Who is Left

Voting Rights and Fraud

2006-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

The only one way to get Corporate America out of power by voting them out. Doing homework on the candidates and voting your choice may no longer be enough. The Republican Party under Karl Rove is preparing a laundry list of tricks that would make Boss Tweet and Huey Long blush. We must be vigilant of the process itself and try to get “one man – one vote” to actually mean just that.

Steven Hill, in his new book “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy” lists four categories of ideas designed to achieve fair elections. I copied one sentence from each. The entire article is here http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/12/recipe_for_a_fair_election.php

1. Nonpartisan election officials - At the top of the list must be creating a bureaucracy of impartial, nonpartisan election officials.
2. Professionalization and training of election officials - In addition to non-partisanship, election administration should be upgraded to that of a professional civil service position as a way of ensuring competence, training and impartiality.
3. National elections commission and national standards - The United States leaves the administration of elections to local officials in more than 3,000 counties and 9,000 townships with few national standards to guide them. This creates different standards and practices for procedures like recounts and use of absentee and provisional ballots, as well as wide discrepancies in the quality of voting equipment.
4. Develop “public interest” voting equipment - At the very least, advocates of fair elections should demand a voter-verified paper trail so that any recounts will have a chance of uncovering errors or fraud. We have such an audit trail for ATM transactions; are our votes less important?

Insure your elected representatives are voting for the extension of the “Voting Rights Act”. It is the “Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006”. It will be voted on this week in the House (HR9) this week. The sponsors of the bill are afraid Bushco may introduce some crippling amendments.

Joel Bleifuss and Steven F. Freeman have written an important new book on the subject. This book was the basis for the recent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. article in Rolling Stone magazine. The title is much to the point “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count.” An excerpt from this book is in the article.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906K.shtml

A 2004 dirty trick was accidentally uncovered by another strong advocate of giving back America to the Americans. The story is about how the Republican National Committee managed to challenge the absentee ballots of black soldiers. His name is Greg Palast and his story is here http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo-soldiers

There are three journalists who are working real hard to bring out the story. Search for there names along with voting and you will have a wealth of information on the depths to which Republicans will stoop for their corporate masters.

Catherine Komp voting
Paul Krugman voting
Greg Palast voting

Two companies heavily involved with voting and fully involved with Bush are Diebold and Choicepoint.

The CEO of Diebold once said in a speech that his mission was to get George Bush enough electoral votes to win. He later said he didn’t mean it “that way”. Diebold has come out with a new voting machine which makes tampering easier.

Choicepoint is a data miner. It was chosen by the Florida AG and Jeb Bush to validate voter registration in that state. It deleted approx 100,000 voters from the list with no reason except they would vote democratic. These people have yet to be reinstated. Choicepoint was recently involved in this scandal.

“Sullivan is one of 145,000 people whose digital data records were exposed to criminals in the largest known security breach of a data broker. But Sullivan's problems with Choicepoint, a spinoff from credit-reporting agency Equifax, may be just a glimpse of the headaches he and millions of others face. ChoicePoint stores an estimated 19 billion public records and functions as a sort of intelligence service for business and government clients”.
It now appears the phone companies did not lie when denying giving phone records to the government. They gave them to Choicepoint who will then enhance them for domestic spying use.

These are your voting machine companies. If now have a paper ballot, keep it.
ES&S:
Chuck Hagel first ran for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska in 1996. Electronic voting machines owned by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) reported that he had won both the primaries and the general election in unprecedented victories. His 1996 victory was considered one of the biggest upsets of that election. He was the first Republican to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign in 24 years and won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican.
Six years later Hagel ran again against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. He was re-elected to his second term with 83% of the vote: the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska. Again, the votes were counted by ES&S, now the largest voting machine company in America.
While these victories could be dismissed simply as a Republican upset, a January 2003 article in the independent Washington paper The Hill revealed interesting details about Hagel's business investments and casts a different light on his election successes. Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S (then AIS) until 1995 and he is still a major stockholder of the parent company of ES&S, McCarthy & Company.
In Florida, ground zero for election problems, ES&S retained the services of a former secretary of state and one-time running mate of Governor Jeb Bush. In 2001, Global Election Systems (Diebold's predecessor) hired the former chair of Florida's Republican Party, the former running mate of a previous governor, and a former environmental advisor to Jeb Bush, according to the Miami Herald. The lobbyist trying to win the $24.5 million Miami-Dade contract for ES&S was a top GOP lawyer who worked against the recount in 2000. The Votomatic punch-card machines at the center of the 2000 Florida election debacle were, ironically enough, also manufactured by ES&S.
Diebold:
Diebold’s current CEO Walden “Wally” O’Dell, reside in Columbus’ northwest suburb Upper Arlington. O’Dell is on record stating that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President” this year. On September 26, 2003, he hosted an Ohio Republican Party fundraiser for Bush’s re-election at his Cotswold Manor mansion. Tickets to the fundraiser cost $1000 per couple, but O’Dell’s fundraising letter urged those attending to “Donate or raise $10,000 for the Ohio Republican Party.”
Populex:
In Illinois, Populex is the company that is creating the electronic voting system for the state. It was recently revealed that Ronald Reagan's former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci now serves on the company's five-member Advisory Board. Carlucci is also the chairman emeritus of The Carlyle Group, the defense contractor often called the "Ex-President's Club" because of the high profile partners and advisors on its payroll.
Sequoia
In 1999, two Sequoia (Voting Systems) executives, Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci, were indicted for paying
Louisiana Commissioner of Elections Jerry Fowler an $8 million bribe to buy their voting machines. Fowler, is
currently serving five years in prison.
Be vigilant, be suspicious of all machines, tampered voting lists, clogged phone lines to voter transportation, anyone in the polling place except voters, election workers and cops

Rove's Election Plans

2006-05-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

Bush's Brain will do what Republicans have successfully done for the past decade or so. They will try and win by the most devious means, that failing, they will do their best to steal it.

We all know what the issues are or should be. The war, total imcompetence, cumpusive lying, curtailing domestic spending while increasing total expenditures by 50%. Tax cuts for the rich at a time of the worlds all time largest deficit. Outsourcing jobs while importing labor (both skilled and non-skilled) The largest trade deficit of all time. Downsizing veterans hospitals just as the shell-shocked and maimed veterans start to return home. Domestic spying by Choicepoint which has now become an intrical part of Bushco.

The hell with the issues. Rove will bring up his own issues designed to inflame the rednecks against all others. They are called "wedge" or social issues. They are not real issues, effect no one, but tend to gets peoples blood boiling, You had best be on the right side of them or the so called "socially conscious" wings of both parties will never give you a vote. Privicy, education, torture, homelessness, etc. get eased out of the equation.
A constitution ammendment making it illegal to burn the flag.
A constitution ammendment making English the National language.
A constitution ammendment prohibiting gay marraige.

The issues of Immigration amd illegal aliens have them confused. Bush is very happy with illegal labor, amnesty, a "guest worker" program and H1B as a present to his corporate friends, but the backlash against this will cause the house to jump ship. If no bill is passed we could always inforce the existing laws.

Stealing the election. In 2000 a company named Choicepoint removed 100,000 name from the Dade County voting list. People with no reasons to have their names removed. This same company illegally sold 145,000 social secutity numbers and other information to a band of theives. They are now in charge of the data obtained illegally by the NSA.

The other partner in voter theft, Diebolt, has come out with a new voting machine making tampering easier.

Here is some stuff on the players:

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

WASHINGTON — The nation's giant in personal-information collection, which announced recently that it had unwittingly handed at least 145,000 Americans' Social Security numbers and other private records to a ring of crooks, is also a major government contractor, providing the tools in sophisticated homeland security screening and law enforcement surveillance efforts.

ChoicePoint
The ChoicePoint fiasco has been news for over a week now, and there are only a few things I can add. For those who haven't been following along, ChoicePoint mistakenly sold personal credit reports for about 145,000 Americans to criminals.
This story would have never been made public if it were not for SB 1386, a California law requiring companies to notify California residents if any of a specific set of personal information is leaked.
ChoicePoint's behavior is a textbook example of how to be a bad corporate citizen. The information leakage occurred in October, and it didn't tell any victims until February. First, ChoicePoint notified 30,000 Californians and said that it would not notify anyone who lived outside California (since the law didn't require it). Finally, after public outcry, it announced that it would notify everyone affected.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But Choice Point can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then buy the info from Choice Point.

Last week, the voting watchdog organization Black Box Voting published a report detailing how Diebold's TS6 and TSx touch-pad voting machines could be compromised by taking advantage of "backdoor" features designed to allow new software to be installed on the systems.

Finnish security researcher Harri Hursti discovered backdoors in the systems boot loader software, in the OS, and in the Ballot Station software that it runs to tabulate votes.

Divine Strake

2006-04-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

The June 2 test in Nevada has been advertised as "aimed at determining how well a massive conventional bomb would perform against fortified underground targets -- such as military headquarters, biological or chemical weapons stockpiles, and long-range missiles -- that the Pentagon says are proliferating among potential adversaries around the world."
That is pure crap. The explosion due to take place is a huge pile (700 tons) of Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil (ANFO). This detonation is 50 times as large as the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) bomb in our arsenal.
The test is a simulation of a small size B61 Tactical Nuclear Bomb to fine-tune the bomb size required for use in Iran.
The lies and deceit just keep piling up. 1001 more days of the unitary executive left. The only hope is to elect a Democratic House and/or Senate in November. This will give them subpoena power. The best use of that would be to call Colin Powell and maybe get some truth as to what the hell is going on.

Immigration + H1B

2006-04-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

A new issue has suddenly taken over the immagination of the American people. "How to protect our borders and jobs from illegal aliens," really. The laws are on the books from "the 1996 immigration and antiterrorism laws" but the enforcement isn't.

There are civil and criminal penalties for hiring illegal aliens. Sec. 274A of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and 8 U.S.C. 1324a, makes it unlawful for any person knowingly to hire, recruit or refer for a fee any alien not authorized to work. An employer that violates these laws can face penalties of:

· $250 to $2,000 fine for each unauthorized individual;

· $2,000 to $5,000 for each employee if the employer has previously been in violation; or

· $3,000 to $10,000 for each individual if the employer was subject to more than one cease and desist order.

The employer could also be fined $100 to $1,000 for each individual “paperwork” violation.

The criminal penalties for a pattern and practice violation can be up to $3,000 for each unauthorized alien, imprisonment up to six months, or both.

Illegal aliens are here, they are not going to storm the country taking over , as Dubya would say "jobs Americans just wont do."
It would be impossible to put 20 million people on busses and take them back to Mexico, just look at Katrina. We couldn't put 50 thousand people on busses to save there lives, and these people wanted to go.
It would be equally impossible to name them all felons. That would require a court hearing, lawyers, trials, jails and other thing we will not fund.
The present congress, which is owned by business, will never be able to come out with a workable bill. Combine this with Presidents Bush and Fox attempting to solve anything. When each country has an intelligent president, an immigration policy can be worked out along with a plan to help the Mexican economy grow so they can use American immigrants. You think the difference between rich and poor is getting bad in this country, look south.
The real kicker in immigration is not the farm worker trying to make a living for his family, it is the H1B worker that comes into the country for conciderably less compensation than their American counterparts, thus driving down wages from top to bottom (excluding Haliburton and Oil Company employees.)

Senator Arlen Specter wants to double the number of H1B visas with built-in, automatic, no debate, no discussion 20 percent increases every year thereafter that the new limit is reached. Ask your congressmen how H1B visas help the unemployed computer specialists. What cannot be outsourced can be done here with imported labor.

Not familiar with H1B? here is recommended reading.

Naom Chomsky writes again

2006-04-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

Naom Chomsky is a professor at MIT and writes. That is like saying Einstein was a scientist. His last book was "Profit over People" in 1999. His new one came out today. "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy". Excerpts from it and interviews are all over the place. I will quote from a passage here and sent you off to where others have to a greater extent.
I am a new fan of Professor Chomsky. Until 6 months ago, did not know of him at all. The movie "Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause" changed that. The man thinks, it is a shame more Democrats can't seem to find their own conscious. We, as a Country, are in deep trouble. Time to stop fucking around tweaking the lobbist rules and throw them out of the temple. Quit looking at polls and look toward centure and impeachment . Time to stop pussyfooting before Bushes combined policies bankrupt us fiscally and morally.

"Democracy Now" conducted an interview. They have two halves of the interview recorded for your viewing pleasure. A total of close to two hours. They also have it in audio or printer friendly. 2d half

Tom Dispatch has an introduction to the book as well as excerpts. This was in turn quoted by "Truthout"

Here is a small excerpt concerning the aftermath of Bush's successful second invasion of Falluga.

How to Destroy a City to Save It

Gonzales's legal advice about protecting Bush from the threat of prosecution under the War Crimes Act was proven sound not long after he gave it, in a case far more severe even than the torture scandals. In November 2004, U.S. occupation forces launched their second major attack on the city of Falluja. The press reported major war crimes instantly, with approval. The attack began with a bombing campaign intended to drive out all but the adult male population; men ages fifteen to forty-five who attempted to flee Falluja were turned back. The plans resembled the preliminary stage of the Srebrenica massacre, though the Serb attackers trucked women and children out of the city instead of bombing them out. While the preliminary bombing was under way, Iraqi journalist Nermeen al-Mufti reported from "the city of minarets [which] once echoed the Euphrates in its beauty and calm [with its] plentiful water and lush greenery… a summer resort for Iraqis [where people went] for leisure, for a swim at the nearby Habbaniya lake, for a kebab meal." She described the fate of victims of these bombing attacks in which sometimes whole families, including pregnant women and babies, unable to flee, along with many others, were killed because the attackers who ordered their flight had cordoned off the city, closing the exit roads.

Bush/Blair memos

2006-04-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

You have by now heard all about the Downing street memos. Here is a reminder.

The five-page memo, dated 31 January 2003, was written by Mr Blair's then chief foreign adviser, David Manning, the New York Times says.

Summarising the two-hour White House meeting, the memo says: "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning."

A second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs
Memo paraphrase of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair

Blair 'made secret Iraq pact'

Mr Bush is paraphrased as saying: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

Although the US and UK pushed for a second UN resolution on Iraq, the memo cites Mr Bush saying he did not believe one was needed.

"The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten," Mr Bush is paraphrased as saying.

"But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."

Mr Blair is described as responding that both countries must make clear the second resolution was "Saddam's final opportunity".

According to the note, he also told Mr Bush: "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."

Then came the White House memo which the NY Times kindly brought to our attention. Here is an excerpt on provocation or how to wage war illegally.

Discussing Provocation

Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.

Mr. Sands first reported the proposals in his book, although he did not use any direct quotations from the memo. He is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner.

Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss the proposals, saying, "We are not going to get into discussing private discussions of the two leaders."

At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as "an insurance policy against the unexpected."

The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."

The question now is why don't the Americans give a shit. Saw a movie today. "V for Vendetta". Are we headed there?

Unitary Executive Doctrine

2006-03-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

I had first heard of The Unitary Executive in a January 16th article by Elizabeth de la Vega printed in "Tom Dispatch.com."She troughly debunked Dubya's arguements as rediculous. "Bush claims his action is legal because: (1) Congress endorsed it in its September 18, 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force in response to Al Qaeda's September 11th attacks, and (2) he has inherent power as Chief Executive to act as he deems necessary in wartime." Things got worse. He now says parts of the Patriot Act which he recently signed into law do not apply to him as the Unitary Executive. He has also written a signing statement on the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill with the McCain amendment prohibiting torture. This statment says the unitary executive does not agree with the amendment and will therefore ignore it. Great day for the Christians.
There is a full explanation of the Unititary executive doctrine entitled "Rethinking Presidential Power—The Unitary Executive and the George W. Bush Presidency." by Christopher S. Kelley, Ph.D. at http://www.users.muohio.edu/kelleycs/paper.pdf

Where is Dubya going with this, is a censure appropriate or maybe not strong enough. Once he claims the only real interpretation of the Constitution acceptable is that of the Unitary Executive, God help us.

What about 9/10/2001

2006-03-21T16:35:00.000-08:00

Donald Rumsfeld was ready to wage war on 910. It was not against the Taliban or Iraq, but closer to home. The war on waste was soon to begin, the recovery of 2.3 Trillion Dollars.The next day that war ended.

Deficits and Deficits

2006-03-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

Listening to the news, I am confused when it comes to deficits and their importances. There is the Budget Deficit, the national debt and the Balance of trade deficit. All three have one thing in common. The United States is on the debit side at an ever acceleration rate. These moneys ar increasingly being held by foreign nations. Do you suppose we are so willing to sell off our infrastructure because we are being blackmailed into it? Try and find out who owns the Westinghouse Nuclear operation. It is either Britian or Japan, not the US. One of them will get a substantial loan ( $5 Billion) from the US to finance 4 nuclear power plants being built in China.
The BBC has a decent article on the Balance of Trade problem. More on this later.

Competence

2006-03-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

Does it seem to you that President Bush has barfed on the American people? Whenever something comes along requiring Leadership and management, neither he nor his appointed yes men seem up to the task. Daily we see evidence that billions of dollars are being thrown at problems with little or no results. Just take Homeland security. Our borders are porous and becoming more so. After billions have been allocated for airport security, 21 airports nationwide failed to detect bomb making materials being carried aboard during a recent government test.