No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress

More lies to Congress from Bush/Cheney. Why am I not surprised?

Findlaw
Friday, Aug. 29, 2003

This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.

The report - entitled "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy" - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.

The Background: How Cheney Stonewalled GAO

In a sense, this story begins during the close 2000 Presidential election, when energy industry special interests were big-dollar contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. (In 2004's re-election campaign, they will doubtless be called upon once again.)

After he was elected - and very much beholden to those contributors - Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force. (Details about the Task Force can be found in my prior column.)

Cheney's selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.

The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.

To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.

Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.

On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter - personally signed by him - to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work." As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.

In the end, GAO had to go to court to try to get the documents to which it plainly was entitled. On December 9, 2002, GAO lost in court - though, as I argued in a prior column, the decision was incorrect.

Then, on February 9, 2003, the Comptroller General announced GAO's decision not to appeal. He said he feared that another adverse decision would cause the agency to lose even more power, more permanently. Several news accounts suggest that it was the Republican leadership of Congress that stopped the appeal.

This August's Report Reveals Cheney Lied About Providing Responsive Documents

Then this August's Report was issued. It was not the thorough, comprehensive Report GAO wanted it to be. (Indeed, GAO's Comptroller General has stressed that "the Vice President's persistent denial of access to" records "precluded GAO from fully achieving our objectives and substantially limited our analysis.") But it is enough to shock, and disturb, the reader.

The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.

According to the Report, Cheney provided GAO with 77 pages of "documents retrieved from the files of the Office of the Vice President responsive to" GAO's inquiry regarding the Energy Task Force's "receipt, disbursement, and use of public funds."

To any lawyer, a mere 77-page document production seems suspiciously slim - especially when it is meant to represent information from a group of people on a fairly broad topic. Surely there were more documents that were not turned over.

Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless: "The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure." They were further described as "predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza."

In sum, the incomplete document production was not only nonresponsive - it was insulting. So the GAO pressed for responsive documents numerous times in different ways: letters, telephone exchanges and meetings.

Perhaps the most pointed of these was a July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller to the Vice President. It noted that GAO had "been given 77 pages of miscellaneous records purporting to relate to these direct and indirect costs. Because the relevance of these records is unclear, we continue to request all records responsive to our request, including any records that clarify the nature and purpose of the costs." (Emphasis added.)

Cheney's False Statement About the Responsive Documents Was Plainly Intentional

Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.

Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents' being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.

Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents - and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request - stating that there, he had merely "provided substantial responses." (Emphasis added.)

Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.

Thus, Cheney's claim to have produced responsive documents was a false statement and, all evidence suggests, an intentional one. That means it is also a criminal offense - a false statement to Congress. (In a previous column, I discussed the false statements statute and its application.)

GAO's Polite Tone Belies The Shocking Evidence Its Report Offers

The straight arrows at GAO were no doubt horrified that the Vice President of the United States, who is the Constitutional presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, would deliberately mislead the Congress with such blatant misinformation.

Being nonpartisan, they refrained from accusing the Vice President of this crime. But as their Report shows, they included evidence that makes the crime evident for all to see. They also provided evidence of what the motive for the crime was.

The Report quietly - but tellingly - notes that the Vice President's team "solicited input from, or received information and advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists." (Emphasis added.)

In other words, if the Vice President is not trying to cover up the fact that he met with big energy interests - including past contributors - and allowed them a large role in settling our nation's energy policy, why all the secrecy ? That is what other observers have suspected - and what has been rumored from the beginning. Thanks to Cheney's obfuscation, we still can't know for certain. Yet thanks to GAO, we do now know for certain that he lied to Congress to cover up something, and there is little doubt in my mind as to what he is hiding.


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

John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.



posted by Richard at 6:06 AM

 

Living In a Kleptocrat Nation

Jim Hightower, Texas Observer
August 20, 2003
Viewed on August 24, 2003

kleptocrat nation (klep toe krat nay shun), n. 1. a body of people ruled by thieves. 2. a government characterized by the practice of transferring money and power from the many to the few. 3. a ruling class of moneyed elites that usurps liberty, justice, sovereignty, and other democratic rights from the people. 4. the USA in 2003.

The Kleptocrats have taken over. Look at America's leadership today -- not just political, but corporate, too. Tell me you wouldn't trade the whole mess of them for one good kindergarten teacher.

Forget George W. for a moment and sneak a peek at practically any big-deal CEO, congressional heavy, media baron, talk-show yakker, pompadoured TV preacher, or any the other pushers of America's new ethic of grab-it-and-go greed. In a crunch, would you want to be tied at the waist to any of them?

Yet, they're in charge! Here we are, living in the wealthiest country in history, a country of boundless possibilities, a country made up of a people deeply committed to democratic ideals, a country with the potential for spectacular human achievement -- but we find ourselves ruled (politically, economically, culturally, and ethically) by a confederacy of Kleptocrats.

When did you first realize or at least begin to suspect that America was lost? Not physically, of course -- we're right here.

Lost its way, is what I mean, having wandered from the brave and true path first pointed out by Tom Paine, T.J., Jimmy Madison, and several other good thinkers back around 1776 -- a path toward a society focused not on empire, but on enlightenment and egalitarianism.

We've never reached that glorious place, of course, but the important thing is that in our two-century sojourn we've been steadily striving to get there...and making progress. If any one thing really characterizes this big boiling pot of diversity dubbed "America," it is that we're a nation of strivers. Unfortunately, the cultural elites want to minimize this powerful virtue by reducing it to nothing more than individuals striving for material gain -- "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" -- "How to Get Rich in the Next Half Hour!" -- "You Might Already Be a Winner."

Then they wonder why there's such a gaping hole in America, an emptiness that can't be filled by nonstop shopping, prepaid elections, more bunting, and reality TV. When the Powers That Be started defining a person's value by the value of their stock portfolio, they lost America, for that's not who we are. Don't go calling us names like "Consumer" or "Stakeholder" when who we are is full-fledged, dyed-in-the-wool, unbridled, rambunctious citizens -- indeed, we're the ultimate sovereigns of this great land. We don't merely strive for material gain, but also for the spiritual satisfaction of building community and reaping the deeper richness of the common good.

The idea of belonging to something larger than our own egos and bank accounts, the idea of caring, sharing, and participating as a public is the big idea of America itself. As a boy growing up in Denison, I was taught this unifying, moral concept by hard-working, Depression-era parents who ran a small business in our town. They knew from experience and from their hearts what America is all about: "Everybody does better when everybody does better," is how my old Daddy used to put it.

The unforgivable transgression of today's leaders is that they have abandoned this common wisdom of the common good and quit striving for that world of enlightenment and egalitarianism that the founders envisioned and that so many throughout our history have struggled to build. Instead, whether from the top executive suites or from the White House, the people in charge today are aggressively pushing a soulless ethic that shouts: "Everyone on your own, grab all you can, and if you've got enough money, secure yourself in a gated compound."

Not only are the Kleptocrats stealing our country from us, they're stealing our democratic ideals-the very idea of America. And it's time to take them back.

How far have the elites moved from us? So far that even the moderates have lost their way. Take Sherwood Boehlert. He's a Republican Congressman, but despite that, not a bad guy. Sherwood thinks of himself as "part of the enlightened middle."

From central New York, he's been in the House of Representatives for 21 years now. He says he loves the job, calling it the "ultimate aphrodisiac." But Sherwood said something not long ago that made me think that maybe he has been sniffing the perfumes of high office longer than is good for him:

"It's the people's house," he gushed about his side of the Capitol, "the one institution in the whole wide world that's the personification of this great democracy of ours."

Think about it: Congress, democracy. Do these two words fit together in your mind? America is a nation of nurses, office workers, cab drivers, school teachers, pharmacists, shop keepers, middle managers, truck drivers, shift workers, librarians, cleaning people, electricians, fruit pickers, struggling artists -- how many of our ilk are sitting next to Sherwood in "the people's house"?

The great majority of Americans make less than $50,000 a year; half of us make under $32,000. How many members of Congress come from such modest backgrounds? Today's Congress is made up of business executives, lawyers, and former political operatives (which Boehlert was). The Public Interest Research Group reports that nearly half of the people newly elected to Congress last year are millionaires. This is the personification of democracy?

Not only do the members tend to descend into Congress from the economic heights, but they also spend practically all of their substantive and social time with others from the heights. Congress' real constituency is no longer you and me, but the people who "matter." These are your top-floor corporate executives and the moneyed elites who have full-time lobbyists and who make the $1,000-and-higher campaign donations (only 0.12 percent of Americans are in this class) that grease the wheels of congressional incumbency. They are the privileged few who know members by their first names, who get every one of their phone calls returned -- and who get their agenda adopted.

Perhaps this gaping economic chasm between those on the inside and all the rest of us on the outside explains why our strumpets of state never get around to dealing with little matters like assuring health care for all families, passing living-wage legislation, and making sure everyone gets a decent retirement. Members of the congressional club feel no urgency because, hey, it's not them -- they have no personal anxiety about such matters because (one) they're well off and (two) they're covered on all this by us taxpayers. Yes, even the multimillionaires in Congress get:

Full platinum-level health coverage for themselves and their families, including choosing their own docs, seeing the specialists they need, dental care, and cosmetic surgery for their pets. (Just kidding about that last one-but don't put it past them!)

A rosy retirement, with pensions that can rise higher than the pay they got while in office. Just the starting pensions are sweet: Phil Gramm, who finally did something for the people of Texas by leaving the Senate last year, starts out drawing retirement pay of $78,534 a year. He'll be paid more for doing nothing than 80-plus percent of us Americans are paid for working full time.

Regular cost-of-living pay raises. While Congress has not seen fit to increase the minimum wage (still $5.15 an hour) since 1996, the members did give themselves four $5,000 pay raises during the past five years. This $20,000 "adjustment" in each of their own annual pay packets is $8,000 more than the gross pay that a full-time minimum-wage worker would get if Congress ever gets around to the one-dollar wage hike they've been "talking" about for years.

Excellent job security. Did you know that a member of Congress is four times more likely to die in office than to lose an election? This is not only because of the special-interest money they're stuffed with, but also because the GOP and Democrats conspire to divide the turf in each state, gerrymandering districts to assure that 96 percent of them are "safe" for the incumbents. There's not much democracy in a rigged system that now allows only about 20 of the 435 House seats to be competitive in each election cycle.

A couple of years ago, Japanese police discovered more than 400 pieces of women's underwear in the home of Sadao Ushimura, a fellow who was a prominent official in Japan's finance ministry at the time. Mr. Ushimura proclaimed total innocence of any possible scandal or perversion, explaining: "I picked up all lingerie on the streets by pure chance."

We still have our underwear in America, but we've been stripped of a garment far more delicate and precious: our democracy. On this sprawling continent with its cacophony of voices, we've been able to hold it all together through the years because of our people's instinctive and tenacious belief in the sanctity of democratic principles.

But something has gone terribly wrong. The essence of democracy -- our power to control decisions that affect us -- has steadily and quietly been pilfered by corporate Kleptocrats. They have gathered up our democratic powers piece by piece, hoarding them in the privacy of their own fiefdoms. These elites (fully abetted by the governmental elites they have bought) now effectively control the decisions that affect We The People -- everything from public-spending priorities to environmental degradation, from wages to war, from what's on the "news" to who gets elected.

This has not taken place by "pure chance," but through deliberate filching, and the filching now has reached the level of wholesale looting. The elites have pulled off a slow-motion coup, radically wrenching America's power balance from a people's democracy to Kleptocrat Nation.

This would be terribly depressing except for one thing, which is that one basic has definitely not changed in our land: The people (you rascals!) still have that instinctive and tenacious belief in our historic democratic principles. The antidote to kleptocracy is the age-old medicine of democratic struggle, agitation, and organization, and all across our country, the rebellion is on!

As happened in the rebellion of 1776, as happened in the populist revolt against the robber barons of the 19th century, and as is already happening in community after community today, America's historic democratic yearnings will not be long suppressed. Despite our present leadership (with their autocratic, plutocratic, and imperialistic ambitions), this is a nation of irrepressible democrats, and their spirit will out.

Come on, America! Don't let BushCo, the Wobblycrats, and the Kleptocrats steal our country and trivialize We The People as being nothing more substantial than passive consumers who can even be made to cower in duct-taped "safe rooms" whenever the governing authorities shout "Code Orange!" out their windows. America wasn't built by conformists, but by mutineers; we're a big brawling, boisterous, bucking people, and now is our time!

Our democracy is being dismantled right in front of our eyes, not by crazed foreign terrorists, but by our own ruling elites. America desperately needs you and me to stand as full citizens, asserting the bold and proud radicalism of America's democratic ideals.

Consider these words:

It is not that we see democracy through the haze of optimism. We know that democracy is a jewel that must be polished constantly to maintain its luster. To prevent it from being damaged or stolen, democracy must be guarded with unremitting vigilance.

That's not Patrick Henry or Abe Lincoln, but Aung San Suu Kyi, the courageous and inspirational fighter for democracy in Burma. Her life literally is on the line every day, for she's the leader of the popular opposition to the ruthless military dictatorship that usurped this beautiful country's democracy in a bloody coup. In 1990, her National League for Democracy won 82 percent of the vote in a democratic election, but the military and the economic elites stepped in and invalidated the people's choice, and they have ruled through iron-fisted repression, murder, and armed force ever since.

You think democracy asks a lot of us -- too many meetings, too much risk of getting your name on Ashcroft's database, too much confrontation with authority? Try walking a few miles in her shoes. Burma's military thugs would love to kill her, but for now they know that they could not withstand the popular explosion that would follow such a murder, for she's the symbol of the people's suppressed democratic yearnings. Instead, they held her under house arrest for seven and a half years, and though she was officially released last year, she is hounded, harassed, monitored, and followed everywhere she goes in an effort to intimidate her and Burma's other democracy activists. They wish she would leave, but she wouldn't even go to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991 because she feared she would not be allowed to reenter her country.

Maybe you're thinking: "Well, Hightower, sure, if a dictatorship was imposed here in the US of A, then, by golly, you can bet your boots that I'd stand up!"

A military coup is not the only way to slip the plush rug of America's democracy from beneath your motionless feet. A few tugs here and a couple of hard yanks there... and it's gone. And they've been tugging and yanking furiously of late, taking scores of actions that would cause Paul Revere to mount up again, including: Ashcroft's ruling that the FBI can secretly infiltrate and spy on political and church meetings without a warrant; the federal judge's ruling that New Yorkers could be denied their constitutional right to march in protest of Bush's war plans, instead, relegating them to a 10,000-person "rally pen" where they "could be adequately policed"; Ashcroft's PATRIOT Act II, which would provide advance immunity for federal agents who conduct illegal surveillance at the behest of top executive branch officials (a provision that would have protected Nixon's illegal wiretappers).

These underminings of our basic civil liberties and imposition of anti-democratic police power are in addition to other maneuvers that are steadily strangling our people's democracy:

The Supreme Court's 1976 ruling that campaign money is "speech" effectively negates the value of your vote and electoral participation, while giving a handful of corporations and wealthy interests far more "speech" than the rest of us, and also puts the possibility of holding public office beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. Nothing has been so destructive of our nation's promise of democratic representation as has this totally un-American decree, which neither political party challenges.

The unheralded provisions of NAFTA, the WTO, the forthcoming FTAA, and other arcane trade schemes allow global corporations to wield veto power over your local, state, and national laws, usurping our people's right to self-government, a theft of power that has been pulled off without the people knowing it, much less agreeing to it.

With a massive infusion of campaign donations, a half-dozen conglomerates have gotten Congress and the FCC to rush through a radical rewriting of the rules so that they now control our public airwaves, making a mockery of our "Freedom of the Press" and restricting the mass-media debate to corporate-approved topics and viewpoints.

Don't expect these political, corporate, media, and other money powers to alert you to the fact that big chunks of your democracy, right here in the US of A, already have been seriously damaged or stolen; and they're certainly not going to rally us to the essential cause of repairing and retaking our democracy. That's up to us.

Of course, BushCo is hoping we're idiots, and to help keep our minds from wandering to what's going on with democracy here in The Homeland, they have us riveted on color-coded threats from afar, warning sternly that millions of the world's people hate us -- indeed, as George so eloquently put it, "They hate our freedoms."

What they hate is that our government, corporations, and military storm around the world in betrayal of every democratic value that the American people hold dear. Bush poses grandly as the noble spear carrier for democracy, yet he is (like his predecessors) a willing accomplice of brutal dictators and global corporate powers that oppress the world's people, impoverish them, and plunder their resources. Through his perpetual war agenda, his oil buddies, the World Bank, the arms dealers, his defiance of environmental and human rights treaties, and dozens of other actions, George W. (and our Congress) is an enthusiastic supporter of global-scale theft and thuggery.

Perhaps it doesn't cross his mind that the people who are being run over can clearly see America's economic, governmental, and military might behind the thievery and thuggery. Aung San Suu Kyi damned sure saw it. When the generals threw out Burma's elected government and installed themselves in power, the United States did nothing in support of democracy. Worse, our government turned its back as Unocal, Texaco, and Halliburton cut deals with the new junta (which had given itself the Orwellian moniker of SLORC, the State Law and Order Restoration Council) to develop gas fields there and build the billion-dollar Yadana pipeline across the country. The pipeline partnership stole land from farmers, displaced entire villages, uprooted sections of rain forests, and conscripted locals who were forced at gunpoint to help construct the pipeline. Unocal is still in partnership with these dictators, who daily hound and harass Suu Kyi.

Such upstanding American corporations as Disney, Eddie Bauer, Levi Strauss, Liz Claiborne, Macy's, and PepsiCo also made business deals with the devils of Burma, though grassroots boycotts and political pressure back here in the United States and elsewhere finally forced them to withdraw (www.freeburma.org).

It is this investment by our oil giants and other corporations that has given the generals the wherewithal to build and maintain a police state that boasts of 300,000 armed forces deployed to stifle democracy and keep the dictatorship in power. This is the face of America that much of the world sees, the face of executives from Unocal, Halliburton, Disney, and others, standing side by side with the SLORCs of the world.

Yet, Suu Kyi does not hate you and me. She knows the difference between us and our corrupt leadership. She is sacrificing her comfort, happiness, and quite possibly her life to try to extend to her country the very values that you and I cherish. She and oppressed people throughout the world love freedom, and they look to the American people as a beacon of the democracy that they seek.

The irony is that she is more aware of what we're at serious risk of losing here than most Americans are.

Author and columnist Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor. This article is excerpted from his new book, "Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time To Take It Back" (Viking Press, September 2003) and is reprinted with permission from Viking Press.

To buy the book, go to Barnes & Noble.


posted by Richard at 9:12 AM

 

Davis Fights Back

Text of Gov. Gray Davis' speech at UCLA

Following is the text of Gov. Gray Davis' speech Tuesday [august 19, 2003] at the University of California, Los Angeles:

Thank you, my friends.

Viva California. Thank you, my friends, for coming here tonight, and those of you watching at home. I know California is going through a difficult time, and this is a challenging moment for all of us. I come here to take responsibility and set the record straight and to talk about our future.

Let's first talk about energy. I know many of you feel that I was too slow to act during the energy crisis.

I got your message and I accept that criticism. I played the hand I was dealt as best I could. I inherited the energy deregulation scheme which put all of us at the mercy of the big energy producers.

We got no help from the federal government. In fact, when I was fighting Enron and the other energy companies, these same companies were sitting down with Vice President Cheney to draft a national energy strategy.

Recent federal investigations have proven that California was victimized by a massive fraud. Energy executives are on their way to jail.

Three years ago, I refused to give in to the pressure to raise rates astronomically. Everyone I talked to said "raise rates, raise rates, raise rates." I would not do it. And I also couldn't let our homes, our businesses, our schools go dark. So I went to work, bought power, built new plants, encouraged conservation for the good people of this state and encouraged the use of clean energy.

My friends, last Friday, 50 million Americans lost electricity for 29 hours. In California, not a single light has gone out in the last two years.

I'm not looking for praise. We made our share of mistakes. And, like you, I wish I had known then all I know now. But my friends, if any of the Republicans in this recall campaign criticized the way we dealt with the energy crisis, you ask them specifically what they would have done to keep the lights on.

Now let's talk about the budget. I'm not happy with the budget I signed recently. I said so then, I repeat that today. But it was the best we could do given the position of Republican legislators who would not compromise and who wanted to strip away health insurance benefits from 400,000 children of working parents rather than increase taxes on the wealthiest Californians.

But as everyone considers how we got into this situation, let me put our situation into perspective. The American economy has tanked. Over the last couple years, it has shed 3 million jobs and gone from record surpluses to record deficit; 46 other states are facing similar problems.

Yes, I could have been tougher in holding down spending when we had big surpluses. But let's be clear. Our increases on my watch went to education and health care, and I make no apology for that.

When I took office, we ranked near the bottom in per-pupil spending, 43rd to be specific. We are now 26, and we're making progress. In fact, just last week, just last Friday, the superintendent of public instruction announced dramatic improvement in student test scores for the fifth year in a row.

Let me just say that the thanks should just go to the teachers, parents, school board members, principals and all the hard-working people in education.

Let me tell you something else about the budget. In California, the Constitution prohibits spending a dollar unless you get a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. So those spending increases I mentioned during the early part of my term - health care and education - those increases were supported by Democrats and Republicans in Sacramento. And one more point about the budget: Some Republicans accuse me of hiding the deficit. That is preposterous, my friends. In California, state finances are a matter of public record. They're available to anyone who wants to see.

Now let's talk about the recall. This recall is bigger than California. What's happening here is part of an ongoing national effort to steal elections Republicans cannot win.

It started with the impeachment of President Clinton, when the Republicans could not beat him in 1996. It continued in Florida, where they stopped the vote count, depriving thousands of Americans of the right to vote.

This year, they're trying to steal additional congressional seats in Colorado and Texas, overturning legal redistricting plans. Here in California, the Republicans lost the governor's race last November. Now they're trying to use this recall to seize control of California just before the next presidential election.

They spent $3 million to put this recall on the ballot, but you're going to have to spend $65 million of your hard-working tax dollars to conduct that election. I'm sure you'll agree with me that money could be better spent educating our children.

Call me old fashion, and I am. Call me old fashion, but I believe when an election is over, the people have spoken and it's time to get to work and do the public's business. There are many reasons to be against this recall. It's expensive, it's undemocratic, it's a bad precedent, and it almost certainly will breed more recalls. The end result will be more campaigning, not less, more politics, not less, and less time to do the public's business.

The Republicans behind this recall say they want you to oust me for past mistakes. My friends, they don't give a rip about past mistakes. This is all about control in the future, seizing back the governor's chair and believing with so many candidates running they can do it with just a handful of California voters. That's what this is all about.

In the next seven weeks, my highest priority will be doing the job you elected me to do. But make no mistake, I am going to fight this recall and the right-wing forces behind it. Take that to the bank.

My friends, from day one I have fought to improve our schools. This year in Sacramento, believe it or not, the Republicans wanted to kick 110,000 kids out of kindergarten. But we worked together and we stopped it. Our schools are getting better, and I pledge you to work every day to improve them further.

That's my highest priority. I said from the very beginning, my three highest priorities are education, education, education. The schools are getting better, kids are learning more, teachers are better trained, doing a fabulous job, parents are more involved. We're on the right path.

I'm also proud to tell you I signed some of the toughest environmental laws in America over the last five years. Laws that clean up our air, clean up our water and protect our magnificent coastline. California has become a national leader again on the environment, and I will never allow California's strong environmental record to be reversed - not by Republicans, not by anyone. I'm going to fight to protect this environment. The same is true for reproductive rights, privacy rights and civil rights.

We passed the toughest laws in the nation, bar none, on all three subjects. And while the Bush administration spends its time peering into our bedrooms, our homes and our libraries, I have been working with Democratic legislators in Sacramento to pass the toughest financial privacy law in America. My friends, no one, no one should look at your bank balances, your spending habits or your personal financial data unless you give them permission to do so. I will sign a bill this year that will protect your financial privacy whether I'm governor for another seven weeks or another three years.

Now let me speak about another issue that will be on the ballot, Proposition 54.

Proposition 54 is another Republican effort to divide Californians over race. I am going to fight this initiative, and I'm going to fight every day to make equal opportunity a reality for every person living in this great state.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now the budget problems we've been dealing with need a long-term fix. I have signed the budget. But we need a long-term fix. And I will soon appoint a distinguished commission of knowledgeable people to propose changes in our budget structure to avoid the wild fluctuations we've seen the last four years and which we saw in the early '90s.

I also want to make this state better. I want to make it better to work and to do business, whether you are in the private sector, the public sector or the nonprofit world. Wherever you're working, you are experiencing skyrocketing increases in worker compensation rates, and I pledge to you that I will sign a bill this year that will stop those increases.

There is much more that needs to be done in California. This election is about your future. I intend to fight for it, and I need your help.

Now this is not going to shock you. I may not be the warmest TV personality in politics, but I am warming to this fight. And I will go all over this state, talk to all comers, answer all their questions, and I might have one or two of my own to ask them.

Now the Republicans say this recall is about ousting me for past problems. But my friends, we're getting over our past problems. California did not go dark. I signed a budget. The schools are getting better, and our economy will turn around.

But this right-wing power grab is something we won't get over. It will do lasting damage to our state, our environment and the very fabric of our democracy.

This is a fight worth making and I need your help.

My friends, if you give me your help, I'll do everything in my power over the next three-and-a-half years to represent everyone in this great state - Democrats, Republicans and independents - to give our children the future they deserve.

Thank you for coming here tonight. God bless you, and God bless America."

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

© 2003 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.bayarea.com


This speech is provided to advance the discussion of the California Recall.
posted by Richard at 7:36 AM

 

Russia exercises responses to fall of Kim Jong Il

It looks very much like the situation with North Korea is coming to the end game. The Soviet Union created North Korea in the first place, and even when broke the Russians have been supporters of the North Korean regime. But now, according to Slate, things are changing rapidly.

In the latest sign that the North Korean nuclear crisis might be on the verge of settlement, Russia has embarked on a joint, 10-day naval exercise with South Korea and Japan. In addition, this Saturday, 30,000 Russian soldiers will carry out a drill simulating a response to a massive flow of North Korean refugees that might take place as a result of a war or a collapse of Kim Jong-il's regime.

The significance of these events, both reported in Tuesday's New York Times, is potentially staggering. Russia (which has long been one of North Korea's chief allies and suppliers) has never taken part in naval exercises with South Korea and Japan (which have long been North Korea's chief foes). Add to that the border drill?—which suggests that Russia is figuring out how to deal with, but not necessarily to prevent, the possibility of Kim's downfall?—and the "Dear Leader" of Pyongyang must be getting a tad nervous.

We can hope that this nuclear standoff works out favorably and soon. Frankly, if North Korea could quit supporting one of the largest military forces in the world they could perhaps feed their own people.

Read the rest of the article. It is informative.
posted by Richard at 6:42 AM

 

Republicans outsource Fundraising to call centers in India

I find that simply disgusting. Business Standard

OK. For American workers who are concerned that they are going to lose their jobs to Indian Call Centers, perhaps they should not vote Republican.

Bush says that the economy will turn back up soon, and the companies will start hiring. What he didn't mention was that they would be hiring in India north of New Delhi, not in the US.
posted by Richard at 5:52 PM

 

What will Iraq cost the US?

The Administration estimates the current cost of the military forces in Iraq is about $4 billion a month. This does not include the cost of rebuilding things like the electric system, the water system, etc.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today offered an Associated Press story by Alan Fram that gives so rather scary estimates of the cost.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. bill for rebuilding Iraq and maintaining security there is widely expected to far exceed the war's price tag, and some private analysts estimate it could reach as high as $600 billion.

The closest the administration has come to estimating America's postwar burden was when L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of occupied Iraq, said last month that "getting the country up and running again" could cost $100 billion and take three years.

These are just sample paragraphs. Read the full story.

The administration needs to come up with an estimate pretty soon, or Congress needs to start demanding it. Either way, the people who got their tax cuts need to begin to look for the bill. They weren't worth it.


posted by Richard at 5:54 AM

 

How many troops does the US need?

Clinton is blamed for responding to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and attacks on the US by Al Quada inadequately or slowly, but when he did use the military the same people who impeached him over nothing and sicced the Special Prosecutor on him with no result on Whitewater were also accusing him of "Wagging the dog." These people now run all three branches of the US government, and Bush has presented a policy of preemptive attacks on potential threats to the US.

The result is a military force stretched so thin that another threat may well have to go unanswered.

The LA Times points out that In 2003, nearly three-quarters of the active Army's combat brigades and one-third of the National Guard's brigades were deployed abroad. Portions of a Marine Expeditionary Force remain in or near Iraq. All this leaves the U.S. with only a small strategic reserve to meet emerging threats. The slowness and slightness of our commitment to Liberia demonstrate the lack of strategic flexibility our current deployment has produced. Our ability to navigate the North Korea situation could also suffer.

We are now committed to Iraq. There is no Iraqi government except that provided by the US, and no real prospect of one for a year or more at the minimum. Iraq has also become a test of wills between the US and the Islamic terrorists. The simple presence of US troops there has been attracting warriors who want to make a statement by attacking the invading infidels, and this will get worse, not better.

The Iraqi people generally seem to be happy no longer have the misrule of Saddam and the Ba'athist Party, but they are not especially happy at being occupied by US troops. They want a government that they control themselves, and they want it soon.

The US also wants the Iraqis to have their own government so that we can have our troops back. First, we are likely to need them elsewhere pretty quickly, and second we are losing one dead every two days and would like to stop paying that price.

However, any government of the Iraqis has to be one that that does not become an enemy of the US again, and must be one that does not support terrorism, generally or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The only way this can be guaranteed is to leave US troops in Iraq and/or appoint and control the leaders of the Iraqi government.

Leaving US troops in Iraq will continue to strain the US military and at present costs us $4 billion a month. The cost is not going to drop soon, and the Iraqi oil wells provide at best $25 billiion a year when operating at peak capacity. They are not at present operating significantly. Leaving troops in Iraq also leaves them as easy targets for terrorists who will continue to be attracted by the target they present.

Controlling the leaders of Iraq will be quite obvious to the Iraqis and will not be much appreciated anywhere else in the Muslim world. That means that troops are required.

So we are stuck in Iraq. We need more troops, more money and no more commitments. In the meantime the Bush administration is cutting taxes for the rich, not even budgeting the costs of Iraq, refusing to tell the Congress what those costs are, running the most massive deficits every run bay any US government, and Rumsfield is on record as not even considering an increase in US Army troop strength.

I guess Bush has prayed for a miracle and has a due-in for it in his pocket. Otherwise, the US is simply SOL.

This is a total failure of government by the bush administration.
posted by Richard at 11:03 PM

 

Bush Admin Misuses Science for Political Gain

I have previously stated that the bush Administration ignores science in almost every case when there is a political decision and scientific evidence recommends against it. Now the Washington Post points out how they take and distort or otherwise misuse scientific data to support political ends or hide the data if it doesn't support their position. This is simply bad government.

From the Washington Post.

"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org. "The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups."

Read the whole thing. It's a good article.
posted by Richard at 8:51 AM

 

Gore Speaks the Truth this Admininstration does not what to hear.

Former Vice President Al Gore
Remarks to MoveOn.org
New York University
August 7, 2003

-AS PREPARED-

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thank you for your investment of time and energy in gathering here today. I would especially like to thank Moveon.org for sponsoring this event, and the NYU College Democrats for co-sponsoring the speech and for hosting us.

Some of you may remember that my last formal public address on these topics was delivered in San Francisco, a little less than a year ago, when I argued that the President's case for urgent, unilateral, pre-emptive war in Iraq was less than convincing and needed to be challenged more effectively by the Congress.

In light of developments since then, you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case - but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis.

The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.

Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.

The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem. Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn't really happen with this war -- not the way it should have. And as a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons that we didn't have a better public debate before the Iraq War started is because so many of the impressions that the majority of the country had back then turn out to have been completely wrong. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how these false impressions got into the public's mind, it might be healthy to take a hard look at the ones we now know were wrong and clear the air so that we can better see exactly where we are now and what changes might need to be made.

In any case, what we now know to have been false impressions include the following:

(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.

(2) Saddam was working closely with Osama Bin Laden and was actively supporting members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, giving them weapons and money and bases and training, so launching a war against Iraq would be a good way to stop Al Qaeda from attacking us again.

(3) Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs that he had made into weapons which they could use to kill millions of Americans. Therefore common sense alone dictated that we should send our military into Iraq in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves against a grave threat.

(4) Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists. And since the only thing preventing Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal was access to enriched uranium, once our spies found out that he had bought the enrichment technology he needed and was actively trying to buy uranium from Africa, we had very little time left. Therefore it seemed imperative during last Fall's election campaign to set aside less urgent issues like the economy and instead focus on the congressional resolution approving war against Iraq.

(5) Our GI's would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and Representative Democracy, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US soldiers would get bogged down in a guerrilla war.

(6) Even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and then contribute lots of money and soldiers to help out, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US taxpayers would get stuck with a huge bill.

Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong.

For example, according to the just-released Congressional investigation, Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Therefore, whatever other goals it served -- and it did serve some other goals -- the decision to invade Iraq made no sense as a way of exacting revenge for 9/11. To the contrary, the US pulled significant intelligence resources out of Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to get ready for the rushed invasion of Iraq and that disrupted the search for Osama at a critical time. And the indifference we showed to the rest of the world's opinion in the process undermined the global cooperation we need to win the war against terrorism.

In the same way, the evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama Bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction. So our invasion of Iraq had no effect on Al Qaeda, other than to boost their recruiting efforts.

And on the nuclear issue of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody -- though we don't know who.

As for the cheering Iraqi crowds we anticipated, unfortunately, that didn't pan out either, so now our troops are in an ugly and dangerous situation.

Moreover, the rest of the world certainly isn't jumping in to help out very much the way we expected, so US taxpayers are now having to spend a billion dollars a week.

In other words, when you put it all together, it was just one mistaken impression after another. Lots of them.

And it's not just in foreign policy. The same thing has been happening in economic policy, where we've also got another huge and threatening mess on our hands. I'm convinced that one reason we've had so many nasty surprises in our economy is that the country somehow got lots of false impressions about what we could expect from the big tax cuts that were enacted, including:

(1) The tax cuts would unleash a lot of new investment that would create lots of new jobs.

(2) We wouldn't have to worry about a return to big budget deficits -- because all the new growth in the economy caused by the tax cuts would lead to a lot of new revenue.

(3) Most of the benefits would go to average middle-income families, not to the wealthy, as some partisans claimed.

Unfortunately, here too, every single one of these impressions turned out to be wrong. Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs -- net losses for three years in a row. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. As I've noted before, I was the first one laid off.

And it turns out that most of the benefits actually are going to the highest income Americans, who unfortunately are the least likely group to spend money in ways that create jobs during times when the economy is weak and unemployment is rising.

And of course the budget deficits are already the biggest ever - with the worst still due to hit us. As a percentage of our economy, we've had bigger ones -- but these are by far the most dangerous we've ever had for two reasons: first, they're not temporary; they're structural and long-term; second, they are going to get even bigger just at the time when the big baby-boomer retirement surge starts.

Moreover, the global capital markets have begun to recognize the unprecedented size of this emerging fiscal catastrophe. In truth, the current Executive Branch of the U.S. Government is radically different from any since the McKinley Administration 100 years ago.

The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."

Ominously, the capital markets have just pushed U.S. long-term mortgage rates higher soon after the Federal Reserve Board once again reduced discount rates. Monetary policy loses some of its potency when fiscal policy comes unglued. And after three years of rate cuts in a row, Alan Greenspan and his colleagues simply don't have much room left for further reductions.

This situation is particularly dangerous right now for several reasons: first because home-buying fueled by low rates (along with car-buying, also a rate-sensitive industry) have been just about the only reliable engines pulling the economy forward; second, because so many Americans now have Variable Rate Mortgages; and third, because average personal debt is now at an all-time high -- a lot of Americans are living on the edge.

It seems obvious that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first Pre-emptive War in U.S. history should have been debated more thoroughly in the Congress, covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn't happen, and in both cases, reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast.

Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time.

At first, I thought maybe the President's advisers were a big part of the problem. Last fall, in a speech on economic policy at the Brookings Institution, I called on the President to get rid of his whole economic team and pick a new group. And a few weeks later, damned if he didn't do just that - and at least one of the new advisers had written eloquently about the very problems in the Bush economic policy that I was calling upon the President to fix.

But now, a year later, we still have the same bad economic policies and the problems have, if anything, gotten worse. So obviously I was wrong: changing all the president's advisers didn't work as a way of changing the policy.

I remembered all that last month when everybody was looking for who ought to be held responsible for the false statements in the President's State of the Union Address. And I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.

But whether you agree with that conclusion or not, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican -- or an Independent, a Libertarian, a Green or a Mugwump -- you've got a big stake in making sure that Representative Democracy works the way it is supposed to. And today, it just isn't working very well. We all need to figure out how to fix it because we simply cannot keep on making such bad decisions on the basis of false impressions and mistaken assumptions.

Earlier, I mentioned the feeling many have that something basic has gone wrong. Whatever it is, I think it has a lot to do with the way we seek the truth and try in good faith to use facts as the basis for debates about our future -- allowing for the unavoidable tendency we all have to get swept up in our enthusiasms.

That last point is worth highlighting. Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty.

Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy.

Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.

The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas.

There are at least a couple of problems with this approach:

First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.

That's what happened, for example, when Vice President Cheney invited all of those oil and gas industry executives to meet in secret sessions with him and his staff to put their wish lists into the administration's legislative package in early 2001.

That group wanted to get rid of the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, of course, and the Administration pulled out of it first thing. The list of people who helped write our nation's new environmental and energy policies is still secret, and the Vice President won't say whether or not his former company, Halliburton, was included. But of course, as practically everybody in the world knows, Halliburton was given a huge open-ended contract to take over and run the Iraqi oil fields-- without having to bid against any other companies.

Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, the White House ordered its own EPA to strip important scientific information about the dangers of global warming out of a public report. Instead, the White House substituted information that was partly paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. This week, analysts at the Treasury Department told a reporter that they're now being routinely ordered to change their best analysis of what the consequences of the Bush tax laws are likely to be for the average person.

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.

Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression.

Maybe one reason that false impressions have a played a bigger role than they should is that both Congress and the news media have been less vigilant and exacting than they should have been in the way they have tried to hold the Administration accountable.

Whenever both houses of Congress are controlled by the President's party, there is a danger of passivity and a temptation for the legislative branch to abdicate its constitutional role. If the party in question is unusually fierce in demanding ideological uniformity and obedience, then this problem can become even worse and prevent the Congress from properly exercising oversight. Under these circumstances, the majority party in the Congress has a special obligation to the people to permit full Congressional inquiry and oversight rather than to constantly frustrate and prevent it.

Whatever the reasons for the recent failures to hold the President properly accountable, America has a compelling need to quickly breathe new life into our founders' system of checks and balances -- because some extremely important choices about our future are going to be made shortly, and it is imperative that we avoid basing them on more false impressions.

One thing the President could do to facilitate the restoration of checks and balances is to stop blocking reasonable efforts from the Congress to play its rightful role. For example, he could order his appointees to cooperate fully with the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, headed by former Republican Governor Tom Kean. And he should let them examine how the White House handled the warnings that are said to have been given to the President by the intelligence community.

Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S.

I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information. And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue. And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too.

After all, this President has claimed the right for his executive branch to send his assistants into every public library in America and secretly monitor what the rest of us are reading. That's been the law ever since the Patriot Act was enacted. If we have to put up with such a broad and extreme invasion of our privacy rights in the name of terrorism prevention, surely he can find a way to let this National Commission know how he and his staff handled a highly specific warning of terrorism just 36 days before 9/11.

And speaking of the Patriot Act, the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights that twice have been documented by his own Inspector General. And while he's at it, he needs to reign in Donald Rumsfeld and get rid of that DoD "Total Information Awareness" program that's right out of George Orwell's 1984.

The administration hastened from the beginning to persuade us that defending America against terror cannot be done without seriously abridging the protections of the Constitution for American citizens, up to and including an asserted right to place them in a form of limbo totally beyond the authority of our courts. And that view is both wrong and fundamentally un-American.

But the most urgent need for new oversight of the Executive Branch and the restoration of checks and balances is in the realm of our security, where the Administration is asking that we accept a whole cluster of new myths:

For example, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was an effort to strike a bargain between states possessing nuclear weapons and all others who had pledged to refrain from developing them. This administration has rejected it and now, incredibly, wants to embark on a new program to build a brand new generation of smaller (and it hopes, more usable) nuclear bombs. In my opinion, this would be true madness -- and the point of no return to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- even as we and our allies are trying to prevent a nuclear testing breakout by North Korea and Iran.

Similarly, the Kyoto treaty is an historic effort to strike a grand bargain between free-market capitalism and the protection of the global environment, now gravely threatened by rapidly accelerating warming of the Earth's atmosphere and the consequent disruption of climate patterns that have persisted throughout the entire history of civilization as we know it. This administration has tried to protect the oil and coal industries from any restrictions at all -- though Kyoto may become legally effective for global relations even without U.S. participation.

Ironically, the principal cause of global warming is our civilization's addiction to burning massive quantities carbon-based fuels, including principally oil -- the most important source of which is the Persian Gulf, where our soldiers have been sent for the second war in a dozen years -- at least partly to ensure our continued access to oil.

We need to face the fact that our dangerous and unsustainable consumption of oil from a highly unstable part of the world is similar in its consequences to all other addictions. As it becomes worse, the consequences get more severe and you have to pay the dealer more.

And by now, it is obvious to most Americans that we have had one too many wars in the Persian Gulf and that we need an urgent effort to develop environmentally sustainable substitutes for fossil fuels and a truly international effort to stabilize the Persian Gulf and rebuild Iraq.

The removal of Saddam from power is a positive accomplishment in its own right for which the President deserves credit, just as he deserves credit for removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. But in the case of Iraq, we have suffered enormous collateral damage because of the manner in which the Administration went about the invasion. And in both cases, the aftermath has been badly mishandled.

The administration is now trying to give the impression that it is in favor of NATO and UN participation in such an effort. But it is not willing to pay the necessary price, which is support of a new UN Resolution and genuine sharing of control inside Iraq.

If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.

And as for honor and integrity, let me say this: we know what that was all about, but hear me well, not as a candidate for any office, but as an American citizen who loves my country:

For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.

So I would say to those who have found the issue of honor and integrity so useful as a political tool, that the people are also looking for these virtues in the execution of public policy on their behalf, and will judge whether they are present or absent.

I am proud that my party has candidates for president committed to those values. I admire the effort and skill they are putting into their campaigns. I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them, because I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions.
posted by Richard at 8:50 PM

 

A Conversation with Shallow Throat

From Bushwatch.

Shallow Throat Explains How Bush Can Be Beaten

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

With the Bush Administration in imploding disarray, frantically scrambling for ways out of its WMD scandal, I set the code for alerting "Shallow Throat" that I wanted to talk. I was anxious to learn, from inside the belly of the beast, how bad the situation was for the Bush forces and what we in the opposition could do to make it worse. (The former, high-ranking Republican mole in the White House* had moved on to another government agency, but still had friends on the inside.)

Shallow Throat appeared for our rendezvous, at a park bench in a D.C. suburb, wearing a wig, wide-brimmed hat and wraparound dark glasses that I hadn't seen before. We ate our deli sandwiches while we chatted.

"You've certainly got their knickers in a twist," said ST, with a huge grin. "What's happened is that the patina of invincibility has suddenly disappeared from Rove and his minions. Everyone in the White House realizes they've bungled this one badly, and they're struggling for how to play it to lessen the political fallout. And so we all get to watch the laughable farce as a new line is trotted out each day, to see what will work best. So far, nothing has worked at all -- Bush is psychologically incapable of accepting responsibility, for anything, so now the Dems are sharpening their knives.

"Oh, much of the larger public seems almost as confused and apathetic as always -- although the public-opinion polls are beginning to show a slide for Bush in believability and support for the Iraq war -- but that's not the class that counts in this town. There's blood in the water, and the political and media sharks are circling. With their arrogant self-righteousness, the Bushies have made a lot of enemies in two-plus years -- including among my traditional conservative friends -- and, if the Bush juggernaut continues to be seriously weakened, it's going to be payback time. So tell your friends to keep bringing it on; the assault is working: The Bush Administration is finally having to use a good share of its energies and time on defense instead of being able to focus totally on offense."

"I'd guess," I offerred, "that the Administration's biggest blunder to date was to try to dump all the WMD scandal blame onto the CIA."

"The spooks in Langley are not appreciative of that sort of political gamesmanship, and they are masters of the controlled leak, and so all sorts of other Bush Administration skullduggery is starting to, or is about to, surface -- in much the same way as a 'third-rate burglary' at the Watergate Apartments led to the real, under-the-rock slime of the Nixon Administration. You don't want to get the CIA ticked off; unlike many of your liberal friends, the spooks know how to play for keeps, and they enjoy the sport.

"But it's a larger issue, and here's where the Bush people are so vulnerable. Given that their bullyboy, in-your-face attitude had worked so well, in their hubris they really thought they could do and say anything and get away with it forever. So they told all sorts of whoppers about why Iraq supposedly was an 'imminent' danger to the U.S., and grossly manipulated non-existent facts to generate pro-war hysteria in time to meet the go-date for the bombing and invasion -- which, of course, had been set a half-year before. All of that was so blatant and obvious, it was no wonder millions of protesters took to the streets, and the European leaders and the U.N. would have nothing to do with the Bush Administration and even shouted at them in public."

"But," I said, "even though the Bushies always had gotten away with such behavior before, didn't they suspect that they might not get away with it this time, given the stakes involved?"

"The short answer is no. For people like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Perle and so on -- the true-believer zealots -- they'd been on such an unimpeded roll for so long, and with the conglomerate-owned mass-media covering their butts for them, why should it ever end? Oh, a few were aware that the approach was risky -- Colin Powell, for one, knew there was too much 'bullshit' intelligence, his word not mine, being passed off as fact -- but figured that after the invasion, the military might just find a whole lot of WMD to justify the war, and make the lies moot.

"But nothing was found, zilch, nada. Even the two trailers, which they claimed were proof of nefarious preparations for bio-chem warfare, turned out to be British-sold vehicles for making weather-balloon gas. And the stuff buried in the nuclear scientist's garden 12 years ago just confirmed that there was no serious atomic development in the works.

"Now, just in case some actual or planted WMD turns up in Iraq, it's vital that your Democrat and internet-writer friends need to quit focusing only on those offending 16 words and to move on to the larger point: Nothing that has been found to date, and probably nothing that will be found, lends any credence to the Bush theory -- elaborated in speech after speech for months before the State of the Union address -- that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. or U.K. or their neighbors. Simply wasn't true.

"But there were Bush and Blair ranting about the necessity to act immediately because Iraq could activate its bio-chemical attack weapons in 45 minutes and have drone airplanes drop nuclear devices on the U.S. mainland. And the supposedly 'close' ties between al-Qaida and Iraq. It was ALL 'bullshit'! And they knew it, just as the Bush inner circle knew al-Qaida was coming by planes to America in the Fall of 2001 and did nothing."

"You think Bush and Cheney and the rest are vulnerable to impeachment?" I asked.

"It all depends on whether the Democrats and the press and the whisleblowers keep the pressure on, keep releasing new juicy tidbits of Bush Administration skullduggery. The GOP, at least the more rabid elements, are circling the wagons around the White House, hoping to cut off the attacks. You'll know the real answer to your question when more Republican moderates, and then elements of the leadership, start backing away and seek a meeting with Bush about the matter."

"You mean," I asked, "seek his resignation before the impeachment stuff hits the fan?"

"Whoa, boy! We're nowhere near there yet. As I say, it depends on a great number of factors: Whether Blair is forced to resign, for example; whether the media keeps digging for more Bush and Cheney dirt; whether the whisteblowers inside and outside the Agency keep the embarrassing revelations coming, etc."

"But what if it continues to get worse and worser for the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle cabal?"

Shallow Throat took a long swig of Snapple. "It's like Watergate, in a way. Nixon was trapped, it was obvious to all that he was going down, but he refused to resign until the impeachment train was in the station, and it was then that the GOP leaders abandoned him and sought a meeting. These Bush guys are not going to leave until impeachment is staring them in the face -- and, even then, they're desperate and greedy enough to be capable of anything, including trying to impose martial law on the country and ruling from the bunkers, postponing the 2004 election, whatever.

"But my guess is that it will never come to that. The forces that support the Bush extremists -- the GOP power-holders, the giant corporations, the think-tank founders, the big-money guys, et al. -- will figure at some point that it's damage-control time and they'd better have a back-up plan in order to continue their program, and to continue their powerful role in making that program's policy. They'll find someone who knows how to massage the system rather than wring its neck, who more subtly can get them what they want."

"And what about Cheney?"

"Tenet probably will have to resign, now that he loyally fell on his sword to take the blame away from Cheney and Bush and Rice and Rumsfeld. But Cheney is expendable, too, if it comes to it. Cheney might just have another heart 'episode,' and, for 'health reasons,' he could resign. But don't look for that to happen overnight, or at all. These guys are ruthless survivors. Cheney will leave, if he does, so that the program can continue -- just like Lyndon Johnson chose not to run again, so the Vietnam War could continue.

"And, by the way, the Bush people are incompetents -- but that's another story."

"Don't just teasingly drop that in. I want to hear that story," I said.

"They're so locked into their ideological box that they don't receive the more complex, real-world information they need to make wise decisions. The White House aides follow their boss in their lack of curiosity about the world outside their little fiefdoms. Don't bother them with facts, their minds are made up, that sort of thing.

"So, for example, they ignored what actually was happenng inside Iraq and listened mostly to what the Iraqi exile leaders were telling them -- basically whatever they figured the Bushies wanted to hear -- and assumed it would all go down like Chalabi and his followers said. The result was that there were no firm plans for an occupation by arms after Saddam was defeated, since everyone would want to cooperate with the Americans, after first kissing their feet and throwing rose petals on their heads.

"And now these exiles, many of whom haven't the foggiest notion what's really happening inside the country, dominate the new Governing Council of Iraq. And the Americans are surprised that a great many Iraqis consider these Council members to be collaborators with the Americans. Every member was appointed by the occupying power -- terrified to permit Iraqis to vote for their own interim government.

"You can smell Vietnam all over Iraq. The U.S., too stupid and stubborn to admit it's made a bad mistake, not really understanding the layers of the culture in which they find themselves, is going to be bogged down there forever, fighting Iraqi guerrillas and calling for yes another 50,000 and then another 100,000 troops but we're winning the hearts and minds of the natives don't worry the boys will be home by Christmas now don't that sound familiar?"

"But they claim they're getting a number of nations to come help them out, so that the American troops can head back home?"

Shallow Throat gave me a look like I was a total dumbbell, then said: "Look, my friend. Before the war started, the Bush Administration humiliated and bullied countries that should have been, and could have been, their allies in the first place. But that would have meant sharing some power, and the Project for the New American Century ideologues that control military policy in the Bush Administration, who drew up the Iraq war doctrine and the strategy for 'benevolent global hegemony' -- yep, they really called it that -- could not permit any other country or international body to have a piece of the action.

"The unilateral cowboys went off and had their nice, quick little war, but now are paying a huge price in blood and treasure, and want the countries they'd insulted to come help them play occupier and hegemonist. No wonder few are signing up voluntarily, and almost nobody is sending large contingents of troops.

"Let's see which countries placate the Giant Elephant by sending a few troops, and which countries, like France and India, politely tell the U.S. to take a long walk on a short pier. And now that Bush and Blair are in the hot seat because of their gross lies to bamboozle their citizenry into supporting an unnecessary war, you can imagine that many countries will feel more emboldened to refuse the U.S. request for peacekeeping troops."

"I'm getting the distinct impression," I said, "that maybe you don't really like the Bush folks."

"If it weren't so tragic, it WOULD be funny," said ST. "But the consequences of their incompetency mixed with their ideological fanaticism are abolutely tragic. Death and destruction on massive scales for -- what? So that the world's only Superpower can swagger around the globe like a coked-out macho-man, thirsty for more oil, more power, more control, more of everything.? It's madness, and does long-term damage to America, creating a fertile field for terrorism to grow."

"Do you think that Bush&Co. can be defeated in 2004?"

"Sure, given some givens: That the 9/11 and WMD coverups continue to unravel. That the economy continues to tank as the deficits keep climbing to astronomical heights. That as popular social programs get cut (Head Start, Medicare, Social Security, pollution controls, etc.), and states keep going broke, with no funds to fix the bridges and the roads and the schools. That the American people grow tired of permanent war and body bags being shipped home. That someone discovers how to make the computer-voting software tamperproof and with verifiable paper trails. And on and on.

"The short answer is yes, because the Rove in-your-face approach works only as long as people are afraid of you; when they stand up and tell you to go to hell, the foundations holding up that deck of cards will topple and down will come baby, cradle and all. If they haven't resigned or been impeached by November of 2004, the Bush forces may well lose the election, provided, of course, that the Democrats put up someone who isn't afraid to speak truth to power but who also is able to mobilize not only the activist Democratic base but also can reach out to middle-class, middle-of-the-road type voters.

"If my Republican conservative friends and colleagues are examples -- just itching to feel secure but not with reckless crazies in charge -- the Democrat could win a fair election."

"Any final thoughts to pass on?" I asked.

"Just this: Like most bullies, the Bushies are insecure. Confront them with the facts, put them on the defensive, keep attacking their weak spots, don't let up, bring it on. You can win. And when you win, we all win -- the country, the nervous world, the Constitution. Now get to work."

And with that, Shallow Throat, from 10 feet out, flung a half-eaten sandwich into the dustbin, grinned, pulled the hat down, and sauntered out of the park. I found myself smiling, for the first time in a long time. --07.21.03

Bernard Weiner, a playwright and poet, was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater critic for 16 years, and now co-edits the progressive political website The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). *For other conversations with the Shallow Throat character, go to: www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm
posted by Richard at 5:26 PM

 

Republicans Creating the Problems they want to be elected to solve.

Paul Krugman again has a very clear statement showing why the Republican irresponsibility is exacerbating the California fiscal crisis.

The recall isn't just a case of hardball politics. It's also a grand act of evasion: in the face of a severe fiscal crisis, voters are being invited to focus not on hard choices but on personality. Replacing Gray Davis with someone more likable isn't going to pay the bills.

You often hear claims that excessive spending is responsible for California's budget woes. True, budgets grew rapidly after the mid-1990's. But California began the 1990's by slashing outlays in response to a fiscal crisis, and most of the subsequent growth was simply a return to pre-crisis levels. As analysts at the nonpartisan California Budget Project point out, real state spending per capita was only 10 percent higher in 2002-03 than it was in 1989-90 — that is, most of the spending growth was simply a matter of keeping up with the population and inflation.

The key factor in rising California spending has been the effort to rebuild a crippled education system.

Proposition 13, the 1978 cap on property taxes, led to a progressive starvation of California's once-lauded public schools. By 1994, the state had the largest class sizes in the nation; its reading scores were on a par with Mississippi's.

Voters wanted this shameful situation remedied. Indeed, much of the recent growth of education spending was mandated by a rather complex measure called Proposition 98. So when conservatives denounce "runaway government spending" in California, what they're really talking about is the effort to hire more teachers and repair decrepit school buildings.

Still, now the state faces a huge deficit, and spending must be cut. But shouldn't the state also seek more revenue? During California's last crisis, Governor Wilson increased the sales tax and temporarily raised income taxes on top brackets. This time Governor Davis proposed doing more or less the same thing — but Senate Republicans refused to go along. Their counterproposal relied entirely on spending cuts — but, tellingly, offered no specifics about what, exactly, should be cut.

This week the stalemate was finally resolved, sort of. The budget that was passed contains one significant tax increase, a rise in the vehicle licensing fee — for technical reasons, this didn't require a vote. And it uses elaborate fiscal footwork to evade restrictions on state borrowing, passing the problem on until next year. It's better than no budget at all, but it's a monument to political irresponsibility.

Do we really want to elect people like this to run our governments? The problem is an economic downturn and Republican demogoguery. Let's hope Gray Davis can get through the recall election October 7th.

Then we need to do something about the federal deficit which is caused by exactly the same kind of demogoguery.
posted by Richard at 11:09 AM