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Gaia Angel 
ezOP
Posts: 2256
(11/20/04 10:53 am)
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This Just in...again
Thread was getting post heavy so made us a new one
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 999
(11/26/04 2:08 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
This was in the New York Times.
Shhh, Don't Say 'Poverty'
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 22, 2004
Former Senator Phil Gramm, a Republican from Texas who was known for his orneriness, once said, "We're the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat."
That particular example of compassionate conservatism came to mind as I looked over a report from the Department of Agriculture showing that more than 12 million American families continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves.
The 12 million families represent 11.2 percent of all U.S. households. "At some time during the year," the report said, "these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources."
Of the 12 million families that worried about putting food on the table, 3.9 million had members who actually went hungry at some point last year. "The other two-thirds ... obtained enough food to avoid hunger using a variety of coping strategies," the report said, "such as eating less varied diets, participating in federal food assistance programs, or getting emergency food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens."
These are dismal statistics for a country as well-to-do as the United States. But we don't hear much about them because hunger is associated with poverty, and poverty is not even close to becoming part of our national conversation. Swift boats, yes. Sex scenes on "Monday Night Football," most definitely. The struggle of millions of Americans to feed themselves? Oh no. Let's not go there.
What does that tell you about American values?
We are surrounded by poor and low-income people. (The definitions can be elastic and easily blurred, but essentially we're talking about individuals and families that don't have enough money to cover the essentials - food, shelter, clothing, transportation and so forth.) Many of them are full-time workers, and some have more than one job.
A new study by the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group, found that more than 550,000 families in New York - a quarter of all working families in the state - had incomes that were too low to cover their basic needs.
We just had a bitterly contested presidential election, but this very serious problem (it's hardly confined to New York) was not a major part of the debate.
According to the study: "Most low-income working families do not conform to the popular stereotype of the working poor as young, single, fast-food workers: 88 percent of low-income working families include a parent between 25 and 54 years old. Married couples head 53 percent of these families nationwide. Important jobs such as health aide, janitor and child care worker pay a poverty wage."
In its introduction, the study says, "The implied bargain America offers its citizens is supposed to be that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can support his or her family and move onward and upward."
If that was the bargain, we've broken it again and again. Low-income workers have always been targets for exploitation, and that hasn't changed. The Times's Steven Greenhouse had a troubling front-page article in last Friday's paper about workers at restaurants, supermarkets, call centers and other low-paying establishments who are forced to go off the clock and continue working for periods of time without pay.
The federal government has not raised the minimum wage since 1997, and has made it easier for some employers to deny time-and-a-half pay to employees who work overtime.
Franklin Roosevelt, in his second Inaugural Address, told a rain-soaked crowd, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
I can hear the politicians in today's Washington having a hearty laugh at that sentiment.
There are advocates and even some politicians hard at work addressing the myriad problems faced by beleaguered workers and their families. But they get very little in the way of attention or resources from the most powerful sectors of society. So the health care workers who can't afford health insurance will continue emptying bedpans for a pittance. And the janitors will clean up faithfully after the big shots who ignore them.
These are rough times for the American dream. But times change, and the people who have broken faith with the dream won't be in power forever.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1000
(11/26/04 2:13 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
I found this one highl;y disturbing.
As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words
Mon Nov 22, 8:08 AM ET
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (Reuters) - What are the words used by indigenous peoples in the Arctic for "hornet," "robin," "elk," "barn owl" or "salmon?" If you don't know, you're not alone.
Many indigenous languages have no words for legions of new animals, insects and plants advancing north as global warming thaws the polar ice and lets forests creep over tundra.
"We can't even describe what we're seeing," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (news - web sites) which says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.
In the Inuit language Inuktitut, robins are known just as the "bird with the red breast," she said. Inuit hunters in north Canada recently saw some ducks but have not figured out what species they were, in Inuktitut or any other language.
An eight-nation report this month says the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in northern hemisphere summer by 2100, threatening indigenous cultures and perhaps wiping out creatures like polar bears.
The report, by 250 scientists and funded by the United States, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, puts most of the blame on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from human use of fossil fuels like coal and oil.
The thaw may have some positive spin-offs for people, for instance by making chill Arctic seas more habitable for cod or herring or by shifting agricultural lands and forestry north.
But on land, more and more species will be cramming into an ever-narrowing strip bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, threatening to destroy fragile Arctic ecosystems from mosses to Arctic foxes or snowy owls.
ELK SHOCK
In Arctic Europe, birch trees are gaining ground and Saami reindeer herders are seeing roe deer or even elk, a forest-dwelling cousin of moose, on former lichen pastures.
"I know about 1,200 words for reindeer -- we classify them by age, sex, color, antlers," said Nils Isak Eira, who manages a herd of 2,000 reindeer in north Norway.
"I know just one word for elk -- 'sarvva'," said 50-year-old Eira. "But the animals are so unusual that many Saami use the Norwegian word 'elg.' When I was a child it was like a mythical creature."
Thrushes have been spotted in Saami areas of the Arctic in winter, apparently too lazy to bother migrating south.
Foreign ministers from the eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik on Wednesday but are sharply divided about what to do. The United States is most opposed to any drastic new action.
The U.S. is the only country among the eight to reject the 127-nation Kyoto protocol meant to cap emissions of greenhouse gases. President Bush (news - web sites) says the U.N. pact would cost too much and unfairly excludes developing states.
In some more southerly areas of the Arctic, like Canada's Hudson Bay, receding ice means polar bears are already struggling. The bears' main trick is to pounce when seals surface to breathe through holes in the ice.
The Arctic report says polar bears "are unlikely to survive as a species if there is a complete loss of summer-ice cover." Restricted to land, polar bears would have to compete with better-adapted grizzly or brown bears.
"The outlook for polar bears is stark. My grandson will lose the culture I had as a child," said Watt-Cloutier, referring to Inuit hunting cultures based on catching seals, bears or whales.
SALMON, OWLS
Around the Arctic, salmon are swimming into more northerly waters, hornets are buzzing north and barn owls are flying to regions where indigenous people have never even seen a barn.
Watt-Cloutier said indigenous peoples lacked well-known words for all of them.
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report says that the region is set to warm by 7-13 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, twice the rate of the rest of the globe. The Arctic warms fast partly because dark ground and water, once uncovered, soak up much more heat than snow and ice.
"Overall, forests are likely to move north and displace tundra," said Terry Callaghan, a professor of Arctic ecology at the University of Lund, Sweden. "That will bring more species -- birds that nest in trees, beetles that live in bark, fungi."
The lack of words to describe newcomers does not stop at animals and plants. "Words like 'thunderstorm' don't exist because they are phenomena indigenous peoples have never known," said Robert Corell, chair of the ACIA study.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1001
(11/26/04 3:12 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
Article Last Updated: 11/25/2004 01:27:25 AM
Military expansion continually besieges Indian lands
Question of proximity: A study contends the high number of hazardous sites near reservations is akin to discrimination
By Nicholas K. Geranios
The Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. - The last major campaigns by the U.S. Army against Indian tribes took place in the late 1800s. But the military is still dangerous to Indians in the West today, a new report found.
The study contends the dramatic expansion of U.S. military bases during the 20th century was largely concentrated in the same remote, arid places where Indian reservations were located.
That means Indians could be disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals and unexploded bombs, compared to non-Indians, according to the report by Gregory Hooks of Washington State University and a former graduate student, Chad Smith, now of Texas State University-San Marcos.
Two world wars and the Cold War ''pushed the United States to produce, test and deploy weapons of unprecedented toxicity,'' the study said. ''Native Americans have been left exposed to the dangers of this toxic legacy.''
The study, just published in American Sociological Review, is based on geography, not on actual data showing whether Indians are more often injured by unexploded bombs, Hooks said. Such studies remain to be conducted, he said.
Using Defense Department data on closed military bases in the Lower 48 states - including bombing ranges, weapons testing and storage sites - researchers discovered the locations deemed most hazardous ''lay within close proximity to Indian reservations,'' the report said.
Numerous past studies have shown that minority groups often face so-called ''environmental racism'' from dangerous factories and other commercial facilities because poverty limits the places where they can afford to live.
But in Indian country, Indians typically did not choose the sites of their reservations, and the toxic wastes were created not by private industry but by the military.
This study is the first to show that Indian tribes in remote areas have faced the same sort of environmental discrimination as people in urban areas, Hooks said.
The study only considered closed military bases because security concerns make it impossible to learn of environmental hazards at functioning military bases, Hooks said.
As a result, military facilities like the Yakima Training Center, Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and Fort Lewis, Wash., all of which are located near Indian reservations, were not considered in the study, Hooks said.
That raises the possibility that dangers to Indians are even greater than what was found in the report, he said.
The study noted the U.S. military expanded dramatically into Indian country for much of the 20th century. That's because they were looking for areas that were remote, unpopulated and already owned by the federal government.
Many Indian reservations are also located on some of the most undesirable land in the West, the study found.
The Department of Defense has acknowledged the problems, the report said, quoting a 2001 department report that said Indian lands have ''hazardous materials, unexploded ordnance (UXO), abandoned equipment, unsafe buildings, and debris.''
The government estimates that unexploded ordnance, which can include mines, nerve gases and explosive shells, probably contaminates 20 million to 50 million acres of land in the United States and would take centuries to clean up at current rates.
Jerry Vincent, who oversees cleanup of formerly used military sites in California for the Army Corps in Sacramento, said most of the bombing ranges in his region are littered with dummy bombs that do not contain high explosives.
But he agreed that remote military sites that might be near Indian reservations get a low priority for limited cleanup funds because of the low population.
The counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego in California and Chaves and Luna in New Mexico were singled out in the new report for having large amounts of unexploded ordnance.
The report found that those six counties averaged 10.5 dangerous sites each, compared with 0.12 dangerous sites for each of the other 3,130 counties in the lower 48 states.
Jonathan Maas of the Army Corps in Seattle said they have been searching for a cache of chemical weapons that might have been stored at a facility on the Tulalip Reservation near Marysville in the 1940s, but have not found the weapons.
The report by Hooks and Smith found that in 1916, the U.S. Army owned about 1.5 million acres of land, and expanded dramatically during World War I. By 1940, the Army owned about 2 million acres of land.
The huge buildup to World War II saw the Army acquire another 8 million acres. Most of those lands were in the vicinity or contiguous to Indian reservations, the report said.
Conventional weapons in World War II were far more lethal than weapons from previous wars, and the United States has led the world in the production of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the report said.
For instance, the huge Nellis Range near Las Vegas was absorbed into the nuclear weapons complex. The Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah saw tests of chemical warfare weapons, the report said.
The military also seized about 342,000 acres of land on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for a bombing range to train pilots. That left many unexploded bombs on the landscape, the report said.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1002
(11/27/04 8:57 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
Reading this almost made me cry.And Bush STILL says we're there to "liberate" them.
Fallujah Refugees in Their Own Words
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
“Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33 year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad, “Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.” He looks at the ground, then away to the distance.
Honking cars fill the chaotic street outside the hospital where they’d just received brand new desks. The empty boxes are strewn about outside. Um Mohammed, a doctor at the hospital sat behind her old, wooden desk. “How can I take a new desk when there are patients dying because we don’t have medicine for them,” she asked while holding her hands in the air, “They should build a lift so patients who can’t walk can be taken to surgery, and instead we have these new desks!” Her eyes were piercing with fire, while yet another layer of frustration is folded into her work.
“And there are still a few Iraqis who think the Americans came to liberate them,” she added while looking out the broken window. The glass lay about outside-shattered from a car bomb that had detonated in front of the hospital. “These people will change their minds about the liberators when they, too, have had a family member killed by them.”
Mehdi then takes us to a refugee camp of Fallujans over on the campus of the University of Baghdad. Tents surround an old mosque. Kids run about, several of them kicking around a half-inflated soccer ball. Some women are using two water taps to clean pots and wash clothing. Many people stand around, walking aimlessly, waiting.
We contact a sheikh for permission to talk to some of the families. He greets us then says, “You can see how much we have suffered. We have 97 families here now, with 50 more coming tomorrow. People are kidnapping refugee children and selling them.”
A 35 year-old merchant from Fallujah, Abu Hammad, starts telling us what he experienced, and barely breathes while doing so because he is so enraged.
“The American warplanes came continuously through the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah! It did not stop even for a moment! If the American forces did not find a target to bomb, they used sound bombs just to terrorize the people and children. The city stayed in fear; I cannot give a picture of how panicked everyone was.”
He is shaking with grief and anger. “In the mornings I found Fallujah empty, as if nobody lives in it. Even poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah-they used everything-tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground. Nothing is left.”
Several men standing with us, other refugees, nod in agreement while looking at the setting sun, the direction of Fallujah.
Abu Hammad continues, “Most of the innocent people there stayed in mosques to be closer to God for safety. Even the wounded people were killed. Old ladies with white flags were killed by the Americans! The Americans announced for people to come to a certain mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed!”
One of the men standing with us, a large man named Mohammad Ali is crying; his large body shuddering with each bit of new information revealed by Abu Hammad.
“There was no food, no electricity, no water,” continues Abu Hammad, “We couldn’t even light a candle because the Americans would see it and kill us.”
He pauses, then asks, “This suffering of the people, I would like to ask everyone in the world if they have seen suffering like this. The people in Fallujah are only Fallujans. Ayad Allawi was a liar when he said there are foreign fighters there.”
He continues on, “There are bodies the Americans threw in the river. I saw them do this! And anyone who stayed thought they would be killed by the Americans, so they tried to swim across the river. Even then the Americans shot them with rifles from the shore! Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot! Even people who couldn’t swim tried to cross the river! They drowned rather than staying to be killed by the Americans.”
Mohammad cuts in and begins his plea. He is from the Julan district of Fallujah, where much of the heaviest fighting occurred, and continues to occur. “They call us terrorists when we live in the city. We own the city. We didn’t go to fight the Americans-they came to our city to fight us. Fallujans are defending our city, our houses, our mosques, our honor. Ayad Allawi says we are his family-can you attack your family Allawi? Do you attack your own family Allawi?”
He now raises his hands to the sky and asks loudly, “We are asking Islam, all the Islamic countries to have a clear conscience to look at what is happening to Fallujah. We were the most secured city with the police and ING (Iraqi National Guard) without the presence of the Americans. But now when we come to Baghdad we are afraid because our cars and belongings will be looted.”
His large body continues to shudder as he talks on, “We did not feel that there is Eid after Ramadan this year because of our situation being so bad. All we have is more fasting. They said they are going to reconstruct Fallujah-but I would like to ask when and how, and what did they do to Sadr City when they stopped fighting there? They did nothing.”
I notice a man with one leg sitting near the mosque nodding while he smokes his cigarette while Mohammad continues, “I would like to ask the whole world-why is this? I tell the presidents of the Arab and Muslim countries to wake up! Wake up please! We are being killed, we are refugees from our houses, our children have nothing-not even shoes to wear! Wake up! Wake up! Stop being traitors! Be human beings and not the dummies of the Americans!”
He is weeping even more when he adds, “I left Fallujah yesterday and I am handicapped. I asked God to save us but our house was bombed and I lost everything.”
As Mohammad no longer speaks, a 40 year-old refugee, Khalil, speaks up. “When the Americans come to our city we refuse to accept any foreigner coming to invade us. We accept the ING’s but not the Americans. Nobody has seen any Zarqawi. If the Americans don’t come in our city, who do Fallujans attack? Fallujans don’t attack other Iraqis. Fallujans only attack the American troops when they come inside or near our city.”
Rather than weeping like so many others I interviewed, Khalil is raging. His sadness is being covered with anger. “If we have a government-the government should solve the suffering of the people. Our government does not do this-instead they are always attacking us, our government is a dummy government. They are not here to help us. The Minister of Defense and Interior are speaking that we are their family-so why do they collapse our houses on our heads? Why do they kill all of us?”
But then tears find his eyes, and while pointing to several small children nearby he says, “Eid is over. Ramadan is over-and the kids are remaining without even a smile. They have nothing and nowhere to go. We used to take them to parks to amuse them, but now we don’t even have a house for them.”
He continues pointing at the children, along with some women nearby, “What about the children? What did they do? What about the women? I can’t describe the situation in Fallujah and the condition of the people-Fallujah is suffering too much, it is almost gone now.”
He then explains, “We got some supplies from the good people of Baghdad, and some volunteer doctors came on their own with some medicines, but they ran out daily because conditions are so bad. We saw nothing from the Ministry of Health-no medicines or doctors or anything.”
He said those who left Fallujah did not think they would be gone so long, so they brought only their summer clothes. Now it is quite cold at night, down to 10 degrees C at night and windy much of the time. Khalil adds, “We need more clothes. It’s a disaster we are living in here at this camp. We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes.”
As of today, a spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent told me none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah, and the military said it would be at least two more weeks before any refugees would be allowed into their city.
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narshaadha
Moderator
Posts: 490
(11/27/04 10:55 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
This is heartbreaking. How can we stop it?
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1003
(11/27/04 11:34 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
I wish I knew,Narsh.I really wish I knew.But as long as a warmongerer is in power,I don't think it will stop.New rebels,and "terrorists" are born every second we remain in a country we don't belong in.They're born from watching thier loved ones killed for no reason.They're born from seeing children lying there,bloody,and wounded.And the world will never be a "safe" place,as long as the real terrorist stays in office.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1004
(11/28/04 1:13 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
According to this,it looks like the current House of Representatives is only going to be run by one party,at least until Bush is out of office.Democrats have NO voice.
November 27th, 2004 6:37 pm
Hastert Launches a Partisan Policy
By Charles Babington / Washington Post
In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.
Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.
Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.
That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."
Such bipartisan spirit in the Capitol now seems a faint echo. Citing the increased marginalization of Democrats as House bills are drafted and brought to the floor, Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) said, "It's a set of rules and practices which the Republicans have taken to new extremes."
Price, a former Duke University political scientist and the author of "The Congressional Experience," acknowledged that past congressional leaders, including Democrats, had sometimes scuttled measures opposed by most of their party's colleagues. But he said the practice should not apply to far-reaching, high-stakes legislation such as NAFTA and the intelligence package, which were backed by the White House and most of Congress's 535 members.
Other House Democrats agree. Republicans "like to talk about bipartisanship," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "But when the opportunity came to pass a truly bipartisan bill -- one that would have passed both the House and Senate overwhelmingly and would have made the American people safer -- they failed to do it."
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a White House aide when NAFTA passed, said this week, "What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked 'a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?"
Some scholars say Hastert's decision should not come as a surprise. In a little-noticed speech in the Capitol a year ago, Hastert said one of his principles as speaker is "to please the majority of the majority."
"On occasion, a particular issue might excite a majority made up mostly of the minority," he continued. "Campaign finance is a particularly good example of this phenomenon. The job of speaker is not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority."
Hastert put his principle into practice one week ago today. In a closed meeting in the Capitol basement, he urged his GOP colleagues to back the intelligence bill that had emerged from long House-Senate negotiations and had President Bush's support. When a surprising number refused, Hastert elected to keep it from reaching a vote, even though his aides said it could have passed with a minority of GOP members and strong support from the chamber's 206 Democrats.
Hastert spokesman John Feehery defended the decision in a recent interview. "He wants to pass bills with his majority," Feehery said. "That's the hallmark of this [Republican] majority. . . . If you pass major bills without the majority of the majority, then you tend not to be a long-term speaker. . . . I think he was prudent to listen to his members."
Some congressional scholars say Hastert is emphasizing one element of his job to the detriment of another. As speaker, said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, "you are the party leader, but you are ratified by the whole House. You are a constitutional officer," in line for the presidency after the vice president. At crucial times, he said, a speaker must put the House ahead of his party.
If Congress eventually enacted an intelligence bill similar to the one rejected last Saturday, Ornstein said, "then it would be unfair to rip Hastert to shreds. But if this either kills the bill or turns it from what would have been" a measure with considerable bipartisan support, he said, "then I think he should be condemned roundly."
Some groups representing families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are already criticizing Hastert. "The failure in leadership of the speaker to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote is particularly troubling because we believe the bill would have passed by a wide majority in the House," the Family Steering Committee said.
In the new Congress that convenes in January, Hastert's strategy may prove sufficient for GOP victories on issues that sharply divide the two parties, such as tax cuts, several analysts said. But on trade issues and other matters that are more divisive within the parties -- and thus require bipartisan coalitions to pass -- he could face serious problems.
Hastert's "majority of the majority" maxim, Ornstein said, "is a disastrous recipe for tackling domestic issues such as entitlement programs, the deficit and things like that."
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1009
(12/4/04 10:58 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
The following is at least part of the text of a letter sent by the House Of Representatives,to Kenneth Blackwell,asking why there were so many "irregularities" reported in the Ohio voting procedures.
This is an OCR transcipt of a scanned letter dated December 2nd 2004 that was sent from the Judiciary committee of the house of representatives to Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell. you can veiw/download the PDF file of it at:
www.house.gov/judiciary_d...r12204.pdf
December 2,2004
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 East Broad Street, 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Dear Secretary Blackwell:
We write to request your assistance with our ongoing investigation of election
irregularities in the 2004 Presidential election. As you may be aware, the Government
Accountability Office has agreed to undertake a systematic and comprehensive review of
election irregularities throughout the nation. As a separate matter, we have requested that the
House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff undertake a thorough review of each and every
specific allegation of election irregularities received by our offices.
Collectively, we are concerned that these complaints constitute a troubled portrait of a
one-two punch that may well have altered and suppressed votes, particularly minority and
Democratic votes. First, it appears there were substantial irregularities in vote tallies. It is
unclear whether these apparent errors were the result of machine malfunctions or fraud.
Second, it appears that a series of actions of government and non-government officials
may have worked to frustrate minority voters. Consistent and widespread reports indicate a lack
of voting machines in urban, minority and Democratic areas, and a surplus of such machines in
Republican, white and rural areas. As a result, minority voters were discouraged from voting by
lines that were in excess of eight hours long. Many of these voters were also apparently victims
of a campaign of deception, where flyers and calls would direct them to the wrong polling place.
Once at that polling place, after waiting for hours in line, many of these voters were provided
provisional ballots after learning they were at the wrong location. These ballots were not
counted in many jurisdictions because of a directive issued by some election officials, such as
yourself.
We are sure you agree with us that regardless of the outcome of the election, it is
imperative that we examine any and all factors that may have led to voting irregularities and any
failure of votes to be properly counted. Toward that end, we ask you to respond to the following
allegations:
.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Two
December 2,2004
I. Counting Irregularities
A. Warren County Lockdown - On election night, Warren County locked down its
administration building and barred reporters from observing the counting.1 When that decision
was questioned, County officials claimed they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a
“10” on a scale of 1 to 10, and that this information was received from an FBI agent.2 Despite
repeated requests, County officials have declined to name that agent, however, and the FBI has
stated that they had no information about a terror threat in Warren County.3 Your office has
stated that it does not know of any other county that took these drastic measures.4
In addition to these contradictions, Warren County officials have given conflicting
accounts of when the decision was made to lock down the building.5 While the County
Commissioner has stated that the decision to lockdown the building was made during an October
28 closed-door meeting, emailed memos - dated October 25 and 26 - indicate that preparations
for the lockdown were already underway.6
This lockdown must be viewed in the context of the aberrational results in Warren
County. In the 2000 Presidential election, the Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore,
stopped running television commercials and pulled resources out of Ohio weeks before the
election. He won 28% of the vote in Warren County.7 In 2004, the Democratic Presidential
candidate, John Kerry, fiercely contested Ohio and independent groups put considerable
resources into getting out the Democratic vote. Moreover, unlike in 2000, independent candidate
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1Erica Solvig,, Warren County Still Counting, CINCINNATI ENQUIFUZR, Nov. 3,2004.
2Erica Solvig, Warren Co. Defends Lockdown Decision, CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, Nov. 10,
2004.
3Id.
41d.
5Erica Solvig,, No changes in final Warren Co. vote count, Emails released Monday show
lockdown pre-planned, CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, Nov. 16,2004.
6Id.
7Ohio Secretary of State 2000 Presidential Vote Results,
www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2000/gen/pres.htm. Gore received 19,142 votes out of a total of
6Y,O78 cast (27.71%).
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Three
December 2,2004
Ralph Nader was not on the Ohio ballot in 2004. Yet, the tallies reflect John Kerry receiving
exactly the same percentage in Warren County as Gore received, 28%.8
We hope you agree that transparent election procedures are vital to public confidence in
electoral results. Moreover, such aberrant procedures only create suspicion and doubt that the
counting of votes was manipulated. As part of your decision to certify the election, we hope you
have investigated these concerns and found them without merit. To assist us in reaching a
similar conclusion, we ask the following:
1. Have you, in fact, conducted an investigation of the lockdown? What procedures have
you or would you recommend be put into place to avoid a recurrence of this situation?
2 . Have you ascertained whether County officials were advised of terrorist activity by an
FBI agent and, if so, the identity of that agent?
3 . If County officials were not advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent, have you
inquired as to why they misrepresented this fact ? If the lockdown was not as a response
to a terrorist threat, why did it take place? Did any manipulation of vote tallies occur?
B. Perry County Election Counting Discrepancies - The House Judiciary Committee
Democratic staff has received information indicating discrepancies in vote tabulations in Perry
County. For example, the sign-in book for the Reading S precinct indicates that approximately
360 voters cast ballots in that precinct.9 In the same precinct, the sign-in book indicates that
there were 33 absentee votes cast.10 In sum, this would appear to mean that fewer than 400 total
votes were cast in that precinct. Yet, the precinct’s official tallies indicate that 489 votes were
cast.11 In addition, some voters’ names have two ballot stub numbers listed next to their entries
creating the appearance that voters were allowed to cast more than one ballot.12
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8Ohio Secretary of State 2004 Presidential Vote Results,
www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2004/gen/nres.htm. Kerry received 25,399 votes out of 92,25 1
cast (27.53%).
9Sign-In Book, Reading S Precinct, Perry County Board of Elections, 1 l/02/04 General
Election, copy on file with House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.
10Id.
11Copy of Signed Printout of Initial Perry County Voting Tallies, on file with House
Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.
12Supra note 9.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Four
December 2,2004
In another precinct, W Lexington G AB, 350 voters are registered according to the
County’s initial tallies.13 Yet, 434 voters cast ballots.14 As the tallies indicate, this would be an
impossible 124% voter turnout.15 The breakdown on election night was initially reported to be:
174 votes for Bush, and 246 votes for Kerry.16 We are advised that the Perry County Board of
Elections has since issued a correction claiming that, due to a computer error, some votes were
counted twice.17 We are advised that the new tallies state that only 224 people voted, and the
tally is 90 votes for Bush and 127 votes for Kerry.18 This would make it appear that virtually
every ballot was counted twice, which seems improbable.
In Monroe Township, Precinct AAV, we are advised that 266 voters signed in to vote on
election day,19 yet the Perry County Board of Elections is reporting that 393 votes were cast in
that precinct,20 a difference of 133 votes.
4 . Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Reading S precinct of
Perry County?
5. What is the explanation for the fluctuating results in the W Lexington AB precinct?
6 . Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Monroe Township
precinct AAV?
C. Perry County Registration Peculiarities
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 Id.
14Supru note 11.
15Id.
161d.
17Staff Interview with Election Volunteer, Dec. 1,2004.
18Id.
191d.
2oSupru note 11.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Five
December 2,2004
In Perry County, there appears to be an extraordinarily high level voter registration, 91%;
yet a substantial number of these voters have never voted and have no signature on file.21 Of the
voters that are registered in Perry County an extraordinarily large number of voters are listed as
having registered in 1977, a year in which there were no federal elections.22 Of these an
exceptional number are listed as having registered on the exact same day: in total, 3,100 voters
apparently registered in Perry County on November 8, 1 977.23
7 . Please explain why there is such a high percentage of voters in this County who have
never voted and do not have signatures on file. Also, please help us understand why such
a high number of voters in this County are shown as having registered on the same day in
1977.
D. Unusual Results in Butler County
In Butler County, a Democratic Candidate for State Supreme Court, C. Ellen Connally
received 59,532 votes.24 In contrast, the Kerry-Edwards ticket received only 54,185 votes, 5,000
less than the State Supreme Court candidate.25 Additionally, the victorious Republican candidate
for State Supreme Court received approximately 40,000 less votes than the Bush-Cheney ticket.26
Further, Connally received 10,000 or more votes in excess of Kerry’s total number of votes in
five counties, and 5,000 more votes in excess of Kerry’s total in ten others.27
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21Id.
22Spreadsheet of Ohio Secretary of State Voter Registration Database, on file with the
House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.
23Id
24Election Results, Cincinnati Enquiver, Nov. 4,2004.
25Id.
26Id.
27Unofficial Results, Ohio Secretary of State website, Nov.30, 2004. There are a number
of peculiar results that appear to run counter to the established principle that downballot party
candidates receive far less votes than the presidential candidate of the same party. These results
also are counter to the statewide trend in Ohio, where Kerry received 48.5% of the vote to 46.6%
for Connally. In Adams County, John Kerry barely received more votes than Connally, 4189 to
4010. In Auglaize County, Connolly received more votes than Kerry, 73 12 to 5729. Similar
results were tallied in Brown County, with Kerry receiving 7LW votes to Connally’s 7407; in
Clermont County, Connally received 29,464 to Kerry’s 25,3 18; in Darke County, Connally.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Six
December 2,2004
It must also be noted that Republican judicial candidates were reportedly “awash in
cash,” with more than $1.4 million and were also supported by independent expenditures by the
Ohio Chamber of Commerce.**
While you may have found an explanation for these bizarre results, it appears to be wildly
implausible that 5,000 voters waited in line to cast a vote for an underfunded Democratic
Supreme Court candidate and then declined to cast a vote for the most well-funded Democratic
Presidential campaign in history. We would appreciate an answer to the following:
8. Have you examined how an underfunded Democratic State Supreme Court candidate
could receive so many more votes in Butler County than the Kerry-Edwards ticket? If so,
could you provide us with the results of your examination? Is there any precedent in
Ohio for a downballot candidate receiving on a percentage or absolute basis so many
more votes than the Presidential candidate of the same party in this or any other
presidential election? Please let us know if any other County in Ohio registered such a
disparity on a percentage or absolute basis.
E. Unusual Results in Cuvahoga County:
Precincts in Cleveland have reported an incredibly high number of votes for third party
candidates who have historically received only a handful of votes from these urban areas.29 For
example, precinct 4F in the 4th Ward cast 290 votes for Kerry, 2 1 for Bush, and 2 15 for
Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka.30 In 2000, the same precinct cast less than 8
votes for all third party candidates combined.31
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
received 8817 to Kerry’s 6683; in Highland County, Connally received 6119 to Kerry’s 6012; in
Mercer County, Connally received 6607 to Kerry’s 4924; in Miami County, Connally received
17,206 to Kerry’s 17,039; in Putnam County, Connally received 4,785 votes to Kerry’s 4,348.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28T.C. Brown, Republicans sweep in state high court, CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, Nov.
3,2004.
29Juan Gonzalez, Ohio Tally Fit for Ukraine, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, Nov. 30,2004.
30Id.
31Id.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Seven
December 2,2004
This pattern is found in at least 10 precincts through throughout Cleveland in 2004,
awarding hundreds of unlikely votes to the third party candidate.32 Notably, these precincts share
more than a strong Democratic history: the use of a punch card ballot. In light of these highly
unlikely results, we would like to know the following:
9. Have you investigated whether the punch card system used in Cuyahoga County led to
voters accidentally voting for third party candidates instead of the Democratic candidate
they intended? If so, what were the results? Has a third party candidate ever received
such a high percentage of votes in these precincts.
10. Have you found similar problems in other counties? Have you found similar
problems with other voting methods?
F. Spoiled Ballots
According to post election canvassing, many ballots were cast without any valid selection
for president. For example, two precincts in Montgomery County had an undervote rate of over
25% each - accounting for nearly 6,000 voters who stood in line to vote, but purportedly
declined to vote for president.33 This is in stark contrast to the 2% of undervoting county-wide.34
Disturbingly, predominantly Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than those that
were predominantly Republican35 It is inconceivable to us that such a large number of people
supposedly did not have a preference for president in such a controversial and highly contested
election.
Considering that an estimated 93,000 ballots were spoiled across Ohio,36 we would like to
know the following:
11. HOW many of those spoiled ballots were of the punch card or optical scan format and
could therefore be examined in a recount?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
321d.
33Ken McCall and Jim Bebbington, Two precincts had high undercounts, analysis shows,
DAYTON DAILY NEWS, NOV. l&2004.
341d.
351d.
36Scott Hiaasen, Like clinging chads, Kerry faithful hang on, THE PLAIN DEALER,
Nov. 6, 2004.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Eight
December 2,2004
12. Of those votes that have a paper trail, how many votes for president were
undercounted, or showed no preference for president? How many were overcounted, or
selected more than one candidate for president? How many other ballots had an
indeterminate preference?
1 3 . Of the total 93,000 spoiled ballots, how many were from predominantly Democratic
precincts? How many were from minority-majority precincts?
14. Are you taking steps to ensure that there will be a paper trail for all votes before the
2006 elections so that spoiled ballots can be individually re-examined?
G. Franklin County Over-vote - On election day, a computerized voting machine in
ward 1 B in the Gahannn precinct of Franklin County recorded a total of 4,258 votes for President
Bush and 260 votes for Democratic challenger, John Kerry.37 However, there are only 800
registered voters in that Gahanna precinct, and only 638 people cast votes at the New Life
Church polling site.38 It was since discovered that a computer glitch resulted in the recording of
3,893 extra votes for President George W. Bush.39
Fortunately, this glitch was caught and the numbers were adjusted to show President
Bush’s true vote count at 365 votes to Senator Kerry’s 260 votes.40 However, many questions
remain as to whether this kind of malfunction happened in other areas of Ohio. To help us
clarify this issue, we request that you answer the following:
15. How was it discovered that this computer glitch occurred?
1 6 . What procedures were employed to alert other counties upon the discovery of the
malfunction?
17. Can you be absolutely certain that this particular malfunction did not occur in other
counties in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election? How?
1 8 . What is being done to ensure that this type of malfunction does not happen again in
the future?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
37Jim Woods, In one precinct, Bush‘s tally was supersized by a computer glitch, THE
COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Nov. 5,2004.
381d.
391d.
40Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 5,2004.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Nine
December 2,2004
H. Miami County Vote Discrepancy - In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts
reporting on Wednesday, November 3,2004, President Bush had received 20,807 votes, or
65.80% of the vote, and Senator Kerry had received 10,724 votes, or 33.92% of the vote.41
Miami reported 3 1,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all
precincts reported, boosting President Bush’s vote count to 33,039, or 65.77%, while Senator
Kerry’s vote percentage stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point at
33.92%.42
Roger Kearney of Rhombus Technologies, Ltd., the reporting company responsible for
vote results of Miami County, has stated that the problem was not with his reporting and that the
additional 19,000 votes came before 100% of the precincts were in.43 However, this does not
explain how the vote count could change for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after
19,000 new votes were added to the roster. To help us better understand this anomaly, we
request that you answer the following:
19. What is your explanation as to the statistical anomaly that showed virtually identical
ratios after the final 20-40% of the vote came in? In your judgment, how could the vote
count in this County have changed for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after
19,000 new votes were added to the roster?
20. Are you aware of any pending investigations into this matter?
I. Mahoning County Machine Problems - In Mahoning County, numerous voters
reported that when they attempted to vote for John Kerry, the vote showed up as a vote for
George Bush. This was reported by numerous voters and continued despite numerous attempts
to correct their vote.44
2 1. Please let us know, if you have: conducted any investigation OR inquiry of machine
voting problems in the state, including the above described problems in Mahoning
County, and the results of this investigation or inquiry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
41Bob Fitrakis, None dare call it voter suppression and fraud, THE FREE PRESS, Nov. 7,
2004.
420hio Secretary of State 2004 Presidential Vote Results,
www.sos.state.oh.us/sosliesults/l1-02-04.htm.
43Bob Fitrakis, And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins, Re: FREE PRESS,
Nov. 10,2004.
44Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, New Ohio Voter Transcripts Feed Floodtide of
Doubt about Republican Election Manipulation, THE FREE PRESS, Nov. 25,2004.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Ten
December 2,2004
II. Procedural Irregularities
A. Machine Shortages
Throughout predominately Democratic areas in Ohio on election day, there were reports
of long lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines. Evidence introduced in public
hearings indicates that 68 machines in Franklin County were never deployed for voters, despite
long lines for voters at that county,45 with some voters waiting from two to seven hours to cast
their vote.46 The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were
never placed on election day, and Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on
November 19,2004 that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day.47 It has come to our
attention that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage
Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election
day.48 However, Franklin County’s records reveal that they had 2,866 “machines available” on
election day.49 This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of
Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day.
Franklin County’s machine allocation report clearly states the number of machines that
were placed “By Close of Polls.“50 However, questions remain as to where these machines were
placed and who had access to them throughout the day. Therefore, what matters is not how
many voting machines were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to
service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
45Bob Fitrakis, Document reveals Columbus, Ohio voters waited hours as election
ofJicia1.s held back machines, THE FREE PRESS, Nov. 16,2004.
46Bob Fitrakis, Is there inner-city election suppression in Franklin County, Ohio? THE
FREE PRESS, NOV. 2,2004.
47Bob Fitrakis, How the Ohio Election Was Riggedfor Bush, THE FREE PRESS, Nov. 22,
2004.
481d.
49Franklin County Board of Elections 2004 Election Abstract,
www.co.franklin.oh.us/boe/content/electionAbstract.htm
50Id.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Eleven
December 2,2004
An analysis revealed a pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of
Columbus, and more machines to the primarily Republican suburbs.51 At seven out of eight
polling places, observers counted only three voting machines per location.52 According to the
presiding judge at one polling site located at the Columbus Model Neighborhood facility at 1393
E. Broad St., there had been five machines during the 2004 primary.53 Moreover, at Douglas
Elementary School, there had been four machines during the spring primary.54 In one Ohio
voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more
than eight hours to vote. 55 There were reportedly only two voting machines at that precinct. The
House Judiciary Committee staff has received first hand information confirming these reports.56
Additionally, it appears that in a number of locations, polling places were moved from
large locations, such as gyms, where voters could comfortably wait inside to vote to smaller
locations where voters were required to wait in the rain.57 We would appreciate answers to the
following:
22. How much funding did Ohio receive from the federal government for voting
machines?
23. What criteria were used to distribute those new machines?
24. Were counties given estimates or assurances as to how many new voting machines
they would receive ? How does this number compare to how many machines were
actually received?
51Id.
52Id.
531d.
54Id.
55Don Lothian, CNN.com, “All Eyes on Ohio,” Nov 3,2004
www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/BLOG/11/02/ELECTION.BLOG/INDEX.HTM .
56Emails on file with House Judiciary Committee staff. A sampling include information
about four hour waits at Precincts 35B and C in Columbus; seven hours waits for one voting
machine per thousand voters, where the adjacent precinct had one station for 184 voters (this
pattern was replicated in predominately African-American areas and areas with colleges); lines of
four to five hours were “the order of the day in African American neighborhoods.”
571d.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Twelve
December 2,2004
25. What procedures were in place to ensure that the voting machines were properly
allocated throughout Franklin and other counties? What changes would you recommend
be made to insure there is a more equitable allocation of machines in the future?
B. Invalidated Provisional Ballots
As you know, just weeks before the 2004 Presidential election, you issued a directive to
county election officials saying they are allowed to count provisional ballots only from voters
who go to the correct precinct for their home address.58 At the same time, it has been reported
that fraudulent flyers were being circulated on official-looking letterhead telling voters the wrong
place to vofe,59 phone calls were placed incorrectly informing voters that their polling place had
changed,60 “door-hangers” telling African-American voters to go to the wrong precinct,61 and
election workers sent voters to the wrong precinct.62 In other areas, precinct workers refused to
give any voter a provisional ballot.63 And in at least one precinct, election judges told voters that
they may validly cast their ballot in any precinct, leading to any number of disqualified
provisional ballots.64
In Hamilton County, officials have carried this problematic and controversial directive to
a ludicrous extreme: they are refusing to count provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place
if they were cast at the wrong table in that polling place.65 It seems that some polling places
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
58Mark Niquette, Ohio won‘t count ballots cast at incorrect precincts, COLUMBUS
DISPATCH, Sept. 25,2004.
59Grant Segall, Voters Told to Ignore Hoax, THE PLAIN DEALER, Oct. 29,2004.
60David Finkel, Now They’re Registered, Now They’re Not, WASHINGTON POST, Oct. 3 1,
2004.
61Email from Cincinnati-area election volunteer, on file with the House Judiciary
Committee Democratic Staff.
62Connie Mabin, Buzzing Bees, Long Lines Among Hurdles at Ohio Polls, THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS, NOV. 2,2004.
63Email from Cleveland-area election volunteer, on file with the House Judiciary
Committee Democratic Staff.
64Jon Craig, Election day Aftermath, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Nov. 25,2004.
65Tony Cook, Final ballots offer no changes, CINCINNATI POST, Nov. 27,2004.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Thirteen
December 2,2004
contained multiple precincts which were located at different tables.66 Now, 400 such voters in
Hamilton county alone will be disenfranchised as a result of your directive.
26. Have you directed Hamilton County and all other counties not to disqualify
provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place simply because they were cast at the
wrong precinct table?
27. While many election workers received your directive that voters may cast ballots only
in their own precincts, some did not. How did you inform your workers, and the public,
that their vote would not be counted if cast in the wrong precinct? How many votes were
lost due to election workers telling voters they may vote at any precinct, in direct
violation of your ruling?
28. Your directive was exploited by those who intentionally misled voters about their
correct polling place, and multiplied the number of provisional ballots found invalid.
What steps have you or other officials in Ohio taken to investigate these criminal acts?
Has anyone been referred for prosecution? If so, what is the status of their cases?
29. How many provisional ballots were filed in the presidential election in Ohio? How
many were ultimately found to be valid and counted? What were the various reasons that
these ballots were not counted, and how many ballots fall into each of these categories?
Please break down the foregoing by County if possible.
C. Directive to Reject Voter Registration Forms Not Printed on White, Uncoated
Paper of Not Less Than 80 lb Text Weight
On September 7, you issued a directive to county boards of elections commanding such
boards to reject voter registration forms not “printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80
lb. text weight.“67 Instead, the county boards were to follow a confusing procedure where the
voter registration form would be treated as an application for a form and a new blank form would
be sent to the voter.68 While you reversed this directive, you did not do so until September 28.69
In the interim, a number of counties followed this directive and rejected otherwise valid voter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
661d.
670hio Secretary of State Press release “Blackwell Issues Voter Registration Directive,”
Sept. 9,2004, www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/n...-09-04.htm .
681d.
69Catherine Candisky, BLackwell ends paper chase, Some could be unable to vote because
of flap over registration forms, COLUMBUS DISPTACH, Sept. 29,2004.
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Page Fourteen
December 2,2004
registration forms.70 There appears to be some further confusion about the revision of this order
which resulted in some counties being advised of the change by the news media.71
30. How did you notify county boards of elections of your initial September 7 directive?
3 1. How did you notify county boards of elections of your September 28 decision to
revise that directive?
32. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many registration forms were
rejected as a result of your September 7 directive? If so, how many?
33. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many voters who had their
otherwise valid forms rejected as a result of your September 7 directive subsequently
failed to re-register? If so, how many?
34. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many of those voters showed
up who had their otherwise valid forms rejected to vote on election day and were turned
away? If so, how many?
We await your prompt reply. To the extent any questions relate to information not
available to you, please pass on such questions to the appropriate election board or other official.
Please respond to 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 by December
10. If you need more time to investigate and respond to some of these inquiries, we would
welcome a partial response by that date and a complete response within a reasonable period of
time thereafter. If you have any questions about this inquiry, please contact Perry Apelbaum or
Ted Kalo of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff at (202) 225-6504.
Sincerely,
(signatures followed)
|
shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1009
(12/4/04 6:09 pm)
Reply
|
Re: This Just in...again
I found this pretty interesting.
Dead voters on rolls, other glitches found in 6 key states
By Geoff Dougherty, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Sarah Frank contributed to this report from Washington
Published December 4, 2004
Michel Pillet died in 2002, but his name lives on at the University of New Mexico. He created the school's graduate architecture program and directed it for years.
Pillet's name lives on in another way too. He's still listed as a registered voter in New Mexico, even though election officials are required to purge the names of deceased voters.
A Tribune analysis of voter records suggests that more than 5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes.
And New Mexico is not alone. The Tribune's review of voter data there and in five other key states--Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota--found widespread flaws in the integrity of voter rolls.
More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in the six swing states, despite efforts to clean up the country's voting system after the 2000 election.
Thousands more voters were registered to vote in two places, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot.
Further, more than 90,000 voters in Ohio cast ballots without a valid presidential choice. Either they decided not to choose a candidate, the machine failed to register their choice, or they mistakenly voted for more than one candidate.
And the FBI is investigating allegations that Republicans in Florida mounted a large-scale campaign to tamper with ballots.
Those developments come after an election that most observers agree was a vast improvement over the 2000 vote.
Data on which voters cast ballots in the November election are not available in some key states as they await county compilations. So it's unclear whether any people registered in two places voted more than once. Likewise, it's impossible to tell whether ballots were cast in the names of the deceased voters on the rolls.
But the number of voters who should have been removed from the rolls and were not is considered cause for concern, especially in states where the presidential election was decided by just a few thousand votes.
"The problem of bloated registration rolls is a serious problem," said Dan Seligson, editor of electionline.org, a voting reform clearinghouse.
Legislation passed after the 2000 election was designed to fix some of those problems by requiring states to maintain better registration data. But those requirements take effect in 2006.
New Mexico health officials each month supply a list of recently deceased residents that Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron uses to scrub the voter rolls. But Pillet died in France and apparently never received a New Mexico death certificate, she said.
`Fell through the cracks'
"He fell through the cracks," said Vigil-Giron.
Francis Walsh, a former assembly worker at Chicago's American Can Co., retired and moved to Iowa. He died there in June 2002, but remains a registered voter in Des Moines.
The Tribune's analysis suggests 4,900 other Iowa voters have died but remain on the rolls.
Bush won Iowa by 10,000 votes.
Phyllis Peters, spokeswoman for the Iowa secretary of state's office, said workers there anticipated that many deceased Iowans would appear on the rolls.
Peters said her agency conducts a monthly purge of voters whose death certificates have been filed with the state vital statistics agency. But of course some people die elsewhere, complicating the process.
Data-entry errors can create problems too. On Walsh's voter information, he is listed as a female. But his death certificate said he was male, so computers did not remove him from the voter rolls, Peters said.
Despite the number of questionable registrations and Bush's thin margin of victory, Peters said she is confident in the election's outcome. That's due mostly to the 10,000 local election workers looking for suspicious voters, she said.
"We really believe there's a lot of integrity at the local precinct level," she said.
Among the states, Florida led the way with 64,889 registered voters who were also listed in a database of Social Security Administration death claims, the Tribune analysis found.
Next was Michigan, with 50,051.
The problem of duplicate voter registrations spurred Glenda Hood, Florida's secretary of state and top election official, to request help from the FBI before the election in weeding out double-voters.
"We believe that immediate and decisive action on the federal level is necessary to send a strong message that this type of illegal behavior and manipulation of the electoral franchise will not be tolerated," said Hood's letter, written Aug. 26.
William Fisher moved from Florida to Ohio and registered to vote. He was surprised to learn that he could have cast a second ballot in Florida.
"I'm retired now, and out of Florida, so I shouldn't be listed as a Florida voter anymore," he said.
In Ohio, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson is demanding a review of the election, saying too many questions have been raised to let Bush's win stand without further examination.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jackson said Sunday at Mt. Hermon Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio.
Voting complaints in Ohio have focused on the use of antiquated punch-card voting machines--the same type of machines that led to thousands of hanging chads in Florida four years ago.
Ohio recount sought
Meanwhile, third-party candidates, joined by Sen. John Kerry's campaign organization, have requested a recount in Ohio, which would begin after the election results are certified. That must happen by Monday.
A hearing on the recount request was held in federal court in Columbus on Friday.
County-by-county results provided to The Associated Press on Friday indicated Bush's margin of victory in Ohio will be about 119,000 votes, smaller than the unofficial margin of 136,000, mainly because of the addition of provisional ballots.
Ohio's so-called spoilage rate, ballots cast without a discernable vote for president, was lower than Florida's in the 2000 election. But the number of discarded ballots--92,000--represents a significant number, given that Bush's margin of victory was about 119,000 .
The state Democratic Party is watching the potential recount carefully, said spokesman Dan Trevas.
"It could be that we lost it," he said. "But if there's a little more to it, we've got to check it out. Let's just make sure everything's aboveboard."
In Florida, new touch-screen voting machines eliminated overvotes and chads. But some allege that ATM-like technology has created other problems.
University of California, Berkeley, professor Michael Hout compared voting patterns in the Florida counties that used the new machines with those that relied on ballots similar to the multiple-choice forms on standardized tests.
He found differences in those patterns that led him to conclude that computer problems with the new machines had given an edge to Bush. He suggested software glitches could have left some Kerry votes uncounted, or assigned them mistakenly to Bush.
"Statistically what we have is a smoke alarm that's beeping," said Hout. "It's up to the local people in Florida to figure out what to do about it."
Also in Florida, Democratic congressional candidate Jeff Fisher, who was defeated Nov. 2, said he had seen e-mails outlining a Republican plot to steal the presidential election. The plot, he said, involved election workers who created bogus voter registrations. The workers then rigged computers to show those ghost voters had cast ballots for Bush.
The FBI confirmed that Fisher had filed a complaint and that agents were investigating.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1010
(12/4/04 6:52 pm)
Reply
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Re: This Just in...again
This one is VERY long,and made me shudder,when I read it.But,it is well worth everyones time to read it thoroughly,and re-read it.It may take a very long time for the full message to sink in,but when it does,we need to figure out just what WE can do about it,before it takes hold to the point where nothing CAN be done.
This is the site I found this on; www.dailykos.com/story/20...133310/217
Many here are unwilling to call the November elections fraudulent; most are uncomfortable with doing so without proof; others are uncomfortable with the very idea that our elections may no longer represent Democracy at its finest.
An Austin, Texas-based Unitarian Universalist minister, Davidson Loehr, is not only willing to claim that the elections are fraudulent; he uses this fraud as a given in his proof that the U.S. is now more nearly a fascist state than a democracy.
Fascism is here, he says, and, unless we fight, here to stay. It's a fascinating argument, and one that I hope you will read in full below.
Diaries :: Black Maned Pensator's diary ::
The following was sent to me as a forwarded e-mail. Davidson Loehr, the author, is apparently a senior minister at the First UU Church of Austin, where his political sermons have garnered him a reputation as being somewhat controversial.
Given the nature of the sermon, and that the www.austinuu.org site does not seem to be working, I hope he will not mind my quoting him in full here.
First UU Church of Austin - Sermons
Living Under Fascism
Davidson Loehr
7 November 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX
78756 512-452-6168 - www.austinuu.org
SERMON: Living Under Fascism
You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word "fascism" in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don't mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That's what I am about here. And even if I don't persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.
The word comes from the Latin word "Fasces," denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it's worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker's podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.
Still, it's an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini's and Hitler's tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in "The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul"), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the money rather than those who earned it.
Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as those concerned with individual rights and freedoms as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.
One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism a coming which he anticipated and cheered as Dennis declared that defenders of "18th-century Americanism" were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."
So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.
Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism. You can read the whole entry at www.fordham.edu/halsall/m...cism.html)
Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people.
Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see it.
In an essay coyly titled "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism." (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at www.secularhumanism.org/l..._23_2.htm) See how familiar they sound.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
This list will be familiar to students of political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.
But, again, this is not America's first encounter with fascism. In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you think his statements apply to our society today.
"The really dangerous American fascist," Wallace wrote, is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, "They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." By these standards, a few of today's weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs not to mention the largest prison system in the world.
The Perfect Storm
Our current descent into fascism came about through a kind of "Perfect Storm," a confluence of three unrelated but mutually supportive schools of thought.
1. The first stream of thought was the imperialistic dream of the Project for the New American Century. I don't believe anyone can understand the past four years without reading the Project for the New American Century, published in September 2000 and authored by many who have been prominent players in the Bush administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfleid, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan, to name only a few. This report saw the fall of Communism as a call for America to become the military rulers of the world, to establish a new worldwide empire. They spelled out the military enhancements we would need, then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans would take a long time, unless there could be a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor that would let the leaders turn America into a military and militarist country. There was no clear interest in religion in this report, and no clear concern with local economic policies.
2. A second powerful stream must be credited to Pat Robertson and his Christian Reconstructionists, or Dominionists. Long dismissed by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of Christianity, which he has been preaching since the early 1980s, is now the most powerful religious voice in the Bush administration.
Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over 1300 pages of interviews from Pat Robertson's "700 Club" shows in the 1980s, has shown how Robertson and his chosen guests consistently, openly and passionately argued that America must become a theocracy under the control of Christian Dominionists. Robertson is on record saying democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind of Christians. He also rails constantly against taxing the rich, against public education, social programs and welfare and prefers Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of Jesus. He is clear that women must remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and that abortions, like homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has also been clear that other kinds of Christians, including Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are enemies of Christ. (The urica Report. Search under this name, or for "Despoiling America" by Katherine Yurica on the internet.)
3. The third major component of this Perfect Storm has been the desire of very wealthy Americans and corporate CEOs for a plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich and disempowerment of the vast majority of American workers, the destruction of worker's unions, and the alliance of government to help achieve these greedy goals. It is a condition some have called socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and which others recognize as a reincarnation of Social Darwinism. This strain of thought has been present throughout American history. Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military coup to replace Franklin Delano Roosevelt and establish General Smedley Butler as a fascist dictator in 1934. Fortunately, they picked a general who really was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke and wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in the book and movie "The Corporation," they have now achieved their coup without firing a shot.
Our plutocrats have had no particular interest in religion. Their global interests are with an imperialist empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all the New Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise of America's middle class after WWII.
Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm is more important than its crudity might suggest: it was President Clinton's sleazy sex with a young but eager intern in the White House. This incident, and Clinton's equally sleazy lying about it, focused the certainties of conservatives on the fact that "liberals" had neither moral compass nor moral concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat to the moral fiber of America. While the effects of this may be hard to quantify, I think they were profound.
These "storm" components have no necessary connection, and come from different groups of thinkers, many of whom wouldn't even like one another. But together, they form a nearly complete web of command and control, which has finally gained control of America and, they hope, of the world.
What's coming
When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead. And it is not hard. The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what's coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years:
1. The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs.
2. Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world.
3. Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children's education to Christian schools.
4. More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work.
5. Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state's official stories.
6. The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veteran's Day sermon for this year.)
7. More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.
8. More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security.
9. Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from government control. This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.
10. Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American.
11. Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to control as the New York Times, for instance.
12. Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America's workers to a more desperate and powerless status.
13. Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.
14. Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the world. That percentage will increase.
15. In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story, these things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions that kept the American spirit alive are the kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing.
Can these schemes work? I don't think so. I think they are murderous, rapacious and insane. But I don't know. Maybe they can. Similar schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a democracy in which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only about 20% vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it no longer matters who you vote for.
Hope
In the meantime, is there any hope, or do we just band together like lemmings and dive off a cliff? Yes, there is always hope, though at times it is more hidden, as it is now.
As some critics are now saying, and as I have been preaching and writing for almost twenty years, America's liberals need to grow beyond political liberalism, with its often self-absorbed focus on individual rights to the exclusion of individual responsibilities to the larger society. Liberals will have to construct a more complete vision with moral and religious grounding. That does not mean confessional Christianity. It means the legitimate heir to Christianity. Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though it must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and hearts of a voting majority of Americans.
And the new liberal vision must be larger than that of the conservative religious vision that will be appointing judges, writing laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and exclusion for the foreseeable future. The conservatives deserve a lot of admiration. They have spent the last thirty years studying American politics, forming their vision and learn how to gain control in the political system. And it worked; they have won. Even if liberals can develop a bigger vision, they still have all that time-consuming work to do. It won't be fast. It isn't even clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they may instead prefer to go down with the ship they're used to.
One man who has been tireless in his investigations and critiques of America's slide into fascism is Michael C. Ruppert, whose postings usually read as though he is wound way too tight. But he offers four pieces of advice about what we can do now, and they seem reality-based enough to pass on to you.
This is America; they're all about money:
* First, he says you should get out of debt.
* Second is to spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
* Third is to stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you angry and exhausted.
* And fourth is to learn how money works and use it like a (political) weapon as he predicts the rest of the world will be doing against us. (from www.fromthewilderness.com...out.shtml)
That's advice written this week. Another bit of advice comes from sixty years ago, from Roosevelt's Vice President, Henry Wallace. Wallace said, "Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."
Still another way to understand fascism is as a kind of colonization. A simple definition of "colonization" is that it takes people's stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in stories that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others, you are ironically in a state of taxation without representation. That's where this country started, and it's where we are now.
I don't know the next step. I'm not a political activist; I'm only a preacher. But whatever you do, whatever we do, I hope that we can Remember some very basic things that I think of as eternally true. One is that the vast majority of people are good decent people who mean and do as well as they know how. Very few people are evil, though some are. But we all live in families where some of our blood relatives support things we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to rebuild broken bridges is through greater understanding, compassion, and a reality-based story that is more inclusive and empowering for the vast majority of us.
Those who want to live in a reality-based story rather than as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer power, possibility and hope to a small ruling elite have much long and hard work to do, individually and collectively. It will not be either easy or quick.
But we will do it. We will go forward in hope and in courage. Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to take it a step, by step, by step.
What does it mean, then, to call America under Bush not merely a corporate haven but a burgeoning fascist state? Is it merely name calling? Or is this the plain and simple acknowledgment of reality?
Is this the first step to a fundamental paradigm shift? How can Democrats win elections if the elections are gamed, manipulated, or purely fraudulent? Are Republicans the proper targets of Democratic and Green Party ire, or is it the system of which they are but a part and a symptom? Can we win elections without first reforming them? Can we reform elections without reforming the media? Can we reform the media without limiting the political power of corporations? Can we limit the political power of corporations without severing the ties between lobbyists and politicians? Can we sever those ties without first winning a presidential election? Can we win a presidential election without improving the American education system and quality of media reportage? Can we do either of those last two things without first winning an election?
My point is that we are looking at a vastly intermeshed system of power structures, and that unless we begin to look at the underlying construct and pattern, and critique them as what they are (correctly identifying the elephant in the bathtub as an elephant, and not merely a collection of body parts), and begin to talk about how to evict it as a whole and at once, our efforts may well be futile.
Are we living in a democracy, or nascent fascist state? What do you think?
Edited by: shadeaux63 at: 12/4/04 6:55 pm
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1011
(12/4/04 6:59 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
This one was just as scary as the last one,in my eyes,anyway.
This is from John Schmidhauser former Congressman (D. IA). Who now lives in Carpinteria CA.
On Friday I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS - I've known her for years and she is a producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse - far scarier.
She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified - every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her to speak out, even if covertly, and she therefore asked me to "spread" the word...She said that journalism and the truth is at stake. She said another friend of hers, a producer at MSNBC, said that an anchor by the name of Keith Olbermann had brought it up on his show on Friday eve and the axe came down. He's at least fighting back and talking about it on his "Blog", but she said that people there are worried that he's going to be fired by higher ups.
She said at this point the only way that the "real news" was going to be known is if the people started talking about it and made a big enough stink about it to our elected officials, the FEC, and "noise" to the international media, that our own media won't have any choice but to cover it. The only place you'll see this talked about right now is on the internet and on AirAmericaRadio.
People and Agencies to Contact regarding this matter:
1) Your two US Senators &Congressional Representative - here is the main switchboard number for the House and Senate: 1-800-839-5276 Although individual numbers are listed below, you can reach all Senators and Representatives via this 800 number.
2) Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader: 202-225-4965
3) These members are allegedl/reportedly looking into the issue -urge them to introduce a bill to investigate voter fraud:
Rep. Henry Waxman of CA - 202-225-3976
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of OH - 202-225-7032
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of OH - 202-225-5871
Rep. Tim Ryan of OH - 202-225-5261
4) Democratic & Republican Members of the House Judiciary Committee:
Rep. Robert Wexler of FL - 202-225-3001
Rep. Maxine Waters of CA - 202-225-2201
Rep. Chabot of OH (R)- 202-225-2216
Rep. King of IA (R)- 202-225-4426
5) Democrat & Republican Members (call both) of theSenate Judiciary Committee:
Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT - 202-224-4242 (Ranking Member)
Sen. Ted Kennedy of MA - 202-224-4543
Sen. Joe Biden of DE - 202-224-5042
Sen. Russ Feingold of WI - 202-224-5323
Sen. Charles Schumer of NY - 202-224-6542
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1012
(12/5/04 6:14 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws
By Geoffrey Lean in Washington
05 December 2004
George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.
In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures - which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford - even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasising his environmental plans during his campaign.
"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with people lenient to polluters.
The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.
But with the election of four Republican senators in favour of the drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the administration now has the votes forvictory.
It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most successful environmental laws.
Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30 years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major developments before they proceed.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one intended to go much further. He added: "We will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental protection."
The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green majority.
They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s - which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green legislation.
5 December 2004 18:08
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1013
(12/5/04 6:52 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
I have to wonder who's next.
Top Official Says U.S. Seeks Cuba's 'liberation'
By George Gedda Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 3, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will be committed during his second term to the "liberation of Cuba" by extending moral and political support to the Cuban people, a top State Department official said Friday.
Roger Noriega, who heads the department's Latin American bureau, also said that once Fidel Castro is no longer in power, the United States is ready to support broad economic and political reform in Cuba "to ensure that vestiges of the regime don't hold on."
Noriega noted that Washington has a blueprint for providing social, economic and other types of assistance to Cuba in the post-Castro era.
The plan is spelled out in a report released last May and overseen by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The assistance is conditioned on whether Cuba is on a democratic path and whether such assistance is requested.
Noriega said that Castro's fragility at age 78 was underscored recently when he fractured a knee and an arm during a fall at a public event.
With Castro's tumble, Noriega said, the Cuban people had to start thinking about their leader's mortality as well as their own lives.
"The transition essentially is under way today," Noriega told a gathering of more than 200 people at an event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In recent days, Castro ordered the release of some prisoners who were facing long sentences following their convictions last year of collaborating with the United States in anti-regime activities.
The Bush administration denied the allegation and said the detentions of 75 activists in March 2003 exposed the repressive nature of the regime.
The prisoner releases appeared to have been the result of Spanish mediation and could lead to a thaw in Cuban relations with the Europe.
Noriega said the Europeans should be engaging with the Cuban people rather than the Castro regime.
He added that it was "cynical and evil" for Castro to detain people and then release them in exchange for diplomatic favors.
As for the Europeans, he said, "making concessions to a regime like that is really a wrongheaded policy."
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1014
(12/6/04 7:41 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
ANYone who takes medications regularly,especially "newer" medications,really NEEDS to read this.The article is 5 pages long,so make sure you're rested before you start in on this one.This is from the New York Times.
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: December 6, 2004
When federal drug officials suspected in 1992 that a popular allergy pill might cause heart problems, they turned to their own scientists. Their trial confirmed the danger, and the drug was pulled from the market.
Eight years later, similar worries surrounded the arthritis pill Vioxx. But by then, the Food and Drug Administration had shifted gears, slashing its laboratories and network of independent drug safety experts in favor of hiring more people to approve drugs, changes that arose under an unusual agreement that has left the agency increasingly reliant on and bound by drug company money. Discovering Vioxx's dangers would take four more years.
That delay has led to a firestorm of criticism. Members of Congress, an internal F.D.A. whistleblower and prominent medical journals have said the agency is incapable of uncovering the perils of drugs that have been approved and are in wide distribution. Some have accused it of being cozy with drug makers.
Dozens of former and current F.D.A. officials, outside scientists and advocates for patients say the agency's efforts to monitor the ill effects of drugs that are on the market are a shadow of what they should be because the White House and Congress forced a marriage between the agency and industry years ago for the rich dowry that industry offered.
Under the 1992 agreement, the industry promised to give the agency millions - in the 2003 fiscal year, $200 million - but only if the agency spent a specified level of money on new drug approvals.
As Congressional support sank since then, the agency has cut everything else but new drug reviews. In the past 11 years, spending on the reviews has increased to more than four-fifths of the budget of the agency's drug center from about half.
Among the priorities that took the worst hit was ensuring the safety of the drugs that patients are already taking. Drug companies test their products in people before they are approved, but sometimes potentially serious problems arise only when they are being used by millions of people. The F.D.A. has never been able to require drug makers to undertake new safety tests once a drug is approved, so tracking the safety of drugs already on the market is the agency's responsibility.
But as a result of the agency's shifting its resources, almost everyone, including critics, outside drug safety experts, medical journal editors, some industry executives and even top agency officials, now agrees that its mechanisms for uncovering the dangers of drugs after they have been approved are woefully inadequate, particularly, as was the case of Vioxx, when the potentially damaging side effect is not an unusual ailment.
The F.D.A.'s present safety monitoring system "is not good for determining if a drug increases the rate of a side effect already common in the population," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting deputy commissioner for operations at the agency.
Indeed, the agency now relies almost entirely on the willingness of drug makers to report problems that crop up after a drug has been approved to ensure the safety of the nation's drug supply. Some critics say this dependency has gradually worn away at the agency's willingness to confront drug makers, making it timid and leaving patients vulnerable.
"This is not just about dollars," said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of "Powerful Medicines." "It's a cultural issue in which the agency feels it can't pressure drug makers."
Now lawmakers are considering proposals for a center for drug safety that would be independent of the agency's new drug reviewers. The departing health and human services secretary, Tommy G. Thompson, said Friday that he favored creating such a center. After initially opposing the idea, agency officials have said they will study any proposals.
These proposals may not have been needed if not for the details of the 1992 agreement, which began with the best of intentions. AIDS, cancer, heart disease - all were terrible diseases that drug makers' laboratories were confronting. But their remedies were languishing for years on F.D.A. shelves because the agency did not have the money to hire enough reviewers.
The drug industry agreed to chip in. Indeed, half of the budget for the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the principal office that oversees drug reviews and safety, will come from drug industry user fees, up from nothing in 1992 and 31 percent in 1998. But these millions come with strings.
More Money for Reviews
The 1992 agreement provided that the F.D.A. could collect fees from industry only if government financing of new drug reviews, adjusted for inflation, never fell below 1992 levels (later revised to 1997 levels). This stipulation was intended by industry to ensure that its money was used to hire new drug reviewers and not simply substitute for government support of those already on staff.
But Congressional financing has lagged the agency's escalating payroll costs. To meet the "trigger" and keep fees flowing, agency officials have been forced to shift dollars from other programs into new drug reviews. This shifting has increased the agency's focus on the reviews even beyond what the drug industry had negotiated.
In 1992, the agency's drug center spent 53 percent of its budget on new drug reviews. The rest went to survey programs, laboratories and other efforts that in part helped ensure that drugs already on the market were safe. In 2003, 79 percent of the agency's drug center budget went to new drug reviews. Everything else has gotten squeezed.
"We get increased user funds and not increased appropriated dollars," said Deborah Henderson, director of the office of executive programs in the F.D.A.'s drug center. "We have stolen from the labs and other parts of the non-user fee program."
Since the 1992 agreement, agency officials have eliminated half of the scientists in the drug center's laboratories and starved them of new equipment. They have ended many of the agency's collaborations with academic groups that scrutinize the problems of marketed drugs. To pay for a modest in-house effort to catalog some information on drug side effects, a system called the Adverse Event Reporting System, the agency has raided furniture and travel budgets.
Dr. Woodcock said she shut down laboratories and many outside grant programs to try and raise the money to keep the agency's side effect reporting system.
The industry's influence even extends to perks given agency employees. Under the 1992 agreement, which was renewed in 1997 and 2002, new drug reviewers have travel and training budgets that allow them to attend far-flung conferences and courses. Those who work in the agency's office of drug safety get two-thirds less, which keeps most at home.
The agreement that accepted such a large proportion of industry financing "made a bad situation worse," Dr. David J. Graham, a reviewer in the agency's office of drug safety who harshly criticized the agency before a Congressional panel last month, said in an interview. "The agency was already far too focused on approvals and not on safety."
"And if this problem isn't fixed," Dr. Graham said, "future Vioxx-like catastrophes are inevitable."
Dr. David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the agency and now dean of the University of California San Francisco Medical School, said the financing agreements with industry "increasingly micromanage the F.D.A."
"They reinforce the focus on new drug review over the agency's field and post-marketing surveillance efforts," Dr. Kessler said.
Sammie Young, a drug safety inspector for the agency from 1963 until 1992, said that by the time he left the agency had become wholly focused on drug approvals - to the delight of industry. Those at the agency "decided their main goal in life was to approve drugs," Mr. Young said.
The decline in the agency's commitments to monitor the safety of approved medicines started in the Clinton administration and continues today. Most experts who track drug side effects say the remedy is more money, perhaps provided by a tax on prescriptions. But others complain that the agency spends far too much already, and some agency critics contend that, more than dollars, what it really needs is more courage to confront drug makers about safety problems.
While its $1.8 billion budget and staff of 10,800 are small by federal government standards, the Food and Drug Administration is among the most important bodies of the federal government. It is the principal overseer for the pharmaceutical, food, medical device and animal feeds industries. Its rules affect nearly 100,000 businesses producing more than $1 trillion worth of goods a year, or about a quarter of the American economy.
Founded in 1906, the agency was at first charged simply with ensuring that claims made on medicine packages were not demonstrably false. But scandal after scandal in the intervening decades led to legislation expanding its powers.
In 1984 a law established a generic drug industry that could capture sales from drug makers once patents on medicines expired. The law led brand-name drug makers to push for quicker review times to maximize sales during the patented period.
And then came AIDS.
As the disease swept through gay communities in San Francisco and New York, people desperate for remedies scoured the world. When AZT showed promise in early trials, the F.D.A. allowed the drug to be distributed to patients before its formal approval.
In 1988, AIDS protesters besieged the agency's offices, raising a black flag on its flag pole and contending that it was actively delaying treatments. The agency responded by allowing potentially life-saving drugs to be widely distributed while undergoing review. Still, it was not enough. Advocates for cancer patients complained about long review times as well. With Congress feeling tightfisted, almost all agreed that the agency needed more money and that the drug industry was the best source to tap. A result was the 1992 agreement. The industry agreed to underwrite the hiring of new drug reviewers if the agency would agree to tight review timelines. Peter Barton Hutt, a former general counsel for the agency, helped negotiate the agreement on behalf of drug makers.
"Clearly the industry forced F.D.A. to pay attention to the industry's agenda, and that has always been to shorten the drug approval process," Mr. Hutt said.
Some who supported the agreement then regret it now. Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's health research group, said it had pushed the agency into the drug industry's arms and led to poorer drug reviews.
But William B. Schultz, who worked at Public Citizen and then in Congress and was deputy commissioner for policy at the F.D.A. from 1994 to 1998, said the agreement saved the agency. In 1996, Republicans lawmakers led by Newt Gingrich, the house speaker, proposed legislation that would have allowed companies to market their products without agency review, gutting its oversight authority.
Proof that the agency had halved its drug review times since the 1992 agreement passed undermined the proposals, Mr. Schultz said. "Their argument was the drug lag, but it fell apart because by then the lag had been eliminated," he said.
A Question of Care
Almost every argument about the 1992 agreement revolves around review times and whether new drug reviews are as careful as in the past. Many outside the agency say the rapid review timelines adopted as part of the agreement have made the agency's drug reviews sloppy, leading the agency to approve drugs like Vioxx that should never have gotten onto the market. Merck withdrew Vioxx in September after a test showed that it doubled the risk of heart attacks.
Top agency officials fiercely disagree with this criticism, pointing out that the ratio of drugs withdrawn compared with those approved has held steady for decades. Some dangerous side effects, they say, will never reveal themselves until millions use a medicine.
Drug industry officials also say this criticism is wrong. New drug reviews are at least as rigorous as they were a decade ago, they say.
Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the drug industry's trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the fees paid by industry to the agency "do not pay for approval. They merely guarantee review of a product application by the F.D.A. in a set period of time."
Beyond new drug reviews, what is rarely discussed is the 1992 agreement's effect on post-approval monitoring of drug side effects. Independent scientists had long helped the agency not only flag possible problems, but also through tests confirm them. Some gave patients drugs and measured the effects. Others combed through millions of patient records at giant managed-care companies to spot problems among those given certain medicines.
Dr. Susan Jick, co-director of the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, one of the nation's largest and longest-running initiatives to uncover drug side effects, said F.D.A. officials told her that the agency was ending its support after 20 years because her program was using British data. Dr. Brian Strom at the University of Pennsylvania, who worked with the agency on drug side effect issues for decades until recently, was told that there was no money. Others were told the same thing.
None knew that the reason was that money had to be shifted out of their programs into new drug reviews to satisfy the requirements of the agreement and industry demands.
Dr. Lou Cantilena, head of the division of clinical pharmacology and medical toxicology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science in Bethesda, Md., not only helped the agency study drug safety issues for years but also trained its staff. Both programs were ended in the late 1990's.
Dr. Cantilena said the agency was now almost wholly reliant on the drug industry for tests of side effects. He said he was more aware than most about the dangers of this situation.
In December 1989, a woman walked into Bethesda Naval Hospital complaining that she kept passing out. Doctors placed her on a heart monitor, and it showed a frightening heart arrhythmia. Dr. Cantilena and his team of drug experts were called in. The woman was taking Seldane for allergies. An overdose of Seldane was known to cause heart arrhythmias, but the woman insisted that she had taken only a pill a day.
The doctors were stumped until the woman revealed that she had also been taking an antifungal drug to treat a vaginal yeast infection. The antifungal was known to interfere with the breakdown of other drugs. Blood tests showed high levels of Seldane. Dr. Cantilena concluded that the woman had suffered from a drug-to-drug interaction.
At the time, Seldane was the fifth-most popular drug in the nation, and the antifungal medicine was common, too. Such a serious interaction between two popular drugs was worrisome. Dr. Cantilena reported the problem to the F.D.A. and Seldane's maker, now known as Sanofi-Aventis. The F.D.A. cannot require drug makers to test already-approved medicines. Instead, it can urge companies to do more testing, can change warning labels or, as a last resort, can take the product off the market.
So the agency asked Dr. Cantilena to perform the study. He recruited six healthy volunteers, hooked them up to heart monitors and gave them Seldane and the antifungal. Four of the volunteers developed heart arrhythmias so severe that Dr. Cantilena ended the study early.
Within weeks of reporting his results to the F.D.A., the agency announced that it was placing a severe warning on Seldane's label about the interaction. In 1997, the maker withdrew Seldane from the market because of the problem.
The agency has almost no ability to perform similar tests now, Dr. Cantilena said.
Tracking Safety
Perhaps even more pressing, the agency has no continuing ability to uncover the kind of life-threatening drug side effects that sidelined Vioxx.
Presently, the main drug program to catalog the dangers of drugs is a computer listing of side-effects. It is a passive system, meaning that doctors report side effects only when they think of it and have the time. The system receives almost 400,000 reports a year, but these represent a small fraction of the total, all agree. Most reports are delivered by drug makers, who hear about side effects from physicians.
The side effects tracking system can signal problems only when a drug causes an effect like liver failure that is normally very rare. If a drug increases the number of heart attacks, a problem that is very common normally, the system is useless, Dr. Woodcock of the F.D.A. said.
Realizing this weakness, Dr. Graham of the agency's office of drug safety collaborated with Kaiser Permanente, a huge health maintenance organization, to check its computer records to see if those taking Vioxx had had more heart attacks. The study took nearly four years to complete. Its results became known in August and demonstrated Vioxx's dangers.
Dr. David Campen, medical director of Kaiser's pharmacy operations, said the study would have taken half the time if the agency had had the money to pay for drug monitoring programs with Kaiser or other large managed care organizations. Dr. Graham has estimated that the delay in uncovering Vioxx's dangers cost 55,000 Americans their lives, a number top officials at the F.D.A. have labeled as "junk science."
An adequate system for monitoring side effects may have prevented some of the deaths.
Dr. Strom of the University of Pennsylvania said the F.D.A.'s almost complete focus on approving new drugs at the expense of ensuring the safety of medicines that patients are already taking is wrong.
"They're getting all these drugs on the market a whole lot sooner and not looking at what happens once they get there," he said.
Seeking Improvements
Some top agency officials are keenly aware of these problems. In 1999, an agency task force wrote a 106-page report cataloging the agency's weaknesses and calling for reforms. "F.D.A. is not funded, staffed or in some cases authorized to collect" comprehensive reports of problems with drugs once they are already being sold, the report concluded.
In a March 13, 2000, letter to Senator Jim Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, Dr. Woodcock wrote that more than 1.6 million people in the United States were hospitalized every year because of drug side effects. Half of these problems are preventable, she wrote. The agency needed more money for better systems to prevent these problems, she wrote. The agency did not get them.
Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group in Washington, said that is how it should be. Mr. Kazman has been fighting for years against F.D.A. regulations, which he said had kept important medicines away from patients. Doctors and patients should decide what drugs are right for them, not the F.D.A., Mr. Kazman said. "Giving them more money is no reason to think they would improve and it's possible that just the opposite would happen," he said.
And Dr. Avorn of Harvard Medical School said that what the agency needed more than money was courage. When doubts emerge about a medicine's safety, the agency needs to insist that drug makers pay for independent tests, he said. And continuing drug surveillance could also be paid for by drug makers, he said.
If companies refuse, the agency "needs to call a press conference and issue a public notice saying, 'There are unresolved issues and we are trying to get the company to do a clinical trial and doctors should take that into account,' " Dr. Avorn said. "The F.D.A. has moral authority and extraordinary public relations power if they chose to use them."
The agency has asked the Institute of Medicine, the government's principal scientific review agency, to study the agency's system for monitoring the safety of marketed drugs. Pressure for an independent drug safety center grew on Friday when Mr. Thompson of health and human services said in a news conference to announce his resignation that he supported such a move.
The reason to make decisions governing the safety of drugs already on the market independent of the groups that approve new drugs, Dr. Graham of the F.D.A. told a Senate panel last month, is the conflicts that inevitably arise when those who approve a drug must later decide whether their own decisions were mistaken.
"They approved the drug so there can't possibly be anything wrong with it," Dr. Graham told the panel.
But many inside the F.D.A. say that separating the monitoring of side effects from drug approvals would be a mistake because a drug's risks cannot be assessed independently from its benefits. Besides, information about the safety of drugs already approved should be used to assess applications for experimental drugs in the same class, said Dr. David Feigal, a top agency official who retired in May. An independent drug safety center "is exactly the wrong way to go," Dr. Feigal said.
Agency officials initially opposed making an independent drug safety center but have recently said they would study any proposals. Some have privately said that if Congress agrees to give such an independent center substantial resources the change could be worth the extra money.
John Schwartz contributed reporting for this article.
Edited by: shadeaux63 at: 12/6/04 7:50 pm
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narshaadha
Moderator
Posts: 495
(12/6/04 8:43 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
Thank you, shadeaux, for all this excellent info. You are awesome.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1015
(12/6/04 10:21 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
THIS IS A MUST-READ,FOR ANYONE WHO CARES AT ALL ABOUT THE PLANET WE LIVE ON.
This week the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award.
I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.
The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best seller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" left off.
Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover – conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution – may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.
That's one challenge we journalists face – how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.
As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge – to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true – one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed – an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 – just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer – "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election – 231 legislators in total – more since the election – are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"
Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.
I can see in the look on your faces just how had it is for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."
I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that – it's just that I read the news and connect the dots:
I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.
That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.
That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.
That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.
That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.
I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars – two million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council – to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
I read all this in the news.
I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by Exxon Mobile and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.
I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer – pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know now what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."
And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?
What has happened to out moral imagination?
On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"
I see it feelingly.
The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" – the science of the heart ... the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the future depended on you.
Believe me, it does.
Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with Bill Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1017
(12/10/04 9:23 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
For a long time now,there are those who have made comparisons to Bush's regime,and George Orwells 1984.And more than a couple of people have compared the Bush administration to Hitlers Nazi Germany.The right-wing reply to this has usually been, " But Bush is a religious man,a devout Christian,who would NEVER allow the atrocities of Nazi Germany to happen here."
Wanna bet? Read this,and do your own research.It isn't hard to find translated copies of Hitlers speeches on the internet.Or go to your nearest used book store,and pick up a copy of Mein Campf.The similarities in doctrine may just give you a case of chills that doesn't want to go away.And if that doesn't do it,just check out the photographs on this link www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
"God Is With Us": Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of "Moral Values"
by Maureen Farrell
"God does not make cowardly nations free." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
A couple weeks ago, while asserting that the Founding Founders intended for the U.S. government to be infused with Christianity, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Holocaust was able to flourish in Germany because of Europe's secular ways. "Did it turn out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?" Scalia asked a congregation at Manhattan's Shearith Israel synagogue. "I don't think so."
One might expect regular citizens to be ignorant of history, but a Supreme Court Justice? Does he imagine that the phrase "Gott mit Uns" was a German clothier's interpretation of "Got Milk"?
If photographic evidence of the Third Reich's Christian leanings were not enough, Hitler's own speeches and writings prove, at the very least, that he presented many of the same faith-based arguments heard in America today. Religion in the schools? Hitler was for it. Intellectuals who practiced "anti-Christian, smug individualism"? According to Hitler, their days were numbered. Divine Providence's role in shaping Germany's ultimate victory? Who could argue? In other words, there is enough historical evidence to color Scalia deluded. Writing for Free Inquiry, John Patrick Michael Murphy explained:
"Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.
Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."
For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," Hitler wrote). But anti-Semitic rants aside, some of Hitler's religious musings are interchangeable with Mr. Bush's.
Hitler was raised a Catholic and spoke of his faith in God, yet, singling out his rants against religion, politicians and pastors continue to characterize him as a pagan barbarian. Such distortions are convenient -- particularly in an age where propaganda concerning "moral values" is readily gobbled up and Christian nation legislation waits in the wings -- but, to paraphrase the Bible, overlooking the truth will not make us free.
Scalia, who also cited the Bible to claim that government "derives its moral authority from God," is hardly alone in his assertions. Leo Strauss, the philosopher who has influenced neoconservativism, and by proxy, George Bush's America, felt that religion, like deception, was crucial to maintaining social order. Meanwhile, neoconservative kingpin Irving Kristol has argued similar points -- bragging about how easy it is to fool the public into accepting the government's actions while arguing that America's Founding Fathers were wrong to insist on the separation of church and state. Why? According to Jim Lobe, it's because religion, as Strauss and his disciples see it, is "absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control."
Saying that neoconservatives believe that secular society is undesirable "because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats," Lobe explained why Kristol and other neocons have "allied themselves with the Christian Right" and, in some cases, have also denounced Darwin's theory of evolution. "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers," Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey explained, pointing to publications like Commentary which has espoused the virtues of religious fundamentalism and has questioned evolutionary science.
(Hitler did the same. The book The German Churches Under Hitler includes his assertion that secular schools should not be tolerated while Hitler's Table Talk quotes him questioning the wisdom in teaching children both creationism and the theory of evolution. "The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution,"he said. "Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall.")
Professor Shadia B. Drury also noted the similarities between the methods endorsed by Hitler and neoconservatives' favorite philosopher. She explained:
"Strauss loved America enough to try to save her from the errors and terrors of Europe. He was convinced that the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic led to the rise of the Nazis. That is a debatable matter. But Strauss did not openly debate this issue or provide arguments for his position in his writings. I am inclined to think that it is Strauss's ideas, and not liberal ideas, that invite the kinds of abuses he wished to avoid. It behooves us to remember that Hitler had the utmost contempt for parliamentary democracy. He was impatient with debate and dispute, on the grounds that they were a waste of time for the great genius who knew instinctively the right choices and policies that the people need. Hitler had a profound contempt for the masses - the same contempt that is readily observed in Strauss and his cohorts. But when force of circumstances made it necessary to appeal to the masses, Hitler advocated lies, myths, and illusions as necessary pabulum to placate the people and make them comply with the will of the Fuhrer. Strauss's political philosophy advocates the same solution to the problem of the recalcitrant masses. Anyone who wants to avoid the horrors of the Nazi past is well advised not to accept Strauss's version of ancient wisdom uncritically. But this is exactly what Strauss encouraged his students to do."
Although several others, including the legendary Seymour Hersh, have noted the neoconservatives' belief that deception is essential, the religious aspect of their philosophy is especially unnerving. Religion may be the opium of the masses, but when zealots become so certain of their own righteousness that they ignore their own humanity, horror is the natural consequence. Islamic extremism offers the most glaring recent example, and now that Osama bin Laden has been granted permission to nuke America, the most extreme changes within the U.S. could very well come from the outside world.
In the meantime, however, for those who have not yet noticed, our own homegrown zealots -- those who advocate hatred in the name of the Lord -- have made considerable headway, with gays and lesbians currently at the center of legislation which, should it pass, will alter this country forever.
When the Marriage Protection Act passed the House in July, the New York Times called it "a radical assault on the Constitution. "If it passes in the Senate, the bill could obliterate the separation of powers and wipe out Constitutional protections for all minorities, stripping the courts and possibly paving the way for Christian nationhood. Other pieces of court stripping legislation bills designed to topple the wall between church and state are also in play.
This encroaching infusion of church and state, combined with recent decrees concerning moral values, doesn't resonate with inclusive tolerance. "When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side? If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct," Bob Fitrakis wrote. "Nothing can be more misleading than to categorize Hitler as a barbaric pagan or Godless totalitarian, like Stalin."
While many of us reserve a soft spot for true Christian generosity and the warm teachings of Jesus, it's important to remember that Christianity can be (and has been) distorted for darker purposes. Whether you're talking about Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil War American South, or the atmosphere in the U.S. these past few years, whenever questions of conscience are vigorously denounced, you can bet there is trouble ahead -- and the hijacking of faith and the manipulation of religion should always arouse suspicion. Moral values as a mandate? What better way to foster civil obedience and "One nation Under God" unity in a time of preventative war, suppressed liberty and sanctioned torture.
So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's Godlessness, the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi Christian affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more WMD-type baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand that no nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism.
Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson -- with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning away from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more. "Once the mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learned to pray," Hitler said in 1936, sixty-five years before Falwell and Robertson blamed abortionists and feminists for the tragedies of Sept. 11.
Hitler's religious phrases could have also come from the lips of George W. Bush. "Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us,"Hitler said in March, 1933, sounding much like our president, who believes that God wants him to liberate the people in Middle East -- even if he has to torture, maim and kill tens of thousands in the process. "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Bob Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.. . . Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . ."
Speaking in Berlin in March, 1936, Hitler said something remarkably similar. "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," he said, before launching the preventive war heard round the world.
Both leaders also promised peace while planning for war. "We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended," Bush said, in his State of the Union address in Jan. 2003, two months before launching a preventative war in Iraq. "Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!"Hitler said in Nuremberg on Sept. 13, 1936.
Yes, many of Hitler's faith-based comments could have come from George Bush himself, and are undoubtedly the kinds of sentiments many Americans not only agree with -- but take comfort in. This is not to say that Bush is Hitler or that religion is evil, but to serve as a reminder that things are not always what they seem. Christianity was used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in America, and facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality and questions of conscience were needed the most. These are but a few of the Fuhrer's assertions:
* "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith." (The German Churches Under Hitler, p.241)
* "We must turn all the sentiments of the Volk, all its thinking, acting, even its beliefs, away from the anti-Christian, smug individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid Phariseeism of personal arrogance, and we must educate the youth in particular in the spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers! This youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts." (Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, page 140)
* "It will be the Government's care to maintain honest cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith." (At the Reichstag, March 23, 1933)
* "Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession [Protestantism or Catholicism], we have restored to faith its prerequisites because we were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933)
* "But there is something else I believe, and that is that there is a God. . . . And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years." (Munich, Feb. 24, 1940)
* "You [blue-collar workers] represent the most noble of slogans known to us: "God helps those who help themselves!' (Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, Vol. 2, page 1147)
* "Fifteen years ago I had nothing save my faith and my will. Today the Movement is Germany, today this Movement has won the German nation and formed the Reich. Would that have been possible without the blessing of the Almighty? Or do they who ruined Germany wish to maintain that they have had God's blessing? What we are we are, not against but with the will of Providence. And so long as we are loyal, honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of Providence." (Rosenheim, Aug. 11, 1935)
* "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. . . As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." (Munich, April 12, 1922)
* "If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work." (Feb. 24, 1939)
* "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933)
* "An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An educated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal)." (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, page 59)
In his book, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer interviewed Germans who discussed how their society changed right before their eyes, and how, despite Hitler's rhetoric, God was nowhere to be found. As one interviewee put it:
"The world you live in -- "your nation, your people" -- is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
Of course, America has hardly "gone all the way" and is unlikely to become as psychotic as Nazi Germany any time soon. But what do you suppose God thinks of preventative war based upon deception? Or about the use of depleted uranium? Or about dropping napalm on civilians? Are Iraqi insurgents are any less certain that God is on their side than our own Evangelical Marines?
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal thug, but why do so many insist on forgetting that the U.S. helped him to power in the first place? Does God see our role in all of this as lightly as we do? And how many U.S. citizens do you know, who, mired in fear, readily dismiss America's use of torture and rationalize our disregard for international law? What else might they overlook?
In 1937, Hitler said that because of Germany's belief in God and God's favoritism towards Germany, the country would prevail and prosper. "We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had Providence not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and transitory if they are not blessed by the Omnipotent. Work such as ours which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be undone by mere mortals,"he said.
While attempting to solidify his power, Hitler also denounced those who denounced religion -- as if he were talking about Hollywood or blue states or Noam Chomsky. "For eight months we have been conducting a fearless campaign against that Communism which is threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public morals, "Hitler said in a speech in Oct. 1933. "We have made an end of denials of the Deity and the crying down of religion."
There will be no more crying down of religion in George Bush's America, either. Though oft-repeated assertions made by the media in the immediate aftermath of the election have proven to be nothing more than myth, propagandists would have you believe that the American people have spoken: "Moral values" reign supreme.
But how can any one of us know God's desires -- especially when our enemies claim to have God on their side as well? And doesn't it seem that religious hubris -- believing that God sanctions one's own inhumane treatment of others -- always invites a fall?
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever," Thomas Jefferson said, of the price America would eventually pay for slavery. "Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions," Ulysses S. Grant advised, describing karmic retribution without pointing hateful fingers at lesbians.
And long before that, the poet John Milton tried to "justify the ways of God to Man." But yet, the world, with its conflicting visions of morality, ethics and truth, still struggles to comprehend.
Perhaps Truth, for want of a better definition, is what God sees when he looks at any given situation. And perhaps it is ultimately impossible for us to know God's mind. After all, it's obvious that Hitler wasn't telling the truth when he spoke of God and country -- and by the same token, it's difficult to look at Najaf or Fallujah or Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay and see God's hand in any of it.
After one of Bush's operatives promised to "export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation" Bob Woodward wrote: "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's Master Plan." And sure enough, when Woodward asked Bush if he had discussed the impending invasion of Iraq with his father, President George H.W. Bush (who could have offered sage advice), the President responded: "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to."
But, without knowing God's mind, most of us have only History to help us judge. And the fact is, without the benefit of History, some of the "moral values" Hitler embraced sound eerily like those being peddled today.
George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But buying into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side is not wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that war is an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and assumptions.
So, aside from Jerry Falwell, who speaks with hate-filled authority, most of us do not know how God will judge us. We will have to settle for History's imperfect record.
All of this begs the question, however. Given his assertions regarding God's role in helping him decide policy ("I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible" Bush told Woodward. . . "I felt so strongly that [invading Iraq] was the right thing to do") how does Bush view the more mundane, secular implications of his actions? When asked by Woodward how History would judge the war in Iraq, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
I challenge anyone to find the moral value in that.
Edited by: shadeaux63 at: 12/10/04 9:30 am
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1018
(12/10/04 9:42 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
This article is very much related to the previous post.
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2003.
Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.
What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?
A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.
The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.
Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.
Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."
Rule One: Deception
It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."
This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).
Second Principle: Power of Religion
According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.
At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."
"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.
Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism
Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people."
Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."
"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."
As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's – many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect."
The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world – as well as the relationship between their relationship as a ruling elite with the masses. "They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury says.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1019
(12/10/04 10:03 am)
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Re: This Just in...again
PLEASE read this!!! This excerpt is on the ACS (American Constitution Society) blog page,for December 2. The link is www.acsblog.org/equal-pro...ation.html
This is about a 7 year old child who was PUNISHED for explaining to another child that his mother was gay.It was an innocent conversation,overheard by the teacher.Another kid asked about htis childs mother and father,and the child in question explained that he had no father,but two mothers.When the other kid asked why,he said"Because my mother is gay". If you read the whole page,you will find a copy of the letter sent home with this poor kid,telling his mother that his crime was using the word "gay".On the line asking the kid what he SHOULD have done,he writes,"cep my mouf shut".
PLEASE,please,please go and read this.
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shadeaux63
Keeper of dreams
Posts: 1021
(12/11/04 10:20 pm)
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Re: This Just in...again
A Lump Of Coal For America's Poor
Bill Vaughan
December 10, 2004
With President Bush set to make his tax cuts permanent for 2005 and push Social Security privatization, the extra money to make up the difference has to come from somewhere. Bill Vaughan of Families USA says it's likely to come from one of the largest—and most vital—government programs: Medicaid. In a season of doing good unto others, cutting taxes for millionaires and leaving severely ill seniors in nursing homes without care is an immoral choice.
Bill Vaughan is government affairs director of Families USA.
Here’s a moral choice for Americans this holiday season: Give more tax breaks for millionaires and cut payments to nursing homes, leaving our elderly out in the cold, or put a break on the tax cuts for the wealthy and protect funding for the Medicaid program—the only health lifeline for 51 million Americans, including seniors in nursing homes.
That’s the decision we will soon be asked to make. The president is preparing his budget request for 2005, and will make key decisions by the end of January, including—most likely—making all previous tax reductions permanent. That will cost about $1.65 trillion over a 10-year period. At the same time, the Pentagon is expected to ask for another $70 billion for our military efforts in Iraq. Nonetheless, the president says that, over the next four years, he wants to cut in half our country’s unprecedented deficits of about $422 billion. And let’s not forget about Social Security privatization. If the most-talked-about option is honestly accounted for, it will increase deficit borrowing by about $1 to $2 trillion.
Maybe in some twilight zone of a parallel universe he could do all these things, but in our universe, the numbers don’t add up. To achieve these goals, he will have to ask for massive, massive cuts in existing programs.
What existing programs could possibly make a dent in the funding of these various new proposals? Cut Social Security when you claim you are reforming it without cuts? No way. Cut Medicare? That will be tough, especially considering potential senior voter turnout.
What’s the next biggest domestic social program? Medicaid.
Medicaid is the federal-state health safety net that serves about 51 million low-income Americans. This number includes about 25 million children, 8.4 million severely disabled, and 6.4 million seniors, of whom 1.3 million—mostly widows over age 80—are in our nation’s nursing homes. Most of these nursing home residents are seriously ill, and it is estimated that about 70 percent of them have some memory loss, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Even if they had homes to go to, the severity of their condition means they wouldn’t receive suitable care from their families. Yet, with the average cost of nursing home care running about $55,000 a year, most American families are unable to save for this expense. Thus, Medicaid pays for about two-thirds of all nursing home residents, and provides about half the funding of our nation’s nursing homes.
Medicaid is the program that the president proposed to cap and cut in his 2003 and 2004 budgets, but he never really pushed those proposals. This coming year, if he is to achieve his other goals—permanent tax cuts but with deficit reduction—he will have to push, and push hard for massive Medicaid cuts.
In 2003, he proposed a system that would have cut about one-sixth of total Medicaid spending. By reducing federal spending on Medicaid, the proposal just shifts costs to state and local governments, which can either raise local taxes or just carry out cuts in services. Families USA calculated that if cuts were to be achieved by reducing the number of people covered by Medicaid, it would increase the number of uninsured Americans by about 7.4 million people (45 million were already uninsured in 2004). Of course, the cuts could also come out of payments to hospitals, doctors and nursing homes.
And that takes us back to our most vulnerable elderly, who, because of the budget decisions we are about to make, will be at risk of receiving poor-quality care—if they can afford any care at all.
We can keep the promise of cutting taxes for millionaires. Or we can look after the sickest and most vulnerable in our society.
The choice will be made by the administration in the next few weeks. Please, in the holiday spirit, urge your members of Congress and U.S. senators not to cut and cap the Medicaid program payments to your state.
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