House Passes War Bill: $162B More For The Destruction Of Iraq And Afghanistan

The House of Representatives [sic] has passed a bill which would fund the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan well beyond the twice-unelected president's scheduled date of departure. And that's the good news.

Republicans [...] applauded the passage of another war funding bill without a deadline for troop withdrawals, something Pelosi and many Democrats had sought [sic] since early last year.

"The measure provides this critical funding without bogging it down with politically motivated surrender language," Boehner said.

"Politically motivated surrender language"! These monsters are so transparent, they'd make me laugh if their actions weren't so deplorable. But that's the good news.

And now the bad news: the Democrats are calling it a victory!

Included in the bill that funds continued war without a deadline, are three provisions which president Bush has already threatened to veto. With apparent support for an override in Congress, the House has "stood up" to the president on those points.

"He is reversing three distinct veto threats and signing them into law. If that ain't a victory, I don't know what is," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus [photo].

Bush can reverse any of those clauses with signing statements, so what difference does it make to him?

The bottom line: the Democrats, who control the House of Representatives [sic] and therefore the national purse-strings, have chosen to spend another $162 billion -- $540 per person -- over the next year, to keep killing people you've never met, in wars of aggression in foreign countries, which are being fought on false pretexts. And

"If that ain't a victory, I don't know what is,"

according to the so-called leader of the so-called opposition party.

Nothing in my lifetime, and probably nothing in American history, has shown as clearly as the so-called Global War On Terror just how easily corruptible and utterly corrupt the American political system is.

But even having seen it -- even seeing it more clearly every day -- we continue to drift along, sliding ever closer to the edge of a horrible abyss.

What's another $162 billion? How many more innocent people will that kill? Enough?

No! It's never enough! Next year they'll need more, and they'll need even more than they needed this year. And even if we've got a Democratic president, even if we've got a solidly Democratic Congress, will they dare to vote against it?

You must be joking.

This is the same Rahm Emanuel who denied funding and national exposure to any Democrat who was fortunate enough to win a primary but not smart enough to toe the party line. So Bob Bowman (who supports 9/11 truth) and Clint Curtis (who supports electoral integrity) were on their own for the general election, while Cynthia McKinney (who supports both) was torpedoed in the primary.

And he's running the national Democratic caucus.

All we can do at this point is drop to our knees and beg for mercy.

Raiding The Vault -- Part III: "Burn"

I almost managed to laugh back in January when I saw that the Washington Post had published a piece called "Democracy Activists Disappointed in Bush", because I knew the democracy activists in question must be foreigners.

Democracy activists in the USA have long been "disappointed" with Bush -- especially with the way in which he was supposedly twice elected -- but the Washington Post has hardly shown any interest in such stories.

As it turned out (mark the calendar!) I was correct; Bush had just ended a tour of the Middle East and some of the people there were none too happy with his failure to bring democracy to their countries.

Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian political activist who last year received a U.S. National Endowment for Democracy award, was left dispirited by Bush's tour. The year 2005 "was the best year in my life, politically. ... Our hopes were way up there," Kassem said. "But -- it was just another story."

Anger grew in his voice. "Bush, as far as American foreign policy vis-a-vis democracy, civil rights, is right back to square one," Kassem added. "This trip marks it."

Hisham Kassem amazes me with his assertion that Bush's pro-democracy rhetoric was "just another story". The amazing part is that it's taken him three years since Bush's second inaugural address to figure it out.

Bush wasn't the only salesman peddling the lies, of course.

In 2005, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped create as much of a democratic fervor as the Middle East had ever seen, democracy activists said. Rice vowed support for "the democratic aspirations of all people."
...

Middle East democracy activists these days say they wonder whether the United States has returned to the formula that Rice renounced in 2005: valuing the stability of autocratic Arab governments over the uncertainty of elected ones.

They're still wondering? Terry Jones figured it out three years ago, and he said so in an interview with Mother Jones:

What amazes me about [Bush's second inaugural address] is he’s basically just declared war on the rest of the world. But nobody seemed to really notice. He said it in a very nice way, so maybe they missed what he was talking about. Basically, he said that America can take out any government it doesn’t like and do whatever it likes. It’s stunning. It’s people’s reaction to it that’s been extraordinary to me, that nobody’s taken notice of what he’s actually saying.

Terry Jones was wrong on one point; somebody did notice what he was saying.

Chris Floyd noticed, too -- he noticed that something was very wrong, and saw what it was, and wrote an amazing piece to mark the occasion. Please read all of "Tongues of Flame: Strange Doings at the Inauguration", not just this introduction:

"Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked." – Exodus 23:7

There was something strange – passing strange – about the sumptuous carnival mounted to celebrate George W. Bush's chokehold on power this week.

Go ahead -- read it all! But don't forget to come back for another piece from the cold vault: a horrified look at exactly what the twice-unelected president said on the occasion of his second inauguration.

"Burn"

It was billed as a giant party. It was presented as a celebration. But in reality it was an act of war. And its centerpiece was a cold-blooded declaration.

George Bush's declaration of war wasn't phrased in conventional terms. But nobody in his administration has ever done anything in conventional terms. They have never said what they meant. We have always been required to read between the lines.

But the meaning of Bush's second inaugural address was crystal-clear, for those who can interpret the code-words. This speech featured two code-words in particular: Freedom and Democracy.

Please read it all, especially all you democracy activists, and don't be disappointed anymore.

It was always just a story.

No Charges Against Spitzer, But Wingnut Calls For Resignation Or Impeachment

Republicans nationwide are calling for the resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer [photo], following allegations of involvement with a high-priced prostitution ring. The story is generating international attention, even though no criminal charges have been laid.

And, according to the New York Times,

[New York State] Assemblyman James Tedisco, a Republican and the Assembly minority leader, said he would begin moving to have Mr. Spitzer impeached if the governor did not step down within 48 hours.

My, what double standards we keep.

When the offending party is an elephant, such as Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi, it doesn't matter whether he's been charged, indicted, arraigned, whatever ... We get explanations like this:

"There is a presumption of innocence in this country and it applies to congressmen. And Congressman Renzi is fully prepared to continue serving [sic] his [constitutents] while we fight for his rights in court. And there's plenty of rights to be fought for."

But when the offending party is a donkey, all that "presumption of innocence" stuff goes out the window. This is politics, after all; and post-democratic America, too; in other words: There are no rules. There is only power.

Larisa Alexandrovna has more at At-Largely. In "Remember the days when being linked to a straight, female, adult hooker was political suicide?" she mentions a few Republicans who have been caught doing much worse, but who have remained in office; she also mentions some of the sleaziest Republican sex scandals of recent times, all of which go way beyond this one.

Then, in "Spitzer's selective prosecution?", she looks at some of the disturbing indications that this case is personal and political rather than anything else.

Jane Hamsher asks some good questions at Fire Dog Lake, too. See "Some Questions About the Spitzer Incident".

As for me, I merely wish to express my confidence that this incident has nothing to do with the op/ed Spitzer published last month in the New York Times, in which he exposed the fact that the Bush administration had used its power to protect predatory mortgage lenders, over the objection of all 50 state Attorneys General.

I am also confident that it has nothing to do with any of the anti-corruption work he has done on behalf of the people of his state.

How can I be so confident? Because ruining somebody because of a truth he'd told -- or because of good work he had done -- would be dishonest.

That's why.

Now, if he had done something really trivial -- started a war of aggression, or several of them -- and an opposition politician had called for his resignation with the threat of impeachment, I might be singing a different tune. I might say "Aw, come on! This is meaningless; it's all political; they just don't like his attitude."

And then I could be the perfect wingnut.

Arizona Congressman Arraigned For Corruption; Party Affiliation A Secret

Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi [photo] pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges including insurance fraud, extortion and money laundering.

Lupita Murillo reports for KVOA News 4 Tucson:

Congressman Renzi arraigned in federal court

On February 21, Renzi and his former business partners were indicted after a lengthy investigation.

It focused on the land development and insurance businesses owned by Renzi's family.

Renzi and his business partners James Sandlin and Andrew Beard are all accused of concealing at least $733,000 that Renzi allegedly took for helping seal the land deals.

Renzi and Beard are also accused of embezzling more than $400,000 in insurance premiums to fund Renzi's first congressional campaign.

Renzi says he's not resigning his position. That's the message congressman Rick Renzi sent to his constitutients from court.

Congressman Renzi sat stoically next to his attorneys as he entered his 'not guilty' plea.

The judge released Renzi on a promise to appear in court and didn't set bond.

Renzi was ordered by the judge to stop at the U.S. Marshall's office to be fingerprinted and photographed.

Outside the courthouse, Renzi and his team of attorneys were met by the media. Renzi's attorney did all the talking.

Reid Weingarten told the media, "There is a presumption of innocence in this country and it applies to congressmen. And Congressman Renzi is fully prepared to continue serving his constitutients [sic] while we fight for his rights in court. And there's plenty of rights to be fought for."

The FBI spent 26,000 man-hours on this case.

Prosecutors declined to comment.

I don't mind commenting.

How is it that I can read this whole article without once finding any allusion to the name of the political party to which Rick Renzi is attached?

Why can I go to his website, and read "About Rick", and still find no mention of his party affiliation?

Could it be because he's an elephant? YES.

Are the elephants so rotten that they no longer publicly identify themselves as such? YES.

Are the American "news" media sufficiently corrupt to go along with this distortion-by-omission? YES.

If the indicted congressman were a donkey, would the media be singing a different tune? OF COURSE.

Anybody who didn't get all these answers on the first try is welcome to stay late today for some review.

As for presumption of innocence, there are more than 350 people incarcerated at Gitmo who have never even been charged with any crime of any nature, let alone betrayal of the supposedly sacred trust of public service. Some of them were captured by lawless tribesmen when they tried to escape the American bombing of their homeland, then sold into eternal captivity. And they aren't entitled to any presumption of innocence. They aren't entitled to anything -- not even a hearing!

So why does "presumption of innocence" apply to a congressman who's been indicted after 26,000 man-hours of investigation, and against the prevailing political winds, when it doesn't apply to people who have never even been charged?

Because "presumption of innocence", like every other aspect of the rule of law, is now a political weapon, to be used against enemies of the regime, and on behalf of their friends. Pakistan is the model.

In Canada, A Parliamentary Jihad Against Corruption

The bogus rhetoric of the bogus War on bogus Terror has reached stunning new lows in Canada, where an investigation by a parliamentary ethics committee looking into corruption allegations against former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has been described as a "jihad".

CBC reports:

Mulroney spent four hours before the committee on Dec. 13 and admitted to taking $225,000 in cash from [German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz] Schreiber after his time in office for lobbying efforts abroad in the late 1990s.

The former prime minister has apologized for that lapse of judgment [sic], said Mulroney's spokesman, Robin] Sears, but adds that the business arrangement wasn't illegal or unethical.

Schreiber, however, maintains that he paid Mulroney $300,000 to lobby the Canadian government for a light-armoured vehicle plant known as the Bear Head project. He also says that the two reached their working arrangement on June 23, 1993, two days before Mulroney stepped down as prime minister.

The line in question came about because Mulroney -- who apparently lied to the committee in December -- has refused to appear for a second round of questioning. It's more dangerous now that the committee has heard other witnesses and his deception has been exposed. So instead of allowing the long-overdue pursuit of justice to proceed, Mulroney has set his spokesman on the attack, like so:

"This has been like a 15-year jihad against Mulroney and his family by his enemies — led by Mr. Schreiber and enabled by some in the media," Sears told CBC News earlier in the day.

So there you have it; it's a holy war, waged by international enemies.

Committee vice-chair, NDP MP Pat Martin, was swift to condemn the spokesman's choice of words, saying the comment was "shameful," "goofy" and trivializes the "international crisis of jihad."

Au contraire, Mr. Martin. It trivializes the international crisis of political corruption. And if this is what the global jihadis are out to expose, then they just got my vote!

Screwed: How The Bush Administration Defied All 50 States So Predatory Bankers Could Rape American Consumers

Here's one of the most disgusting stories to come along since ... well ... Tuesday:

The Bush administration [...] used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer [photo], courtesy of the Washington Post, in toto, with my emphasis (and thanks to z):

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime:
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers:

Thursday, February 14, 2008; A25

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

As I read this piece, I couldn't help asking myself: How much more treason are we going to put up with?

When I finished reading, I started thinking: Why isn't this front-page news all over the country? This is not some crank we're talking about; it's the governor of a very important state! And he's not whining about what the feds did to him or his little fiefdom; he's speaking for all 49 others as well! So why is this story not considered "news"? Why is it only an "opinion" piece? Why was it run on page 25? Why aren't reporters chasing this down all over the country?

... and all these questions answer my first one, don't they?

So does this video: "Orwell Rolls In His Grave".

Not "If" But "When": Business Will Become Enforcement Under Martial Law

When the meltdown passes the crucial stage and Bush has "no choice" but to declare martial law, a select group of businessmen will know about it first, thanks to inside information from the FBI.

And if you don't like it, they'll be ready to shoot you, without danger of legal consequences, as Matthew Rothschild reports for The Progressive:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

As the name implies, InfraGard values property rights above all else. So they're the perfect tools of a fascist government, and they're being readied for more action than one might suspect:

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, “Partnership for Protection.” On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.

But that’s not all.

“Then they said when -- not if -- martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

I'm not someone who gets nervous either.

It's a win/win situation. The businessmen get inside information, and the feds get a few more details -- armed thugs.

On second thought, make that situation "win/win/lose".

And read Matthew Rothschild: Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business

Tom Toles: So Much For Mikey

Need A No-Work Job And $13,000 Per Month? Try The Air Force!

He was between jobs, waiting to be confirmed for his new post, and he needed a paycheck. So the Air Force arranged one for him -- at a tax-exempt "charity" that mostly works for the US military. The Washington Post headline says it was a no-work contract, but that's not technically true. Charles Riechers did attend the company Christmas party.

Air Force Arranged No-Work Contract

For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his resume. But during that time he actually worked for Sue C. Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, on projects that had nothing to do with CRI, he said.
...

"I really didn't do anything for CRI," said Riechers, now principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. "I got a paycheck from them."

Riechers's job highlights the Pentagon's ties with Commonwealth Research and its corporate parent, which has in recent years received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants and contracts from the military, and more than $100 million in earmarks from lawmakers.

Commonwealth Research and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies, are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt charities, even though their primary work is for the Pentagon and other government agencies.
...

Specialists in federal contracting law said Commonwealth Research's arrangement with Riechers may have violated regulations governing how the Air Force is permitted to hire and use contractors, including a prohibition on certain uses of consultants to augment the federal workforce. The prohibition is designed in part to ensure that employees in sensitive government jobs serve the public and not corporate or other outside interests.

"It's a seriously questionable arrangement to have him on the payroll not even pretending to do assigned and properly monitored work," said Charles Tiefer, a contracting law professor at the University of Baltimore Law School. "The principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management should not be making himself into a glaring example of what not to do with acquisition and management."
...

Riechers was paid a total of $26,788 as part of the contract to provide research to the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. In a statement, Riechers said he had no problem accepting the pay because Commonwealth Research is a nonprofit organization "that had an established relationship" with the military service.

Well there we are, then. Are you being paid $13,400 per month and not doing anything to earn it? That could be a problem; it might look "shady". But if you can justify the arrangement on the grounds that the company paying you is registered as a non-profit and it has "an established relationship" with the military service, you don't have anything to worry about.

Just take the money and keep it. What's wrong with that? You might even be the perfect man for the job:

In November, Riechers was nominated to be a senior acquisition official, taking the title last held by Darleen A. Druyun. She was sent to prison in 2004 after she left the Air Force for negotiating a job with Boeing while she worked for the government and for favoring the company in several procurement decisions.

Ah, Darlene Druyun. I remember her well. She spent billions of taxpayers' dollars at Boeing while the corporation was doing wonderful things for her family.

Charles Riechers should suit her old job just fine.

You can read more about his not-for-profit escapade here.

Expect More Topless Mountains

Here's John M. Broder of the New York Times on the prospect of even more topless mountains, and even more rivers and streams buried under heaps of slag.

The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.

It's a pretty simple process. You blow the tops off mountains, dig out the coal, dump the debris in the nearest valley, and head on down the road.

From 1985 to 2001, 724 miles of streams were buried under mining waste, according to the environmental impact statement accompanying the new rule.

If current practices continue, another 724 river miles will be buried by 2018, the report says.
...

The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.

The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.

It's a slick technique, isn't it? We've already made up our minds, now what did you want to talk about?"

The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Reduce dependence on foreign oil? That's a good line. The administration should use it more often.

Government and industry officials say the rules are needed to clarify existing laws, which have been challenged in court and applied unevenly.

A spokesman for the National Mining Association, Luke Popovich, said that unless mine owners were allowed to dump mine waste in streams and valleys it would be impossible to operate in mountainous regions like West Virginia that hold some of the richest low-sulfur coal seams.

All mining generates huge volumes of waste, known as excess spoil or overburden, and it has to go somewhere. For years, it has been trucked away and dumped in remote hollows of Appalachia.

Environmental activists say the rule change will lead to accelerated pillage of vast tracts and the obliteration of hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.

“This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration,” said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. “What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal.”

Making legal what has long been illegal is one of the hallmarks of the Bush administration. So is ubiquitous corruption.

Environmental groups have gone to court many times, with limited success, to slow or stop the practice. They won an important ruling in federal court in 1999, but it was overturned in 2001 on procedural and jurisdictional grounds.

The Clinton administration began moving in 1998 to tighten enforcement [...], but the clock ran out before it could enact new regulations. The Bush administration has been much friendlier to mining interests, which have been reliable contributors to the Republican Party, and has worked on the new rule change since 2001.

The early stages of the revision process were supported by J. Stephen Griles, a former industry lobbyist who was the deputy interior secretary from 2001 to 2004. Mr. Griles had been deputy director of the Office of Surface Mining in the Reagan administration and is knowledgeable about the issues and generally supports the industry.

In June, Mr. Griles was sentenced to 10 months in prison and three years’ probation for lying to a Senate committee about his ties to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the heart of a corruption scandal who is now in prison.

Abramoff again? What else is new?

Actually there's quite a lot more, and you can read it here ... or here.

Spot The Conspirator! Guess His Political Affiliation And Win A Free Ice Cube!

This one's easy.

Let's start with Dan Joling of the Associated Press via the Seattle Times:

Ex-Alaska lawmaker convicted of bribery, conspiracy

ANCHORAGE — Former Alaska state Rep. Tom Anderson was convicted of conspiracy and bribery Monday by a federal jury.

Anderson, 39, was charged with conspiring to take money he thought was coming from a private prison firm, Cornell Industries. The money was supplied by the FBI through an informant working for Cornell who secretly recorded his conversations with Anderson and a co-conspirator, former municipal lobbyist Bill Bobrick.

"I'm devastated," Anderson said after the trial. He said he planned to appeal.
...

"I think the prosecution has criminalized being a legislator over the last year," Anderson said. "I think I fell victim to that."

Sure you did, Tom. You're a victim, that's for sure.

Hey, isn't that a Rovian talking point? Who else talks about the "criminalization" of politics? It's something you hear from people who think (or wish us to think) that because they're in politics, therefore none of the laws apply to them. It doesn't sound like a very convincing defense to me. But then I think for a living.

And in any case, Tom Anderson was not just a legislator. He was on the Finance Subcommittee for Corrections, and therefore in a position to cut some serious ice for a private prison firm in the Alaska State Legislature. Dan Joling didn't mention that, but you can find such information easily with The Google. In any case, it's tough to see how somebody with such an education could be "devastated" by this conviction, after

"The evidence spoke for itself," said juror Jody Canet on Monday afternoon. "The prosecution did a very good job of presenting its case and the evidence."

Anderson was ordered by Judge John Sedwick to surrender his passport. Sedwick scheduled sentencing for 8:30 a.m. Oct. 2.

The case was prosecuted by lawyers from the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. They referred reporters to the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Dan Joling has more details over in Seattle. But even if you read the whole article, you won't find any mention of a political party. I thought that was kind of strange. Did you?

The same thing happens if you visit Tom Anderson's website, where you can read fascinating details about the convicted conspirator. For example, Tom Anderson is married with four kids and you can find out all their names if you're interested. He was born and raised in Anchorage, lived there all his life, at least so far; he''ll turn 40 on August 4th. He's got a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Public Administration, both from the University of Anchorage, and a Juris Doctorate from Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not too bad. But it's gonna be hard for Tom Anderson to convince anybody he didn't understand what was going on in the courtroom, and that he would soon be toast.

You can find out from Tom Anderson's web page that he was elected to the Alaska House in 2002 and 2004, but his page hasn't been updated since the spring of 2006, and you have to look elsewhere to find out a few more things.

For instance, Wikipedia reports that Tom Anderson continued to work as a "Public & Government Affairs Consultant" even while he was a member of the Alaska state legislature. Also that his re-election bid in 2006 was unsuccessful.

By then Tom Anderson was in deep hot water, having been named as one of the 11-member "Corrupt Bastards Club", whose slimy ways had come to the attention of a federal corruption investigation that started in 2004.

So if Tom Anderson is "devastated", it's not because he didn't see any of this coming ... unless, of course, he deeply believed that because he had been elected to public office, therefore the law didn't apply to him. Or else his personal "devastation" is just another talking point.

At any rate, he's now a convicted conspirator, and whenever you run into people who talk about tin-foil hats or call you "a conspiracy nut" or they tell you that conspiracies are unlikely, or they tell you that conspiracies don't really happen, or (my personal favorite) they tell you they "don't believe in conspiracies" ... now, when any of that happens, all you have to do is remind people of Tom Anderson, former Alaska State Legislator, now convicted conspirator.

That's the easy part.

Now for the slightly harder part. Guess which party Tom Anderson represented?

Guess which party all the corrupt bastards represented?

Even the governor!

Did you say ... Republican?

Here, have an ice cube.

It's ok, I've got plenty.

But yeah, that was pretty easy, wasn't it?

One Way Of Dealing With A Corrupt Politician

Shocking news! from the New Straits Times Online:

China's former food-and-drug chief executed

The former head of China’s food and drug watchdog was executed today, state media reported, following a sensational downfall that saw him become a symbol of the nation’s endemic graft.

Sensational!!

Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, the former director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration that had a ministry-level ranking, was executed this morning following the approval of China’s Supreme People’s Court, Xinhua said.

Zheng was sentenced to death in late May after being found guilty of accepting 6.5 million yuan (850,000 dollars) in bribes in exchange for granting approvals for hundreds of medicines, some of which proved dangerous.

His execution comes ahead of the Communist Party’s five-yearly Congress expected to be held in or around October. The showpiece political event is typically preceded by official campaigns against corruption within party ranks.

Whoa! Ritual human sacrifice politics! How sensational can you get?

Political observers said previously that Zheng’s downfall had also marked a major step in reining in the country’s chaotic food and drug industries.

China’s consumer product quality-control systems have come under fierce scrutiny recently both at home and abroad due to a spate of incidents ranging from fake drugs to chemical-tainted food.

Zheng is believed to be the highest-ranking Chinese official put to death since 2000, when Cheng Kejie, the vice chairman of the National People’s Congress, was executed.
...

The report did not say how Zheng was executed but the typical method in China is a bullet to the head or lethal injection.

What?

What??

I haven't said a word!

Hidden Cost Of The GWOT #419: Diplomatic Cover -- 'They Send Us A Bill, And We Just Pay It'

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb according to David E. Sanger and David Rhode in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, May 19 — The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

Now that's cool, isn't it? They don't even have to go patrolling anymore, but we still give them money! It makes a lot of sense to me!

The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised.

That's understandable, wouldn't you say? I wouldn't advertise it either.

Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

Five point six billion? Meaningless! Less than one percent of the GWOT!! Chump change!

Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

Why should the money be conditional? Pakistan pretends to be our ally in the bogus Global War On Terror. We're making trillions of dollars. What's the problem?

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them.

Exactly. And besides, we can't let anything happen to Pervez Musharraf. He's one indispensable element, that's for sure!

There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.

Good one! "took power" is Right! This is why Gwynne Dyer calls Musharraf's Pakistan "a one-bullet regime" -- it makes perfect sense to give them billions of dollars, whenever they need it. Who needs a nuclear-armed rogue state on the border of their Imperial Ambitions? Not us!!

The White House would not directly answer the question of why Pakistan is being paid the same very large amount after publicly declaring that it is significantly cutting back on its patrols in the most important border area.

I wouldn't answer that question, either. Would you?

Or else I might just say: "Come on! Who do you think you are, and what do you think you're asking for? Accountability? Get real! It's only a few billion dollars! And besides, who cares?"

“They send us a bill, and we just pay it,” said a senior military official who has dealt extensively with General Musharraf. “Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it’s going.”

So that's just about perfect, isn't it? You could call it nuclear blackmail, if you like. I wouldn't be in a position to disagree. But I see it a shade differently.

Let's say a middle-aged man of questionable orientation wants to cavort with the young buckaroos. He needs some hot hetero cover, so he'll hire a high-end call-girl to hang on his arm.

It's easy money for her; perfect, in fact. She doesn't mind that he doesn't want her, 'cause she thinks he's a pig.

And he only cares about his image, so the fact that she's along for the ride is all that matters!

She doesn't actually need to wear a banner saying "My very presence -- on the arm of this despicable swine -- legitimizes the GWOT!"

British Government Employees Jailed For Trying To Protect Journalists

Remember when Bush wanted to bomb Aljazeera? Remember how Tony Blair talked him out of it? It was a big story in November of 2005, but we're not supposed to write about it anymore.

Larisa Alexandrovna is still writing about it, and Chris Floyd is still writing about it, and so are lots of other people. Hooray for all of them. If I were feeling half-decent, I'd be writing about it too. Instead I'm reduced [?] to editing.

The Mirror broke the story on November 22, 2005:

PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

The Brits wouldn't revoke freedom of the press to protect a joke, would they? Of course not! And their reaction spoke louder than any words in support of the claim that Bush was serious.

Larisa at Raw Story, November 23, 2005:

The Mirror, a UK publication which reported Tuesday on an alleged US plan to bomb an Arab TV station seen as anti-US, has been gagged from reporting any further on the memo and its contents by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith...

The publication reported on the contents of a five page memo, stamped Top Secret, alleging that President Bush had threatened to undertake military action against al-Jazeera, a TV station located in the country of Qatar. While al-Jazeera is seen by some in the Bush administration to be largely anti-West, Qatar is an American ally.

According to sources familiar with the case, it was the recent attack on Fallujah that had Bush concerned about what al-Jazeera might report.
...

The allegations of how the memo came to be leaked focus on three players, former Foreign Office official in the Cabinet, David Keogh, former Labor MP for Northampton South, Tony Clarke, and Clarke's then researcher Leo O'Connor.

It is alleged that Keogh, who has been charged under section 5 of the Official Secrets Act, sent the memo to O'Connor sometime between April 16 and May 28 of last year. O'Connor, also charged, then took the document to his boss, Clarke, who dutifully handed it back to the government. O'Connor and Keogh were arrested in August of last year; the charges have just recently been filed.
...

According to the Guardian, in reaction to the article in the Mirror, the International Federation of Journalists is demanding complete disclosure with regard to the death of 16 journalists and media staff, including al-Jazeera cameraman Tarek Ayoub, who was killed when the station's Baghdad office was hit during a US air strike in April of 2003.

All media outlets had to provide the US military with their locations in Baghdad and neighboring cities. Al-Jazeera provided the location of its Baghdad office to Washington prior to the bombing on its Baghdad office.

Here's Larisa again, yesterday:

We now learn that both Keogh and O'Connor have been found guilty.
...

Murdering journalists is like killing the people they represent, because journalists are the true representatives of a nation and its people. Journalists, are, therefore given safe passage as a matter of policy by all civilized countries. But when the so-called leader of the free world targets journalists as a matter of policy, plans to bomb the headquarters of a network, and is allowed to walk free, then there is no freedom to be had, not anywhere...

Are you sick yet? Too soon! We're just getting started.

Chris Floyd hit all these notes and more in his masterful essay, "Parting Shot: Blair Jails Two to Shield "Madman" Bush". With his kind permission I reproduce it below, in its entirety. I urge you to read it carefully, and to click the links and read them carefully too. As thorough and as daunting as the following piece may seem, it's really an overview. The devil -- and the details -- are in the links.

These are days of troubled sleep. As in a dream, you walk familiar streets, living out your ordinary life -- going to work, having love affairs, watching sports, getting the car fixed, worrying about bills, fighting a toothache, taking kids to school, listening to music -- and everything seems as it was before, as it always was; you seem to be what you always were: a free person in a free country. Then some discordant noise reaches your mind; you stir, you open your eyes, and you remember: that's not how it is here anymore.

For citizens in the world's two "leading democracies," the United States and Britain, these rude awakenings come at regular intervals now, piercing through the incessant roar of static from the media engines of sell and spin. A story catches your eye -- usually something buried beneath the "big news" of the day -- and once again you're tumbled from your private concerns into a dreadful realization of where history has taken you: into a strange hybrid world of unfree freedom, where you can say what you want, do what you want -- unless those in power arbitrarily decide that you can't. In 99 cases out of 100, they'll leave you alone (as long as you're white and look non-threatening; if not, that ratio drops considerably). But this liberty is illusory; it no longer has a physical reality, or even a statutory one. It is now a "gift" of the authorities, one which they can bestow -- or revoke -- according to their own, ever-shifting needs and desires.

The idea of arbitrary power beyond all check of law or outside supervision is the sum total of the so-called "Unitary Executive" theory of the Bush Administration, which has put this radical and barbaric idea into practice. It is also undergirds the "crown prerogative" of British governance, where the ancient immunities of the sovereign ("The king can do no wrong" -- or as that proto-unitary executive Richard Nixon once put it: "If the president does it, it's not illegal") have "devolved" upon the prime minister as head of the government. In neither of these endlessly self-celebrating democracies is the consent of the governed or the rule of law the basis for the exercise of power. Otherwise, the leaders of these countries -- the dual lame ducks Bush and Blair -- could not have launched an illegal war or maintained this criminal enterprise year after blood-soaked year. And many of their exercises of arbitrary power have been in aid of masking the true nature of this war.

Thus we come to the latest shaking of our troubled sleep. While the media world gaped and gabbed about Tony Blair's long-belated announcement of his long-overdue retirement yesterday, a more revealing story was buried beneath the fold or in the back pages -- except in the dogged Independent, which put it on the front page:

Two jailed for trying to leak details of Blair's talks with Bush
Tony Blair's ill-fated war with Iraq claimed two more victims yesterday when a civil servant and an MP's researcher were convicted of disclosing details of a secret conversation between the Prime Minister and President George Bush. Last night, MPs, lawyers and civil rights groups described the prosecution as a "farce" and accused the Government of misusing the Official Secrets Act to cover up political embarrassment over the war.

David Keogh, 50, a Cabinet Office communications officer, was today jailed for six months. He passed on an "extremely sensitive memo" to Leo O'Connor, 44, a political researcher who worked for an anti-war Labour MP, Anthony Clarke. O'Connor was today sentenced to three months in jail after an Old Bailey jury found them guilty yesterday of breaching Britain's secrecy laws.

Their trial was carried out under extraordinary secrecy, clamped down even tighter than Britain's continuing series of terror plot trials. The judge wouldn't even allow the press to report Keogh's response "when he was asked in open court what preyed on his mind when he first saw the document," the Guardian reports. What's more, the British press were also forbidden from referring to stories they had previously published about the memo when it first came to light and reports of its contents were being freely discussed. The attorney general -- Blair's old friend Peter Goldsmith, the same legal eagle who infamously reversed his stand on the illegality of the Iraq invasion after a talking to from the Beltway boys, and who most recently quashed a years-long probe into a sex-car-cash bribery scheme between the Saudi royals and the UK's top arms merchant -- draped a retroactive veil of secrecy over the case -- much like the one the Bush gang has used on fired FBI truth-teller Sibel Edmonds after she threatened to expose a nest of high-level treason and corruption. The only thing the British press could tell the British people about the trial yesterday -- beyond the sentences handed down -- was the reaction Keogh had given to the police when he was first arrested in 2005. He told them that what he had seen in the memo convinced him that "Bush was a madman."

But what was this document whose very existence posed such a dire threat to the life of the nation that its contents could not even be hinted at in public? It was a four-page record of a White House meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair on April 16, 2004. It is known in the trade as the "al-Jazeera Bombing Memo" because in those early news reports -- after Keogh had leaked the document in May 2004 to O'Connor, in the hopes that it would be brought before the people's representatives in Parliament -- at least one part of its contents became widely known; to wit, that Bush had proposed to Blair that they bomb the headquarters of the independent Arabic news agency al-Jazeera in Qatar, as well as agency offices elsewhere.

The context of this criminal proposal is important. In April 2004, the grand Babylonian Conquest was turning into a nightmare. The tortures at Abu Ghraib had just been exposed. (Outrages which, as we now know, were just the barest tip of a massive iceberg: the vast gulag of secret prisons, "disappeared" captives, and "strenuous interrogation techniques" specifically approved by Bush and Rumsfeld.) But beyond that scandal -- which was being successfully fobbed off with the "bad apple" defense, and would never be in an issue in the coming presidential election -- there was also, more glaringly, the ongoing bloodfest in Fallujah: the Guernica of the Iraq War.

The attack was launched in retaliation for the killing of four American mercenaries from the politically-wired firm of Blackwater on March 31, 2004 -- another PR hit for the "Mission Accomplished" team in the White House. Fallujah -- a once quiet city whose citizens had rebelled against Saddam Hussein -- had been turned into a hotbed of unrest over the course of the previous year by a heavy-handed American occupation, which included several civilian deaths after occupation troops fired into crowds exercising what they believed was their liberated right to protest. Anger and insurgency took hold in the city, leading to the "Black Hawk Down" style despoliation of the dead mercenaries a year later.

Against the advice of military commanders on the scene, Bush ordered the "pacification" of the city a few days later. But the L'il Commander's attack turned into yet another PR nightmare, spreading death and destruction through civilian areas, causing hundreds of deaths, launching airstrikes into residential areas, closing the city's main hospitals while thousands were suffering -- and failing to dislodge the insurgents who were the ostensible target of the operation. (There were two other main targets, of course: the American people, who were meant to be seduced by the man-musk of the War Leader, and the Iraqi people, who were meant to be terrorized into submission by the shock-and-awe of Fallujah's decimation.)

In addition to the lack of progress on the battleground, Bush was beset by the presence of al-Jazeera correspondents in the city. The agency -- headquartered in Qatar, a staunch U.S. ally -- was a rare independent voice in the Arab world, reporting from all sides and offering a platform for all sides, including Israeli and American officials. It was, in fact, the very kind of thing that Bush claimed he wanted to instill in the Middle East through his invasion of Iraq. But of course, this was just another lie. Al-Jazeera's independence proved inconvenient for the Bushists, who in both Iraq and Afghanistan had sought to impose the greatest degree of message control (and "psy-ops" spin) ever seen in an American war. For both the Bushists and the Blairites, truth was not the first casualty of war; it was a deadly enemy -- an enemy combatant, in fact, to be rendered, disappeared, tortured, killed, like any other gulag captive.

So it was no surprise at all that Bush and Blair would be discussing al-Jazeera during that fretful confab in April 2004. Nor is it any surprise that Bush's answer to the "problem" of an independent Arab news agency would be to kill the ragheads where they stand. He had already demonstrated that wanton violence and mass murder was his preferred option for dealing with problems in the Middle East.

The contents of the controversial memo were actually well-known after it came to light -- and before Blair's buddy Goldsmith lowered the boom. The Daily Mirror, for example, had this report in November 2005:

President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals. But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash...The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush. He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious". But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha. Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists. To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors. In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre. The memo, which also included details of troop deployments, turned up in May last year at the Northampton constituency office of then Labour MP Tony Clarke.

This is the kind of thing that filled British papers for weeks. But now, in the brave new world of unfree freedom that Bush and Blair have bestowed upon their subjects, Britons can no longer mention any of this in public. Indeed, the judge in the Keogh case reinforced Goldsmith's earlier ban with a new gag order, decreeing "that allegations already in the public domain could not be repeated if there was any suggestion they related to the contents of the document," the Guardian reports. Anyone who does so can be jailed for contempt. Yes, jailed for repeating in public what has already been published.

During the trial, Blair's top foreign policy wonk, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, offered this notable justification for jailing faithful government servants whose consciences had been shocked into action by the discovery of a plot for mass murder by the "leader of the free world":

In evidence at the trial, Sir Nigel Sheinwald..said private talks between world leaders must remain confidential however illegal or morally abhorrent aspects of their discussions might be.

Quite right, too. After all, if a memo of, say, a summit meeting between Hitler and Mussolini had come to light in, say, 1938, detailing how Hitler had told Mussolini that he was going to, say, kill a few million Jews just as soon as he could lay his hands on them, then obviously such confidences between statesmen should be respected -- and any civil servant who tried to warn the world about this "madman" should obviously be prosecuted.

Blair -- who in his lachrymose and self-pitying resignation speech yesterday again reiterated his pride in standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Bush in the slaughter of more than 600,000 innocent human beings in Iraq -- obviously talked his pal down from his murderous rage at al-Jazeera, which is now so respectable that it appears on American cable TV systems. But there was no such consideration for the people of Fallujah. Bush soon called off the attack as the bad PR mounted, but promised that the city would be "pacified" in the end -- after the election. And so it was, without demur from Blair. Just days after Bush had procured office again in November 2004, a second assault -- even more savage than the first, was launched, destroying the city with bombs, shells and chemical fire.

It is entirely typical of our strange days that the arbitrary, draconian power that now characterizes the Anglo-American "democracies" would be used here in an attempt to suppress a political embarrassment -- the revelation of a barbaric idea that never came to fruition -- while the actual physical slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people is openly and unashamedly embraced -- even championed as an act of moral courage, as in Blair's unctuous parting bromide, "Hand on my heart, I did what I thought was right."

So did Pol Pot. So did Stalin. So did Osama bin Laden. So does every madman who vaunts himself beyond the law, and kills in the name of a "higher cause."

Once again, Larisa:

The fact that two UK government officials have been found guilty for making something this illegal public and UK publications are banned from reporting on the documents requires the public to stand up and all over the world.

Support your journalists, people, because that is the last and most sacred front left protecting the people from their government.

Will the public stand up?

Will the public ever stand up?

It's up to you -- it's up to everyone who reads these words -- to answer Larisa's plea, and my question:

Will the public ever stand up?

Why Democrats And Democratic Interest Groups Won't Fight E-Vote Machines

From Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, here is the best answer I have seen to a question raised most recently by Big Dan in a comment.

(Warning: You might really hate this story.) This story represents months of original research by Black Box Voting. We went into this looking for the defense industry contractors we'd heard had lobbied for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). That legislation has been blamed for the touch-screens (DREs) that showed up all over America. Well, that's not what we found. The real story on who was behind HAVA may come as a surprise to you. It was to us.

Permission to reprint and distribute granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

THE ROAD TO BOONDOGGLE IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS: HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) LOBBYIST LIST

Question: What happens if you lobby a lawmaker for $4 billion in expenditures for touch-screen voting machines and go back to that same lawmaker two years later asking to dump DREs?

Answer: You lose credibility. It might be hard to lobby for other things. It's politically embarrassing. And your members, or funders, might have a few questions to ask about the prudence of your lobbying expenditures.

BUT HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE KNOWN?

The road to voting computers was paved with good intentions. No one knew that some of the programmers for voting computers would turn out to be convicted embezzlers.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14318.html

No one realized that the main sponsor of the HAVA bill -- Rep. Bob Ney -- would end up going to jail on corruption charges.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46466.html

Few realized that the federal testing labs, Ciber and Wyle, weren't doing their jobs and their overseers -- NASED and now the EAC -- failed to check their work.
Wyle failures (Bowen Hearing): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/itahearing.pdf
Ciber failures: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46428.html

HAVA bought a lemon.

WHO BIT INTO IT?

Progressive public interest groups. Labor unions. Civil rights groups.

While many election reform activists are under the impression that touch-screen (DRE) voting machines were some sort of Republican plot to take over America, the truth is that lobbying for the DRE-seeking "Help America Vote Act" came primarily from the foundation of the Democratic Party itself.

Activists throughout America have expressed surprise at the Democratic Party's unwillingness to pull DREs off the shelf. One reason is simply this: To do so would damage the credibility of those who lobbied for HAVA. And those who lobbied for HAVA just happen to be the biggest funders and activist workhorses for the Democratic Party itself.

WHO INVESTED THEIR CREDIBILITY (AND MEMBERSHIP FUNDS) TO LOBBY FOR HAVA?

1. Public interest groups - mostly progressive
2. Big labor
3. Minority rights groups
4. Disability rights groups
5. Industry

Of these, the first four tend to favor Democrats but the fifth group -- industry, the group charged with writing the computer code that counts America's votes -- is made of vendors that are more often close to the Republican Party.

Democrats lobbied HAVA in but to a large extent, Republican-affiliated vendors executed the mechanics of the plan. Some would call this comical; others, tragic.

PUBLIC INTEREST GROUP HAVA LOBBYISTS

1. People for the American Way
2. Common Cause
3. American Civil Liberties Union
4. League of Women Voters
5. American Jewish Committee
6. Hadassah
7. American Association for Retired Persons
8. Public Citizen
9. American Network of Community Options and Resources
10. Constitution Project (Georgetown University)
11. Open Society Policy Center (Soros)

LABOR UNION HAVA LOBBYISTS

1. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
2. Laborers International Union of North America
3. International Brotherhood of Teamsters
4. United Auto Workers
5. American Federation of Teachers
6. AFL-CIO
7. UNITE (Industrial & Textile employees)

Of the seven HAVA-lobbying groups above, five are among the Top-20 largest donors of all time to any political party. All five donate almost exclusively to the Democratic Party and its candidates. None of the top 20 Republican donors lobbied for HAVA.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the labor unions that lobbied for HAVA have given nearly $150 million to support Democrats since 1989, and six were in the Top-20 Democratic PAC funders for 2006-06.

MINORITY RIGHTS HAVA LOBBYISTS

1. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
2. National Council of La Raza
3. Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF)

DISABILITY RIGHTS HAVA LOBBYISTS

1. American Foundation for the Blind
2. The ARC of the United States
3. National Disability Rights Network
4. Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund
5. United Cerebral Palsy Association

Black Box Voting has been unable to locate the lobbying disclosure forms for the American Association of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD) featuring the vocal Jim Dickson, nor did we find any disclosure forms for the National Federation for the Blind (NFB), the group that took $1 million from Diebold. Misfiled? Misnamed? Overlooked? Omitted?

Link for NFB $1 million from Diebold: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/36492.html

COUNTY GOVERNMENT HAVA LOBBYING

1. Riverside County, Calif.
2. San Diego County, Calif.
3. Ventura County, Calif.
4. Miami-Dade County, FL

INDUSTRY & BUSINESS HAVA LOBBYISTS

1. Accenture
2. VoteHere
3. Election Systems & Software
4. AccuPoll
5. Danaher
6. Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs
7. US Business & Industry Council
8. Assocation of Technology Act Projects

Not found on lobbying forms pushing HAVA: The SAIC, the ITAA, and Diebold.

Diebold Election Systems Inc does not show up on the 2001-02 HAVA lobbying forms, but did lobby for elections issues in 2004 and 2005.

Also notably missing are the firms referenced by R. Doug Lewis of "The Election Center" in an August 2003 meeting. In this tape recorded meeting, he said that HAVA was put into place by an election systems task force which included Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, EDS, and Accenture.

Of these, only Accenture shows up the lobbying forms, and there is no entity called Election anything, except for Election System & Software and another company, election.com, which lobbied for Internet voting. (See Chapter 8 of Black Box Voting for more on the Saudi-owned election.com, which was later taken over by Accenture - http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf - See Chapter 16 for more information on the tape recorded meeting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-16.pdf)

What about Choicepoint? Choicepoint says it didn't lobby for HAVA. Choicepoint says it hasn't had any involvement in elections.

The lobbying forms don't show lobbying for voting machines, but a lobbying firm called Fleishman-Hillard Government Relations filed a registration form in 2002 indicating they planned to lobby for "Election Reform" on behalf of Choicepoint. Muddying things up, no 2002 lobbying form appeared showing that they did. In 2001, however, a lobbying form clearly puts Choicepoint in the middle of HAVA lobbying, showing that Choicepoint was involving itself in lobbying for the voter registration component of HAVA.

Choicepoint has repeatedly stated that they have "no involvement whatsoever" in elections, and in rebuttal to a controversial article that appeared for a short while on OpEd News, Choicepoint came on to deny that they lobbied for HAVA. More on Choicepoint here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17778.html

Choicepoint, a controversial database broker, clearly cannot state that it has "no involvement in elections."

Choicepoint stakeholder Donna Curling, wife of Choicepoint chief Doug Curling, has continued to fund election reform lobbying by providing funding for some of the activists working on the Holt Bill.

THEY THOUGHT DRE VOTING MACHINES WOULD HELP THEM BUILD THE DEMOCRATIC BASE

Those who lobbied for HAVA were convinced that the DRE machines would solve problems, helping more people vote.

1. Many of the HAVA reformers believed that with DREs, people with less education would be more likely to fill out the whole ballot. In fact, they reasoned, the DRE machines would be easier to use for educationally disadvantaged populations, minorities, non-English-speaking voters, and the disabled.

Few studies back these conclusions up, and those that do have generally not been replicated, or were not peer reviewed, and sometimes show methodology that is as flawed as the lemons HAVA bought. The occasional studies that have been done -- even those prepared by DRE advocates -- sometimes end up with troubling caveats. A Georgia study purported to show that "most people like voting on the DREs" (but rarely mentions the small print: The same study showed that the African-Americans surveyed distrusted the touch-screens).

2. The citizens' right to oversee local elections -- and especially the citizens' right to even get access to information -- has been all but eliminated through the implementation of HAVA. The original civil rights concept was virtuous.

Federal Government is the entity that enacted civil rights, HAVA reformers reasoned, so therefore let's ask the federal government to fix our elections process.

Be careful what you ask for. It just might get "fixed."

REAL SOLUTIONS

If federal government is going to correct anything, it should start with enacting tougher standards to give citizens Freedom of Access to Elections Information -- mandating that the system actually PRODUCE the information needed for citizens to make sure the right candidate was place in office, in a TIMELY manner, that is COST EFFECTIVE and USABLE, prohibiting removal of the information through proprietary claims.

And above all, local CITIZEN oversight must be protected. In almost every case, discoveries of problems with elections and the computers that count them have been discovered by ordinary citizens, not by government oversight, auditors, consultants, certifiers, or experts.

And if we are going to rid ourselves of the DREs, we need to get past the -- er -- little "problem" of the threat to credibility if former HAVA lobbyists take the courageous step of changing course.

They couldn't have known. Perhaps a set of tough investigative hearings can provide the evidence to brace those backbones for the change in direction. Look to Calif. Secretary of State Debra Bowen's well-prepped, no-nonsense hearings on the certification process for examples, and start by issuing subpoenas to Diebold's master programmer, Talbot Iredale, and Ciber's Shawn Southworth (who refused to show up for Bowen's hearing).

This thing can be done. It doesn't need a bandaid, it needs a disinfectant.

SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW HAVA CAME TO BE:

Photocopies of the lobbying forms are in the process of being uploaded to the Black Box Voting Document Archive. You will find lobbying forms for all of the groups listed above as they are uploaded here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/46539.html

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