be

NY Times: Hong Kong Working to Grasp Scope of Mysterious Ailment:

HONG KONG, March 18 — Government health officials said here today that a small but unknown number of carriers of a mysterious kind of pneumonia were somewhere in this city, but they added that the moderate rate of new infections around the world suggested that the disease was not as contagious as initially feared.

Mystery Disease is Identified

Doctors in Hong Kong Identify Killer Virus.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Doctors in Hong Kong have made a major breakthrough in identifying a deadly pneumonia virus which has killed about 10 people and left hundreds ill around the world, which will make it easier to treat, The Standard newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Proportionality

This is up on Drudge Report this morning:

THE BLITZ, THEN SIEGE OF BAGHDAD STARTS IN FOUR DAYS: Troops hope to have Saddam Hussein surrounded in Baghdad within four days after an unprecedented aerial blitz which will obliterate one in 10 major buildings in Iraq... Developing...

This fits with one of these rumors we have been hearing -- that the Iraq war is happening because the right wingers want to demonstrate America's superior power to the world. They want to show the world what we can do to anyone that opposes us.

Destroying one of every ten major buildings in Iraq? Because we think Iraq might attack us someday? Because, as Bush said in his speech last night, they might attack us in five years?

"We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year or five years the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now where it arises before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities."

Destroy one in ten major buildings in Iraq and how many thousands of civilians because they might attack us in five years? Will the world ever forgive us?

Will the worldwide defensive arms race this will trigger ever end?

Cases of Killer Pneumonia Spread Around the World

Cases of Killer Pneumonia Spread Around the World.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A deadly form of pneumonia is moving rapidly around the world as travelers from parts of Asia spread the disease, creating new suspected cases in Britain, Germany, Australia and the United States.

Dixie Chicks

Apology from (not the real) Dixie Chicks here. Excerpt:

I hope everyone understands, I'm just a young girl who grew up in Texas. As far back as I can remember, I heard people say they were ashamed of President Clinton. I saw bumper stickers calling him everything from a pothead to a murderer. I heard people on the radio and tv like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott bad mouthing the President and ridiculing his wife and daughter at every opportunity.

I heard LOTS of people disrespecting the President. So I guess I just assumed it was acceptable behavior.

Thanks to Bartcop.

Canary In The Blog Mine

Will the Bush regime use war as an excuse to round up the opposition and put them in camps? Here's a suggestion: If you don't see any posts from Atrios for 24 hours, head for Canada as fast as you can.

Buy French Now

Buy French Now!

Demonstrations in U.S.

You won't get this from the mainstream press: Liberal Oasis, How Many Americans Said No to War? A detailed study of 287 demonstrations for peace in the United States on February 15, 2003.

Mystery Disease

Killer Pneumonia Infections Mount, Fear Spreads:

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The number of Hong Kong people infected with a severe and contagious strain of pneumonia had nearly doubled, officials said on Monday as airports and hospitals around the world went on high alert for carriers.

Proud PETA Supporter

Dear Hamster,

I'm a proud PETA supporter. Here's something I wrote on this subject a while ago.

Visitors to Seeing the Forest

Friday was Seeing the Forest's most-read day, with approx. 3,500 unique visitor IPs visiting the site! I'm not sure how many unique visitors that translates to because many companies, universities, organizations, etc. would register as a single unique IP.

Someone in the last couple of days was unique IP visitor number 50,000. Congratulations! The number of people visiting Seeing the Forest is growing quite a bit, with each week surpassing the previous by a good number. It seems that more people are showing up to read weblogs!

Fellow Bloggers - If you see your weblog listed in my blogroll on the left, please consider adding a link to Seeing the Forest to your weblog. If you think you SHOULD be linked over on the left, let me know. (Instapundit is the only right-winger listed because I'm hoping he links back one of these days.) (Yes, this is blatant "trolling for links", also called Link Sluttage.)

Also, if you want blogrolls to let readers know when you have recently posted, you need to set your weblog to ping weblogs.com. If you're using Blogger, there's a setting under Publishing that lets you do this. I know you can ping them manually, and the instructions are in their FAQs, but the FAQs are not available right now. I'll post that here later, when their site is working again.

I have my blogroll set to put "|UP|" to the left of a weblog's name if there is a new post there within the last 3 hours.

More On That Mystery Illness

NY Times, Cases of Mysterious Illness Increase Over the Weekend.

The number of cases of what the World Health Organization now calls "severe acute respiratory syndrome" continued to rise through the weekend and spread to additional countries, especially in Southeast Asia.

More than 150 patients sick with the disease have been found in Hong Kong, mainland China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as in Canada, the World Health Organization announced over the weekend, calling the disease a "worldwide health threat."

I'll keep posting on this as I see stories.

Israeli Army Executes American Woman

The Israeli army executed an unarmed American woman who was peacefully protesting the demolition of a house, by using a bulldozer to cover her with sand until she was crushed to death.

Update -

"The American girl was lying in front of the bulldozer when the bulldozer took sand and put it over her," Ali al-Shaar, a witness to the incident, told Reuters.

and

"The bulldozer put sand on her and kept crushing her," said Nicholas Dure, a fellow protester.

Doctors who examined Corey's body at Rafah's main hospital said she died from suffocation.

Not Just Because He's My Friend

tendentious has some good stuff to read.

The Wurlitzer Campaign To Intimidate Mexico

This story, Mexico fears backlash from vote on Iraq, describes fear among Mexicans about a U.S. popular backlash should Mexico vote against war with Iraq. If you look between the lines, you can see the Wurlitzer operating.

Here's the right-wingers' strategy: Whip up lots of news making it look as though Americans are angry at France, are boycotting French products and otherwise retaliating against the French for voting against Bush's war. Then make it clear to Mexico, "This could happen to YOU if you don't play ball." Even drop not-so-subtle hints that Mexican-Americans risk harm if Mexico votes against war.

Mexico's ambassador to the United States was active this week trying to head off the sort of hostility that is pestering France, featuring boycotts on cheese, mocking jokes and bitter commentary on French diplomacy and French character.

But just WHO is whipping up this anti-French stuff, putting out "bitter commentary," and just WHO is holding it out to Mexico as an example of what can happen to them? It was the Republicans in Congress who changed the name of french fries and french toast to "freedom fried" and "freedom toast." This isn't a "popular" backlash, this is Republicans. And this,

Mexico expert Robert Pastor said his recent appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" TV show on the Fox network convinced him that there is real danger of an anti-Mexican backlash.

"He just leveled into Mexico," Pastor said of the show's host, Bill O'Reilly. "I can assure you that these things resonate out there," he said.

I'm not going to go into more examples of WHO is spreading this, but there are plenty of the usual suspects involved - listen to talk radio for an hour to see what I mean. This isn't "popular" backlash, it is ENGINEERED, MANIPULATED backlash, and we know who is sooooo good at that, don't we?

So WHO is threatening Mexico with this treatment, should they vote against war?

President Bush increased that intensity last week in statements that provoked alarm in Mexico, where they made front-page news. 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.

And in case we missed his point, the Wurlitzer was out there amplifying it. But it isn't working:

Peter H. Smith, professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, said Bush's comments were widely perceived in Mexico as a threat and may have eliminated any possibility that Fox would line up with the United States at the United Nations.

"The costs to Fox of taking the U.S. side would be very high, higher than they would have been if they hadn't received those threats," Smith said. He said Fox could not afford to be perceived as submitting to pressure from an American president.

What did the bonehead-in-chief THINK the Mexicans would do in response to his Godfather-style threats? "You're with us, or you're against us." Mexico says, "Well, I guess we are just going to have to be against you, then."

Mystery Disease is Spreading!

I've been reading about a mystery pneumonia that started in Hong Kong. Today the UN issued a worldwide "Emergency Travel Alert." Read this story, UN Warns of Worldwide Threat from Killer Pneumonia to learn more. I'll be following this story and will post here if it continues. It appears to be in Toronto, Vancouver and New York now.

WHO issued its first global alert for 10 years earlier this week because of the speed at which the disease travels and because patients are not responding to the usual treatments for pneumonia, Thompson said.

"As reports of cases are confirmed, you will see that there is a very high attack rate. When they get sick, they get very sick," he said.

"We have been doing tests for weeks now in the world's best laboratories and we still do not know whether it is a virus or bacteria," the spokesman added.

Forget about terrorism and Iraq for a minute - this could be more serious.

The New York Times also has a story today, Rare Health Alert Is Issued by W.H.O. for Mystery Illness.

Reported cases have come from Canada and six countries in Asia — Hong Kong and elsewhere in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, the health organization said. There have been no reports of the illness in the United States. But yesterday, an ill passenger and two companions who traveled from New York City were removed from a flight after it arrived in Frankfurt and put in isolation in a German hospital.

Later in the story:

W.H.O. and American officials urged all travelers to be aware of the main signs. In addition to the breathing problems, the illness can cause a dry cough and other flulike symptoms that are thought to develop two to seven days after exposure. They usually start with a sudden onset of high fever and go on to include muscle aches, headache, sore throat and shortness of breath.

Standard lab tests often show low numbers of white blood cells and platelets, which help blood to clot.

Sorry, Mr. President, it doesn't look like you can blame this on Iraq or Bill Clinton, so I know you'll just ignore it.

Update - The Washington Post has a story up about it now, as well.

A Big Deal?

Is this as potentially as big a deal as I think?

Rockefeller expressed concern that the forgeries "may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."

"The implication of Senator Rockefeller's letter is that the intelligence community forged these documents to somehow bolster the case against Iraq."

FBI asked to investigate whether documents were forged in an attempt to get us into a war. Wow.

Who Is Our Economy For? (II)

Jobs Jumping Ship:

"As painful as February's big job cuts were, what's even more painful is that many of those jobs are never coming back, as U.S. employers in a wide range of industries move more and more jobs overseas."

So who benefits from this? You think you participate in our economy because you have a job? Well, guess what? YOUR function in the economy is to help someone ELSE get richer. It's only thanks to unions that you get paid what you get paid, and get a vacation (if you do) and insurance (if you do), and have any protections at all. Now the corporations have a way around even that.

Start asking the question, Who is our economy for?

Character Assassination As Election Tactic

Daily Kos writes about the right-wing "Wurlitzer" that will attack all the non-Bush candidates in 2004. From the Daily Kos piece:

I've always said I will support the candidate that can best fight back against the Wurlitzer, since 2004 will be nasty. Remember that Rove hopes to amass a $250 million warchest to pummel the eventual Democrat nominee to the ground.

My jury is still out on Kerry (who may be hoping that nobody is paying attention to the early character assassination being waged by the Boston Globe). Edwards has been doing a great job rebutting the "trial lawyer" slurs.

Dean now gets his turn at bat, though the "he's a liar" meme is just a tast of what's to come. Just wait until the "Civil Unions" slurs and innuendo begin.

I think he is exactly right. My very first blog piece about "the forest" had this:

Let's see if we can see the forest. Look back to the 2000 election. Step back and look at the candidates. The Democrat's candidate was a well respected, well liked, extremely experienced, Vietnam vet, former seminary student, character beyond reproach, faithfully married family man, foreign policy expert, with many accomplishments including being the person in the Congress most responsible for advancing the Internet... The Republicans ran a foul-mouthed thoroughly inexperienced scandal-ridden (Harken oil, Rangers stadium, recipient of bribes directed at his father) failed businessman, continuously bailed out of jams by his father's connections, draft-dodger (worse, he got into the Nat. Guard through connections and then played hooky!), former drunk, probable drug-user, kids constantly in trouble, with a campaign entirely financed by large corporations obviously looking for favors.

But by election time the only issue was “character”, and the character in question was the Democratic candidate’s! That's the forest.

I'm still wondering what Gore was thinking. Clinton WON because he set up a "war room" to respond to character assasination attacks. Awareness that the right uses character assasination as a tactic to win elections was part of the strategy from day one! Did Gore somehow miss that? Then we saw 8 long years of massive, well-funded character assasination against Clinton. Did Gore somehow miss that? So in the 2000 election how did Gore respond to the character assasination directed against him? HE DIDN'T RESPOND!

Daily Kos is exactly right. The candidate that runs against Bush must be ready, willing and eager to fight back against right-wing character assasination! That is number uno on my list of qualities I want to see in a candidate.

The individual lies are just trees. See the forest: THEY LIE!

Jim Hightower Endorses Commonweal Institute

Jim Hightower has endorsed the Commonweal Institute.

"It's always good to put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion. The folks at the Commonweal Institute do the heavy mental lifting so agitators like me can arm ourselves on the front lines of the ideological battles taking place every day in America. For too long progressives have walked fearful of their shadows, whimpering and whining about what's wrong and fighting amongst themselves over crumbs. With the help of the Commonweal Institute, that time is over."
-- Jim Hightower, National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of If the Gods had Meant us to Vote They Would Have Given us Candidates

For details on how the Commonweal Institute is going to help fight back against the right, please read How To Fight Back.

Chna

The Agonist takes a look at what China is thinking.

The Press Committing Suicide

Over at The Daily Brew, read The Consequences of Failure.

"I have never seen my peers as frightened as they are now" commented Mr. Hersh, who was recently described as a "terrorist" by Senior White House advisor Richard Perle. Mr. Hersh also spoke of his own frustration with the Bush administration. "There is no real standard of integrity because the White House doesn't have any," he said.

While Mr. Hersh's observation that the White House is deliberately intimidating the Washington press may be correct, it is disingenuous at best to blame President Bush for the White House's success in this effort. The catastrophic failure of our national press corps began well before Mr. Bush assumed office, at a time when American journalists were free to critique Mr. Bush with little fear of retribution.

I wrote something along these lines here and I think it's worth reading again.

The history of right-wing treatment of the press is not good. Media people - do you really think it's a good idea to be shilling for right-wingers?

Press people - it might help your careers today, but these people do not like you. That's putting it mildly. You are not earning their respect.

Remember what Ann Coulter said, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." She said this after you helped put Bush in office! Did you earn her respect? No, she wants you dead and thanks to you she and her buddies are in a much better position to accomplish this.

No matter how much you suck up to the right wingers, they still call you "the liberal media." You're first in line, even before the gays, even before the atheists. If you keep helping them gain more and more power you'll be the first they dispose of.

Standing Together

I wrote a comment after this post over at over at Electrolite. They're talking about Ralph Nader's effect on the election and whether the Greens are partly responsible for the terrible things that the right-wingers are now inflicting on us and the world. Here is my comment - of course edited and expanded as necessary to make me look better:

I used to be a union guy.

Think about how unions evolved. It was the fight of the working people against the moneyed interests. Workers learned that there IS a way to fight against the overwhelming power of money and that way is to band together, form a coalition, stand as one, etc.

These are lessons that were learned they VERY HARD way! These lessons were learned over time and through struggle. They were learned in very tough battles that eventually won minimum wages, the 40 hour work week, vacations, pensions, health care, worker safety and other worker protections that brought us a middle class and made America what it is today!

The word 'union' means everyone standing together because they are stronger standing together than if they split into small factions. 'Solidarity' is another union expression.

'Scab' is another union expression. A scab is someone who breaks ranks. A few people breaking ranks can cause EVERYONE to lose!

The Democratic Party has always been a coalition of factions banding together to fight for average people. The Naderites broke the coalition, and look what happened!!! We ALL need to learn from this!

Anyone who couldn't see what was coming if Bush was elected was only fooling themselves. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Refusing to vote for Gore because the Clinton/Gore administration was only able to accomplish SOME of what we believe in ignored that the right-wingers were going to smash EVERYTHING we believe in! It ignored the horrible violent history of Nixon and Reagan in Vietnam and Central America and the overthrowing of governments and oppression of people all over the world! It ignored the terrible damage done by Reagan to environmental and economic and worker and women's concerns! I'll repeat - anyone who claims they didn't know that Bush would be this bad was willfully ignoring the obvious!

My very first weblog post was on this topic!

Economic Double-Whammy

There were two really bad reports today on the economic front. Retail sales plunged in February. It was the worst month since November, 1991. And the only reason it wasn't worse was that gas stations had higher sales because of higher gas prices!

"Consumers were downbeat," said Richard Yamarone, economist with Argus Research Corp. "There was not much for the consumer to be happy about last month."

And while new jobless claims were very high, the number of people continuing unemployment was very high.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, rose to 3.5 million in the week ended March 1, the latest data available, from a revised 3.48 million the prior week.

All of this bad news makes it look like we're heading into a "Dubya-dip" recession. In response, the stock market had its biggest one-day increase of the year.

Which Corporation Owns Your Vote

I missed this last week! Which Corporation Owns Your Vote over at AlterNet.

And corporate control of America's vote has reached beyond the borders of this nation. The last week of February, New York's "Newsday" reported in a story by staff writer Mark Harrington that: "Election.com, a struggling Garden City start-up scheduled to provide online absentee ballots for U.S. military personnel in the 2004 federal election, has quietly sold controlling power to an investment group with ties to unnamed Saudi nationals, according to company correspondence."

This article also goes into the history of how corporations became "persons" with the same rights as people.

Boycott The War!

Here's a way to actively boycott the war-makers. The following is from ">Be The Cause:

Boycott the War!
It can be stopped

• Download a Flyer • Criteria for Selecting Corporations • Members of this Coalition


Our current administration has been dismissing our vocal opposition on War. No Longer! Now, it is time to take our protests to the next level. We will hit them where it hurts the most – in their wallets.

We are beginning a global boycott of companies that make significant financial contributions to this administration. We will not purchase services or products from:

Kraft (Subsidiary of Phillip Morris)
Contact: Michael Mudd, Senior Vice President
Tel: 847-646-2868 or pr@kraft.com
Address (HQ): Three Lakes Drive, Northfield, IL 60093, USA

Some popular brands are Maxwell House, Starbucks*, Tang, Oscar Mayer, Taco Bell*, California Pizza Kitchen*, DiGiorno, Kool-Aid, Velveeta, Capri Sun*, Philadelphia, Jacobs, Post, Milka, Old English, Cheez Whiz, Bull's-Eye, Shake ‘n Bake, Oven Fry, Nabisco, Milk-Bone (Dog food), Jell-O, Oreo, 100% Bran, Breyers, Chips Ahoy!, Marshmallow Twirls, Pecanz, Honey Maid, Ritz, Planters, Toblerone, Altoids, Grey Poupon, Cream of Wheat, Triscuit, Handi-Snacks, Lunchables. For a more detailed list click on above link.

* are registered trademarks owned and licensed by their respective companies and not by Kraft.

Exxon-Mobil
Contact: Mr. Lee R. Raymond - Chairman & CEO
Tel: (800) 252 1800 or Contact Form
Address: 5959 Las Colinas Boulevard, Irving, Texas, 75039-2298, USA.

Pepsico Inc
Contact: Donald M. Kendall - Co-founder (USA)
Tel: (914) 253-3055 or (914) 253-2000
Email: Pepsico
Address:700 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577, USA.

Some popular brands are A&W All-American Food, Long John Silvers, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Frito-Lay, Doritos, Pepsi-Cola, 7Up, Mountain Dew, Lipton Iced Tea (in partnership), Mirinda, Dole juice drinks, Frappuccino coffee beverages, Gatorade, Tropicana, Quaker. For a more detailed list click on above link

United Parcel Service
Contact: (800) PICK-UPS or Contact Form
Address: UPS Inc., 55 Glenlake Parkway, NE, Atlanta, GA 30328, USA

Wal-Mart Stores
Contact: S. Robson Walton - Chairman
Tel: (479) 273-8446 or Contact Form
Address: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Bentonville, Arkansas, USA.

Given the current situation of the economy we expect that even the slightest mention of a boycott should carry weight. It is our hope that once word on the boycott reaches the management teams of the selected corporations, they themselves will be the ones to carry our voices forward. Please feel free to voice your opinions by sending them e-mails and making phone calls to the respective companies.

Click here to download a PDF Flyer on the Boycott. Please print out the flyer and distribute everywhere! This can only work with overwhelming support.

--------------------------

I agree with this. Please forward this info to friends!

UPDATE! - Starbucks is NOT owned by Altria (Phillip Morris)! Either is Taco Bell! I'll see if I can learn why these names appear on this boycott list.

Update 2 - Taco Bell is managed by Pepsi, which is on the list. I'm still looking into what's going on here.

Update 3 - The PDF Flyer link is not working at this time. The website is still active.

Undemocratic

With the Republicans calling the Democratic filibuster against far-right judicial nominee Estrada "undemocratic," Nathan Newman writes about the undemocratic nature of the Senate itself.

Not In The Original German

I don't remember ever reading a column by Pat Buchanan before this and agreeing with every word in it! But I did this time!

Enron and Other Things

Whatever happened to Enron, anyway? Did anyone ever go to jail? Did anyone ever get their retirement money back?

Whatever happened to the investigation of Bush's insider trading at Harken Oil? He promised to release the Board meeting minutes? He promised to open up the notes of the SEC investigation.

Whatever happened to the SEC investigation of Cheney and Haliburton?

Media Fails Again

tendentious brings up an excellent point. A NYTimes poll (scroll to the very end) showing that 45% of us STILL believe that Saddam was personally involved in Sept. 11 is really a test score for the media. The headline should be, "Survey shows public uninformed - media gets an F."

Voodo Economics

As I write this, Treasury Secretary Snow is on the Jim Lehrer News Hour, saying that Bush's tax cuts will stimulate the economy, provide jobs and generate enough tax revenue to cover the deficits. This sounds like a variation on Bush's statements that "taxes take money out of the economy."

Let me tell you what "takes money out of the economy."

The tax cuts go primarily to the rich. They rich ALREADY spend all the money they want to spend - because they're rich - and aren't going to spend MORE. How do I know they aren't going to spend more if they get tax cuts? They already CAN spend more if they have ANY DESIRE to spend more. They're not going to spend more, they're going to lock up the additional money in the bank. And the bank they are going to put it in is in the Cayman Islands or somewhere else offshore, so even THAT won't help the U.S. economy. Tax cuts for the rich take money out of the economy.

The resulting deficits cause the government to cut spending or not increase spending that might have increased. GOVERNMENT SPENDING creates jobs. The government HIRES PEOPLE, or it BUYS THINGS FROM COMPANIES or it sends money to people who PURCHASE THINGS WITH THE MONEY. And before the right wingers took over, the government did all of this with policies designed to benefit Americans - higher wages, purchasing American goods from American companies, or truly helping the poor and elderly. Now they contract out the work to the lowest paying companies (who pay their execs millions), and try to cut our benefits. And now, because of the deficits, the federal government is not assisting the states with their deficits, so the states are laying off teachers, police, and thousands of other workers. Cutting government spending takes money out of the economy.

The government is supposed to be US. Our economy is supposed to be for US.

Also, see this piece, Tax Cuts Don't Raise Revenue.

Voting Machines

I haven't seen any articles about the voting machine problem in the last week or so. More and more counties are buying voting machines that cannot be audited, and there are suspicions about the ownership of the companies that manufacture the machines. Regardless of the ownership issue - do you want to have voting machines that have no way to independently verify what the machine records. Never mind the potential for vote tampering - what happens if the machine just breaks? Do you just not count all the votes from that precinct? Neighborhoods can tend to have like-minded voters, so losing all the votes from a machine can change local election results.

I hope everyone reading this talks to others, writes to their local, state and federal representatives, as well as writing to newspapers and calling talk shows. This is an extremely important subject!!!

From Germany

If you read nothing else today, read this recent cover article from Der Speigel, looking into the religious underpinnings of America's fixation on Iraq. In case you don't read it, I'll put bits of it here. It begins with this:

By attacking Baghdad, US president George W. Bush wants to fulfill a divine order. In the highly religious United States, there has rarely been such a deep connection between national power interests and fundamentalist false piety. Christian fanatics are calling for a crusade against Islam.

The press in other countries is giving more coverage to the Christian vs Islam aspects of Bush's war plans. The story also goes into Bush's personal history.

The next day, he was severely hung-over and vowed to stay dry from then on. His wife Laura said that he went back and forth with this resolution for one year, but kept falling off the wagon. One day, at the end of a week-long drinking binge, he woke up and looked at his vomit-covered face in the mirror. He fell to his knees and prayed for God's help. America loves such stories of the return of a lost son.

A little further into the article:

The decision to give up alcohol was probably his first somewhat momentous and independent decision. Apparently, however, he was unable to give himself sufficient credit for having accomplished this about-face on his own, instead feeling that he had a higher power to thank. Since then, he has become one of about 60 million Americans who view themselves as "born-again Christians" and constantly profess gratitude to their God for having reformed them. Incidentally, Bush has said that he considers Jesus to be one of the most important political philosophers of all time, "because he helped me give up drinking."

After 9/11:

Heads of state only noticed this change after September 11th, when they arrived to pay their condolences and make inquiries. To them, Bush no longer seemed like an uninformed, disinterested lightweight. Although he is still not well-informed and worldly, and he continues to become grotesquely muddled in language, and he has trouble relying on his memory, his basic stance has since become clear and unwavering: Anyone who is not with us is against us.

And a little further:

Bush has confirmed his first rebirth with the fact that, in spite of a lack of talent, he has been called to do greater things. The second rebirth has launched this belief in predestination into the historic realm. Weak presidents can be dangerous, because they give free rein to their subordinates. However, religious presidents can make the world a worse place by spectacularly failing in their efforts to improve it.

It goes into America's religious nature, leading to a discussion of how this affects Europe:

Since the attacks on September 11th, the apocalypse of John, Book of Revelations, is experiencing a booming comeback in the fundamentalist churches of America. In light of the military campaign against Saddam, the simple-minded exegetes of the last book of the New Testament do not shy away from even the most uninspired attempts to connect this puzzling piece of scripture to present-day events. To them, the United Nations represents the preferred forum of the Antichrist, because Revelations 17,13 teaches that the kings of the earth "will transfer their power and strength to the animal." The pope, also an opponent of war, is chastised as a "whore of Babylon" because, according to Revelations 17,9, its throne is on "seven mountains," just as Rome lies on seven hills. The fact that the EU exists as a result of the Treaties of Rome makes all of Europe an instrument of the devil.

There's a LOT more there. So go read. If this article is typical of how Europe is talking about us, our standing and credibility in the world has certainly changed.

Thanks to Robert Hildebrand of Exposing the Right for pointing this article out to me.

My Computer Forgot

This morning my WinXP computer forgot all of its "cookies," so I have to enter every password and identify myself at every website. So far I have had to enter passwords for Blogger, My Yahoo, Site Meter, NY Times. Don't tell me about the patch that fixes this - this is a completely up-to-date system. Previously it forgot it's power manager settings, putting the computer on standby when I thought it was hibernating, causing the battery to run out, shut down the computer, and lose everything I was working on.

This is my laptop, necessary for work at a previous job in a Windows environment.

I have a G4 Mac at home, a little bit too large to carry around. The problem there is we are stuck on System 9. We have a Wacom tablet that uses the ADB connection. We have a USB adapter for it and it works great. But Wacom won't write a driver for OSX for the ADB tablets. They're trying to force people to pay another $350 for a new tablet.

We won't give in to that kind of extortion. Hence, System 9 and future computer purchases will be Windows machines. (If they would stop forgetting their settings.)

Please don't tell me about Linux. You have no idea how much I know about Linux. And BeOS. You have no idea. I wish BeOS had been able to develop. Then I wouldn't be having any of these problems. Different problems, but not these problems. (And I'd be rich, but that's another story.)

God Appointed Bush

More about Bush and God in the following, from this Washington Post piece:

"It seems as if he is on an agenda from God," said Jim Cody, a Tennessee Christian broadcaster who was at a convention of religious broadcasters Bush addressed last month. "The Scriptures say God is the one who appoints leaders. If he truly knows God, that would give him a special anointing."

Cody's friend, Steve Clark of the Faith Baptist Tabernacle in Jamestown, Tenn., concurred that "Divine Providence" has a role in Bush's actions. "At certain times, at certain hours in our country, God has had a certain man to hear His testimony," he said.

I wrote about Justice Scalia's belief that God appoints leaders, in Scalia and Self-Government. Scalia feels that democracy is illegitimate and gets in the way of God's intentions. The above from the Washington Post backs up what I was writing.

Former president Jimmy Carter wrote about the religious aspect of the current Iraq situation in the New York Times today:

As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology.

I think we need to worry about whether our current leaders really do believe they are appointed by God, and desire to lead us into the end times.

In my experience, people who find themselves in situations they don't necessarily deserve come up with justifications for why they are there. For example, people who make tons of money in business decide they did so because they are brilliant. People who inherit positions have made up elaborate theories about bloodline superiority to explain why they are in the positions when others aren't. Bush certainly didn't work his way to the top, so maybe he has to justify his being there by deciding he was put there by God for a mission.

Update - I removed a line about the Southern Baptists, and will write another day about the split between the right wingers and others over the leadership of the Conference.

Serenity!

OH MY GOD! Go read Serenity, over at No More Mr. Nice Blog!!!

My Position on Iraq

I think all of the reasons for war, as started by the Bush administration, (with new reasons brought forward almost weekly,) are good goals: Disarming Iraq of what weapons of mass destruction might remain. Freeing the Iraqi people. Setting up a model democracy in the region and having a base from which to fight terrorists and project ideas of democratic and religious freedom. Protecting the oil from dictators or terrorists bent on disrupting the world's economy. Israel, the democracy in the region, would be safer.

All are good goals. All the other goals that I haven't covered are good goals.

So I'm for war: IF the world supports it and it is not a unilateral attack on a country that has done nothing to us and IF the Iraq war harms no civilians or military on either side, and IF it is over in a day or two, and IF Saddam's government is replaced by a government selected by ALL OF THE PEOPLE of Iraq, and IF the Kurds are protected and peacefully integrated into Iraqi and Turkish society, and IF it does not lead to destabilization of any other governments or regions, and IF it does not lead to increased hatred of the U.S., and IF it is not taken as an opportunity by China to seize Taiwan or North Korea to invade the South or Pakistan and India to go to war, and IF it does not lead to any terrorist acts by Islamic extremists.

And about a thousand more IFs.

And THIS support is only after we finish rebuilding Afghanistan and supervising a free and fair election there, and making sure that al-Queda is no longer an effective organization.

AND what about Kuwait? Weren't they supposed to become a free country after we went to war with Iraq to free THEM? What's up with THAT?

Conversions

Please read Thomas Spencer, writing about recent conversions over whether to go to war with Iraq.

Saturday Heartbreakers

Reading the paper on Saturdays can be such a depressing experience. You see, the Bush administration "buries" stories by releasing them late on Fridays, so they're in the weekend news cycle, when fewer people are paying attention. (The war hysteria is also proving to be a useful cover for their agenda.)

Here is a heartbreaker from today's LA Times, Oil Industry Granted Clean-Water Waiver.

The Bush administration has decided to give the oil and gas industry two years to comply with a storm-water regulation that goes into effect across the country Monday, and will consider granting a permanent exemption.

Environmental groups and environmentalists in Congress argued that the administration is granting special rights to a favored industry, at the risk of polluting rivers and lakes.

Do Businesses Pass Income Taxes On To Customers?

My comments posted in response to this entry over at MaxSpeak, (and edited to make me look good):

Businesses can't pass income taxes on to customers. Income taxes are not a cost. They are not a component in the price of an item or service. They are calculated based on the overall profitability of the entire business AFTER all sales have been accounted for during the fiscal year, and are unknown at the time of the sale.

Prices are based on what a company can get for its product or service. If the company has room to raise prices, and hasn't already, then it has not been operating as profitably as it should have been -- its management was not competent. A company might be profitable, and its competitor not profitable. Does the profitable company raise its prices to cover the previous year's tax, leaving its competitor with an advantage?

And if the company DOES successfully raise prices, then it will be much MORE profitable -- being profitable already this is a marginal increase in revenue after costs so it ALL goes to the bottom line -- and will pay much HIGHER taxes on THOSE profits. Does the business raise prices MORE to pass THOSE taxes on to customers? What kind of circle does this start? Anyway this is just to illustrate that it is a silly idea that a company can pass income taxes on to customers. The whole idea is just more right-wing propaganda.

I wrote about this, and also about whether cutting taxes causes businesses to hire more people here.

The So-Called "Press Conference"

One reason you don't see reporters asking tough questions is that it has been made clear that if they do, they will never be allowed to ask another question. So reporters have to choose between their career and asking one question -- and they know the President will dodge the answer anyway.

Another Bush Whopper - Will Lack of Credibility Lead to War?

In last night's press conference, Bush said this about Korea, "We've tried bilateral negotiations with North Korea. My predecessor in a good-faith effort entered into a framework agreement. The United States honored its side of the agreement; North Korea didn't. While we felt the agreement was enforced, North Korea was enriching uranium."

No, North Korea was NOT enriching uranium. The current problem with North Korea is about PLUTONIUM. There is a difference between plutonium and uranium, and how you obtain enough of each for bomb-making. Yes, North Korea had started new efforts to BUILD THE CAPACITY to enrich uranium, but this is NOT the cause of the current crisis. The problem with North Korea is that AFTER Bush sabotaged their negotiations with South Korea, and then insulted their leader ("pygmie") and then made it clear the U.S. intends to attack them after Iraq ("axis of evil"), THEN the North Koreans REstarted their PLUTONIUM bomb-making capability, which Clinton had worked out a deal to STOP, (and it STAYED stopped until this happened.)

Was this just a lie -- another attempt to trick the public into blaming Clinton? Or, worse, does Bush just NOT KNOW the difference between plutonium and uranium? I can understand that a guy who says "nuc-u-lar" might not understand, but what about his genius team of advisors? Well, these are the same advisors who let him go out and say "nuc-u-lar" in public. Obviously they've done polling and focus groups that show this pronunciation helps him get votes. So is his crack team of advisors more concerned about scoring domestic political points than about the impact of his statements on the rest of the world?

Making this kind of statement about Korea might help them trick the public into blaming Clinton, but it could also lead to war. Of course, if it works, and the public blames Clinton, then maybe allowing it to escalate into war would be good for Bush's re-election possibilities.

Is General Rove capable of triggering a war to win re-election? I think the fact that this question is on the minds of so many people in the world right now says it all. Maybe this is what's going on, maybe not. No one is really sure. No one thinks the Bush administration tells the truth. It's instructive to note that even the supporters of Bush's Iraq war have their theories about the real reasons the administration is pursuing this. They also don't accept Bush's stated reasons. They accept and appreciate that he lies to trick the public. Wink, wink, nod, nod - go ahead as long as it furthers our agenda...

My point is that this administration's credibility is gone, and this is what is most dangerous.

Questions for Bush

Thinking it Through wants to ask Bush some questions at tonite's rare, rare, rare, rare, rare press conference.

I would ask, "You say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and will use them. What happens to our forces if he really does have weapons of mass destruction and uses them? Aren't we going to need a draft to replace them?"

Cutting Spending

Here are two (revised to make me look better) comments I wrote, after reading this post at Brad DeLong's weblog:

Cutting Social Security and Medicare spending might move the costs a few steps away from the government, but it's a very short term fix.

Most of the elderly are still going to get expensive medical treatment, and the citizenry is going to pay for it one way or another. Everyone else's health care cost goes up, insurers raise rates, etc. If you think of paying for this spending as a tax, the tax just shifts to different payers. If you want to cut out the financial burden of caring for the elderly you have to pass laws allowing emergency rooms to refuse treatment. (I'm not advocating that, I'm pointing out that it doesn't do any good to just cut the budget at the Fed level.)

Cutting Social Security spending might also make the government's books look better in the short term, but then you're talking about the elderly cutting THEIR spending in response, so the grocery stores, landlords, etc. suffer, and the tax base erodes. And for those lucky enough to have kids that make enough money, those kids will send a few hundred dollars a month, and cut their own spending accordingly, and the economy drops, and the tax revenue drops. (A side note - the 80's ALSO began a wave of cutting off of pensions and companies moving to 401Ks which only benefit the upper middle... which raised stock prices, which passed the pension money up to the rich instead.)

So the Reagan/Bush tax cuts for the rich lead to government spending cuts which lead to costs increasing for the poor and middle class, (and companies that offer insurance.) Shifting even more costs from the rich to the rest of us. [Added, not in the original:] My point: Cutting spending just cuts the economy, which cuts tax revenues, which undoes some portion of the savings from cutting the spending, and, most important, IT HURTS PEOPLE. Cutting spending is not the answer.

Second comment:

I have a strong impression that everyone posting comments here is well-paid or comes from families that are. (One poster identified himself as a student.)

Here's some news - most of the people in the country don't make very much money and are falling further and further behind, and their health insurance is cutting back and cutting back - if they are lucky enough to have an employer that provides it at all - while the whole time the rich become vastly richer. For the majority of our elderly any cut in Social Security or Medicare would mean hunger. Real hunger. Many are already skipping meals to pay for essential drugs.

This is not a talking point, this is not a campaign line, this is not an academic discussion. This is what is happening out there in the real world of regular people who make the median and below while people like us are talking and talking.

Imagine yourself trying to survive even on the median and then imagine yourself trying to survive on Social Security AND paying for drugs that keep you alive! But here you're all talking about cutting back on Social Security and Medicare. What has happened to people?

Korea

I wonder if the reason the Bush administration seems to be ignoring the crisis with Korea is that Korea it isn't in the Bible.

Update - I took the dog for a walk, and thought about this. Here's what I'm getting at: is it possible that the Christian Right-Council for National Policy-Heritage Foundation-staffed, Scalia/God-selected Bush administration people are following a script they think they see in the Bible, with a Tim Lahaye "End Times" biblical vision of the Apocalypse, in which Bush is the divinely chosen Leader, with all of this nonsense reinforced in the Bible study sessions they have every morning in the White House?

In that script Iraq is Babylon, and Korea just isn't a problem to worry about. If that's the script they're following we can see why the Bush people aren't paying any attention to Korea - they just do not believe Korea will play a part in the coming conflagration that will lift them to Heaven and leave the rest of us to burn in Hell.

Pricing

If you have ever wondered how companies decide what prices to put on their products, here is a good article on the subject. I got this from Slashdot, and here is Slashdot's discussion of the article.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

This is a follow-up to February 25's piece, Some History of the Conservative Movement. This is a much revised version of something I posted here a few months ago.

There is a version of this, designed and formatted to be sent as an e-mail message for forwarding, available online at: http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/ltr030403.rtf

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

The right seems to be taking over everywhere. They are tearing down so much that we care about - environmental programs, family planning programs, basic "safety net" programs, causing massive budget deficits, etc. How did we get into this predicament and what do we do to get out of it? How did the right shift the center of American public opinion? And how can we beat them at their own game?

The Predicament - The extreme right-wing took complete control of the Federal Government on Nov. 5th. The solution -- Fight Back with the Commonweal Institute.

Those of us fighting for common sense policies that protect the environment, prevent corporations from abusing workers, investors and the communities around them, provide pregnant women with basic health care, and ensure that the rich pay their fare share of society's needs (among other things) are now reduced to fighting a rear-guard action to prevent further damage.

We see it every day in the headlines - education, health care, public parks and even roads, police and fire departments -- all face massive budget cuts. It seems you can't open up a paper or turn on the television without hearing about an environmental setback, a school closing, a hospital shutting down, the cost of health insurance rising or another corporation laying off massive numbers of workers after moving production overseas. It's just overwhelming!

This is not your grandmother's country.
What happened to the common sense, mainstream middle of the road politicians like Sen. James Jeffords that your grandmother used to cast votes for without hesitation? He had to leave his own party, saying the extremists have taken over! Why has the extreme right-wing pulled the country so far to the right that sometimes you have to look very closely to tell the difference? How did the "center" of the American political spectrum shift so radically to the right over the last three decades? And what can we do to shift it back?

What can we do about it?
It is important to understand what has been happening to us! How did the right shift the center of American public opinion? And how can we beat them at their own game? They have been so effective, maybe we ought to be doing some of what they've been doing! (Acting with honesty and ethics, of course!)

So I'd like to write about the right-wing movement's campaign to move the public to the right. By examining how it was done we can learn how to counter it, and move the public and the country back into balance, back to the center back to sanity. And then I'll describe the Commonweal Institute’s plan to do something about it.

Part 1 - What has been happening to us?

Pushed to the right.
The American public has been the target of an ongoing, deliberate, planned campaign to push them to the right.

Who is funding this campaign?
A small group of wealthy far-right and Christian-right individuals, foundations and corporations. Since the early 1970's, they have been pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars into a small group of think tanks and organizations in order to create the appearance of a much larger "movement." You might recognize some of the following names: The Heritage Foundation (founded in 1973), The American Enterprise Institute (founded in 1943, but whose budget exploded from $1 million a year in 1970 to $11 million a year by 1981), the Cato Institute (founded in 1977), the Free Congress Foundation (founded in 1977 by Paul Weyrich, who also helped found The Heritage Foundation), The Federalist Society (founded in 1982), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (founded in 1984). These organizations did not exist a few decades ago, but now are cited with overwhelming regularity by mainstream media and politicians. The research to back this up is on the Commonweal Institute's web site, at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/information.html. I also go into detail about this subject in a recent article, Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors?, online at http://hnn.us/articles/1244.html.

What's remarkable is that when you look at these, and about 500 other similar organizations that have sprung up since the early 1970’s, they are all funded by the same few people, corporations and foundations! You'll find that Richard Mellon Scaife and his family foundations, and the Bradley Foundation, Olin Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and Coors family foundations and a few corporations and individuals are funding and coordinating almost all of the activities of this right-wing “movement.” What seems like a number of different organizations and individuals is really just a small group.

What do they get for their money?
Studies and policy papers ("idea product") specifically designed to support right-wing political positions. Translated by modern marketing techniques (polling, focus groups, psychological profiling…) into easy to digest sound bites that resonate emotionally and culturally, these "ideas" are promoted by “independent experts” and “scholars” through far-right outlets such as TV’s Fox News, the Internet’s Drudge Report and NewsMax, Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, newspapers like the Washington Times, and a multitude of right-wing columnists, pundits, authors and celebrities (many of which are dependent on right-wing institutions for their paychecks).

How pervasive are these ideas?
The “communications engine” of the right-wing goes far beyond the self-consciously "conservative" institutions cited above. An extraordinary number of the “talking heads” on network television ("Meet The Press" on NBC), cable (CNBC) and public TV (McLaughlin Group), articles and letters on the editorial pages of national newspapers (the New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today), “sources” and experts in news stories, “studies” referred to in magazine articles (US News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, etc.), and books reviewed in the paper get their “talking points” from these extreme right-wing organizations. This is all well documented in the research gathered by the Commonweal Institute at .

What are some examples of these right-wing "ideas"?
“The public schools are failing.” “Raising taxes slows economic growth and takes money out of the average worker's paycheck.” “Social Security is going broke.” Sound familiar? These are part of a very conscious and deliberate attempt to frame public opinion in a way that makes the otherwise extreme sounding solutions favored by the right wing seem reasonable. The organizations funding the right wing think long term: contracting out the operation of public schools to private, for-profit corporations would have been unthinkable just decade or two ago (along with other schemes that privatize and commercialize public education, such as "vouchers" and “Channel One”), but now that we've had thirty years of continual harping on the "failure of public education", it sounds vastly more reasonable to an American public that rarely hears any dissent from this manufactured "conventional wisdom".

How much money are we talking about?
Over $1 billion dollars in the last decade, alone. A BILLION. One, followed by nine zeros. That doesn't even count more conventional attempts to influence the political process and public dialogue, such as donations to candidates and paid "issue" advertisements. They've been so successful at flooding the nation's "marketplace of ideas" that moderate and "left wing" opinions go almost completely unheard in the mainstream media. The right’s "success" hasn't stopped the flood of money - over the next two years, these organizations anticipate pouring over $400 million dollars into the 500+ right wing groups working to influence the American public's views and perspectives on key issues.

How can I see this in action?
When you read a commentary or hear from an “expert” that seems right wing, make a note of what organization(s) they are associated with. Then go to MediaTransparency.org at http://www.mediatransparency.org/ and use their excellent Search capability to look them up and see where they get their money. For those individuals whose associations are unmentioned, use the Google search engine and search on the author’s name to discover what organizations they are affiliated with. If you do this a few times, you'll begin to see a pattern of a small group of right-wing foundations showing up again and again. Mention this the next time you're talking with a friend or neighbor - encourage them to check this out as well. Over time, this will increase the public's awareness and decrease the effectiveness of these tactics.

Where can I find out more information about these groups?
The Commonweal Institute has made available a collection of links to research that details the establishment and financing of the “conservative movement”, as well as the individuals, organizations, institutes and foundations that fund it. See Commonweal's Information page, online at http//www.commonwealinstitute.org/information.html. Studying these resources will help you better understand the biases and influences underlying media coverage.

Scott Rosenberg’s Salon weblog summed this process up just the other day

"What did the Republicans do in the 1970s? They went back to their roots and created institutions for the long-term. They spent money on think-tanks and local organizations and decided to build a new party from the ground up that appealed to conservatives. They elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the party they built then is the same party that Karl Rove is orchestrating today. The fringe-y think tanks of the '70s -- like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute -- now provide an endless supply of talking-head and op-ed support for right-wing policies. And, give them credit, they're just full of ideas."

Part 2 - How is the Commonweal Institute going to shift the center of American public opinion?

The Commonweal Institute will provide message leadership.
The Commonweal Institute is committed to advancing moderate and progressive principles through message leadership, using strategic marketing and aggressive communication of ideas. We are working to bring positive moderate and progressive messages to the public and build widespread support for the issues we care about. Our goals: to swing American public opinion back towards a moderate/progressive perspective; to restore balance to the marketplace of ideas; to revitalize and reenergize the democratic process; to advance the values of fairness, justice, and opportunity and to help create a equitable society with sustainable economic development.

Here's how.
The Commonweal Institute will use modern marketing and public relations methods to advance moderate and progressive principles to the broad, mainstream public -- some of the same techniques that the right wing has used so effectively to dominate our nation’s marketplace of ideas, but used honestly and ethically. The “idea product” of moderate/progressive think tanks and other organizations will be translated into researched, effective messaging that resonates with target audiences. This means polling & focus groups to uncover issues important to the targeted demographic & psychographic groups and cognitive interviewing, linguistic analysis, framing analysis, etc. to determine effective emotional messaging that reaches these target groups. Because people respond best to stories that trigger an emotional response, using words that evoke images in the mind and metaphors that hook facts to their deeper feelings, giving them a sense of “Oh yeah, that's right.”

The Commonweal Institute will work with other organizations to use multiple channels of communication to reach the widest possible set of audiences. These channels of communication will include books, articles, columns, commentaries, letters to the editor, newsletters, on-line information, expert speakers, scholars, talk show guests, video clips, tapes, media training for activists and advertisements, as well as providing talking points and other ready-to-go materials for use by opinion leaders, public speakers, educators, activists, talk show hosts and guests and the general public -- the exact same set of tools and techniques that the right wing has been using to shape public opinion over the past three decades.

An example: If the rumored "liberal radio talk show network" does gets started, the talk-show hosts will need things to talk about, and will need to know how to talk about them in ways that reach out and grab a mainstream general public audience. THIS is what Commonweal will do. The Commonweal Institute will provide the wording, data, issues, framing, even many guests.

Manufacturing "conventional wisdom".
The right has used the technique of repeating something often enough that people believe it (the “public schools are failing”, “Social Security is going broke,” "we need to cut taxes to stimulate the economy"). Commonweal Institute will provide message leadership, creating conventional wisdom that reflects moderate and progressive principles by repeating messages that build support for moderate and progressive principles, over and over again, through many outlets, using words that resonate with people, until public opinion changes.

A battle of ideas.
We progressives and moderates have a clear advantage in the battle of ideas -- we don't have to lie, trick or otherwise fool the public to get them to agree with us! In fact, we are going to do the opposite -- we're going to tell it like it is. The right wing is trying to convince the public to do absurd things, such as giving up their Social Security, pensions, healthcare, environmental regulations, workplace safety rules, environmental protections and all the rest of the benefits and protections we have built up over the years, just so that some rich white guy can upgrade his five car garage to a seven car garage and park another couple of Ferraris in it. That’s why, even with all the billions spent and all the domination of the media they've developed, they STILL can't get a majority of the voters to agree with them, even after convincing so many people to give up voting entirely!

Multi-issue vs. single issue.
While many issue-organizations offer good information for their issues, they tend to be financially dependant on reaching out to their own base of supporters. Many have limited budgets and cannot reach as many as they would like. Fundraising is difficult and ongoing, and it makes sense to reach people who will tend to support your cause. It is not typically economical for single-issue organizations to spend the money to reach out to the mainstream, general public. So out of necessity there is a lot of preaching to the converted. In addition, more and more, they are fighting shorter-term defensive battles, as they endure constant attack by right-wing elements.

To reach out to wide general audiences, talking about a number of issues, you need a different kind of organization. Moderates and progressives need to fund and develop infrastructure. This is what the Commonweal Institute is.

The beginnings of a foundation for progress.
What we’re creating at the Commonweal Institute is an “infrastructure” organization. These are what the right-wing has been building over the past three decades. The Commonweal Institute will work to change underlying public attitudes, by translating particular issues and causes into a larger framework of understanding, and communicate that general perspective to the public at large.

Growing the base.
Changing underlying public attitudes toward the moderate/progressive perspective will bring the growth of the base of support for moderate and progressive organizations and leaders. Environmental, social, health, and other types of organizations will see their own support and funding base increase. They will also have some of their burden reduced as government again picks up some of the load.

It’s not about picking the right politicians.
Politicians and parties follow the lead of the people. Once the Commonweal Institute is able to change the public's core attitudes, moderate and progressive leaders and officials will have an easier job convincing voters that they have the right solution, since the public will already understand the issues it faces, and will already be asking for what they are suggesting. This will be a lot easier for candidates and elected officials than having to explain the background of issues, introduce the programs, and convince the voters that they have the right ideas and solutions, all at the same time, and in a single 15 to 30 second sound bite.

Some good news.
Lack of money is not what has been handicapping moderates and progressives. There is actually a lot of money available on the moderate/progressive side. It just hasn’t been used as effectively as the money poured into right-wing idea machine infrastructure. There are some good articles about this on Commonweal’s information page, online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/information.html.

Much of the money supplied by moderates and progressives goes to fund narrow programs with limited and specific goals. This once worked well as a way to get a lot done with limited funds. But "program funding" is not as effective in a time when so much that we care about is under attack from right-wing organizations! There is no “fight back” component in this kind of funding.

This style of funding creates organizations that lack the flexibility to quickly respond to changing needs. Opportunities are often lost as a result, when the resources to take advantage of them are unavailable until the next annual budget cycle. The right has provided general operating funding money for use any way the organizations want, as long as it is spent to further the right-wing ideological movement, according to their specific long-term strategic goals. Moderate and progressive donors need to do much more of this.

So the money is there, but until this funding pattern changes, organizations like the Commonweal Institute must be funded by individual donors who understand the necessity of the task at hand and want to help out. You, in other words.

Return on investment.
Here's an example of the funding problem. Many of us support local members of the national Land Trust Alliance, such as The Sempervirens Fund in Santa Cruz County, California, which is working to permanently protect the area's remaining ancient old growth redwoods by acquiring land and integrating it into the public parks system. They are currently working to raise $13.4 million to save the San Lorenzo River Redwoods. But that huge investment, and others like it, can be undone overnight, wasting all the money, if public officials decide to gut anti-logging protections in the state parks under the guise of “forest fire prevention”, or even sells off the state parks. (Yes, they're even talking about selling state and national parks)!

Progressives and moderates face losses like this across our entire “investment portfolio” of programs, because they have failed to build infrastructure that works to change underlying attitudes, along with funding specific projects and programs. Without this infrastructure, progressives and moderates will continue to experience losses and lack the ability to generate the kind of large-scale public reaction that makes ideas like clear-cutting our national forests under the guise of “fire protection” non-starters.

The Commonweal Institute will increase our return on the investments we make in organizations and programs that work on specific issues.

Whew!

OK, I wrote a lot here today. Let me sum up

Please visit Commonweal Institute’s website at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org.

Tell others!
Please take a look at the collection of resources on Commonweal’s Information Page at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/information.html. No matter what else you take away from reading this, learning about what the right-wing has been doing and telling others is one of the most effective ways to immunize yourself and combat their pervasive messaging!

Donate money.
And, of course, if you agree that it is time to work “to restore balance to the marketplace of ideas,” please go to this web page, http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/youcanhelp.html, and help build the Commonweal Institute. FIGHTING BACK TAKES MONEY. But there are a lot of us!

We are reaching out to all Americans, and asking for your participation in democracy, your birthright, and your obligation as a citizen. We are just facilitators of your participation. Even a little can help us a lot, in rallying people to the cause. Even one dollar says you care.

Give.
Give....give time, give attention, give your presence at rallies, give the time to get informed, and if you have a few dollars, give to Commonweal Institute so we can continue the fight.

Where did you give money last year? How many charities got $10 or $100? Add it up. Does that really reflect your own priorities? Why not consider making one big gift this year to one nonprofit that can make a difference, needs to make a difference, now? This may be the most important issue of all -- your own political freedom and the fate of democracy. Put the money where your beliefs are. Give what you can, and get active.
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There is a version of this, designed and formatted to be sent as an e-mail message for forwarding, available online at: http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/ltr030403.rtf

tendentious

The new weblog tendentious is getting good.

Voting Machine Story in SF Chronicle

There's a *key* story about voting machines today in the SF Chronicle, Scientists question electronic voting.

Their objection, as David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford and leader of the campaign, puts it on his Web site: The machines the county planned to buy, like those other jurisdictions around the country are installing, "pose an unacceptable risk that errors or deliberate election- rigging will go undetected, since they do not provide a way for the voters to verify independently that the machine correctly records and counts the votes they have cast."

New Voting Machines Resources Added

I have added Election Guardians to the Voting Machine Story Link Collection. Their story Who Creates Your Vote? is a good read.

Voting Technology, California Voter Foundation

Computer-Related Elections, Peter Neumann

Newsday Story on Voting Machines!

This important story is getting more attention. Newsday has a story, Paperless Voting Machines Under Fire.

"Even my ATM has the courtesy of asking if I want a receipt," said Kim Alexander, president of the Sacramento-based non-profit California Voter Foundation. "My pay-at-the-pump Visa transaction is more secure than my voting ballot if my county goes to paperless voting."

Terrifying Update - In the story they quote a spokesperson from Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the companies manufacturing the machines:

Even if the records are never handed to voters and are instead kept with the county registrar, they represent another layer of complexity for administrators.

"You'll have printer jams, you'll run out of paper, you'll have voters say, 'That's not how I voted,' and you'll have to have procedures for letting them re-vote and to determine which of the receipts you printed was the valid one, and which of those constitute the official recount in case of a contested vote," Sequoia spokeswoman Kathryn Ferguson said.

You got that? The Sequoia spokesperson complains that there shouldn't be a paper trail because voters will say "That's not how I voted"!!! This company is making it clear that they trying to stop voters from being able to verify that the machine correctly records their vote!

Have YOU called your member of Congress about this yet? Have YOU written to your newspaper about this yet?

Added to Voting Machine Links

I have added Electionline.org - The Election Reform Information Project to the Collection of Voting Machine Articles. Electionline is a very good resource on this issue.

I'm also changing the TITLE of the collection to "Voting Machine Story Link Collection." (Does this break the rules of blogging?)

Consumer Confidence Worst In 9 Years

I have my browser set to My Yahoo as my home page. I have it set up to show me news, political news and business news, and I get headlines from different news sources. Under the heading "Top News Stories From Reuters", there is this headline: Consumer Sentiment Hits 9-Year Low-Report. Under the heading "Financial News from CBS MarketWatch.com", there is this headline: U.S. stocks climb on consumer strength. The second story contains this information:

Wall Street is reacting favorably to the latest Consumer sentiment data, which fell less than expected in February.

OK, it's the worst reading in nine years, but stocks are up because it wasn't as bad as expected.

Meanwhile, the current PE ratio of the S&P 500 is 22.6. As I wrote before, "This is where the stock market usually falls FROM, not TO." The stock market crashed FROM a PE ratio of 21 in 1929. To put it a different way, stocks are extremely high right now, even though they have fallen from the incredible heights they reached during the bubble. Here are two charts that show you what I mean: Still overvalued and Another perspective. What these charts clearly show is that we are only part way through the bubble, and the market still has a long way to fall before it gets back to where it should be. Here are two more charts, showing historical PE ratios so you can see where we are in terms of valuation instead of price: one, two. The charts on page 2 of this PDF file also clearly show where the stock market is relative to historical average. This is not a pretty picture!

Want to know my thinking on this? The clowns are running the show. Run for your life, get away from the stock market. Get rid of your debt, SAVE MONEY.

Paul Krugman writes about the economy today.

(I should warn you now that both the headlines and content of stories linked to at My Yahoo change sometimes; it happened to me after I wrote the "War Is Peace" entry below.)

SUVs

CalPundit on SUV safety.

Gotta Read

You gotta read this over at PLA! It's titled Lies, Distortions and Deception and details the lies that the Bush administration is using to promote its tax cut agenda. You just gotta go read it!

War IS Peace!

Bush's M.O. is to promise the public what polls show the public wants, and then go ahead with whatever his agenda is, usually the opposite of what Bush promised. It is a pattern of "say one thing and do another", using the words to cover up the actions. So far this deceitful method of has proven remarkably effective.

Here is an example that makes this trickery so clear, and is so blatant, that it hopefully will force the public to see what Bush is doing. The headline on the story is "Bush: Iraq War Will Build Mideast Peace"

The polls show that people want peace. How do you manipulate that public desire for peace into public approval of your war? You tell the public that war IS peace!

UPDATE - That is headline of the article that was at that link when I posted this story! Here is a New York Times story covering the same event, with a similar headline.

aWol

Skippy is pointing to Planet Swank who is pointing to this Mother Jones timeline of Bush's National Guard duty. Go see why so many webloggers are referring to the pResident as aWol Bush.

Planet Swank says they got it from Testify!

Call Tomorrow

Skippy suggests if you tried to call senators today and couldn't get through, call tomorrow (Thursday)!

Clearing Up the Santa Clara County Vote Story

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Board "took a step Tuesday toward creating a touch-screen voting system that will issue a paper printout.." This appears to be the opposite of the San Jose News story. The press release (below) is confusing.

Here's how it seems to add up. It looks like they voted to NOT REQUIRE paper trails at this time. But IF the Secretary of State decides to require paper trails, then the machines will have that added.

Big Voting Machines Stories

Over at Black Box Voting, a story about a former employee of a voting machines company, suing the company for firing him for whistleblowing.

Spillane's lawsuit charges wrongful and retaliatory termination; he contends he was removed so that he could not blow the whistle to certification labs and pass critical information to the US General Accounting Office.

He says he has evidence which shows voting systems are certified despite known flaws, demonstrating a weakness in both the NASED and the ITA system for certifying machines.

Here's a bit about the ownership of this company:

VoteHere's board of directors includes former CIA director Robert Gates. VoteHere's Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, who was senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, and also includes Ralph Munro, a key Washington State politician.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County, Ca voted to purchase voting machines WITHOUT A PAPER TRAIL!

Santa Clara County supervisors rejected pleas from computer scientists Tuesday that they require new electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail after each touch-screen vote is cast, leaving that decision to the California secretary of state. But supervisors did vote to set up a limited pilot project for November's election that will give some voters a physical receipt to verify their otherwise ethereal ballot.

They take it with them? What good does THAT do? It doesn't help a recount, but it does help people sell their votes!

After Tuesday's 3-2 vote, supervisors will begin negotiating with Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland to buy at least 5,000 electronic voting machines. The company will get the $20 million contract only if it agrees to provide paper printouts when -- and if -- the California secretary of state calls for printed verification of electronic votes.

So it's up to the California Secretary of State. (Let the Secretary of State know how you feel. Here is contact information. Scroll down to Elections Division.)

This month, in response to stepped-up pressure from a nationwide network of computer scientists, voting rights advocates and security and fraud experts, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley launched a task force on electronic voting. Members are expected to call for security guidelines and the need for verification of votes.

So what happens if the machine has a glitch and loses its voting data? Do they throw out the election or just the votes?

Here is the county's official press release:

Board of Supervisors Selects Electronic Voting System -- Calls for Pilot "Paper Record" Study


SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- Today, the County of Santa Clara Board of Supervisors approved the staff recommendation of Sequoia Voting Systems to provide its Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system, and directed staff to proceed with negotiations.

Under the Board's proposed plan, the County will petition the Secretary of State to approve pilot projects for a paper record a voter could inspect in the November 2003 and March 2004 elections. This strategy would enable the County of Santa Clara to move forward to comply with the Federal Court Order which requires nine counties, including Santa Clara County, to convert to electronic voting by the March 2004 Presidential Election. It also would set the stage to prepare for a voter inspected paper records, pending the final recommendations of a newly appointed State Task Force on Electronic Voting.

All three firms that competed for the $20 million County contract are certified by the California Secretary of State's Office to provide DRE voting systems. In recent weeks, computer scientists and computer technology professors have voiced concerns about DRE voting systems that do not produce paper records for voter inspection. The Board held a workshop on February 11, 2003 to review issues pertaining to accessibility by the disabled, costs and security.

"The action taken by the Board of Supervisors keeps us on track to meet the Federal Court Order and if the Secretary of State approves the pilot for a voter verifiable paper ballot, it would enable us to develop a system that assures our voters that Santa Clara County elections continue to be fair and accurate," said Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, Chairperson.

The proposal to move forward with DRE voting system, using paper records on a limited basis for the November 2003 and March 2004 was offered by Supervisor Pete McHugh who cited concerns that the work of the newly formed State Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force might take longer than anticipated; and waiting for those results could place the County in jeopardy of violating the Federal Court Order.

"All of the recent reports in the media may have created doubts in the minds of voters about the ability of the County to conduct an accurate election using the electronic voting machines," said Supervisor Pete McHugh, District 3. "If the Secretary of State approves the pilot studies, it would enable the County to test the accuracy of the machines, assess the impact of the paper record requirement on those who are visually impaired and should minimize any doubts and concerns these security issues have created among County voters."

The Board also approved the creation of an ad hoc election systems oversight review committee, proposed by Supervisor Jim Beall, District 4. The Committee would be comprised of voters, computer security experts and citizen observers.

Background
Following an extensive competitive process that included a six-month pilot program and extensive community input, the County of Santa Clara Registrar of Voters recommended Sequoia Voting Systems as the preferred vendor to implement its new Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting System. The County's Finance and Government Operations Committee reviewed the selection on January 31, and forwarded it to the full Board for consideration on February 4, 2003. The Board decided that additional time was required to study the issues pertaining to access for the disabled, costs and security and set a special workshop for February 11, 2003.

At that workshop, the Board heard presentations by staff on the six-month pilot project and the vendor evaluation process. It also heard brief presentations from the three firms who responded to the RFP - Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia. The Board also heard concerns from members of the computer science community.
# # #

So contact California's Secretary of State! Write a letter!

Please Read

Please read THE HIJACKING OF THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION MOVEMENT: How a Violent Sect Duped Mainstream Civil Rights Groups, at Nathan Newman's weblog.

Bush Caught on Film

Caught on Film: The Bush Credibility Gap

Great!

Thanks to Thinking it Through for pointing me to THIS POSTER! Go see!

Democracy

Michael Finley's blog is now named worldgonewrong. See this excellent piece on responsibility in democracy. A bit of it to get you to go there and read:

Every decision is a moral act. Every time you tell a pollster, "Sure, drop bombs on those people," you have just dropped a bomb on someone, with you heart and soul. It was a sin of intent, a sin not of deed but of thought. If leadership uses your vote or remark or letter to the editor to justify violence, then you have done something even worse: you aided and abetted in the commission of a sin.