A-Changin' Times (ACT)

2009-03-18T13:45:00.000-05:00

The DFH were right-! (Adult Language)

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/the_dfh_were_right.php

http://tinyurl.com/cj7c9v

2005-10-26T15:57:00.000-05:00

MESSAGE TO YOUTH FROM NEWT & AL

THE MEDICINE CABINET — Negotiating a Peace Treaty in the War on Drugs

Check out the rest of the 'Lectric Law Library while you're there!

2005-10-19T10:57:00.000-05:00

Let's play "Stump the Biometrics"!

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of Freedom, Media and Elections

From today's Coffee Break:

British ID system stumped by brown eyes

British government trials of a national ID card system have run into a roadblock, as people who have brown eyes are being misidentified. Immigration Minister Tony McNulty made the embarrassing revelation on the controversial system, which uses 13 biometric identifiers, the Mirror reported. "There are difficulties with the technology, not least ... with people with brown eyes rather than other colored eyes," McNulty said. There have also been reports the system made wrong matches for black, elderly and disabled people, as well as balding men and laborers with worn-down fingerprints. However, a Home Office spokesman said the database system has an old-fashioned back-up system. "The database also holds photographs and personal information so an incorrect biometric match would be easily discovered," he said.

[That seems like a mighty long list of "misses"... –L.]

2005-10-14T10:20:00.000-05:00

The blatant assault on the middle class continues... part deux

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE* — Lisa's finger on the Pulse of America

Sorry for doing this in a separate post rather than adding on to the existing post, but the "new and improved" (HA) Blogger won't let me edit anything!

On this morning's Mind Over Money segment, WUSA-TV anchor Andrea Roane was discussing with some guest financial advisors this halfwitted notion of reducing mortgage interest deductions. She did not cite a source for this information*, but said that the general idea behind the initiative was to "spread out" investment rewards over more investment categories — i.e., take the real estate benefit and divvy it up to give more equal treatment to "other" types of investments.

<sarcasm>
Guess who has "other" investments. And guess who doesn't.

Apparently, it just doesn't seem fair to the plutocracy that "other" investments are victimized by the free ride given to real estate.
</sarcasm>

When Andrea threw the financial expert a big softball by asking whether this proposal was wise, the financial expert hit it out of the park with a pointed "NO". She wisely recommended that citizens contact their legislators early and often to express their opposition to this plan.

At best, the panel that recommended this travesty is out of touch. At worst, they have been emboldened by the thusfar unpunished cronyism (FEMA, Supreme Court, Halliburton, etc.) going on around them, and have uncovered yet another reverse-Robin-Hood scheme to line the pockets in their circle.

On a related note — in direct proportion with the increasing brazenness of the thievery and lying, I am increasingly convinced that the current administration has no intention of holding the next scheduled national elections. Why else would they be making it so hard for any potential Republican candidates to have any credibility? Come time for the elections, we'll have either a terrorist attack or a bird flu epidemic to close the polls.

2005-10-12T21:56:00.000-05:00

The blatant assault on the middle class continues...

MONEY. IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE* — Lisa's finger on the Pulse of America

From tonight's Anderson Cooper 360:

A panel charged with making proposals for tax reform is suggesting cuts in home mortgage deductions. The panel says the changes would address an inherent bias in the tax code towards wealthy homeowners. Opponents say they'd hurt the housing market.

WEALTHY homeowners don't NEED that tax break to keep their houses... MIDDLE CLASS homeowners DO!

For those who are not old enough to remember... back in the day, you could deduct ANY interest... INCLUDING your CREDIT CARD, CAR LOAN, COUCH PAYMENT, whatever. Can you IMAGINE how much $$$ you'd save on your taxes if you could do that TODAY?? Now think how much more your mortgage interest is compared to your credit card interest, and you begin to see the dent this could put in one's budget!

And you can bet BUSINESSES will still be able to deduct the interest on THEIR loans.

These slimeballs are just hacking away at the soccer moms and NASCAR dads, who lick their master's boots and ask for more!

Really, I'm not bitter.

2005-10-07T07:03:00.000-05:00

Wal-Mart gives student a (not good) civics lesson he'll never forget

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

I didn't always understand what the big deal was about Wal-Mart. (Michele from Buffalo, I get it now... thanks for planting the seed!) Once I caught on to its unsustainability (what an understatement), I vowed to avoid the place like the plague. Unfortunately, a recent work assignment took me there. I was struck by the atmosphere: disaffected, alarmingly unhealthy-looking employees (pallor, bad teeth, etc.); cluttered aisles and merchandise strewn about as if picked through by desperate, panicked customers; and long lines at the checkout, a reminder that You Are Po' And Your Time Doesn't Matter.

If you browse the ACT archives, you'll see plenty of ranting from me about the dysfunctional corporate culture at Wal-Mart — most prominently, bullying of suppliers, employees, communities (who opposed new Wal-Mart locations), and taxpayers (who are picking up the health care bill for Wally's undercompensated work force*).

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I've always wondered how ALL levels of government have allowed Wal-Mart to get away with various things over the years. However, even I am left agape by their transformation from bully to spy. Please, PLEASE don't support this (IMHO) criminal enterprise with your hard-earned dollars!

Civics Student...or Enemy of America?

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive.
Posted October 7, 2005.

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that's what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

She says the student was upset. "He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business," says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted," she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further. [Sorry, this doesn't make me feel better. He didn't get his poster back (he should be entitled to its return if it will not be used as evidence — annoy the hell out of 'em, kid, petition to get your poster back!)... and nobody can ever give him back his sense of security. –L.]

"I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody," she says. "I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service."

When contacted, an employee in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, "You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that."

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period. [Of course the underhanded cowards have no comment! –L.]

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, "We just handed it over" to the Secret Service. "No investigative report was filed." Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, "We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee."

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: "ridiculous."

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.

__________
* At least one study showed a negative local economic impact from new Wal-Mart stores — oversimplified a bit, it means the local taxpayers laid out more in Medicaid (yes, plenty of hard-working Wal-Mart employees make so little they qualify for Medicaid!) and other social support than they got back in sales taxes and such.

2005-09-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

WELL IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

It is not lost on me that these comments are being made by a mainstream media "star", and being reported by a mainstream media feed! The light at the end of the tunnel may not be an oncoming train, after all...

...MAYBE.

NBC's Williams: Journalists' Gloves Off

NEW YORK (AP) - NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power.

There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel and Shepard Smith were among the stars.

The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off.

"By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt over the past couple of years," the "Nightly News" anchorman said. "Perhaps we've taken something off our fastball and perhaps this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it."

Williams spent much of the past two weeks in New Orleans, huddling in the Superdome with suffering residents and giving one of the first warnings on the "Today" show that the levees had been breached.

Hundreds of reporters, in all media, did heroic work on the Gulf Coast in the deadly storm's aftermath. None arguably was as financially and symbolically important to his company as the job turned in by Williams.

It could solidify his spot as network news' top anchor. He was NBC News' point person at a time its rivals had none, since replacements haven't been named for the late Peter Jennings at ABC News or Dan Rather at CBS.

"Nightly News" viewership the week after the storm jumped 2.5 million from the week before, its lead over second-place ABC increasing to 1.1 million from 300,000, according to Nielsen Media Research. A Williams-anchored "Dateline NBC" special about Katrina was the most-watched program all week.

When ABC and CBS settle on succession plans, they'll be playing catch-up.

Williams increased the value of his stock by aggressively seizing an opportunity, said Jeff Alan, author of "Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News."

"Brian handled this as professionally as any of the reporters down there and maybe more so," Alan said. "Brian knew how much was at stake here. Brian took his anchor hat off and put his human being hat on in a lot of the broadcasts that I saw."

Williams said he's focused on a story that will preoccupy the country for many months and probably play a key role in deciding the nation's next president.

"I have not seen an inch of my own coverage," he said. "I have very little sense of it and I'm probably the last judge of my own work. I tried to call them as I saw them. And if I let my emotion or anger get the better of me, what some would have called a failing of a journalist I think should be taken the other way around on this story."

Pointed criticism of the government response has been posted on his daily Web log, particularly on Labor Day when he wrote about food and water being dropped to survivors: "There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words 'failure of imagination' come to mind."

His blog also reprinted in full a National Weather Service bulletin from the morning before the storm struck that gave a prescient road map to the destruction, including power outages and water shortages that "will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."

Williams said he sensed trouble brewing already that Sunday, Aug. 28. At the Superdome, he saw National Guardsman barking orders at people seeking shelter, and patting down small children and the elderly for weapons. [Iraq- or Afghanistan-hardened Guardsmen, perhaps? Hmmm, maybe that's another underhanded purpose of of this W-ar! –L.] The crowd was angry about being forced to stand in line in the rain even though there was a large overhang a few yards away, he said.

"I went back to my hotel to get a few hours of sleep before they sealed the Dome at 6 the next morning thinking, 'This is not good,'" he said.

He was one of a few reporters stationed at the dome as it degenerated into a house of horrors, and used his cell phone to snap a picture of its damaged roof that was widely circulated on NBC and MSNBC.

"I can't shake the belief that I got to know people who aren't with us anymore," he said.

One imaginative piece was produced simply by using a camcorder at the Baton Rouge airport on Labor Day when Williams and a crew returned, illustrating how the airport itself was filled with hundreds of compelling human stories.

About the only blemish on Williams' record was NBC's failure to lead its Aug. 30 "Nightly News" with the levees breaking in New Orleans, said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies news content. NBC says that criticism is unfair, since the levee breaches were one of several angles Williams touched upon at the opening of that newscast.

Williams has had a hellish travelogue the past year, including Banda Aceh after the tsunami and a battleground in Mosul, Iraq, filled with the dead and dying. He never thought he'd see such suffering in his own country.

"I measure my words very carefully," he said. "I guard my opinions very carefully. To me, this was life and death.

"I refuse to believe that anyone I met at the dome has lesser value than anybody in my family that I go home to. I don't believe that about this country. I don't want that to be the lesson in this. I was angry. People were going without and dying in the wealthiest country the world has ever known."

2005-09-19T22:07:00.000-05:00

Queen Barbara of Houston: "LET THEM EAT CAKE"

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Well, not exactly... the REAL quote is actually WORSE:

"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I’m hearing — which is sort of scary — is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

~ Barbara Bush, commenting on refugees staying in places such as the Astrodome

From Editor and Publisher
Also seen at Discourse.net, who gets a hat-tip for the cake line...

2005-09-09T14:21:00.000-05:00

Ever More to Mourn

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

Ever More to Mourn

I don't believe there's ever been a U.S. administration that's given the U.S. population (to say nothing of the world population) more pain and loss to mourn than the current Bush thugs admin. And it gets worse every day! More incompetence, more lies, more outright racism and genocide right here in America. Here we are at another anniversary of "the big one" while the Southern states are struggling to recover from their "big one." Too sad.

MORE DETAIL

2005-09-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

Great Flood of New Orleans

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Thanks go to Empire Notes for the following:

Radio Commentary -- Great Flood of New Orleans

As a major city lies underwater, thousands of dead rot, and tens of thousands of the living starve and dehydrate, a country's autocratic ruler at first continues his vacation, declines generous offers of foreign assistance, and then minimizes the tragedy.

After a growing outcry, said autocrat switches gears, visits the affected area on a special set constructed for a photo-op, diverting or grounding rescue efforts while he's there, and makes sure to go nowhere near the masses of refugees.

His vice president goes on with his vacation while the country goes through its biggest disaster in nearly a century and his secretary of state shows her concern by shopping for $7,000 shoes.

As soon as the disaster hits, the autocrat's cadre of lickspittle sycophants jumps into action, trying to shift the blame from an increasingly unresponsive, bureaucratic, arrogant, and authoritarian government to the unworthy victims of the disaster and their supposed propensity for violence, theft, and general immorality.

Had this happened in North Korea or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, everything would have fit perfectly into America's effortless demonology, and it would simply have reinforced our views of how everything really is in this best of all possible worlds.

Instead, it happened right here in America. So stark are the realities of the Great Flood of New Orleans and the subsequent response that, for a few days, even the hysterical self-congratulation of a culture that has lost any ability to understand itself was halted – although it seems to be reasserting itself.

This disaster almost defies analysis, certainly in anything short of book length, but a few things have become clear:

[Emphasis mine. -v]

CONTINUE

2005-04-10T10:38:00.000-05:00

Anti-RFID "technology" is already rolling in

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

One of my favorite "entrepreneurs" has come up with a protective product for those who are concerned about RFID passports:

FOIL'ID AGAIN - Passport Guard vs Homeland Insecurity

It would be funnier if it weren't so accurate...

2005-04-07T08:55:00.000-05:00

The value of your identity? $35...

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

Net Aids Access to Sensitive ID Data
Social Security Numbers Are Widely Available

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page A01

Want someone else's Social Security number?

It's $35 at www.secret-info.com. It's $45 at www.Iinfosearch.com, where users can also sign up for a report containing an individual's credit-card charges, as well as an e-mail with other "tips, secrets & spy info!" The Web site Gum-shoes.com promises that "if the information is out there, our licensed investigators can find it."

Although Social Security numbers are one of the most powerful pieces of personal information an identity thief can possess, they remain widely available and inexpensive despite public outcry and the threat of a congressional crackdown after breaches at large information brokers.

Brokers such as ChoicePoint Inc. and LexisNexis have pledged to restrict the availability of such data after personal information on more than 175,000 people was purloined from the two firms by identity thieves posing as legitimate businessmen.

So far, neither those moves nor revelations of a series of breaches at major banks and universities has curbed a multi-tiered and sometimes shadowy marketplace of selling and re-selling personal data that is vulnerable to similar fraud.

A simple Internet search yields more than a dozen Web sites offering an array of personal data.

Some are run by small data brokers and other re-sellers. Others are run by private investigators, many of whom have complained that recently announced restrictions on the availability of Social Security numbers would hurt their ability to assist law-enforcement, track down deadbeat dads or locate witnesses.

Yet with only scant checks to verify whether someone requesting data is legitimate, several sites sell full Social Security numbers, potentially contributing to an epidemic of identity theft or fraud that touched about 10 million Americans in the past year.

No law prohibits the sale of Social Security numbers, but privacy experts and some government agencies have warned for years that the number is over-used and under-protected.

Inaugurated in 1936, the nine-digit number was intended to match citizens to the retirement money they would eventually receive. Over time, the number became essential for getting or verifying credit and for employment background checks.

Eventually, it became so deeply linked to personal data throughout the economy that it became a de-facto national identifier.

"For identity thieves, it's their magic key . . . that gets into every door," said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University law school professor who specializes in privacy law. Getting a number can make it possible for criminals to access to bank or credit-card accounts, establish credit to make purchases, or find someone they wish to harm.

Nonetheless, some insurance companies still use the Social Security number as an individual's account number, printing it on identification cards, leaving people vulnerable if wallets are stolen or lost. Medical offices routinely request Social Security numbers, often when initial appointments are made, and many universities use it as a student identification number. [Some of these organizations will accommodate requests to use an alternate number. ASK!! And for those who won't, if they can't give you a reason why they still need it... REFUSE! –L.]

According to a recent study commissioned by Unisys Corp., a technology consulting company, about half of large financial institutions use Social Security numbers to verify the identities of customers who call in for services. Some even use it to identify customers as part of the log-in process when they want to access accounts via the Internet.

So vital are Social Security numbers in this sea of information that ChoicePoint warned investors in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its business could suffer if the rules on distribution of Social Security numbers were tightened. [BOO HOO... my heart bleeds for them. They obviously don't care how much an individual's "business" suffers when their identity gets stolen! –L.]

The mass breaches of data at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis forced the companies to be proactive.

Executives of both firms told Congress last month that for many of their non-law-enforcement clients, Social Security numbers would be truncated so that only five digits would appear on reports.

But plenty of sources of the information still exist. Using an intermediary, The Washington Post was able to obtain the full Social Security number of a reporter within 24 hours from two of three online providers the intermediary contacted.

Not all of the providers advertise Social Security numbers, and those that do promise to verify that the buyer has a legitimate reason for seeking the number, such as to complete tax forms of an employee or to find someone involved in a court action.

The intermediary, a security consultant who helped the Federal Trade Commission identify illegal data sales in 1999, told the providers he needed the number for tax purposes. Two providers accepted that reason without question or requests for documentation. A third provider refused to provide Social Security numbers.

Robert Douglas, the intermediary, operates the consulting firm PrivacyToday.com. Douglas, who chose the method of acquiring the numbers on his own, said he used the pretext of tax preparation because that would be a common trick used by an identity thief at this time of year.

Michael Leighton, a North Carolina private investigator who operates secret-info.com, acknowledged that he did not request further documentation from Douglas. But he said the company verifies that a requester is calling from a land-based phone line with a valid address. Douglas said he used a cell phone.

"We get on average between 30 and 75 requests a week," Leighton said. "We maybe do less than 10" because others did not have a valid reason for seeking a Social Security number.

Leighton declined to say whether he received the data directly from a large data broker, or from other re-sellers.

The other site that provided the reporter's number, USRecordsearch.com, does not advertise that it sells the numbers. But with the same explanation for why he wanted the data, Douglas received the reporter's full number.

A principal of the Florida-based company did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Under a law that took effect in 2001, non-public data from financial records cannot be sold or transferred without giving individuals a chance to opt out. There are several exceptions, however, including employment checks, for tax filing, or to process a financial transaction. ["Exceptions"? Don't they mean "giant freaking loopholes you could drive a double semi through"?! –L.]

But the system relies on the honesty of the person seeking data, and the diligence of the person selling it.

"Until Congress understands about the re-sale market here, they are not going be able to get a handle on this problem," Douglas said.

Bruce Hulme, chairman of the legislative committee of the National Council of Investigation & Security Services, the largest investigators' trade group, said he could not condone investigators who make a side business out of indiscriminately selling data.

"They should pull those Web sites down," he said. "They better know the client."

Still, Hulme said private investigators have generally proved to be more careful stewards of private data than are information brokers. His organization is beginning a lobbying campaign to ensure that any new laws don't cut off private investigators' access to data they say they need.

Several members of Congress are sponsoring new privacy legislation, including bills that would ban the sale of Social Security numbers without individuals' permission. [I'm not holding my breath for the Rethugs to do the right thing here. –L.]

Private investigators are clearly worried. In Internet chat groups, they exchange information on which data brokers are still selling full Social Security numbers, while bemoaning how they are being punished for the security lapses of the brokers.

For their part, ChoicePoint and LexisNexis say they are "re-credentialing" all non-government clients. At ChoicePoint, those who use the Internet to request information were greeted with a pop-up notice indicating that privileges might be restored after the certification process was complete.

ChoicePoint declined to provide an executive for an interview. Spokeswoman Kristen McCaughan said the company plans to give full access only to government or law-enforcement agencies, banks and insurance companies. She declined to say how many of its customers, including private investigators, would end up with restricted access.

McCaughan said the company sells data to fewer than 15 other brokers or re-sellers, and that their access will now be subject to stricter guidelines.

A LexisNexis spokesman said clients downgraded to restricted access included law firms, media and private investigators.

The financial services industry argues that it has steadily reduced its reliance on the Social Security number for several years, but that the number's use has benefits for consumers.

Nessa Feddis, senior federal counsel of the American Bankers Association, said that with so many numbers consumers already must remember, using Social Security numbers to verify accounts makes sense.

If a credit-card is lost or stolen, she said, a consumer can quickly report the missing card to a bank by knowing his or her Social Security number. If the only accepted identifier was a separate account number, she said, the person would have to wait until he or she could get to a credit-card statement at home.

Privacy experts argue that at the very least, institutions should employ multiple test questions when people call in, rather than just the Social Security number. And they point out that if the number is compromised, it is hard to limit the damage because new numbers are almost never issued.

"The current system has the worst of all worlds," Solove said. "Anyone can easily find it [the Social Security number] out . . . It's used everywhere, and it's really hard to change if it falls in the wrong hands. How could you come up with a worse system?"

2005-04-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

"So you'd like to bring Tom DeLay to justice?"

STOP, PEOPLE! WHAT'S THAT SOUND? — Ev'rybody Look What's Goin' Down: Recommended Books, Movies, Music, Websites, Blogs, etc.

I stumbled on this while surfing around on the subject of natural building options(?!?). I'm not sure how much it has to do with Tom DeLay, but it's a pretty comprehensive progressive reading list!

Bring Tom DeLay to justice!
(scroll down about 1/3 of the page to get into the meat of the recommended books with reviews)

2005-04-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

The mark of the beast? SAY NO to RFID passports by Monday 4/4/05!

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

If you don't already have a passport, get one SOON, before you are "marked"! If you do already have a passport, and it's expiring in the next year or so, maybe it should get "damaged" so you can replace it NOW?

From the article: "Even if you don't have a passport, this still impacts you. Passport chipping is a trial run for other documents. If we allow this to happen, drivers licenses will be next."

From CASPIAN:

Help us stop RFID in passports!

WE CAN STOP RFID IN PASSPORTS!
URGENT REQUEST - this will take only 5 minutes of your time

=====================================================

WHAT: Tell the government you oppose spychips in passports
WHERE: http://www.rfidkills.com/action.html
WHEN: By Monday, April 4th, at 5:00 PM EST

Add your protest comment to the hundreds that have already been filed. Then forward this email and spread the word!

================
THE PROBLEM:
================

SPYCHIPS PLANNED FOR PASSPORTS

The US Department of State plans to put remotely readable radio frequency identification (RFID) spychips into all new passports. These tiny computer spychips will use radio waves to broadcast the information contained on our passports — including name, date and place of birth,passport number and photograph right through our wallets, backpacks, pockets or purses, to nearby reader devices.

The data will not be encrypted or protected in any way. This reckless plan could put Americans traveling overseas at risk of attack by thieves, muggers, kidnappers, and even terrorists who could use portable reader devices to zero in on the radio signals emanating from our passports. Don't let the federal government put a spychip in *your* pocket!

NOTE: While the maximum legal read range of the passport chips is only a few inches, criminals can eavesdrop on official reader devices to capture your data from across a room or potentially even down the block.

(Even if you don't have a passport, this still impacts you. Passport chipping is a trial run for other documents. If we allow this to happen, drivers licenses will be next.)

================
THE SOLUTION:
================

Join the nationwide outcry against spychipped passports!

Our friends at RFIDKILLS.COM have put together a quick and easy way to submit your comments against spychipped passports directly to the US State Department.

There are ~~four days~~ left [now just ONE day! –L.] to inundate the State Department with complaints. Write a short note of opposition yourself (even something as simple as "I oppose RFID in passports" is fine.) Then ask five friends to do the same.

It will take only a few thousand Americans speaking out against this plan to put an end to it. Please do your part!

Note: RFIDKILLS.com is not officially affiliated with CASPIAN, but we know and trust the people behind it. We are supporting them every step of the way. Please do the same!

In Freedom,

Katherine Albrecht
Founder and Director, CASPIAN Consumer Privacy

2005-03-28T18:26:00.000-06:00

Forget the V-Chip... every TV needs this!

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc

Protect our kids from REAL smut! or have a little fun with your favorite wingnut... sneak in and stash one of these babies on the back of their TV ;o)

FOXBlocker

FOXBlocker is an innovative new product that filters out the FOX News network. Simply screw the filter into the back of your TV and never be exposed to right wing propaganda again (at least through FOX News). Using a proprietary technology, the FOXBlocker works to filter out FOX News from your cable lineup.

Protect yourself and your family, or send one to a misguided right wing friend.

Priced at JUST $8.95, the FOXBlocker is a wonderful way of telling the advertisers at FOX News that you are no longer interested in being exposed to right wing propaganda.

With every order placed, FOXBlocker.com will send an e-mail in your name to the TOP 10 advertisers at FOX News letting them know that yet another subscriber has opted out of FOX News. With a little luck and a lot of volume, we can shut the FOX up!

NEW !! - We are now running an "adopt a school" program. Buy a FOXBlocker and send it to your local high school to keep the minds of our young people smut free. Simply order a foxblocker and include:

The principle's [sic] name
The phrase "School Donation"
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in the paypal shipping fields, we will do the rest.

2005-03-28T18:15:00.000-06:00

John Edwards praises bloggers in cutting-edge "broadcast"

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

Edwards Releases Podcast

Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards has released his first podcast.

Edwards is one of the first politicians to try podcasting.

The online audio recording features Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, talking about a host of different subjects, including the NCAA basketball tournament, Elizabeth's recovery from breast cancer, Edwards' opposition to President George W. Bush's Social Security plans and his respect for bloggers.

The 25-minute recording is available on his Web site, One America Committee.

2005-03-28T18:08:00.000-06:00

Freedom of information loses an advocate

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

J. Emory Cross led charge in Legislature for 'Sunshine' laws
The Georgia native got the conversation about open meetings started in Florida.

The Associated Press
March 26, 2005

TAMPA -- Former state lawmaker J. Emory "Red" Cross, credited with making Florida a leader in open government by pushing for a law to open up meetings, has died. He was 91.

Cross died Thursday in Tampa, family members said.

Cross was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1952, representing the Gainesville area, and to the state Senate in 1958.

It was in the Senate where he left his mark on Florida, writing the initial "Government in the Sunshine" laws, which required meetings to be presumed open to the public.

"He was really the person who was instrumental in getting passage of what we consider the modern 'Sunshine' law in 1967," said Barbara Petersen, the president of the First Amendment Foundation, which advocates for openness in government.

Cross first proposed that meetings should be open to the public in the 1950s, but got nowhere.

"He kept bringing it up and bringing it up," Petersen said. "He was really the father of open government in Florida."

After serving in the Legislature until 1968, Cross served as an elected judge on the Alachua County Court from 1973 to 1981 and then was appointed a circuit-court judge in Brevard County. He was on the bench until 1989.

J. Emory Cross was born Jan. 26, 1914, in Iron City, Ga.

Survivors include his wife Dorothy, son Emory, daughter Gayle Giannini and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

[alternate link]

2005-03-28T18:02:00.000-06:00

"Is our children learning?" Not from this raggedy bunch!

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

N.Y. Schools Send Out Flawed Tests

NEW YORK -- New York school officials are red in the face after sending out prep material for students that was filled with grammatical and math errors.

The booklets were intended to help students pass mandatory math and reading tests.

They were distributed via e-mail to superintendents and math coaches on Wednesday but had to be recalled after the embarrassing mistakes were noticed.

One of the errors was right in the title of the math booklet for fourth grade. It spelled the word fourth, "f-o-r-t-h."

2005-03-23T22:18:00.000-06:00

At last... honesty at the pump!

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips (and sometimes Pics!)

There was a "photoshopped" version of this going around the internet a few years ago... but this one appears to be the real thing!

'Arm', 'Leg' Becomes New Price Of Gas In Baltimore

BALTIMORE -- A gas station in a Baltimore suburb posted new gas prices Tuesday, but not without some commentary.

Instead of the normal prices on their sign, the owners of the station at the corner of York Road and Seminary Avenue displayed "arm" and "leg" on their sign.

The gas station owners may be hoping to send a signal to motorists that the local gas station is not to blame for the rising prices.

For those who choose not to hand over a part of their body for the right to fill up, they are still accepting cold hard cash — a gallon of unleaded is $2.15 at the station.

2005-03-21T15:47:00.000-06:00

New Study Shatters Milk Myth

FLORA AND FAUNA — Environment and Health

[And more lies, damned lies!!! -v]

From Gwen:

New Study Shatters Milk Myth
For Strong Bones, Kids Need Exercise,
Sunshine And A Dairy-Free Diet
Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine 03-07-2005

WASHINGTON -- In a new scientific review scheduled to appear in the March issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Pediatrics, Cornell-trained nutritionist Amy Joy Lanou, Ph.D., and co-authors show that dairy products do not promote bone health in children and young adults. Physical activity does have a positive impact on bone health, while evidence linking bone health with dairy product consumption is weak, at best.

"Under scientific scrutiny, the support for the milk myth crumbles. This analysis of 58 published studies shows that the evidence on which U.S. dairy intake recommendations are based is scant," says Dr. Lanou, lead author of the study. "A clear majority of the studies we examined for this review found no relationship between dairy or dietary calcium intake and measures of bone health. In the remaining reports, the evidence was sketchy. In some, the effects on bone health were small, and in others, the results were confounded by vitamin D intake from milk fortified with vitamin D. To build strong bones and healthy bodies, children need exercise, sunshine, and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables that helps them maintain a healthy body weight."

The level of dairy product consumption in the United States is among the highest in the world, and yet osteoporosis and fracture rates are also among the highest. This "calcium paradox" was an impetus for the current investigation. "We found no evidence to support the notion that milk is a preferred source of calcium," the authors conclude. Dr. Lanou is nutrition director for the
non-profit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and her co-authors are Susan E. Berkow, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Neal D. Barnard, M.D.

- Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a
nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, especially good
nutrition. PCRM also conducts clinical research studies, opposes unethical human
experimentation, and promotes alternatives to animal research.

[Emphasis added. -v]

SOURCE

2005-03-18T22:15:00.000-06:00

It's bad enough when the neighbors tattle on you... but your own car?!

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

Below are two recent articles from bankrate.com with some great tips on what to watch out for in transportation surveillance.

Is Big Brother your backseat spy?

By Melissa M. Ezarik • Bankrate.com

Is the latest auto technology a threat to your privacy?

A strange question at first glance, perhaps, but it's no coincidence so many new-car commercials show a solitary driver escaping civilization along some lonesome desert, mountain or prairie road.

Americans love cars and one of the things they treasure most is the privacy they provide.

But they also love convenience. And that clash promises to bring strife to Americans' love affair with the automobile: Convenience versus privacy.

"What is a car? The freedom on an open road to do as you please," says Beth Givens, founder and director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute, which advises businesses and the government on privacy and ethical information management, agrees. "It's a sacred place where we can sing, we can make private phone calls. For the most part people don't worry about their privacy when they're in the car — they're home."

But as technological gizmos, such as global positioning systems, can make cars physically safer and more convenient, they can make driving less safe from a privacy perspective.

"The freedom to travel is one of the most fundamental freedoms in a democratic society, and that's something you should be able to do without your every move being tracked," says Jay Stanley, communications director of the technology and liberty program of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Privacy advocates acknowledge the benefits of auto technology while cautioning about their potential for privacy invasion. Here's how some of today's electronic auto gadgets could be used to interfere with your freedom:

The black box
Nearly everyone knows about flight data recorders on airplanes, but news to many consumers is that most newer cars have a similar device. These black boxes (aka, event data recorders or crash data recorders) can capture vehicle speed, brake action, shift position, engine speed, change of speed over time, airbag deployment, seat-belt use and other data just before or after a crash.

On the pro side, black boxes accelerate safety by providing information that experts use to improve cars and roads. Also, simple knowledge about the device may be enough to get some people to think thrice about risky driving moves.

What frustrates privacy advocates most is this: "All of a sudden you're involved in a situation with your car and you didn't know it was really spying on you," Givens says, noting that attorneys and insurance companies are well aware of the data and already are using it in legislation.

"Some car safety people are pushing for all cars to be equipped with [black boxes]," says Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant. Smith says that adding the devices is "not a big deal" from either a technical or financial standpoint. "It's really a crapshoot; it's very unclear who this helps," he says, pointing out that ownership of the data and how it's interpreted (or misinterpreted) are potential issues.

Money savings may convince consumers to give up a little privacy. Through a Minnesota pilot program, some insurance policyholders of the Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. allow their driving habits to be tracked.

The tracking device, which spokesman William Perry says doesn't actually involve a black box, records mileage, speed and time of day. Customers willing to share that information can save 5 to 25 percent off the cost of their next policy. It's all in the name of accurate pricing, Perry explains.

Radio frequency ID chips
RFID chips allow everyday objects to "talk" to each other.

"I'm very concerned about expansion of radio frequency ID in cars," Givens says. "We could literally be tracked everywhere we drive." Highway systems are equipped with RFID signal readers, and tire manufacturers have started implanting chips in tires to help spot failures and track tires for recall purposes.

Toll-booth speed-pass systems also incorporate the technology and can record a person's whereabouts. "Of course, 99 percent of the time it doesn't really matter," says ACLU's Stanley. "It becomes another data point on that individual. But on rare occasions, it could matter to you."

And sufficient privacy protections haven't yet been put in place, he adds.

Secondary use of RFID data concerns privacy consultant Smith, too. One example of "feature creeper" is in the Orlando, Fla., area, where, beginning in May 2005, roadside RFID readers will trace the travel time of individual cars, creating an average trip time that can be communicated to other drivers.

"Most people just think about the benefits of having [speed pass]," Givens says. But driver data could be connected to other records — and the data have already been used in divorce and child custody disputes. Not to mention, the data also could be used to nab individuals for speeding.

Global positioning systems
Divorce attorneys and private detectives wouldn't mind getting their hands on navigational system records, either. What better way to prove or disprove a spouse's location? Subscribers to GPS technology services have access to maps and driving directions as needed, and companies such as OnStar also offer stolen-vehicle and roadside assistance. OnStar call centers can even listen in on a car, should it be stolen or the driver needs help.

"Most people think that this is an excellent technology and it's worth money to pay for it," says Ponemon. "But you're basically providing information on where you are at any point in time. In safe hands that information is probably OK for each of us, (but) it can be used against people who may not want to reveal where they are."

"They kind of control your car," Smith says, noting that companies such as OnStar have no particular reason to spy on their customers, but in some cases they have been required — under subpoena — to provide that information." OnStar's privacy policy is upfront about stating that information will be used to respond to regulatory and legal requirements. In some cases, drivers don't even know they're being tracked through GPS. Law enforcement officials have gotten warrants to attach GPS devices to the cars of suspects, Givens says. While many might find that a desirable feature, a stalker could use GPS to keep tabs on a victim.

Some rental car companies have also used the technology, charging customers additional fees for speeding or exceeding certain boundaries. California legislation prohibits companies from using GPS without the customer's consent, and in Connecticut a court ruled that one rental car company's speeding fines were illegal. But experts say the issue isn't closed.

Risks and rewards
"There's no absolute right to privacy," Ponemon cautions. "None of this information, when it's collected, is absolutely protected."

And Givens adds, "The problem is that there will always be other uses found for [the data]." [Emphasis mine. –L.]

And if the day comes where drivers rely too much on auto gizmos, a technology failure could cause havoc. As could an outright technology shutdown; the Bush administration has recently announced that the nation's GPS infrastructure could be turned off in the event of an attack, since terrorists could tap into the systems.

"I'd be afraid of technology that shuts my car off," Ponemon says, imagining that he's on a highway when someone pushes a button that could cause his car, which may be relying too much on technology-based systems, to crash. [I would be equally, if not more, concerned about the vehicle being disabled and stranding me — in what would likely be a dangerous situation, by definition. –L.]

Still, privacy advocates recognize the plus side of technologies that improve safety and enhance the driver's experience. "I think that the benefits outweigh the costs and the risk, but there need to be privacy and security safeguards," Ponemon says.

ACLU's Stanley adds, "Most technologies have good uses and we want to be able to [use them] without worrying about them being used against us."

How to guard against Big Brother

By Melissa Ezarik • Bankrate.com

No matter which side of the "convenience vs. privacy" debate you come down on, rest assured further technological advances will continue to stir the pot of controversy. But also, don't forget there are things you can do to protect yourself.

Today, auto gizmos such as global positioning systems and easy-pass toll tags primarily are controlled by consumers themselves. But proposals are cropping up in California, Oregon and other state legislatures to use this technology for generating highway upkeep money and more.

Say hello to the mother of Big Brother, who could well be arriving soon, according to privacy experts who fear legislation could lead to the advent of scary things such as:

Requiring every car to have a GPS system, so the state can track road use and tax accordingly.
Hooking up all cars to an electronic system, so speeding between point A and point B would result in an automatic traffic ticket.

"There's potential for these mandatory systems tracking everybody," says Jay Stanley, communications director for the technology and liberty program of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Taking steps to help ensure your car is a private place may soon be just as important as gassing up for the trip. If you want to hit the open road — or just zip up to the corner convenience store — without concern about being watched, here's how to go about it:

Scan for "bugs." Look in your car's manual or check in with the manufacturer to find out whether you've got a black box. This safety enhancement device, also known as an event data recorder or a crash data recorder, is found in most newer cars (California requires event data recorders be disclosed in car owner's manuals). Privacy proponents point out that, because a black box monitors speed, seat belt use and other driver behaviors before a crash, attorneys have started to use its data in lawsuits.
Shop wisely for auto gadgets. Is there a way for you to turn off the technology? Does the manufacturer have a privacy policy? These are two questions Larry Ponemon, chairman of the privacy and ethics think tank Ponemon Institute, suggests asking.
Rent with caution. Rental car agreements may come with privacy strings attached. Cross a state line, speed or otherwise stray from that contract, and your wallet may be emptier than you bargained for. "Ask just what sort of monitoring is being done and how it could affect the bill," advises Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
Speak up. "These kinds of privacy questions are often not solvable on an individual level," says Stanley. Givens suggests getting involved in the public policy process by contacting legislators. Good policy can help ensure that consumers know what's in their cars and can disable devices that do exist, and also make sure that data collected by these devices aren't available to use without the owner's permission or a court order. And Stanley adds, "With good, robust privacy policies, we can enjoy the benefits of amazing new devices like GPS without having to worry about the dark side."

Melissa Ezarik is a freelance writer based in Connecticut.

2005-03-16T04:59:00.000-06:00

Sad News Via Pip at Wilson's Blogmanac:

Yellow Times has shut down

"YellowTimes.org has shut down due to funding issues. While this may be temporary, it also may be permanent. We appreciate your past support."
Source: Yellow Times

This is very sad for anyone who used to read the excellent Yellow Times website. Our own Wilson's Almanac Yellow Pages for two years has beeen produced in association with our friends at YT, and will continue, but using news and current affairs material from other sources.

Congratulations, thanks, commiserations and all good wishes to the team that produced one of the best background briefing sites on the Net.

2005-03-16T04:04:00.000-06:00

White House to Agencies: Ignore GAO's Ruling on 'Illegal' TV News Releases

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

TO Editor's Comment: This story appears to be gathering steam quickly. In addition to considerable public outrage, the White House's position was further complicated by a ruling from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the practice described was illegal, violating laws prohibiting the U.S. government from producing covert propaganda. In response to the GAO's ruling, an attorney for the Justice Department issued a statement in opposition to the GAO's position, stating the White House had not broken the law and is within its rights to continue the practice.

While the attorney who drafted the opinion was Steven Bradbury, the final decision on whether or not to take legal action against the White House would have to be made by the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the man who has been George W. Bush's personal attorney for decades. Accordingly, we are reporting that the Justice Department, under the direction of Gonzales, is shielding the White House rather than acting on the recommendation of the GAO. - ma.

Go to Original

White House to Agencies: Ignore GAO's Ruling on 'Illegal' TV News Releases
By Ken Herman, Cox News Service

Washington - The White House, intent on continuing to crank out "video news releases" that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.

In a memo on Friday, Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the lawyers the White House depends on disagree with the GAO's conclusions.

Accompanying Bolten's memo was a letter from Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who said video news releases "are the television equivalent of the printed press release." advertisement

"They can be a cost-effective means to distribute information through local news outlets, and their use by private and public entities has been widespread since the early 1990s, including by numerous federal agencies," Bradbury said.

Comptroller General David Walker of the GAO said Monday that his agency is
"disappointed by the administration's actions" in telling agency heads to ignore the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

"This is not just a legal issue, it's also an ethical matter," Walker said. "The taxpayers have a right to know when the government is trying to influence them with their own money."

Bradbury's memo said video news releases are legal and legitimate as long as they don't "constitute advocacy for any particular position or view."

The GAO, in a Feb. 17 memo to agency heads, said its review of video news releases distributed to television stations by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy showed violations of federal law barring the use of government money for propaganda. The GAO said,
"Television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government."

Giving no indication that the administration would change its policy, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "It's very clear to the TV stations where they are coming from."

But the GAO, in the Feb. 17 memo from Walker, said that's not enough.

"They are intended to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public by independent television news organizations," Walker wrote. "To help accomplish this goal, these stories include actors or others hired to portray
'reporters' and may be accompanied by suggested scripts that television news anchors can use to introduce the story during the broadcast."

Former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who held the job in the Clinton administration, said there was a "considerable amount of video news release activity" during those years, but much of it was limited to raw footage."

[Emphasis added. -v]

Source

2005-03-15T19:21:00.000-06:00

Outsourcing shocker: underemployed college grads may no longer be able to ask, "do you want fries with that?"

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE — Cover your assets!

During various economic downturns, we proletariat have comforted ourselves with the knowledge that we "can always flip burgers if we have to". Flipping and bagging, at least, appear to still be an option... for now.

McDonald's could employ call centers to handle drive-thru

OAK BROOK, Ill. (AP) — McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant chain, is testing the use of remote call centers to handle drive-thru orders in an effort to improve service. [Newspeak for "improve their bottom line". –L.]

Company officials said the idea, being tested at a small number of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, is aimed at reducing the number of mistakes at the drive-thru window. The company declined to say where in the Northwest the tests were taking place.

"If you're in L.A. and you hear a person ... with a North Dakota accent taking your order, you'll know what we're up to," McDonald's Chief Executive Officer Jim Skinner said during a presentation to analysts Thursday in New York. [North Dakota? Yeah, right. Try North Timbuktu. It's a short drive from "outsourcing" to "offshoring". –L.]

The strategy would help process orders faster and allow McDonald's employees to focus on delivering better customer service, the company said. [At the risk of repeating myself... yeah, right. It lets McDonald's Corporation "focus" on paying North Dakota — or North Timbuktu — wages, rather than the local rate, in high-cost areas. –L.]

"You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders," said Matthew Paull, the chief financial officer.

Paull said a "heavy percentage" of complaints the company receives are from drive-thru customers who got the wrong order.

"Even if 95% of the time it is right, those 5% are very upset with us," he said. [We'll still be talking through the same crappy speaker, without the option of pulling up to the window so we can be understood! I really don't see that 5% number shrinking because of this. –L.]

McDonald's spokeswoman Anna Rozenich said Friday it was too early to say whether the outsourcing strategy would be implemented systemwide. [I'll bet! Getting tens of thousands of franchisees on board with this would be a logistical nightmare. –L.]

McDonald's shares declined 10 cents to $32.65 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, near the upper end of their 52-week trading range of $25.05 to $34.56.

2005-03-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

Restrict sales of social security numbers... what a concept!

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

I guess this article caught my attention because I had not fully digested how much of a commodity our social security numbers are! Some things in life should be bought and sold, and others just shouldn't.

U.S. may restrict sale of Social Security numbers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Seeking to combat rampant identity theft, U.S. lawmakers said Thursday they may clamp new restrictions on companies that amass and sell social security numbers and other personal information.

Executives from ChoicePoint and rival LexisNexis told legislators that they had scaled back the sale of sensitive personal information following revelations in recent weeks that identity thieves gained access to more than 177,000 of the consumer profiles they sell.

But lawmakers said during the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that data brokers should not be allowed to sell Social Security numbers without permission from the individuals involved. [How positively libertarian of them — giving me more control over what's mine! ...and how positively disgusting that I need their "permission" to control it. –L.]

"There's a very good chance we're going to put together a bill," said committee chairman Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.

"I've not heard anything that explains to me why we should allow that to go on," said Barton, who said he would probably carve out an exemption for police investigations.

Government-issued social security numbers are considered the key to identity-theft scams because they are frequently used as unique identifiers by banks and other companies that handle sensitive information, such as medical records. [...despite being expressly prohibited for use as a "national identification number" at the time the Social Security program was created. Why is this never "enforced"? Because the "penalty" is... for the number holder to not participate in the program or situation that is requesting the number! So, that gives us the "right" to opt out of such extraneous activities as medical insurance, home mortgage, and any type of bank account. Some "penalty"! –L.]

"This is an industry still in denial, that still doesn't recognize how highly Americans value their privacy, and hopes to ride out this scandal," said Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, who has already introduced such a bill. [Keep that in mind, Congressman, when Patriot Act XXIX crosses your desk. –L.]

AMASSING RECORDS

ChoicePoint and other data brokers have operated largely free of restrictions as they amass driving records, fingerprints and other personal details into comprehensive profiles they sell to law enforcement agencies, landlords and businesses.

But regulation appears likely. Last month, ChoicePoint revealed it had inadvertently sold 145,000 profiles to identity thieves, and LexisNexis said criminals had gained access to 32,000 profiles at its Seisint subsidiary.

More painful revelations may be ahead.

At a separate hearing by the Senate Banking Committee, ChoicePoint vice president Don McGuffey said the company had "a handful" of breaches in the past that it has not made public. McGuffey said he did not know enough to elaborate.

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said last week that data brokers should be required to take reasonable precautions to protect consumer profiles, and tell consumers when security breaches place that data at risk.

Senators have suggested other approaches, from fining companies that don't protect consumer data to withholding government business from those that have poor security. [Whoop-de-damn-doo. Want to put the fear of God in them? (Isn't that what all good neocons want these days? ;o)) Maintain their full civil liability for such breaches, then let the plaintiffs' attorneys at them! –L.]

ChoicePoint and LexisNexis officials said they supported greater security requirements and a national disclosure law, as well as some restrictions that would limit the disclosure of Social Security numbers.

But they tried to convince the committee that they needed to use Social Security numbers to differentiate between people with the same name.

"We just need to make sure that we can maintain the uniqueness of these individuals," said ChoicePoint chief executive Derek Smith.

2005-03-15T18:10:00.000-06:00

Diebold can provide stamps, gift cards, and movie tickets... but not receipts for votes?!

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

Diebold ATMs provide more than cash

By Jay Loomis, The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

In past years, most buyers of postage stamps, movie tickets, cell phone minutes or sporting event seats didn't pick up their purchases at an automated teller machine. Neither did many ATMs spit out gift cards for a favorite store, a coupon for a free car wash or a ticket to a rock concert.

Yet developing such technology is a prime mission at Diebold Inc., the largest supplier of bank ATMs in the United States with more than 60% of the market.

"From the consumer standpoint, we want to make things easier," said Ken Justice, vice president of ATM product marketing at Diebold. "As you add more applications to the terminal, you have to make sure that you don't complicate life for the consumer."

ATMs have been around since the 1960s.

But like other old and familiar gadgets, they have gotten smarter thanks to technological advances. Try depositing a counterfeit bill or a bad check in one of Diebold's newer machines, for example, and the ATM is designed to reject them, often with more ease than a human teller. [Too bad they're not nearly so diligent with counterfeit votes! –L.]

Do you want to print out your account statement, get traveler's checks, pay bills or print checks? Want to be dazzled by colorful graphics and videos? How about the added security of identification through fingerprints in addition to a PIN number? Want an audio system for the blind? Advanced ATMs offer all that, too.

"We are very upbeat about the potential not only in the United States but across the globe," Justice said. "There are still a lot of growth opportunities."

For now, the most exotic features are not widely available for many bank consumers whose institutions have yet to fully roll them out as they ponder potential demand. ATM activity is still dominated by traditional cash withdrawals (70 percent of transactions) and cash/check deposits (20 percent). Only 10% of activity is other transactions such as stamps or movie tickets.

Yet Diebold executives anticipate that the market for more sophisticated ATM machines and services will grow in coming years. The demand will be driven not only by banks but also businesses such as movie theaters and stores that push tickets or other products through in-house ATMs.

"When we look at the market research, there is much more demand for transactions through the ATMs than the market is meeting," Justice said.

Diebold, based in North Canton, Ohio, has been a dominant player in the ATM market since the 1960s. The company still generates about two-thirds of its revenues from ATM sales in 90 countries.

Following a 13% rise in ATM sales during the fourth quarter, Diebold is poised for double-digit sales increases during the next three years as banks replace older machines with the company's 2-year-old Opteva line, according to Charles Brady, senior equity analyst at Hibernia Southcoast Capital in New Orleans.

"We are in the middle of a major ATM upgrade cycle," said Brady.

Diebold's customers range from most of the 20 largest U.S. banks to community institutions with a single branch. Wachovia Corp., the nation's fourth largest bank, expanded its ATM network to 5,300 machines in 15 states as it grew through acquisitions during the past decade. Nearly 57% of Wachovia's ATMs are Diebold products.

"ATMs allow us to enhance the customer's experience and be where they live, work and shop," said Joe Kirk, Wachovia's retail banking director for southern New York and Connecticut.

The average ATM in the United States is seven years old. But Diebold's Justice said that how often banks replace them varies as much as how often people replace their cars. New ATMs cost from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on the features the bank includes.

"We still service ATMs that have been out there 20 years," Justice said. "But other banks replace them every three to five years."

2005-03-09T18:02:00.000-06:00

The Senate Opens Fire on U.S. Consumers

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE — Cover your assets!

As someone who was forced into bankruptcy by job loss and a medical condition — and whose debt was artificially inflated by one predatory lender (who was since bought out, but has possibly been reincarnated) and continues to be illegally reported as owed to a second predatory lender — I find this particularly infuriating!

The Senate Opens Fire on U.S. Consumers

by Arianna Huffington

U.S. senators are about to pass a bankruptcy bill so hostile to ordinary American families that it could only have come about in a place as corrupt, cynical and unmoored from reality as Washington, D.C.

In a normal world, those elected to represent the interests of the people would have fought for bankruptcy legislation that would, well, represent the interests of the people. But not in Beltway Bizarroland. Instead of cracking down on predatory lending practices, closing loopholes that favor the wealthy, and strengthening the safety net for working people, single mothers and elderly Americans struggling to recover from a financial setback, the Senate put together a nasty little bill that reads like a credit industry wish list. Rubbing salt in the wound, Sen. Charles Grassley, the bill's chief sponsor, labeled it the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 — even though it does nothing to prevent bankruptcy abuse or protect consumers.

So what does the bill do? It makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of value in homes and asset protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize, while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to reign in lending abuses that frequently turn manageable debt into unmanageable crises. Even in failure, ordinary Americans do not get a level playing field.

Credit card companies have been feverishly lobbying for this legislation for nearly a decade — and it looks like the $34 million the finance and credit industries have contributed to political campaigns since 1996 is finally about to pay off. On Tuesday, the cloture vote on the bill was 69 to 31. The House passed similar legislation last year and GOP leaders are hoping to bypass the conference committee deadlocks that have derailed similar measures in the past and have the bill on President Bush's desk in short order. The president, well aware that credit card giant MBNA is one of the Republican Party's largest donors [and longtime patron of freshman Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger — I told ya not to trust that guy! –L.], has promised to sign the bill as soon as someone hands him a pen.

Make no mistake, the inequitable nature of the bill — bending over backwards to help the credit card industry while sticking it to American working people who fall on hard times — is no accident. Time and again over the last week, the Senate shot down amendments that would have made the bill a bit less mean-spirited. They denied proposals that would have made it easier for military veterans, the sick and the elderly to qualify for bankruptcy protection. They even rejected an amendment that would have put a 30 percent ceiling on the interest rates credit card companies can charge. Thirty percent — that's more than Paulie Walnuts charges. But 74 U.S. senators — including John Kerry, Harry Reid, Barack Obama [!! –L.] and Dick Durbin — clearly thought that wasn't high enough. Quick, somebody send those guys a Bible bookmarked to Deuteronomy 23:19: "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother."

For years, credit-card companies have been claiming that tougher laws are needed to reign in high-flying customers using bankruptcy to game the system. But the truth is that the vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can't pay their bills because they've lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills or gone through a divorce.

Indeed, a recent study by Harvard University found that half of last year's 1.6 million bankruptcies were the result of crushing medical bills. Put another way: Every 30 seconds, someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the wake of a serious illness. How's that for a shocking stat? Here's another: Three-quarters of the so-called medically bankrupt had health insurance. It just wasn't enough to cover the dramatic rise in health-care costs.

But instead of adapting to this harsh new reality, where hardworking, college-educated, middle-class folks can be financially destroyed by a sudden illness, the Senate is about to approve a one-size-fits-all law that treats a family man who has sunk into debt because of a heart attack the same as a con artist who maxes out his MasterCard, then refuses to pay up.

Worst of all, the bill does absolutely nothing to protect consumers from the aggressive tactics credit-card companies have devised in recent years — tactics that have proven hugely profitable. Along with sending out over 5 billion solicitations a year, they are constantly developing new ways to stick it to the people they've already lured into the tent. For instance, companies now routinely jack up a cardholder's interest rate when their payment is late — and, presto, a "fixed" 7 percent APR is suddenly transformed into a cash-gobbling 30 percent loan.

There has also been an explosion in the fees that credit card companies charge: late fees, balance transfer fees, cash-advance fees, over-the-limit fees. Such fees bring in billions and are partly responsible for the fact that, even as personal bankruptcies in America have steadily increased, so have the profits of credit card companies — which reached a whopping $30 billion last year.

So tell me again: Just who is gaming the system?

It's one thing for credit card companies to exact their pound of flesh even as their profits soar. But shouldn't we hold our elected officials to a higher standard? The bankruptcy bill is morally bankrupt. And so is any senator who votes for it.

2005-03-05T15:15:00.000-06:00

The "Real" Creation Story

FLORA AND FAUNA — Environment and Health

From Jeffrey:

The "Real" Creation Story

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, "You want chocolate with that?" And Man said, "Yes!" and Woman said, "and as long as you're at it, add some sprinkles." And they gained 10 pounds. And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14. So God said,
"Try my fresh green salad." And Satan presented Thousand-Island Dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, "I have sent you heart healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them." And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it "Angel Food Cake," and said, "It is good." Satan then created chocolate cake and named it "Devil's Food." God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald's and its 99-cent double cheeseburger. Then said, "You want fries with that?" And Man replied, "Yes! And super size them!" And Satan said, "It is good."

And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

Then Satan created HMOs.

--Author Unknown

2005-03-03T19:45:00.000-06:00

So much for smokin' in the back of the bus!

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

No wonder today's kids are so screwed up — no more sneaking a smoke on the bus, no more riding in the back of pickup trucks... all those little bits of "freedom" we used to take for granted!

Note the lack of an anti-intrusion viewpoint in the story.

High-Tech School Bus Designed To Protect Kids
Administrators Can Access Surveillance Video Via Internet

POSTED: 5:01 pm EST February 28, 2005
UPDATED: 3:47 pm EST March 1, 2005

BALTIMORE -- School buses may soon receive a makeover — all in the name of safety, WBAL-TV reported.

This bus is equipped with surveillance cameras and plenty of high-tech equipment to keep an eye on the kids on the bus.

The television station reported that 24 million students ride school buses every day in this country. A number of private and nonprofit groups believe they've found a way to help make their trips safer.

At least one school bus was on the road Monday in downtown Baltimore, despite the snow. The bus is equipped with surveillance cameras and plenty of high-tech equipment, according to the station.

The bus is part of a new national project that combines technology with homeland security efforts.

"The unit that we have is a digital video recorder that records video up to two or three weeks and — wirelessly, remotely using a Nextel server — we can connect any point at any time using the Internet," said Amin Ansari, a technology officer for Securtex Digital.

The bus is a model of sorts that the nonprofit Points of Lights Foundation and a number of technology companies are trying to put on the market.

"We can tell not only what's going on on the bus (and) wherever the bus maybe located in the case of an emergency, but also what's going on around the bus," said Tony Watson, the CEO of the Alliance Leadership Group, a consulting group. [Well isn't THAT a vague description! –L.]

"We hope school districts and state governmental officers who are concerned and working on homeland defense will see this as a state-of-the-art, timely resource to help ensure the safety of our children," said Robert Goodwin, the president and CEO of the Point of Lights Foundation.

And that's a plus for school bus drivers.

"Sometimes, when we pull into schools, you'll have children on the outside of the bus come up and they'll hang on the windows. We'll be able to see who to charge for the broken window," said Anna Vermillion, a school bus driver.

While organizers are trying to sell the concept to state governments, some students have already given it a passing grade.

"It's just trying to help them to make sure they don't get lost or something like that. It's pretty neat," said Jimmy Whitehead, a student.

The technology can be installed in 60 days, and the Points of Light Foundation is still looking for private and public companies to help pay for the program, the television station reported.

["Points of Light"... gee, that sounds familiar!

I found it interesting that they couldn't decide which half, if either (or both!), was supposed to be plural. –L.]

2005-03-03T19:32:00.000-06:00

Creditor "declares war" on deployed soldier

BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN — War and Peace

Bank Says It's Put Foreclosure Of Soldier's Home On Hold
Kansas Soldier Is In Iraq; Wife Worries About Keeping Home

UPDATED: 9:48 am EST March 2, 2005

OSAWATOMIE, Kan. -- A mortgage company said it won't foreclose on a Kansas soldier's home while he's fighting in Iraq, but the family has their doubts.

KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Mo., reported Monday that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage had threatened to foreclose on Sgt. Steve Welter's house in Osawatomie.

Keira Welter, Steve's wife, said that the military paycheck doesn't match the civilian pay Steve had as a Lawrence firefighter. He was called to active duty in August, and the family got behind on house payments. Four months later, Wells Fargo sent letters threatening to foreclose on the home and sell the contents. That threat is in apparent violation of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act, a 64-year-old federal law.

Hours after the story aired Monday night, Keira Welter received a special delivery letter from Leesa Whitt-Potter, a Wells Fargo vice president. The letter stated that Wells Fargo will clean up the negative report, stop the collection calls and that no foreclosure action is in progress.

But Keira Welter said the foreclosure papers are still at the courthouse.

"I want that piece of paper that tells me for sure this foreclosure proceeding has been dismissed," Keira Welter said. "I have no paper saying there's nothing under way. The best I've got is that it's on hold ... Until I have that piece of paper saying the foreclosure is off, I have doubts about whatever Wells Fargo has said."

She said she's disappointed that neither the U.S. Army nor Veterans Affairs offered more assistance until the story hit the media.

"It seems like now everybody wants to step up. Where were they six months ago?" Keira Welter asked.

She said she remains skeptical about Wells Fargo's promise, but said she is more hopeful about the situation.

Numerous viewers have asked how they can help the Welter family. Their concerns are being passed along to the family by KMBC-TV, but the family's contact information will not be released out of respect for their privacy.

Previous Story:
March 1, 2005: U.S. Soldier Fights To Keep Home While In Iraq

2005-03-03T17:58:00.000-06:00

Odd couple with a lot in common

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Bush, Putin vs. the press

By Dennis Jett
Special to the Sentinel

March 1, 2005

When President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last week in Slovakia, they had much to discuss. One of the issues they talked about was freedom of the press. While the specifics have not been revealed, it was an opportunity for Bush to reassure Putin he has nothing to fear from a free press. Bush could have recounted his own experience: that the media can be bought and bullied — and if the government still doesn't like the news, it can make it up.

Thus far Putin has been using much more repressive measures. According to Freedom House, which assesses the state of press freedom throughout the world, the Kremlin has gained nearly total control of the broadcast media through financial pressure and restrictive legislation. On the print side, the few independent publications are largely drowned out by those that parrot the government line. Worst of all, 11 journalists have been murdered, gangland-style, since Putin came to power and none of the killers has been brought to justice. Press freedoms have deteriorated so dramatically that Freedom House ranks Russia as 147th out of the 193 countries it evaluates. (By way of comparison, Cuba and North Korea are the worst in the world while the United States tied Andorra and Monaco for 15th place.) [With all due respect to the rest of the world, our historical rhetoric and our First Amendment should put us no lower than the top 5. How sad that we are 200% below that. –L.]

Bush's recent public questioning of Russia's commitment to democratic principles had created the expectation that there would be a public confrontation when the two leaders met in Bratislava. Nothing of the sort happened. When the pair emerged for a press conference after the meeting, it was winks, chuckles and accentuating the positive.

Perhaps Bush told Putin how to put pundits on the payroll. His administration paid two columnists, Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to endorse administration policies. Williams got $240,000 and Gallagher only $21,500, perhaps because among reactionaries for rent, African-Americans are harder to find and therefore much more expensive.

Bush also may have given Putin a lesson in news management. The press can't report unpleasant events that don't happen and such occasions are easily avoided in the name of security. For instance, when Bush stopped in Germany earlier in the trip, he had no contact with any Germans other than government officials, journalists and one carefully screened group of "young leaders." The thousands of Bush protestors isolated elsewhere were thus rendered unnewsworthy.

Another tactic Bush could have described to Putin is how to fabricate news. In the Bush administration, many departments put out "video news releases." These are made to look like journalists reporting news stories. They are really actors doing infomercials for government programs, but are never identified as such. Government spending on this and other public-relations gimmicks has doubled since 2000 and reached a record level of $88 million in 2004. The practice of putting out these prepackaged "news" videos prompted the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office recently to warn administration officials that the failure to identify the government as their source violates laws that ban covert propaganda. [No big deal when you're above the law anyway. –L.]

The Pentagon has also not been a noncombatant in the disinformation war. It has Web sites that look like news pages. Only by clicking on a small link at the bottom does one find out the site is "sponsored by" the Defense Department, and even then it is not made clear the 50 free-lance journalists that write for the sites are paid by DOD.

If there were a lighter moment in Bush's two-hour chat with Putin, it would have come when Bush explained how to invent not just the news, but also the newsman. Bush could have done that by telling him about Jeff Gannon. Two years ago, he gained admission to the White House press room despite the fact that Gannon is not his real name, he had no credentials as a journalist and he wrote only for a Web site called GOPUSA founded by a Texas Republican.

Putin would have been in stitches to hear how Bush called on Jeff (evidently they are on a first-name basis) in a recent press conference. Jeff returned the favor not only by serving up a fluff ball question, but by using it to misrepresent the position of prominent Democrats. Putin would have laughed until he had tears in his eyes if Bush mentioned that Gannon also did stories bashing homosexuals, including one about John Kerry's potential to be the first gay president. The real joke is that when Gannon wasn't writing he was renting himself out as a male "escort" whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of Web sites.

So it is no wonder that there was no brawl in Bratislava. The two presidents had so many notes to compare and so much in common.

Dennis Jett is a 28-year State Department veteran who served on the National Security Council and as U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel and can be reached at dennisjett@hotmail.com.

2005-03-03T11:57:00.000-06:00

Beware blogspot.com 'Next Blog' link

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

From Pip of Wilson's Blogmanac:

Ever clicked 'Next Blog' at the top of a Blogger blog and instead of finding something great like the Blogmanac, your computer starts flashing lights and ringing alarms? I have. Beware. Others have pointed it out too:

Spyware warning: be careful of Blogspot.com "next blog" link

So I wrote a little something, but it's not exactly on topic, but what the hell:

I got them sit down, cain't cry,
oh Lord I wanna die, woman on the Next Blog blues

I tried on a brand new blog this morning,
        Cause that old Next Blog don't work no more
I tried on a brand new blog this morning,
        Cause that old Next Blog mama don't work no more
Gonna change my way of living,
        Ain't nothing like it was before

Where did that woman get to
        That Next Blog babe I seen
Where did that woman get to
        That Next Blog mama I seen
I shouldn't never have clicked her off
        That Next Blog button treat me soooo mean

2005-03-01T20:06:00.000-06:00

Big Brother Is Here — Microsoft Gets Power to Search and Destroy on Your System

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

TECH PRIVACY ENEMY #1

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)

This alert came from my local linux user group (LUG). Find a LUG near you and escape the evil clutches of M$!

Big Brother Is Here — Microsoft Gets Power to Search and Destroy on Your System

Posted by Wee-san on Thursday, February 17 @ 06:50:46 CST

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has readied H.R. 29, the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY ACT) [Another deceptively cutesy acronym, à la PATRIOT ACT –L.], to allow software vendors to scan user systems, and "interact" with them to determine any breach of proprietary rights. While the bill continues prohibitions against spyware, phishing schemes and other hostile actions against end-users, it also retains a curious provision threatening users and their right to due process and privacy in use of proprietary (commercial) software.

The obscure, anti-user provision at issue allows Microsoft or any software vendor to scan user systems and (implicitly) to take whatever actions deemed appropriate in determining compliance with its own view of licensing terms.

In effect, the legislation skips due process altogether in license infringement disputes. By allowing Microsoft or any other software provider freedom to conduct vigilante-style search-and-destroy missions on user systems, the bill undermines the rule of law (and its protections) for all consumers. The clear presumption is the user is guilty of piracy if Microsoft or another vendor says so, and there is no appeal, only suffering whatever action the software vendor deems appropriate to protect its property.

By allowing such interaction with a user system, this bill makes the software vendor sheriff, judge, jury and executioner in suspected software piracy cases. Currently, Microsoft scans millions of end-user systems by permission, but only to determine patch requirements for an installed Windows operating system. While there is no explicit authorization or prohibition of more aggressive policies, such as disabling program code and/or data, MS has not publicly pushed for power to do so, fearing a user backlash.

The legislative amendment is effectively a quiet, post-election gift to Microsoft by GOP Rep. Cliff Stearns (FL) [Remember the days when M$ was rightfully sweating it out in a courtroom because of its monopolistic business practices? With the Rethugs in charge, those days are gone! –L.], who otherwise would be first to champion full protection for your individual rights and privacy. [IMHO, the author has our current neocons in Republican clothing confused with what the ideals of the Republican party used to be! These days, if you want government to stay out of your business, you have to go libertarian. –L.] In contrast to such high ideals, this legislation is the purest example of cyber-surveillance. While surreptitious, remote actions are commonly employed by hackers and spyware, the bill authorizes exactly the same extra-legal actions by Microsoft and others.

Further erosion of privacy comes from the bill's relaxed provision for network monitoring for purposes of maintenance, repair/diagnostics, security or crime detection. It relaxes legislative protections for privacy to allow online intelligence-gathering by security agencies, exempting such activity from provisions of the notice and consent requirements of the bill. Action on the bill by the full House is expected in the next few days.

Here is the story about which Wee-san wrote the commentary... which was deceptively titled House Cuts Cookies From SPY ACT:

By Roy Mark
February 16, 2005

With little fuss and no debate [What else is f'n new? –L.], a House subcommittee today amended an anti-spyware bill to clarify that the legislation does not cover third-party cookies.

H.R. 29, the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY ACT), prohibits unfair or deceptive practices related to spyware and requires an opt-in notice and consent regime for legal software that collects personally identifiable information from consumers.

The spyware practices prohibited by the legislation include phishing, keystroke logging, homepage hijacking and ads that can't be closed except by shutting down a computer. Violators could face civil penalties of up to $3 million.

At a January hearing on the legislation, concerns were raised that the bill would unfairly target third-party cookies, although lawmakers insisted that was not their intent and expressed their desire to reach a compromise on the issue.

"This amendment otherwise clarifies an excellent bill," [Excellent?! for the plutocracy, maybe! –L.] said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection [How about CORPORATE protection?! F*** the consumer! –L.]. "The bill should not penalize authentic use of the technology. It [the bill] does not apply to cookies, including third-party cookies."

First-party cookies are placed from the same domain the user clicks on and are solely used to allow the user to access a Web site, most typically by allowing the site to remember a user name and password. Advertisers, publishers and their service providers use third-party cookies to serve, rotate, target, cap, measure and report on online advertising.

"This is an all-out technology arms race [against bad actors]," Stearns said. "This bill will help us win that race."

The bill permits computer software providers to interact with a user's computer without notice and consent to determine whether the user is authorized to use the software. [Scary translation: M$, or any other company whose software you use, has the right to poke around your computer, totally unsupervised. The AOL employee selling lists of customer names is just one example of privacy breaches... can you imagine how vulnerable you'll be if they can invade your desktop?! I don't even want to think about it. –L.] Network monitoring is also exempted from the provisions of the notice and consent requirements of the bill to the extent that the monitoring is for network or security purposes [A bone thrown to employers who want to monitor employees? –L.], diagnostics, technical support or repair [Like the ISP diagnostic software I refused to install? BTW, my connection works just fine! –L.], or the detection or prevention of fraudulent activities. [Carnivore, anyone? –L.]

The bill next goes to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee. Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) said he "expects this bill on the floor very quickly." The Senate has yet to hold any hearings on spyware. [The lack of action by the Senate is either our last hope, or the last sign that we've lost all hope! –L.]

[This is a classic case of giving with one hand while picking your pocket with the other! This legislation will no doubt be as impotent as anti-spamming laws (yeah, they undertake big prosections for show... but, really, has the amount of spam in your inbox decreased? I thought not.), thus providing the consumer zero protection... while simultaneously robbing the PAYING customer of control of the product they BOUGHT! Ba$tard$! –L.]

2005-03-01T19:14:00.000-06:00

At last, an award W is actually worthy of!

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips (and Movies and Awards!)

There was even enough to share with his bestest friends!

Berry Good Loser at the Razzies

Sun Feb 27, 3:25 PM ET

By Joal Ryan

Halle Berry was a good winner. She might be an even better loser.

Berry checked her ego at the door at the 25th Annual Razzie Awards, showing up Saturday in Hollywood to personally accept a spray-painted golf ball dis-honoring her work as Worst Actress in Catwoman.

"I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece of [excrement]," Berry told the audience.

Berry's speech mocked her teary Oscar thank-yous from 2002 when she was honored as Best Actress for Monster's Ball.

"I'd like to thank the rest of the cast — to give a really bad performance like mine you need to have really bad actors," she said.

Indeed, Berry, who took the stage at the Ivar Theatre with her Academy Award in one hand, the Golden Raspberry in the other and her agent in tow, had company in Razzie hell. Catwoman was one of the night's big winners, as it were, taking four awards, including the ultimate dis, Worst Picture.

The other big "winner" was Fahrenheit 9/11, which also claimed four Razzies. Michael Moore's popular and polemic documentary on President Bush and post-9/11 politics was not itself ridiculed. Voting members of the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation, a consortium of 675 dues-paying film buffs from around the world, reserved their scorn for the featured talking heads.

To whit [sic], President Bush was named Worst Actor; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Worst Supporting Actor; and Britney Spears, seen in a brief clip voicing support for the President [Like I needed another reason to dislike this usually-blond bimbo? –L.], Worst Supporting Actress. Bush scored a second Razzie win for Worst Screen Couple category, a needling shared with now Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the titular hero of the children's book My Pet Goat.

[From MSNBC: Razzies founder John Wilson said the prizes were not meant to mock Moore’s film, only the statements Bush and the others make while “putting their highly paid, highly skilled feet in their mouths repeatedly and sucking on them.”]

The White House contingent did not attend the Razzies ceremony. Aside from Berry, neither did any of the other scorned winners, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, named Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 Years for his knack of racking up nominations (eight in all), but never quite converting them to wins. Until now, that is.

As one might expect, star appearances at the Razzies are rare. The last name act to take his medicine — and his golf ball — in person was Freddy Got Fingered's Tom Green, proving himself a better sport than filmmaker in 2002.

Berry's act of bravery was the product of her upbringing, she told the audience. "When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser," she said, according to the Associated Press, "then there's no way you could be a good winner."

The failed feline heroine will bounce back Sunday as a scheduled presenter at the 77th Annual Academy Awards.

Good egg or no, Berry said she has no intention of becoming a Razzies regular. Quipped the actress, per the AP: "I hope to God I never see these people again!"

_____________
Here's a complete look at the razzed winners of the 25th annual Razzie Awards:

Worst Picture: Catwoman
Worst Actor in a Leading Role: President Bush, Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Actress in a Leading Role: Halle Berry, Catwoman
Worst Supporting Actor: Donald Rumsfeld, Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Supporting Actress: Britney Spears, Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Screen Couple: President Bush and either Condoleeza Rice or his pet goat, Fahrenheit 9/11
Worst Remake or Sequel: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Worst Director: Pitof, Catwoman
Worst Screenplay: Catwoman
Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 Years: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Worst Musical of Our First 25 Years: From Justin to Kelly (2003)
Worst Comedy of Our First 25 Years: Gigli (2003)
Worst Drama of Our First 25 Years: Battlefield Earth (2000)

2005-03-01T18:42:00.000-06:00

If it's unsafe in 6 weeks, why isn't it unsafe now?

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

Why not? Because that's not the point, is it?

Lighters being banned on air travel
Secure areas included; matchbooks still OK, for now

Reuters
Updated: 8:28 a.m. ET March 1, 2005

WASHINGTON - The government will ban cigarette lighters on planes and secure airport areas beginning in April but passengers can still tote common matches in carry-on bags for now, security officials said Monday.

The Transportation Security Administration, responding to a congressional order, said passengers cannot carry butane, battery powered or other lighters on themselves or in carry-on bags as of April 14.

“By creating a policy to add lighters to the prohibited items, we are closing a potential vulnerability in air travel security,” said David Stone, administrator of the security agency.

Four matchbooks OK
Wooden matches that can be struck on a hard surface are already banned but passengers will still be allowed to pack up to four matchbooks inside carry-on luggage, security officials said.

Common butane lighters are considered a hazardous material by aviation safety regulators and are already banned from checked luggage.

While smoking is banned on all U.S. domestic and international flights, passengers are permitted to smoke in many airport terminals, restaurants and lounges.

In legislation passed in December that overhauled U.S. intelligence programs, Congress required the lighter ban be in place on aircraft and beyond airport security checkpoints.

'Shoe bomber' cited
Proponents, including Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said it was necessary to reduce the chance that someone could ignite a bomb or incendiary device on a commercial flight.

Dorgan says convicted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid may have succeeded in blowing up a passenger plane on a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 had he used a lighter instead of common matches to set off explosives hidden in his shoe. Reid was sentenced to life in prison in 2003.

But concerns raised by airports about the potential impact on their smoking policies, airport-related businesses, and passengers’ travel habits prompted the Bush administration to move more slowly on the lighter prohibition. The Transportation Security Administration is still considering a ban on matches.

[This is the biggest load of obvious crap I've seen in... well, at least 10 minutes. If lighters are so bloody dangerous, ban them NOW! And do they really think a determined terrorist is going to be discouraged by having to use a standard matchbook?!

For this freedom we're giving up, we're not even getting temporary safety (much less permanent). Ben Franklin must be whirling in his grave! –L.]

2005-02-28T16:16:00.000-06:00

Lies, Damned Lies and Research Results

FLORA AND FAUNA — Environment and Health

From Today's Health Tip:

Coconut Oil Myth

Poorly interpreted research leads to wrong information and this is why for years you might have heard that coconut oil leads to hardening of the arteries.

Over 40 years ago researchers found that feeding coconut oil to animals caused their cholesterol levels to rise. But the problem was that the animals were not fed natural coconut oil, but instead given hydrogenated coconut oil.

The hydrogenation process creates trans fats — disfigured fat molecules that wreak havoc on your body's cells. Any oils that are hydrogenated (even olive oil) are bad for you and will age you and your skin at a fast rate. To put it bluntly, hydrogenated oils are poison in your body.

To keep your body in good health and avoid aging too soon, don't eat any foods that contain hydrogenated oils.

Replace shortening in recipes with natural coconut oil and you will find your skin is no longer dry, but instead, moist, velvety and beautiful. [AHA... I'd been looking for a suitable substitute for shortening! Ya can't use butter in everything... –L.]

Soften Your Knees and Elbows for Pennies

Coconut oil is a wonderful moisturizer for knees, elbows and other dry areas of the body.

After a shower, dry off and rub a little coconut oil on the areas that need it most.

You can find coconut oil in your health food store for about $5. [I have also seen it, believe it or not, at Albertson's. An occasional online source is Flutterbye Aromatics. Join her mailing list to receive notification when she has some available. –L.]

2005-02-27T14:29:00.000-06:00

Tell Congress to repair our election system now!

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to Take to Make a Difference

New legislation has been introduced in Congress to repair the embarrassing flaws in our election system -- from electronic voting machines to long lines to partisan election officials. If we act right away, we can help these bills pick up the momentum they need. Can you sign our petition to speed election reform?

www.moveonpac.org/repairthevote/

The Good News: Your contributions are helping to expose election irregularities in Ohio. Read all about it below.

Dear Friend of MoveOn,

Several great bills have just been introduced in Congress to repair the embarrassing flaws in our election system -- from electronic voting machines to long lines to partisan election officials. Everyone's waiting to see if this new legislation will pick up speed or fall victim to partisan bickering. If we act right now, we can give these bills the early momentum they need.

Later we'll tell you more about how your contributions are exposing election errors in Ohio, but first we need your help to get this legislation moving. There's no time to lose: In the coming months, states are poised to buy a billion dollars worth of unreliable electronic voting machines without paper trails.

Can you speed election repairs by signing this new petition?

www.moveonpac.org/repairthevote/

We'll deliver your comments to your Senators and Representative. A massive grassroots push could move legislation through Congress in time for the 2006 election.

Last November, a paperless e-voting machine lost more than 4,000 votes in North Carolina, leaving a tight statewide race up in the air for months.1 Another mistakenly added nearly 4,000 votes to Bush's total in Ohio.2 The solution for these electronic glitches is straightforward: e-voting machines should be equipped to print an ATM-like receipt for every voter. Voters can see their choices are recorded accurately on paper, and if there's any question about the outcome, a recount can rely on these voter-verified paper ballots. Only then can we know an election was run fairly.

Last week, Senators Clinton (D-NY), Boxer (D-CA), Kerry (D-MA), and Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced a far-reaching bill to require paper receipts, provide remedies for long lines, stop partisan election officials, and institute a national holiday for voting. Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Harry Reid (D-NV) have introduced bipartisan legislation focused on voter-verified paper ballots. In the House, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced a bill to require paper ballots and audit electronic machines to make sure they're counting properly. All these bills would ensure handicap accessible voting and all would vastly improve our election system.

At our Future of MoveOn house parties after the election, MoveOn members chose election reform as one of our top priorities. Your donations are making it possible to get to the bottom of what happened in Ohio and problems with electronic voting machines there and elsewhere.

Two months ago, we heard a disturbing story from an Ohio voter. A senior citizen, on Election Day she voted for Kerry on the electronic voting machine at her precinct, but the machine indicated a vote for Bush. She changed her selection several times and the machine kept showing Bush. Finally, it showed a vote for Kerry and it appeared her vote was counted, but she was far from sure.

Badly shaken, she went to a lawyer for help but couldn't afford a legal fight. The lawyer approached MoveOn PAC for help, and we offered funds donated by members supporting electoral reform. The attorney used the Ohio Public Records Act to demand information on the voting machines. Local officials resisted and the lawyer prepared to sue.

In response, the local officials backed down and provided the computer records of what happened that day for all the electronic voting machines in the county, along with paper documents that can be compared to the computer records.

Using the funds from MoveOn members, one of the nation's top experts on electronic voting machines will now go through the data. The expert's conclusions will be turned over to authorities who are investigating voting irregularities.

The voter who raised this complaint (who has asked us not to reveal her name because the matter is ongoing) deeply appreciates MoveOn's support. She told us, "I can't change the outcome of the election, but we can find out what happened. If something went wrong, then someone should be held accountable. I just want to know -- did my vote count?" We will continue to support her fight to uncover flaws in Ohio's election system.

In the meantime, Congress can repair what we already know is broken -- from requiring paper receipts to providing remedies for long lines to prohibiting election officials from campaigning for a candidate.

Sign our petition right now.

Thank you for all you do for democracy.

Sincerely,

--Noah T. Winer, Adam Ruben, Eli Pariser, and the whole MoveOn PAC team

P.S. A New York Times editorial urged Congress to pass these very bills. You can read it here.

Sources:
1. "Democrat concedes Agriculture post," The Sun News, February 5, 2005
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=642

2. "Report Says Technical Foul Up Inflated Franklin County Bush Votes," Associated Press, February 12, 2005
http://www.nbc4i.com/news/4192153/detail.html

PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

[Emphasis added. -v]

2005-02-26T20:16:00.000-06:00

Happy birthday. We are throwing you out of Britain

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Happy birthday. We are throwing you out of Britain

His mother was shot dead for her political beliefs. So was his father. He was looked after by foster parents in London until he turned 18. Then he was locked up so that he can be 'dumped' abroad. Soon we'll be doing this to 16-year-olds...

By James Blake and Terry Kirby

23 February 2005

He could be any teenager, relaxing in a London park, wearing his favourite football shirt, but last night Blerim Mlloja was in a detention centre awaiting deportation to Albania, a country he considers foreign and where he believes his life would be in danger.

Two weeks ago, Mr Mlloja, not long turned 18, took a day off school, put on his smartest clothes and went to the Home Office's immigration directorate in Croydon. He thought it was one of his routine, regular meeting with officials.

His foster mother, Mary Watts, who has looked after him for three years, waved him off from their home in south London. She had no reason to worry. Instead, he never came back, and Mrs Watts, sick with worry, has not seen him since.

For, as the Government trumpeted its apparent success yesterday in reducing the number of asylum-seekers applying to stay in this country, the tale of Mr Mlloja highlights the reality faced by many young people living here. Unaccompanied child asylum-seekers deemed at risk are often accepted at first but once they turn 18 they are sent back. Soon, in a pilot scheme, the age limit is likely to be dropped to 16 for asylum-seekers from Albania, a country deemed to be safe.

While yesterday's figures did show a reduction in the number of asylum applications, they also showed that the number of failed claimants being deported is falling. That helps to fuel the political and media furore, and, in turn, means the Home Office is intensifying its efforts to remove easy targets, such as Mr Mlloja.

Clive Efford, the Labour MP for Eltham, who has taken up the case, said: "Outside the current climate of hysteria over immigration, Blerim might have been looked on more sympathetically. To say he can build a life here, to be taken into the heart of a foster family and then told 'you're 18 now — so you must go' is unfair. It doesn't take into account the individual cases".

When he arrived at the immigration offices Mr Mlloja was arrested by officials and sent to a detention centre near Heathrow, pending deportation. He has been held there while Mrs Watts and lawyers fight a desperate rearguard action. They argue that Mr Mlloja, both of whose parents were shot dead in separate incidents, knows no other home. They fear his life would be in danger if he was "dumped" back on the streets of Albania. He was beaten up by police before managing to reach this country three years ago.

Mrs Watts, aged 66, of Eltham, said yesterday: "This is his home and we are his family now. He's got no one, and nowhere else to go. He is settled here and has an English girlfriend. He should not be made to leave.

"It was very cruel the way they took him. It's like he was kidnapped. They tricked us and they didn't even phone me to tell me." [That's the big, stinking dead fish in this story... WHY would it be necessary to "disappear" someone like that for a "legal" proceeding?! –L.]

Mr Mlloja's mother was shot dead in Tirana, the Albanian capital, when Blerim was three years old. She was involved in the anti-Communist uprisings. His father, a bodyguard for a leading democratic politician, put his son into a children's home. When he was 12, one of his father's friends came to tell him he too had been killed. He was murdered alongside the politician he was protecting.

After that, Blerim was arrested twice and beaten up by officers who wanted information about his parents. His father's friend helped him to escape to Britain at the age of 15.

While living with Mrs Watts in Eltham for the past three years, he has been attending a local school and was among a number of local teenage asylum-seekers who took part in a film, funded by Channel 4, called Birthday Boy. It addresses the precise predicament he finds himself in now.

The film was shown last autumn, around the time the Home Office rejected his application to stay in this country after he turned 18. Because of a mix-up, his solicitor failed to lodge an appeal, allowing the Home Office to detain him once his birthday passed on 1 December. Although Mr Mlloja has spent the last two weeks believing deportation was imminent, his lawyers succeeded yesterday in their application for a judicial review of the case, delaying deportation for a few weeks. But he remains in custody and, despite the glimmer of hope, few have succeeded in overturning the Home Office's decision.

Since arriving in Britain, Mr Mlloja has had regular sessions with John Barcroft, a child psychiatrist. Dr Barcroft wrote a report for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, arguing that he should not be deported for health reasons.

Dr Barcroft said: "It's quite crazy to keep people in this country and then ship them back as soon as they turn 18. He grew up in a children's home where he was not allowed to go out and was under constant threat. Everyone should have some sort of childhood. Here, at last, he's found someone who can parent him."

Mrs Watts said: "I was just given him to look after — as a son and he calls me 'mum' now. I was never told that he'd be taken from me. He's such a lovely boy and there is a big bond between us. He's got a home here with brothers and sisters and they all love him too.'

"He has been reluctant to make too many plans but his experience with the film encouraged him to think he might have a future as an actor."

Mr Mlloja is forbidden to have visitors at Colnbrook detention centre, but he is allowed to use the phone. He said: "It is like a prison here. I keep getting panic attacks. I've seen people try to kill themselves and I have thought about it too. And it's so cold, I keep asking the officers for extra blankets, but they tell me no."

2005-02-26T19:29:00.000-06:00

Yet another example of "moral relativity"... from the folks who popularized the term!

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

Adelphia Pulls Plug On Hard-Core Cable Porn
Anti-Porn Activists Pushed Company To Stop Service

POSTED: 8:32 am EST February 25, 2005
UPDATED: 8:37 am EST February 25, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- Adelphia is dropping hard-core pornography from its channel lineup in Southern California.

Pressure from anti-porn activists has prompted the cable television company to pull the service less than one month after it started.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that the nation's fifth-largest cable provider also was worried the X-Rated pay-per-view service could jeopardize its pending sale.

Time Warner and Comcast have submitted a joint bid for Adelphia, and the Times said the companies have expressed concerns about the adult programming. [Horsefeathers... I was a Comcast customer for years, and they always carried various "adult" PPV channels. Cable companies care about PROFIT. –L.]

Adelphia has struggled for years with whether to offer hard-core films.

Five years ago the company dropped the soft-core porn channel "Spice" from cable systems in Southern California because company founder John Rigas considered such programming immoral.

Adelphia filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 after Rigas and others were accused of cheating investors out of billions of dollars.

[Ah, so sex is bad, but it's OK to steal... um, yeah. right. thanks for enlightening us.

Customers can opt out of the porn if they don't want it — but obviously the investors didn't have the opportunity to opt out of being scammed! –L.]

2005-02-25T19:18:00.000-06:00

The Who's Kids were Alright... these kids are brainwashed!

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Oddly, this opinion piece does not come up when you search the LA Times site! Thanks to Google for hooking us up with the link — and links to the 4,509(!) other sites that have mentioned this important commentary.

Kids Say the Darndest, Most Stalinist Things

By Bill Maher

A new survey found that a majority of high schoolers think newspapers should not be allowed to publish without government approval. And almost one in five said that Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions.

Lemme tell you little darlings something: This is my livelihood you're messing with, so either learn the Bill of Rights or you don't deserve Social Security.

Now, to those of you who think I'm overreacting: Yes, I understand that when you're in high school you're still very young and that no one really cares what kids say anyway — it's not like priests are dating them for their brains.

But the younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it; they're supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority.

And what's so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation — the kids who first became aware of the news under an "Americans need to watch what they say" administration, the kids who've been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment — or the loss of your show on ABC.

President Bush once asked, "Is our children learning?" No — they isn't. A more appropriate question might be, "Is our teachers teaching?" In four years, you can teach a gorilla sign language. Is it too much to ask that in the same amount of time a kid be taught what those crazy hippies who founded this country had in mind?

I know the Morals & Values folks want us to take time out of the school day for prayer and the Ten Commandments and abstinence training and at least two theories of evolution — the one agreed upon by every scientist in the world and the one that involves naked ladies and snakes — but, lest we forget, last month the people of Iraq risked death and danger to send a simple, inspiring message: America, get out of our country. But also, we want the freedoms you take for granted.

Now, I didn't mind being on the losing side of the last election. But as a loser, I guess I have some "unpopular" opinions — and I'd like to keep them. I'd even like to continue to say them right out loud on TV, because if I just get up there every Friday night and spout the Bush administration's approved talking points, that's not freedom or entertainment. It's Fox News.

2005-02-25T17:59:00.000-06:00

Those of us whose leaders don't understand history are just plain doomed

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE — Cover your assets!

Why the "money" tagline for this post? Because we all need to GET PREPARED for the events foretold by this essay... and that preparation involves "breakfast" as much as, or even more so than, money! After all, you can't eat cash. (Well, you can, but it's not terribly nutritious. But, from the sound of things, it will be much more useful for wiping your @$$ with...)

We Americans been raised to believe that anarchy and upheaval happen in "other places", not here. Don't get caught with your pants down on this one!! People have survived total domestic meltdown in other parts of the world. Will you be a survivor?

Imperial Entropy
Collapse of the American Empire

By KIRKPATRICK SALE

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.

The neocons in power in Washington these days, those who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter the nation itself on the domestic front.

All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl [sic], Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities.

In my reading of the history of empires, I have come up with four reasons that almost always explain their collapse. (Jared Diamond's new book Collapse also has a list of reasons for societal collapse, slightly overlapping, but he is talking about systems other than empires.) Let me set them out, largely in reference to the present American empire.

First, environmental degradation. Empires always end by destroying the lands and waters they depend upon for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without limits, and ours is no exception, even if we have yet to experience the worst of our assault on nature. Science is in agreement that all important ecological indicators are in decline and have been for decades: erosion of topsoils and beaches, overfishing, deforestation, freshwater and aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soil, air, and food, soil salinization, overpopulation, overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals, introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme weather, melting icecaps and rising sealevels, species extinctions, and excessive human overuse of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. As the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has said, after lengthy examination of human impact on the earth, our "ecological footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain, and it is getting larger." A Defense Department study last year predicted "abrupt climate change," likely to occur within a decade, will lead to "catastrophic" shortages of water and energy, endemic "disruption and conflict," warfare that "would define human life," and a "significant drop" in the planet's ability to sustain its present population. End of empire for sure, maybe end of civilization.

Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, usually derived from colonies farther and farther away from the center, and eventually fall when the resources are exhausted or become too expensive for all but the elite. This is exactly the path we are on-peak oil extraction, for example, is widely predicted to come in the next year or two-and our economy is built entirely on a fragile system in which the world produces and we, by and large, consume (U.S. manufacturing is just 13 per cent of our GDP). At the moment we sustain a nearly $630 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world &mdahs; it has leapt by an incredible $500 billion since 1993, and $180 billion since Bush took office in 2001 — and in order to pay for that we have to have an inflow of cash from the rest of the world of about $1 billion every day to pay for it, which was down by half late last year. That kind of excess is simply unsustainable, especially when you think that it is the other world empire, China, that is crucial for supporting it, at the tune of some $83 billion on loan to the U.S. treasury.

Add to that an economy resting on a nearly $500 billion Federal budget deficit, making up part of a total national debt of $7.4 trillion as of last fall, and the continual drain on the economy by the military of at least $530 billion a year (not counting military intelligence, whose figure we never know). Nobody thinks that is sustainable either, which is why the dollar has lost value everywhere — down by 30 per cent against the euro since 2000 — and the world begins to lose faith in investment here. I foresee that in just a few years the dollar will be so battered that the oil states will no longer want to operate in that currency and will turn to the euro instead, and China will let the yuan float against the dollar, effectively making this nation bankrupt and powerless, unable to control economic life within its borders much less abroad.

Third, military overstretch. Empires, because they are by definition colonizers, are always forced to extend their military reach farther and farther, and enlarge it against unwilling colonies more and more, until coffers are exhausted, communication lines are overextended, troops are unreliable, and the periphery resists and ultimately revolts. [This is sounding mighty familiar! –L.] The American empire, which began its worldwide reach well before Bush II, now has some 446,000 active troops at more than 725 acknowledged (and any number secret) bases in at least 38 countries around the world, plus a formal "military presence" in no less than 153 countries, on every continent but Antarctica — and nearly a dozen fully armed courier fleets on all the oceans. Talk about overstretch: the U.S. is less than 5 per cent of the world's population. And now that Bush has declared a "war on terror," instead of the more doable war on Al Quada we should have waged, our armies and agents will be on a battlefield universal and permanent that cannot possibly be controlled or contained.

So far that military network has not collapsed, but as Iraq indicates it is mightily tested and quite incapable of establishing client states to do our bidding and protect resources we need. And as anti-American sentiment continues to spread and darken-in all the Muslim countries, in much of Europe, in much of Asia — and as more countries refuse the "structural adjustments" that our IMF-led globalization requires, it is quite likely that the periphery of our empire will begin resisting our dominance, militarily if necessary. And far from having a capacity to fight two wars simultaneously, as the Pentagon once hoped, we are proving that we can't even fight one.

Finally, domestic dissent and upheaval. Traditional empires end up collapsing from within as well as often being attacked from without, and so far the level of dissent within the U.S. has not reached the point of rebellion or secession — thanks both to the increasing repression of dissent and escalation of fear in the name of "homeland security" and to the success of our modern version of bread and circuses, a unique combination of entertainment, sports, television, internet sex and games, consumption, drugs, liquor, and religion that effectively deadens the general public into stupor. But the tactics of the Bush II administration show that it is so fearful of an expression of popular dissent that it is willing to defy and ignore environmental, civil-rights, and progressive groups, to bribe commentators to put out its propaganda, to expand surveillance and data-base invasions of privacy, to use party superiority and backroom tactics to ride roughshod over Congressional opposition, to use lies and deceptions as a normal part of government operations, to break international laws and treaties for short-term ends, and to use religion to cloak its every policy.

It's hard to believe that the great mass of the American public would ever bestir itself to challenge the empire at home until things get much, much worse. It is a public, after all, of which, as a Gallup poll in 2004 found, 61 per cent believe that "religion can answer all or most of today's problems," and according to a Time/CNN poll in 2002 59 per cent believe in the imminent apocalypse foretold in the Book of Revelation and take every threat and disaster as evidence of God's will. And yet, it's also hard to believe that a nation so thoroughly corrupt as this — in all its fundamental institutions, its boughten parties, academies, corporations, brokerages, accountants, governments — and resting on a social and economic base of intolerably unequal incomes and property, getting increasingly unequal, will be able to sustain itself for long. The upsurge in talk about secession after the last election, some of which was deadly serious and led on to organizations throughout most of the blue states, indicates that at least a minority is willing to think about drastic steps to "alter or abolish" a regime it finds itself fundamentally at odds with. [One such group — formed well before the last election, not in response to it — is the Free State Project, whose motto is "Freedom in our lifetime." –L.]

Those four processes by which empires always eventually fall seem to me to be inescapably operative, in varying degrees, in this latest empire. And I think a combination of several or all of them will bring about its collapse within the next 15 years or so.

Jared Diamond's recent book detailing the ways societies collapse suggests that American society, or industrial civilization as a whole, once it is aware of the dangers of its current course, can learn from the failures of the past and avoid their fates. But it will never happen, and for a reason Diamond himself understands.

As he says, in his analysis of the doomed Norse society on Greenland that collapsed in the early 15th century: "The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity." If this is so, and his examples would seem to prove it, then we can isolate the values of American society that have been responsible for its greatest triumphs and know that we will cling to them no matter what. They are, in one rough mixture, capitalism, individualism, nationalism, technophilia, and humanism (as the dominance of humans over nature). There is no chance whatever, no matter how grave and obvious the threat, that as a society that we will abandon those.

Hence no chance to escape the collapse of empire.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of twelve books, including Human Scale, The Conquest of Paradise, Rebels Against the Future, and The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream.

2005-02-25T17:38:00.000-06:00

SURPRISE! Bush's Social Security propaganda not even close to fact!

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

From the 2/25 Alliance for Retired Americans Friday Alert:

MYTH: "It makes sense for younger workers to hold their own account, because when they pass on they can leave their own assets to whomever they choose." President Bush, 2/16/05

FACT: Under President Bush's plan, money saved in a private account must be used to buy an annuity, which provides a monthly income check for the rest of your life, leaving nothing to leave to your heirs. Should you die immediately after retirement, an annuity cannot be passed on to anyone. While the idea of leaving money to heirs is most appealing to middle or lower income workers, it is these same workers who are most likely to spend all of the money in their private accounts for the annuity because of the expected cuts in guaranteed benefits. And if you die before you retire? As with most details in President Bush's plan, that is still unclear. (Center for Economic and Policy Research)

2005-02-23T12:00:00.000-06:00

An ode to bloggers? ;o)

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

From Quote-a-Day:

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

--"Think Different", Apple Computers Advertisement

2005-02-22T22:50:00.000-06:00

'Kill the President' Becoming More Popular Around the World

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips (and Sometimes 'Toons)

'Kill the President' is a continuing, online narrative poem (144 stanzas so far) being written in NSW (Sandy Beach, 7km south of Woolgoolga) Australia, by our own friend and co-/fellow-blogger, Pip Wilson.

Here's a bit from a review:

“Like Byron, Wilson dons the tight suit of an eccentrically complex regular verse form, then amazes with the acrobatics he performs in it. The narrative is headlong, wildly entertaining, and Byronically shot-through with quirky authorial asides ... The twenty-first century has not, to my knowledge, produced any long poems of any note, but I’m slipping a tip to literary history to keep an eye on this one.”
— Douglas Houston, PhD (British poet, editor and reviewer, contributor to Blackwell's Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, and co-editor of the Oxford Good Fiction Guide). The full review is at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/lum_reviews.html.

Kalliope is an international forum of people who are trying to work out the mysteries and cryptograms evolving in the poem. Anyone may participate in Kalliope, except the author, Pip Wilson, 0407 249 335 (Curriculum Vitae at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/resume.html)

2005-02-17T14:13:00.000-06:00

ALL Americans Should be Ashamed

BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN — War and Peace

How The US Murdered a City
Fallujah: The Truth at Last

Doctor Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah last month.
This is a report of his visit.

02/17/05 - - IT WAS the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen-bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs.

A wave of hate had wiped out two-thirds of the town, destroying houses and mosques, schools and clinics. This was the terrible and frightening power of the US military assault.

The accounts I heard over the next few days will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Fallujah. But the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined.

[Emphasis added. -v]

CONTINUE

===0===0===0===

Legacy of Fallujah

This amateur video was shot on the first day of one of the biggest festivals in the Muslim year. But instead of buying new clothes for their children and visiting family and friends, the men of Falluja are digging graves.

Watch the video

2005-02-14T21:36:00.000-06:00

CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea!

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

BradBlog strikes again! — by noticing, and documenting, the use of different versions of the same photo in stories about nuclear plants in the U.S.' next 2 target countries.

I try to post stories here in their entirety to keep our faithful readers from having to click, click, click... but this one loses something in the translation. Please visit BradBlog to get the scoop!

Thanks to Citizens for Legitimate Government for alerting us to this story.

2005-02-13T21:20:00.000-06:00

"What are we doing giving drugs that cause hallucinations, confusion, psychotic behavior to people that carry weapons and hold secret clearances?"

THE MEDICINE CABINET — Negotiating a Peace Treaty in the War on Drugs

Guys in droopy drawers are busted for selling peace-and-love wacky weed, but guys in expensive suits get to sell this shit with impunity. Hell, not just impunity, they even get assistance! Something is VERY wrong in America!!

Worry Spreads Over GI Drug Side Effects

Sat Feb 12, 5:12 PM ET

By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer

SAN DIEGO - Some current or former troops sent to Iraq claim that Lariam, the commercial name for the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, has provoked disturbing and dangerous behavior. The families of some troops blame the drug for the suicides of their loved ones.

Though the evidence is largely anecdotal, their stories have raised alarm in Congress, and the Pentagon has stopped giving out a pill it probably never needed to give to tens of thousands of troops in Iraq in the first place.

As a volunteer firefighter, Georg-Andreas Pogany had seen disfigured bodies pulled from wrecked cars. But something very different happened when the Army interrogator saw the mangled remains of an Iraqi soldier.

He became panicked, disoriented and that night reached for both his loaded pistol and rifle as he thought he saw the enemy bursting into his room. Pogany asked his superiors for help; the Army packed him home to face charges of cowardice — the first such case since Vietnam. [There's that V-word again! –L.]

None of it made sense to Pogany until he learned more about the white pills the Army gave him each week to prevent malaria.

The drug's manufacturer warned of rare [yeah, right –L.] but severe side effects including paranoia and hallucinations. It became his defense: The pills made him snap. The Army dropped all charges, a spokesman later saying that Pogany "may have a medical problem that requires care and treatment." [...which he'll likely never get, considering the incredible shrinking V.A. budget! –L.]

"What are we doing giving drugs that cause hallucinations, confusion, psychotic behavior to people that carry weapons and hold secret clearances?" asked Pogany, 33, who is now seeking a medical discharge. "It doesn't pass the common-sense test."

The U.S. military, which developed the drug after the Vietnam War [There's that V-word again... and a couple of paragraphs from now, the article names a private sector manufacturer! HMMM... –L.], maintains that Lariam is safe and effective, though officials have expressed some concern and the military tells its pilots not to take Lariam.

In written guidance on the drug last year, the military urged commanders to send for a medical evaluation anyone who showed behavioral changes after taking the drug, "especially ... if they carry a weapon" — a description of nearly all U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Delay could put the service member or your unit at risk," the guide said.

Lariam is among the drugs recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [the same people who want you to take a thimerosal-preserved vaccine for every damn thing –L] for treatment and prevention of malaria, which kills about 1 million people worldwide each year. [How many people die from pharmafia products? ...often a slow, suffering death that, conveniently, doesn't immediately get related to the drugs. –L.] The drug's New Jersey-based manufacturer, Roche Pharmaceuticals, points out that more than 30 million people worldwide have used Lariam over 20 years.

"There is no reliable scientific evidence that Lariam is associated with violent acts or criminal conduct," Roche spokesman Terence Hurley wrote in an e-mailed response to questions.

Further blurring the issue, the side effects associated with Lariam closely mirror symptoms of stress disorders related to combat, making diagnosis difficult.

Still, the pill has dedicated critics who believe it's causing problems that are only beginning to be understood. A review by the Department of Veterans' Affairs found 34 articles in medical journals about patients who took Lariam and became paranoid, psychotic or behaved strangely.

Within the civilian medical community, faith in the drug is mixed among doctors who specialize in tropical diseases. Two said they routinely prescribe it to travelers and believe troop complaints are overblown. Another criticized the military's use of a drug with a known history of psychiatric complications.

Dr. G. Richard Olds, professor and chairman of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is among Lariam's critics.

"There's a strong recommendation not to use Lariam for those who depend on fine motor skills," he said. "Do you call firing an M-16 a fine motor skill? I do."

Doctors at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego have diagnosed a disorder in the region of the brain that controls balance in 18 service members who took Lariam, among them Pogany.

The Pentagon's records show the number of Lariam prescriptions issued to active-duty personnel nearly doubled from 18,704 in 2002 to 36,451 the next year, said Lt. Col. Stephen Phillips, a program director for deployment medicine. Since prescriptions issued at remote locations aren't counted, actual numbers may be higher.

Shortly after the March 2003 invasion, military doctors determined another malaria drug would do the job with fewer side effects. Around the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that doctors should give patients revised information, underscoring that some Lariam users experience severe anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, depression and think about killing themselves.

Troops were supposed to receive those kinds of warnings, but several current and former soldiers interviewed for this story said they did not — and that they continued taking the drug in Iraq as recently as 2004. In that year, Phillips said, the number of prescriptions fell to 12,363.

Concerns about those taking the drug weren't new. Some U.S. and Canadian forces deployed to Somalia in the early 1990s reported strange behavior. Lariam came up as a possible explanation after four Fort Bragg, N.C., soldiers killed their wives over 43 days in 2002. An Army probe ruled out Lariam, which was only prescribed to two of the soldiers.

Last year, the assistant defense secretary for health affairs ordered a review of the drug's use based on troop concerns. Many who complained came from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Carson, Colo. A base spokesman referred all questions to the Pentagon.

In a letter last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pressed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release results of the Pentagon's investigation. Feinstein has said there is enough evidence in the warnings from Lariam's maker "to make the causal link between the drug and many of the serious adverse events experienced by service members."

Military officials now concede Lariam wasn't needed in Iraq — and not just because, according to the Pentagon, no malaria infections have been reported among U.S. forces there.

Troops sent to Kuwait in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm were given another anti-malarial, chloroquine. Before the Iraq invasion, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center in Fort Detrick, Md., which is charged with evaluating medical risks, was concerned that a deadly malaria strain in the region might have become resistant to chloroquine. They relied on reports from the World Health Organization and U.S. Special Operations units sent to northern Iraq.

In a series of reports before the invasion, the intelligence center extrapolated that — without bug spray, mosquito nets or other preventive measures — about 1 in 2,000 troops could pick up a deadly chloroquine-resistant malaria strain, according to a spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Michael Birmingham.

In March 2003, U.S. Central Command recommended the use of Lariam or another drug, doxycycline, in high-risk areas in Iraq. The idea was "to err on the side of caution," rather than assume chloroquine would work, said Phillips of the Pentagon's deployment medicine program.

Some commanders chose Lariam because it could be taken once a week rather than daily like doxycycline, whose main side effects included sensitivity to sunlight.

By July 2003, the military had determined the chloroquine-resistant strain wasn't in Iraq. Chloroquine then became the drug of choice.

"That's the saddest part," said Laura Howell, a widow with two children after her husband killed himself in Colorado Springs, Colo. "There was never a need."

Howell blames Lariam for what happened a few weeks after her husband, a veteran Green Beret, returned home. In March 2004, Chief Warrant Officer William Howell went from "normal to murderous" in a half-hour, his wife said, and ended his life in his front yard with a bullet to the head.

Critics of the drug in organizations such as Lariam Action USA and the National Gulf War Resources Center believe Lariam is connected to the surge in military suicides in 2003, when 23 people deployed to Iraq and Kuwait took their lives. The suicide rate dropped after Lariam's use was halted in Iraq.

Former Army Spc. Don Dills and his wife say he grew anxious, paranoid and depressed after taking Lariam for seven months in Iraq. Dills, 22, says he "went crazy" on a family visit to Mississippi last year and wound up jailed for robbery. When Dills' wife called her husband's first sergeant about the arrest, he told her: Look into Lariam.

Dills, who like Pogany and Howell was based at Fort Carson, was kicked out of the military shortly after he wound up in a psychiatric ward for problems he and his wife contend are linked to Lariam. [Ah, so that's how they plan to "fit" these cases into the budget shortfall... just kick them to the curb so they don't qualify for V.A. benefits! –L.]

"The bottom line is they know what's going on," said Elicia Dills, 25, of Pueblo, Colo. "They just don't know how to deal with the can of worms they opened." [Yeah, they do... DENY, DENY, DENY! –L.]

___

On the Net:

deploymenthealth.mil

Lariam.com

Lariaminfo.org

2005-02-13T18:00:00.000-06:00

So THAT'S how they plan to save Social Security! Guilty until proven innocent...

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

Hunt for Fugitives Expands to Retirees

Sun Feb 13, 7:55 AM ET

By Sandy Bergo
Special to The (L.A.) Times

WASHINGTON — A law enforcement measure that has had mixed results in hunting down fugitives among the nation's sick and disabled is expanding this year to target the much larger ranks of retired Americans.

Thousands of unsuspecting retirees could lose their Social Security checks in the months ahead, some over false or unproven allegations, minor infractions or long-dormant arrest warrants.

The risk is a consequence of the Fugitive Felon Project, a little-known law-and-order measure created by Congress in 1996 to help apprehend suspects and to prevent fleeing criminals from using government benefits to elude arrest.

Project computers already match names on various welfare lists with names on felony warrants issued around the country. That screening process has led to thousands of arrests among recipients of disability checks alone, including 88 wanted on homicide charges.

But records and interviews also show that the computer dragnet frequently cut off federal benefits to the sick, poor and disabled who were neither fugitives nor felons. Many lacked financial and legal resources to get their benefits restored.

In one case, an Oregon man with a mental disorder was named on an arrest warrant for entering a rental car without permission at an airport parking lot in 1999. Four years later, computers found the record, and the man's federal disability payments stopped. The man committed suicide last year, before his benefits could be reinstated.

An Oregon woman with lung disease lost her monthly disability check and faced the loss of her government-subsidized oxygen supplies over a Nevada arrest warrant she didn't know existed.

And a Minnesota man lost his disability support because he once disrupted Conrail train service in Ohio. He had threatened to kill himself by jumping from a trestle in Toledo. He left the state unaware that he was named on a criminal warrant.

Others regarded as fugitives and denied benefits turned out to have been in nursing homes or wheelchairs and were physically unable to flee. [So, the old and disabled get to pay the price for law enforcement's failure (or refusal) to pursue them. –L.]

"They're not fleeing suspects; they're sitting ducks," said Bruce Schweiger, deputy public defender for Los Angeles County and a critic of the project.

In one case reviewed by The Times, a Georgia man had his disability checks cut off for four months over an unpaid 1978 motel bill in Seattle.

"I was guilty before proven," said James Brassell, a stroke victim now living in a Macon nursing home.

Police in the state of Washington were unwilling to extradite Brassell, records show. The old charges eventually were dropped after Georgia Legal Services workers petitioned West Coast prosecutors on behalf of the invalid.

Such examples were discounted as "the exception, not the rule," by Daniel MacLean, press secretary to U.S. Rep. Wally Herger (R-Chico), a champion of the Fugitive Felon Project.

Herger declined requests for an interview [Afraid of a few pointed questions? –L.] but defended the program in a statement, saying more should be done "to ensure taxpayer resources support those who obey the law, not flout it."

However, the government's statistics show a large share of the warrants involved allegations or infractions of such limited interest to law enforcement that police often were unwilling to arrest or extradite.

The computer does not distinguish between serious felony charges and allegations that may be dropped or routinely reduced to misdemeanors, for example.

During a four-year period ending in September, police reports showed that authorities declined to make arrests or to extradite almost as often as they took fugitives into custody — in about 48% of the cases with solid investigative leads. [A 48% "failure" rate? Sounds like a pharmafia statistic! But I digress... –L.]

Nonetheless, benefit payments routinely are suspended in all cases where warrants are found — about 78,000 since 1996 — even if police decline to make arrests. The actions commonly launch a cycle of inquiries and appeals.

An audit by the Social Security Administration's inspector general found that about one-third of those cut off from Supplemental Security Income payments for the blind, aged and disabled ended up getting their warrants resolved and benefits restored.

Citing that pattern, retired Social Security Inspector General James Huse questioned the program's inefficiencies even as he endorsed its goals.

"If all we do is identify people, suspend benefits — not arrest and then restore benefits — it doesn't make a whole lot of sense," he said in an interview.

The problem goes beyond inefficiency, critics argue.

"It ends up penalizing some of the most vulnerable people in our society under the guise of law enforcement," said Gerald McIntyre, a Los Angeles-based attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

Despite such doubts, this month the Fugitive Felon Project began scanning the 48 million names in the nation's Social Security register — a pool nearly seven times larger than the 6.8 million disability recipients screened in past years.

"I think it's going to be a bit of a shock when it hits a much wider, deeper population — all the retirees," said Marty Ford, co-chair of the Social Security task force at the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, in an interview.

Advocates for people with disabilities, while generally supporting efforts to locate fugitives, are critical that the project cuts off benefits so broadly.

"Why don't they just use the Social Security database to go out and pick up the people they want [to arrest], and leave the other people alone?" said Bill Lienhard, director of the mental health project for the Urban Justice Center, a legal advocacy organization based in New York.

Peter Blute, a father of the Fugitive Felon Project, is unmoved by examples of hardships caused by the legislation. The onetime Republican congressman from Massachusetts, who sponsored the original bill, insisted that benefits be stopped to everyone wanted on a felony warrant, even those whom police refused to arrest.

Blute, now a radio talk show host in Boston, said in an interview that lost benefits could be considered a penalty and a fitting substitute for arrest. [WTF?! In some of these cases, less than one month's worth of benefits would cover the entire original offense! He thinks it's appropriate to PERMANENTLY deprive them of promised income? –L.]

Such action "puts pressure on that person" to go back into court and resolve any warrants, Blute said.

"I'm fine with that," he said.
[I bet he is... Mr. I've-Got-Plenty-Of-Money! Retirees, especially, have often moved to lower-cost states out of necessity, and due to financial (and, often, health) reasons, are not able to return to the "scene of the crime", as it were. –L.]

Among those penalized by loss of disability benefits was Edith Hull, 56, who lives in Oregon. When her $358 monthly SSI disability check stopped, she was surprised to learn that she was considered a fugitive from justice.

The woman, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disorder, also was threatened with loss of Medicaid benefits essential to pay for oxygen equipment.

The problem was a 7-year-old arrest warrant from Nevada that Hull said she knew nothing about.

"I obviously wasn't fleeing. I had a driver's license for all these years. It's not like I was hiding," Hull said.

With help from Legal Aid, she found that in 1995, three months after she and her husband had moved to Oregon, a warrant had been issued. Her former Nevada employer alleged that she improperly cashed a $962 check. She said she was owed the money.

Hull and her husband, a cancer patient, borrowed heavily from relatives to pay for housing and other bills while trying to resolve the legal tangle. Without her mother-in-law, Hull said, "we wouldn't even have a car to live in."

Meanwhile, authorities in Sparks, Nev., declined to spend the $3,800 they said it would cost to extradite her.

"Considering the age of the case and the relatively small amount of money" allegedly stolen, a case like Hull's isn't worth the expense, said Washoe County deputy district attorney Mike Mahaffey.

Hull couldn't afford a trip back to Nevada to clear the warrant, according to Legal Aid attorney James Kocher.

"One of the things about these cases is that once you're cut off, your ability to do anything about the warrant is compromised," Kocher said.

Last June, a federal judge ruled that Hull was not a fugitive and ordered her disability payments resumed.

Still, Hull complained, for 2½ years while her benefits were suspended she was treated as "guilty until proven innocent."

The Fugitive Felon Project grew out of congressional concern that federal funds might be helping criminals hide and avoid capture. The computer screening project was incorporated into the landmark welfare reform bill of 1996.

Four years later, Inspector General Huse estimated that $39 million in Social Security checks each year was going to people named on arrest warrants, and he recommended amending the law to permit screening lists of retirees as well.

He said in a report that benefits checks otherwise "may finance a potentially dangerous fugitive's flight from justice."

Rep. Herger helped lead the project's expansion.

"Our laws should help bring fugitives to justice, not subsidize their flights from justice," Herger said on the House floor before the expansion was approved.

Herger resisted pressure from Senate negotiators to ease the rules by limiting benefit cutoffs to people targeted for arrest.

He and other backers on the House side felt the tougher rules provided appropriate "pressure to come clean" on people with lingering legal problems, according to a House Ways and Means Committee aide.

But critics of the project won a partial victory.

A compromise now in effect allows Social Security recipients who lose their benefits to challenge the action if they can argue that there is good cause to disregard the warrants. The burden remains on the retiree, however, to reverse a benefit cutoff order.

As a result, public defender Schweiger said, once the project is in full operation, he expects to get calls "from hysterical people in desperate need" of resolving warrants.

But, he said, "it will take time, and time is something [they] don't have — because their income is cut off."

Many of the poor, sick and elderly who dominate the welfare lists and, therefore, the resulting warrant matches, are ill-equipped to challenge bureaucratic and legal obstacles when their benefits are stopped.

Ford of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities told Congress that the group was "concerned for people with mental impairments" who may not be aware of violations or understand their legal status.

Ford cited the case, also reviewed by The Times, of a troubled Minnesota man wanted in Ohio for stopping rail traffic for two hours while he contemplated jumping to his death from a Toledo bridge.

Police never served a warrant on Eddy Haverstock of Duluth. Once negotiators and emergency crews talked him down from the train trestle, he was hospitalized for psychiatric care. He later moved back to Minnesota, unaware he was wanted in Ohio.

"I got on top and didn't care," said Haverstock, recalling that night on the bridge in July 2000.

"I had no idea that I did something wrong. I thought I was doing something to myself."

In Minnesota, Haverstock was hospitalized again for suicidal episodes and diagnosed with major depression. But by February 2002, he was responding to outpatient psychiatric treatment and had enrolled in a job training program.

That's when he received his termination notice. The computer had found the Ohio warrant, and Haverstock's disability payments stopped.

"He obviously wasn't running away," said Legal Aid attorney Gwen Updegraff.

An administrative law judge ruled that Haverstock was not fleeing from Ohio and that police had chosen not to arrest or extradite him. After eight months and lost benefits of $3,573, Haverstock's disability checks were ordered reinstated and he was repaid the withheld money.

It is fairly common for police to decline to arrest or extradite despite fresh leads from the Fugitive Felon Project on a person's whereabouts.

In 2004, Fugitive Felon computers sorted through millions of warrants.

But police with limited resources routinely prioritize whom to arrest and prosecute, based on such factors as the seriousness of the crime and what it would cost to transport the suspect.

From May 2000 through September 2004, police reported arresting 17,640 suspects located by the project computers. However, police declined to arrest another 16,240, records show.

Of those suspects taken into custody in the last four years, according to Patrick P. O'Connell Jr., inspector general of the Social Security Administration, 88 were seized in homicide cases and 248 in sexual assault cases.

One of those was Aaron Anderson, 65, wanted in the 2003 shooting death of a Florida preacher.

Anderson moved around the country evading authorities for two months, but kept returning to bank ATMs to withdraw direct-deposited SSI funds.

The wanted man eventually notified Social Security that he was moving to the West Coast and provided a new address — a San Diego homeless shelter. Anderson was arrested and is awaiting trial.

Statistics O'Carroll provided to The Times show that fewer than 10% of warrants involve violent crimes. Among the most common are warrants for probation violations.

A typical case is that of a Sun Valley, Nev., man with heart trouble and unresolved legal problems.

Gene Schuller, 62, a former Marine, is fighting to keep his $997-a-month Social Security disability check and access to medical care at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Reno, all threatened because of an old warrant in California.

Schuller did time in Santa Cruz County Jail for multiple drunk driving arrests in the early 1990s, and was released on probation.

"I was a mess," he conceded, saying the violations occurred when he was going through a divorce. Schuller thought he long ago paid the price and did his time.

According to court records, however, Schuller failed to stay in touch with his probation officer, and a warrant was issued in 1994. Because of that, an order cutting off his benefits is pending a decade later.

"I don't know why they don't just arrest me here and extradite me if it's that important," Schuller said. "I'm not hiding from anyone."

Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said denial of benefits in such cases was a penalty "out of proportion" to minor probation violations.

"To deny somebody Social Security benefits is to deny them their livelihood," Travis said. "For a lot of people, this is literally life and death."

Despite the high incidence of declined arrests, O'Carroll said law enforcement agencies were grateful for the leads that the computer matching project provided.

During an interview in his Baltimore office, he leafed through pages of messages from police agencies, reading excerpts:

"Deeply appreciate your assistance."

"Good information — keep it coming."

"Subject arrested outside parents' residence in a lawn chair drinking a beer."

The expanded screening program is expected to save federal dollars. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the program would reduce retirement payments by $588 million over the next 10 years.

CBO analysts also predict that some people fearful of being caught in the Fugitive Felon dragnet will stop using their Medicare benefits. That could save the government another $199 million, the analysts say.

Fritz Streckewald, chief of Social Security Administration's benefits policy, said the savings would have a negligible effect on the trust fund.

"I mean, it's not a small number, but in terms of the trust fund solvency, it's a very tiny fraction," Streckewald said. [What they're admitting is a tiny fraction. I suspect this is similar to corporate annual reports... the real truth is between the lines! –L.]

Debate focuses more on the project's application than on its economics.

Lienhard of the Urban Justice Center calls the expanded Fugitive Felon Project an "absurd and cruel policy" that he predicts "will push more of our neediest elderly and disabled citizens into homelessness and crime."

But Inspector General O'Carroll said he was satisfied with the project.

"The intent of Congress was to make America safer, to identify people that have warrants outstanding [so] that we can provide law enforcement information that will help find them.

"I think that we've accomplished that," O'Carroll said.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

[What I don't see here is almost as disturbing as what I do see.

In a program this big, there must be some cases of misidentification. It's bad enough when the warrant does actually "belong" to the cut-off beneficiary; it will be absolute hell on earth for someone trying to prove they've got the wrong person!

Also, I see no mention of the "finality" of the benefit restoration process. Is there a requirement that the warrant be withdrawn? If not, it is still around, waiting to creep into the "suspect's" wallet again when they least suspect it.

This reverse-Robin-Hood trend has gone toooooo far.

–L.]

2005-02-11T13:22:00.000-06:00

America is officially a theocracy

POLITICS OF FEAR VS. DEMOCRACY — The Campaign to Oust Bush and the Progressive Movement to Regain our Country

I saw the following article cited on a mailing list... and it clarified for me why there was ZERO outcry a few months back when Chris Matthews openly referred to Bush's crowd as "Armageddonists". It never occurred to me that they would see it as a compliment rather than an insult!

Not exactly being a Biblical scholar myself, following the article I have also included quotes from a couple of replies on the list, citing instances where the theocracy has clearly picked and chosen which verses to heed... and why Bill Moyers knows whereof he speaks on the subject!

No Tomorrow

by Bill Moyers

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true — one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

That's right — the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed — an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer — "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed — even hastened — as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election — 231 legislators in total and more since the election — are backed by the religious right.

Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture?

And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, "America's Providential History." You'll find there these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." [WHAT kind of high school was using a RELIGIOUS text as a history book?! –L.]

No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that — it's just that I read the news and connect the dots.

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:

That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand whether actions might damage natural resources.
That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.
That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public. That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies. That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million — $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council — to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer — pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free — not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma — the science of the heart... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers was host until recently of the weekly public affairs series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS. This article is adapted from AlterNet, where it first appeared. The text is taken from Moyers' remarks upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

From replies to the posting of this article:

One list member pointed out that Bill Moyers was once a Southern Baptist minister (which I believe I have heard elsewhere before)... therefore he's not just an average Joe blowing smoke about Biblical references.
Another reply cited the following Biblical verse, which has been conveniently overlooked by our Armageddonist friends:

"The nations were angry and your wrath has come: The time to judge the dead and reward your servants, the prophets and the saints; those who fear your name, small and great. And for destroying those who destroy the earth." Revelation 11:18

2005-02-11T11:29:00.000-06:00

What if you shred your "recycling", but your bank doesn't?

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE — Cover your assets!

Recycled Bank Accounts

COLMA, Calif., Jan. 14, 2005

Dennis Yu noticed strange checks in his statement; they had his number, but another person's name. (Photo: CBS)

(CBS) Balancing his bank account, Dennis Yu found a half-dozen checks he knew he didn't write, CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone reports.

"I saw, well, what's this? I don't buy ladies clothing. I didn't go to Home Depot. I don't have a Sprint account," Yu said.

He saw a check with his number on it, but somebody else's signature.

"I couldn't believe it," Yu said. "I thought it was a processing error."

The problem: his Bank of America account number recently belonged to somebody else.

"Eventually I discovered that B of A recycles checking account numbers," he said

Bank of America wouldn't comment on camera but did confirm that when an account is closed its number may be reused. Other banks do the same. Industry officials say the banks are running out of numbers.

"As the number of checking accounts increases we will see the use or the reuse of those checking account numbers increase as well," said Peter Soraparu, executive director of backing industry group BAI.

But do the math: there seem to be plenty of numbers available.

"If we had nine digit numbers, there would be 10 to the 9th equals one billion possibilities," says math professor David Meredith of San Francisco State University.

However, Meredith explains, account numbers are actually like secret codes and that greatly limits the numbers banks can use. So they have to throw out a lot of numbers to make sure the numbers are secure in some sense.

Banks advise consumers to do what Dennis Yu did: review your account often. But account number recycling still leaves plenty of room for confusion.

Finally, consider the plight of the San Francisco man whose says his account was frozen because the bank told him he was dead. He got his money only when the bank concluded the deceased was the previous holder of his recycled account number.

2005-02-10T21:08:00.000-06:00

Armed services having trouble meeting recruiting goals... what a shock!

BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN — War and Peace

Marines Miss Recruiting Goal First Time In 10 Years
January's Total Recruits 84 Short

POSTED: 12:27 pm EST February 4, 2005
UPDATED: 12:58 pm EST February 4, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps fell slightly short of its recruiting goal in January, the first month that has happened in nearly a decade, amid parents' concerns about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the Marines remain on target to meet their full-year goal [HUH? –L.], officials said Thursday the wars have made the parents of potential recruits much harder sells.

"It's a natural reaction in a time of war that a mother and father are going to have concerns, and so they are putting on the brakes," said Maj. Dave Griesmer, spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

The 17-year-olds in high school who are a prime target of Marine recruiters [don't those words make ya shiver? –L.] cannot sign up without parental approval. Griesmer said that increasingly, parents are making their sons and daughters wait until they are 18, but that has not stopped recruiters from putting in extra effort.

"What we're doing is working with the parents more," he said. "Whereas before it may have taken one visit and they would accept, now it may take a recruiter two, three, four" visits.

The Army is having its own challenges on the recruiting front, although Gen. Richard Cody, the vice chief of staff, told Congress on Wednesday that the Army would meet its full-year goal of signing up 80,000 recruits. The last time the Army missed its full-year goal was 1999.

The Army National Guard and Army Reserve, on the other hand, have fallen behind in recent months. The Guard missed its full-year goal in 2004 for the first time since 1994.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the only factors working against recruiters. They also compete against private-sector opportunities and college aspirations of young Americans.

And, as casualties in Iraq continue to mount, parents have been become warier, analysts say.

"You have to work harder to get them to understand that this is a not a death warrant" for the son or daughter, said Bernard Trainor, a retired three-star Marine general who is writing a book about the Iraq war. [The lack of armor and support on the front, and cuts to already disgustingly low veterans' benefits, wouldn't exactly inspire me to hand my kid over to you, either! –L.]

The Marines' losses in Iraq have been especially heavy in recent months. In November, when they led an offensive against insurgent holdouts in the city of Fallujah, the Marines had 80 men killed in action — by far the most for any month since the war began in March 2003.

Over the final five months of 2004, the Marines, who contribute about one-quarter of the total U.S. forces in Iraq, suffered 49 percent of the combat deaths, according to Pentagon statistics. In January, 30 Marines were killed when their CH-53E helicopter crashed in western Iraq.

That is a major change from the Marines' experience earlier in the war. For eight months, from July 2003 through February 2004, no Marines were killed in action in Iraq. Only one was killed in May and one in June 2003.

"We acknowledge this is a very challenging time for recruiting, yet we continue to stay on track to meet our annual goals," Griesmer said, adding that this is the first time since the all-volunteer military was established in 1973 that the nation has been in a period of prolonged war.

Recruiting typically is most difficult in the February-May period, when most high school seniors have already made up their mind about what they will do after graduation, Griesmer said.

In January, the Marines signed up 84 fewer recruits than their target of 3,270, Griesmer said. That was the first time they missed a monthly goal since July 1995, which also was the last year the Marines missed their full-year goal.

Griesmer stressed that although the number of new enlistment contracts in January was short of the goal, the Marines managed to make the January quota of recruits sent to boot camp because some had been signed up previously.

For the October-January period, the Marines sent 10,222 new recruits to boot camp, or 184 more than their target number, Griesmer said.

2005-02-10T20:27:00.000-06:00

We're recording this one before it falls down the Memory Hole

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

Rice: Attack On Iran 'Not On Agenda'
New Secretary Of State Makes First Overseas Trip

POSTED: 10:15 am EST February 4, 2005
UPDATED: 10:36 am EST February 4, 2005

LONDON -- An attack on Iran "is simply not on the agenda," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her first overseas visit.

Rice said in London that there's still room for diplomacy when it comes to dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions. But while she told reporters in London that there are no plans to go to war with Iran, Rice wouldn't say whether the United States supports a change of government in Iran.

She said there is broad international agreement that Iran can't be allowed to use a civilian nuclear power project as cover for a weapons program. Rice also called Tehran's human-rights record "abysmal."

Earlier, she met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was her first meeting with a foreign leader since taking over the State Department from Colin Powell.

Rice will return to London next month for a conference to help the Palestinian government build democratic institutions.

2005-02-10T19:12:00.000-06:00

Apparently a driver's license is not sufficient ID in Arizona

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom,

There's a fine line between visionary proactivity and downright buttinski-ness!

I posted recently about a fellow who spent a totally unnecessary 7 weeks in jail due to having his identity stolen... BUT, I don't think this approach is the solution to that problem. There was ample information already on file to absolve that victim, IF it had only been utilized! Let's not start crossing a privacy line to collect additional info when we're not making good use of what we already have, eh?

Arizona Sheriff Orders Fingerprinting When Traffic Citations Issued

BETH DeFALCO
Associated Press
Updated: February 4th, 2005 01:53:02 PM

PHOENIX (AP) -- Pulling out a license, registration and proof of insurance may no longer be enough for some Phoenix-area drivers who are being ticketed.

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies began Thursday asking all drivers who receive a criminal traffic citation to allow themselves to be fingerprinted. It's part of a new pilot program Sheriff Joe Arpaio says will help fight identity theft in Phoenix, which has the highest per-capita rate of identity theft complaints in the country, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2003, there were 6,832 cases of identity theft statewide, or 122.4 per 100,000 residents. The Phoenix area had 5,042 of those cases, or 155 per 100,000 residents. Statistics for 2004 were expected to be similar, according to the FTC.

"It's a huge problem and law enforcement needs to be proactive in fighting it,'' Arpaio said.

Deputies started carrying inkless fingerprint pads and were asking for a thumbprint from drivers given criminal tickets — such as those issued for excessive speeding. Most moving violations are civil offenses.

Arpaio said the program was being tested in communities southwest of Phoenix — a socially and racially diverse 5,000-square-mile area patrolled by sheriff's deputies. [Code language? –L.]

Arpaio said the new procedure is designed to ensure the person who committed the offense is the same person being charged with a crime in the courtroom. Fingerprinting would help identify people with stolen or falsified driver's licenses, he said.

Arpaio stressed that giving fingerprints would be voluntary, but constitutional law experts and civil rights groups were quick to point out problems with the program. Many doubted whether the public would understand that they weren't required to give their fingerprint.

"It won't be completely voluntary,'' said Paul Bender, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University. "Most people don't realize they have a choice. The police likely won't say 'Would you like to give us your fingerprints even though you don't really have to?'"

Bender also questioned how fingerprints would ultimately be used. Arpaio said the prints would be randomly entered into a fingerprint ID system to cross check them with identity theft claims and other crimes.

"The sheriff doesn't have the right to make that extra intrusion on someone's privacy under the state constitution,'' Bender said, adding that he doesn't think Arpaio should be undertaking such a pilot program without a mandate from the Legislature.

Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director for the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the fingerprint program "an example of putting the cart before the horse.''

The chapter was looking into whether the program infringes on privacy rights, Eisenberg said.

"The standard is not whether we have anything to hide,'' she said, "It's 'Does the government have a right to invade our privacy?'''

Scottsdale Justice of the Peace Michael Reagan — who is not a lawyer — said he thinks giving over a thumbprint is a small inconvenience compared to the hassle of trying to prove identity theft.

"I'm seeing more and more people with warrants issued for their arrest and they have no idea what it's about,'' he said.

"We then have to have an identity hearing, which forces me to become a handwriting expert, and I'm not qualified,'' Reagan said. "If you had something to fall back on, it would help get them out of this hole that someone else dug for them.''

2005-02-09T21:02:00.000-06:00

If they keep up like this, there won't be a "homeland" left to secure!

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to Take to Make a Difference

From the Natural Resources Defense Council:

NRDC's EARTH ACTION:
The Bulletin for Environmental Activists

February 9, 2005
========================================

Urgent alert — House vote scheduled for tomorrow!
Tell your representative not to let the Department of Homeland Security disregard health, safety and environmental laws
Take action now at nrdcaction.org.

======================================================

Tomorrow, February 10th, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that would grant the Department of Homeland Security sweeping new authority to waive all federal and state laws, including those that protect public health, worker safety and the environment, for the construction of roads, walls, fences and other barriers along U.S. borders. Under this sweeping waiver, the DHS would be free to undertake large construction projects without oversight, accountability, or legal constraints anywhere along our borders — from the densely populated border communities in California, Texas and Washington, to the remote wilderness of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, to the pristine islands and waters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.

Federal and state laws that protect citizens from criminal activities and negligent business practices, as well as those that ensure civil rights, public health and safety and environmental protections, could be disregarded. Long-standing laws like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act could be ignored, putting communities at risk for increased pollution. Additionally, our border areas contain an enormous amount of protected federal lands, including national parks, wildlife refuges, forests and wilderness areas, that could be subject to this provision.

Border security can be ensured while shielding the public and the environment from harm and, indeed, the DHS has not demonstrated a need to waive any laws. In fact, not a single congressional hearing has illustrated a need for these broad exemptions. Never before has any federal agency been provided with such a breadth of unjustified exemptions from our laws.

== What to do ==
Send a message right now urging your representative to oppose any attempts to allow the Department of Homeland Security to waive environmental, health and safety laws.

== Contact information ==
You can email or fax your representative directly from NRDC's Earth Action
Center. If you prefer to call your representative, the Capitol switchboard number is 202-224-3121 (or toll-free at 800-839-5276).

Please also forward this message to your friends and co-workers and urge them to contact their representatives as well.

Thank you!

2005-02-08T19:10:00.000-06:00

A computer that comes bundled with MONEY? I want one! (or maybe not...)

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

Received by email, author unknown:

Who's on First? 2004 Version

If Abbott and Costello were still around today, their famous sketch "Who's on first?" might have turned out something like this....

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT . .

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look in the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What have you got?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, lets just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".

COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight answers. OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?

ABBOTT: Yes, you want Real One.

COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: If it's a long movie I also want to see reel 2, 3 & 4. Can I watch them?

ABBOTT: Of course.

COSTELLO: Great! With what?

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: OK, I'm at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?

ABBOTT: You click the blue "1".

COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?

ABBOTT: The blue "1".

COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue w?

ABBOTT: The blue "1" is Real One and the blue "W" is Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there's three words in "office for windows"!

ABBOTT: No, just one. But it's the most popular Word in the world.

COSTELLO: It is?

ABBOTT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren't many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.

COSTELLO: And that word is real one?

ABBOTT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn't even part of Office.

COSTELLO: STOP! Don't start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer

COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

A FEW DAYS LATER . .

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on "START"..........

2005-02-08T09:35:00.000-06:00

An apt metaphor for this "morality"-obsessed administration

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

From Quote-a-Day:

Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered. Hence, the problem the Bush administration has in dealing with Iran is that having been so wrong about Iraq, who can believe it now?

~ Charley Reese, Conservative columnist

2005-02-07T13:28:00.000-06:00

Granny D silenced? Say it ain't so!

C'MON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BROTHER! — Cultural Creativity, Pop Culture, Art Culture, Lifestyle

From Will Pitt FYI:

The email came down the wire last week: Doris ‘Granny D’ Haddock was going into the hospital for throat surgery. For someone her age – 95 years old last month – surgery can be as dangerous as the medical problem necessitating it. As of this morning, I have heard nothing about her condition, which I am hoping is a good thing. Yet according to an Associated Press Story from last week, the surgery may cost Granny D her voice.

[Click through to FYI for a brief Granny D bio and selected quotes; and the AP story includes a link to her latest project. –L.]

2005-02-03T14:37:00.000-06:00

Speaking of hot air . . . .

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

[The State of the Union speech shouldn't have been surprising for its total lack of content and pure jabberwocky jibberish. We should be used to it by now. Here's a late January example that should have warmed us up. -v]

Bush's Unprecedented Attack on African Americans
By James Ridgeway, Mondo Washington, The Village Voice

"We've got to shed ourselves of bigotry if we expect to lead by example," Bush said. "And I'll do the very best I can, as president, to make sure the promise—and I believe in the promise of America—is available for everybody."

WASHINGTON, D.C. — For four years Bush didn't meet with the Congressional Black Caucus and paid no heed to African Americans, except, of course, to repeat the Republican mantra of how terribly concerned we all are and how we just want to include you under the big Republican tent. But yesterday, reinvigorated by his election mandate, Bush called the caucus and fed them a line of bullshit.

Arguing that his "reforms," ranging from education to Social Security, will help blacks, he offered an insulting cliché: "Civil rights is a good education. Civil rights is opportunity. Civil rights is home ownership. Civil rights is owning your own business. Civil rights is making sure all aspects of our society are open for everybody." When you get past the rhetoric, Bush's ownership society amounts to an unprecedented attack on black people.

Social Security reform that turns over substantial hunks of a person's account to Wall Street, where the vicissitudes of the marketplace can yo-yo it up and down, is little help to anyone, let alone blacks. The only source of retirement for 40 percent of all African Americans is Social Security, according to Melvin Watt, a Democratic rep from North Carolina. Without it, poverty rates among blacks would double.

The American Journal of Public Health reported in December that 886,000 more blacks died between 1991 and 2000 than would have died had equal health care been provided. The health of minorities, many of whom live in poor industrial brownfields, can only get worse if Congress passes Bush's "Clear Skies" clean-air legislation, which promises a 70 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury emissions by 2018.

Members of the Black Caucus point out that Bush wants to cut Medicaid. "That would be disastrous for my state," said Tennessee congressman Harold E. Ford, Jr. Blacks are particularly hard-hit in rural areas, which face more cuts in social-welfare programs and dwindling access to health care.

According to Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, insurance companies don't want to insure doctors in medically underserved areas. "And when you tie in blacks in [rural] areas, the disparities go off the charts."

"We've got to shed ourselves of bigotry if we expect to lead by example," Bush said. "And I'll do the very best I can, as president, to make sure the promise—and I believe in the promise of America—is available for everybody."

[Emphasis added. -v]

SOURCE

2005-01-31T17:44:00.000-06:00

Who is full of more "hot air"? Your vote is needed!

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to Take to Make a Difference

From New Heaven New Earth news:

THE FLAT EARTH AWARD

Remember when scientists were attacked for believing that the earth was round? That same denial of scientific fact is now plaguing the world's understanding of global warming.

The Flat Earth Award was created as a humorous effort to highlight the denial of global warming by prominent public figures. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions are altering the global climate, some deniers remain. They are trying to convince the public and our government that a massive peer-reviewed international research project conducted by thousands of scientific researchers is bogus!

The nominees for the award — Michael Crichton, Rush Limbaugh and Fred Singer — are using their influence to sway the public about the growing scientific consensus that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels. International consensus continues to increase, yet these naysayers remain, misleading the public. Vote for the nominee you think has done the best job of confusing the American people at:

http://www.flatearthaward.org

Current voting results:

Michael Crichton = 48%
Rush Limbaugh = 30%
Fred Singer = 22%
Total votes: = 384

2005-01-29T20:52:00.000-06:00

Another hazard of identity theft: indefinite detention by incompetent cops

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

I'd like to believe this is an isolated incident... but these days you just never know. (Especially when Texas and Florida are involved!)

There is no excuse for what happened to this man! Verifying the identity of a prisoner is of utmost importance. If you have the wrong wo/man, then the "right" wo/man is still out there, likely victimizing even more people.

Hector should sue the $hit out of everybody involved... although no amount of money can repair the damage to his family, or replace the events he missed.

Stolen-ID nightmare finally ends
A man spent almost 8 weeks in an Osceola jail. A photo could have freed him sooner.

By Willoughby Mariano | Sentinel Staff Writer
407-931-5944

Posted January 29, 2005

KISSIMMEE -- After nearly eight weeks in jail, Hector Omy Collazo pleaded with deputies one last time: Let me go. You have the wrong man. A criminal stole my identity.

The Kissimmee man had made the demand dozens of times since Dec. 4, when police arrested Collazo outside his grandmother's house on a Texas warrant for felony forgery. He has never been to Texas, he insisted. Collazo has proof he was in Orlando on the date of the crime.

No one checked out his story until Thursday at Orlando International Airport, just as a Harris County, Texas, sheriff's official was about to escort him onto a flight to Houston. Collazo said that didn't happen until the Orlando Sentinel began making inquiries. After faxing Collazo's photograph to Harris County authorities, the cop handed over $45 for cab fare and told him he was free to go.

Now Collazo, 23, and his family are asking why authorities allowed him to spend 54 days in jail when deputies, jailers and other authorities in Texas and Florida had access to a photograph and other identifying information that clearly show they were holding the wrong man.

"All I was asking for over and over again was for them [authorities] to fax my picture over to Texas," Collazo said. "All it takes is five minutes."

The Osceola County Sheriff's Office is looking into the matter to see whether authorities here followed proper procedures.

"I've extradited people all over the United States. I've never heard anything like this," said Lt. Mark Thompson, who took over as head of the sheriff's extradition office Jan. 4.

The local agency that arrests a fugitive is responsible for verifying his identity, said Scott Haywood, a spokesman for the Texas Governor's Office, which asked Florida officials to extradite Collazo. Texas' Office of the Governor sends information such as fingerprints or mug shots to verify the identity of a suspected fugitive as part of its extradition request. A photograph was sent to Osceola, but it is unclear if prints arrived. If the request meets state requirements, Florida's Governor's Office allows the extradition.

The man who remains at large called himself Hector Omy Collazo of Houston and listed his birth date as Nov. 10, 1981 — Collazo's birthday, said Gabriel Vasquez, an investigator for the Harris County District Attorney's Office. He [the suspect] is a 5-foot-6-inch [dark skinned –L.] black man who weighs 120 pounds, according to Vasquez.

Prosecutors think he is an undocumented immigrant who forged someone else's name on a federal immigration document Aug. 8, 2003, so he could keep his job, Vasquez said. His real name is not known. Collazo said he lost his Social Security card in 1998 in Puerto Rico; that's how he thinks someone was able to steal his identity. [Yet another strike against the proposed national ID cards! If this much damage can be done with just a name and SSN, imagine the grief that could be generated by the virtual dossier — likely including biometrics — that a national ID card would be. –L.]

Collazo of Kissimmee is a 5-foot-5-inch, 185-pound, light-skinned Hispanic. On the date of the crime, he was at Hogar Crea, a drug-treatment program in Orlando.

"The residential program is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There's no way possible he was in Texas," said Joseph Hammerl, assistant to the program's executive director.

Soon after Collazo arrived from Carolina, Puerto Rico, in 2003 to join his mother and grandmother, he entered the rehab center to kick a drug habit. After Collazo left treatment in late fall 2003, he found work at Walt Disney World in housekeeping. He moved in with his grandmother, Carmen Jimenez, 60, who has cancer, to care for her and help pay her bills.

Collazo's life was improving. Then, late on the night of Dec. 4, he was walking outside his grandmother's house smoking a cigarette. A Kissimmee police car approached.

"Are you Louis?" Collazo recalls an officer hollering.

"No, I'm Hector," he replied and showed his drivers license. He was taken into custody when a computer check showed a person with his name was wanted in Texas.

Collazo thought he would straighten everything out at the jail and that he would be back at his Disney housekeeping job the next morning.

"I said 'Man, this can't be true,' " Collazo said during a jailhouse interview Thursday.

Instead, he entered a complex extradition system involving multiple agencies in Texas and Florida.

An arresting officer must verify the identity of a suspected fugitive, Thompson said. Harris County officials sent a description of the fugitive to the Osceola Sheriff's Office, which handles extradition issues in the county. A judge can assign the suspect a public defender to help straighten out a mistaken-identity issue.

In January, the Osceola County Jail obtained a copy of the fugitive's mug shot, which clearly does not match that of Collazo, according to jail documents. Jail officials said they play no part in verifying the identity of their inmates. [WTF?! –L.]

"I don't know if it's for us to determine the identity. We go by the paperwork we have," said the Osceola County Jail's interim director, Joyce Peach.

After Collazo went to jail, his family fell into disarray.

Collazo's family retained an attorney in Texas who was unable to sort out the mess.

"We're a good family. We're a close family," Sandra Rivera, 40, Collazo's mother, said Friday. "What happens to one, happens to all."

Rivera took days off from work at an assisted-living facility in Hunter's Creek to fight for her son's release. [That's not exactly lucrative work... you know she needed every penny of the money she had to give up! –L.]

There was no one to care for Collazo's grandmother, Jimenez, so his cousin, Jacob De La Cruz, 17, had to help out. But he couldn't pay the bills as Collazo had done. Jimenez filed for bankruptcy in early January, Collazo said.

Collazo also missed a trip to Jamaica with his brother, a soldier serving in Iraq who was on leave during the holidays.

Now Collazo and his family must put their lives back together. This morning, he plans to ask for his old job back. [C'mon, Disney, do the decent thing for once. Or, maybe the guy will get lucky and get offered something better! –L.]

"All it took is a fax," Collazo said of the mistaken-identity case. "They've spent all this money to jail an innocent person rather than send a fax."

2005-01-29T18:30:00.000-06:00

Another instance of soldiers being billed for their services

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

From MSNBC Citizen Reporter:

My son is an army reservist and he returned from Iraq last March. He was ordered to attend one of the inauguration parties.

I am prior service myself, so I felt very proud that he was chosen from all the people in his group. This particular gathering was to honor many of the soldiers and their families who have been to Iraq.

A group of five drove down from Long Island to Washington last Monday morning, and they were to return Tuesday evening.

Around midnight on Tuesday, my son returned home, looking tired from the drive. The next morning, he told me he didn’t have a good time because they basically stood around and watched the president say a few words. He said there was no food provided for them, so they ate after the event at some fast-food restaurant. They spend all this money for this celebration and can't feed my son? He stayed at a local military base with the rest of the group, but they made him pay for the room.

Apparently, there was a mix-up, or they were short a room.

I don't care what the problem was, he was told to go, this was not an option, orders were cut for this excursion! I am disgusted and horrified that he had to even show his wallet for this event.

In addition to serving as a medic in the 310 MP Batallion, my son is a full-time student and works part-time to fill in the gaps the military doesn't. He takes his responsibility as a soldier very seriously.

I am angered at the way he has been treated. People need to know how some heroes are being treated by their own government.

—Rebecca Lawson, West Babylon, N.Y.

[Bold emphasis, as usual, was mine.

This is just wrong on so many levels... where do I begin??

It's disgusting enough to order citizen soldiers to make an appearance (presumably for PR/photo-op) at an essentially political event... but just beyond words to expect them to PAY for the privilege!!

I wonder if they intentionally chose soldiers who were within driving distance? If not, I wonder if those farther away were expected to pay their own plane fare! It's bad enough that these guys had to drive 5 or 6 hours at $2/gallon...

As Citizens for Legitimate Government so astutely observed, it ain't likely that the representatives of Halliburton or any other outpost of plutocracy had to provide their own food! (Which begs the question, what the hell did the high cost of this party buy?)

The whole situation also begs the question, WHY did soldiers have to be ORDERED to attend?! If everything was as it should be, soldiers should be HONORED to be invited to a presidential event; they should have to hold a lottery to accommodate a number of requests that would greatly exceed the number of spaces. However, since we know things are NOT as they should be, Der Fuhrer has to order the soldiers to show up and make him look good.

I never cease to be amazed by the man's gall.

–L.]

2005-01-27T11:46:00.000-06:00

One of America’s Greatest Failures

THE MEDICINE CABINET — Negotiating a Peace Treaty in the War on Drugs

The War on Drugs: One of America’s Greatest Failures.
Now’s the time to admit we were wrong.
By Corey Owens, OpEdNews.com

Excerpt:

Instead of allocating funds to programs that work (treatment programs, preventative education, addiction counseling, etc.) the federal government has seen it fit to pump billions of dollars into a system of enforcement that has done less than nothing. Not only has hardcore use increased since 1968, the War on Drugs has spurred a general distrust of the police and courts in many communities. This distrust is not unfounded. For one, Whites comprise nearly three-quarters of drug users in the United States, but make up only 21% of imprisoned drug offenders at the state level. The racial disparities are evident at all stages of the enforcement system, ranging from arrest and conviction rates to length of sentences and time served. The statistics that consider income level are equally staggering. The privileges stemming from being White and wealthy are seldom more apparent than when observing the workings of the War on Drugs.

President Abraham Lincoln once famously stated that “prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” More than thirty years later the United States has little to show for the tens of billions of dollars it has spent combating the use illegal narcotics. It is time to acknowledge the facts: America is waging war on its own citizens. The War on Drugs is a war on racial minorities, the impoverished, civil liberties, and common sense. Ultimately, the War on Drugs is a war on all of us. The War on Drugs was a mistake in 1971 and it’s a mistake now. It’s time to admit we were wrong.

CONTINUE

2005-01-27T11:15:00.000-06:00

Insult to injury

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Insult to injury
By Mark Benjamin

Some wounded soldiers back from Iraq are having to pay for meals at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Veterans' groups say it's another symptom of fighting a costly war on the cheap.

01/27/05 "Salon.com" -- WASHINGTON -- Most patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington have a lot on their minds: the war they just fought, the injuries they came home with, the future that lies ahead. The last thing a wounded soldier needs to worry about is where the next meal is coming from. But for hundreds of Walter Reed patients, that's a real concern. Starting this month, the Army has started making some wounded soldiers pay for the food they eat at the hospital.

Paying out of pocket for hospital meals can impose a serious financial burden, costing hundreds of dollars every month. That can be a lot of money to a military family. But perhaps worse, the meal charge feels like an ungrateful slap in the face to some soldiers. "I think it sucks," said a soldier from West Virginia who broke his neck in Iraq after falling off a roof. "I think that people should be able to eat. They get us over there, get us wounded and shot up and then tell us: Fend for yourself. You are all heroes, but here you go."

Whether it is the lack of protective armor for troops in the field or, now, wounded troops paying for food, complaints from soldiers have shed an unflattering light on how the military bureaucracy takes care of its troops. And they have prompted accusations that the Pentagon is fighting the Iraq war on the cheap, no matter what the cost to soldiers. The meal charge policy "is an example of a much larger problem relating to the overall cost of the war. It is all an indication of extreme costs they are trying to make up on the backs of these men and women," said Steve Robinson, a retired Army Ranger and the executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. "If the war is costing too much, the one place you don't skimp is on soldier and veteran programs. The administration has no problem deficit-spending on the needs of conducting war, and we see no reason not to apply the same methodology to veterans' benefits and soldier care."

A veterans' advocate who lost the use of his legs fighting in Vietnam said the meal charges constitute a personal affront to soldiers. "I don't care what bureaucratic bullshit they come up with, this is an insult," said Bobby Muller, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and director of the foundation's Alliance for Security. "I cannot believe that people are being charged for their meals. This is a showstopper."

For its part, the Army explains -- and defends -- the food charges at Walter Reed by saying they apply only to some outpatients, not inpatients confined to hospital beds. "I have been absolutely assured ... that no inpatient has been charged for meals," Walter Reed spokesman Don Vandrey told Salon. But until Jan. 3, outpatient soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan ate for free in the chow hall. Now outpatient soldiers there longer than 90 days pay for meals in cash. Although Walter Reed did not disclose the exact number of soldiers affected, the policy is most likely to affect at least the estimated 600 soldiers getting long-term outpatient care at the hospital in what the Army calls "medical hold."

Soldiers in medical hold are considered outpatients, but they usually live on hospital grounds -- some are put up in nearby hotels if housing on the grounds is full -- and have little choice but to buy food at the Walter Reed chow hall. Even as outpatients, soldiers in medical hold often have serious injuries. Some have been blown up by roadside bombs or crumpled in Humvee wrecks. They have serious head wounds and amputations. Others are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after being flown out of Iraq with shellshock. Some soldiers in medical hold are waiting to get processed out of the Army because their wounds are so serious that they will never return to duty. But processing at Walter Reed can take over a year, much to the frustration of the soldiers who would prefer to get outpatient treatment near their homes and families. Soldiers in medical hold also complain they are still expected to line up for daily formations and buy new uniforms even as they struggle with debilitating physical and mental trauma from their service in Iraq. They say being charged for food while they're recovering is one more indignity.

From the Army's perspective, the meal charges follow Army rules that are supposed to prohibit soldiers from getting free food as well as a separate food budget. But the only soldiers prohibited from getting both, under the new rules, are the long-term outpatients. "If they get [the cash each month] they would be expected to pay for their meals," said Vandrey, the Walter Reed spokesman. He said the hospital was "really cracking down on soldiers who are getting both."

But here's how the new rules drain hundreds of dollars a month from the pockets of soldiers: Enlisted soldiers get an extra $267.18 every month in their paychecks for food. So before this month, all soldiers at Walter Reed got free food at the chow hall and extra cash. Soldiers say they received that extra food money while they were serving in Iraq, too, and they just let their families spend it on groceries. Now, though, the outpatient soldiers forced to buy meals at Walter Reed say they could spend around $15 a day if they eat three square meals at the dining hall -- about $3 for breakfast and around $6 each for lunch and dinner. That adds up to $450 a month, $183 more than soldiers' food allowance from the military. (The situation is even worse for officers, who get only $183.99 extra each month for a food allowance.) The soldiers at Walter Reed point out that that they don't have the option of eating at home to save money because they are stuck at the hospital. Vandrey said spending $6 for lunch and dinner sounds excessive. "I eat breakfast and lunch there every day and I never spend more than $5 a meal," he said.

Most soldiers in medical hold eat at Walter Reed every day, too. But for those well enough to leave the hospital grounds, a favorite spot -- and a rare treat – is the local Red Lobster, particularly if the press is paying. At a recent meal there, three soldiers from Walter Reed told Salon the new meal charges were putting a serious strain on already tight pocketbooks. (All three ate hefty-size meals.) "I don't starve, [but] it might be beans and weenies or a cup of noodles," said the soldier from West Virginia who was treated for the broken neck; he can now walk, but does so with an awkward, bowlegged gait. "I'm not going to starve to death, but it is an issue that really sucks." A soldier from Pennsylvania said, "They want to charge us for uniforms, for food, everything."

Notwithstanding the charges for food, it should be said, Walter Reed has gained recognition for its excellent medical treatment of acute battlefield injuries, including those sustained by amputees. Soldiers seem to agree that while the hospital has its problems, that particular credit is well deserved.

The soldiers interviewed for this story asked for anonymity because they feared getting into trouble with their chain of command for speaking out. Many soldiers from Walter Reed attended the Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball last week, attended by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others. Soldiers told Salon they were lectured on the bus on the way to the ball that they would face consequences if any untoward comments about the military appeared in the press. One soldier said he and others were told that they should not feel compelled to speak with reporters, but if they did, they would be in their commander's office in the morning if they said anything negative.

Beyond the creeping food bill, perhaps what's most bothersome to soldiers about the meal charge rule is the principle of the thing: Paying for food at an Army hospital after fighting in a war doesn't seem right. "You know they treat us like shit up here," said the soldier from Pennsylvania. One officer from the Army Reserve who served in Iraq told Salon he was "highly disgusted" at being asked to pay for food after being stuck at Walter Reed. "It affects me to a point, but it has a tremendous impact financially on the junior enlisted soldiers," he said. "After these kids get physically or mentally injured in combat, and then you expect them to take away from their personal finances to feed themselves? That is what disturbs me the most."

[This is not a new issue or a change in rules, as mentioned above. I'd read about this since the beginning of this so-called "war." Military personnel, especially reserves, who have left families in bankruptcy, are forced to short their grocery money to pay for their own meals in hospital! Considering all the billions of dollars going to Halliburton, et al., to rebuild what wouldn't need rebuilding had WE not destroyed it, this is an outrage and more Americans need to know about it. -v]

[Emphasis added. -v]

Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon based in Washington, D.C.

Copyright: Salon.com

SOURCE

2005-01-25T14:34:00.000-06:00

Divided We Fall

POLITICS OF FEAR VS. DEMOCRACY — The Campaign to Oust Bush and the Progressive Movement to Regain our Country

Divided We Fall
By Dom Stasi

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. In the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience until luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake." –Thomas Jefferson

01/24/05 "Information Clearing House" -- On Thursday, January 20, 2005, the most widely disliked man on earth swore a sacred oath of office. Then, in a display of arrogant and insensitive vulgarity unmatched in our nation’s history he ascended himself to the 55th Presidency of the no-longer-United States of America. All about him, the believers reveled.

The debauch capped a week that saw the Secretary of State-designate, Condoleeza Rice, declare her sensitivity to foreign affairs by publicly calling the tsunami disaster “…a wonderful opportunity for America.” The inauguration caps a week in which we heard the nation’s proposed chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General designate Alberto Gonzalez, endorse the most flagrant violation of human rights imaginable – torture - as a lawful way to interrogate prisoners. It was a week in which the White House finally announced that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and hadn’t been since the Nineties. Then, as if to top it all off, we were subjected to more baby-talk from the great man himself.

In a post-election return to using his own words, the self-styled leader of the “free world,” George W. Bush, blurted out that we cannot find Osama bin Laden because he is hiding. Still, the believers reveled.

What’s happening here is simple. A pickpocket creates a diversion so he can steal your money while you’re looking elsewhere. Well, guess what? The last four years have been one diversion after another. And our collective pockets have been picked clean while most of us were looking elsewhere.

Through skillful, and to all indications criminal exploitation of the ignorance, religious bigotry, and fear-borne panic of fully half of our countrymen, no less than $750 billion has disappeared from our public treasury with no accountability forthcoming. Yet they revel.

No fewer than 1.8 million jobs have moved offshore (5.3 million when adjusted for population growth) in response to Bush’s $79 million in yearly tax incentives for corporations who leave the United States.1 Yet they revel.

When Bush took office America was $265 billion to the good. It was the most prosperous day in our history. Three years later we were $500 billion in the hole.2 We are today $7 trillion in debt to foreign banks and about to allow the Bush pickpockets to rob Social Security of $2 trillion more. Two trillion! Seven trillion! We’re talking real money here! It causes one to speculate: can the knuckle-walkers who still believe this guy, conceptualize how very many zeroes are to the left of the decimal in such numbers?! Yet they revel.

The $40 million inauguration extravaganza – the most expensive ever - symbolically urinates upon the graves of the over 1300 young Americans who’ve died for Bush’s lies, mistakes, and corporate greed. That money would buy one helluva lot of body armor for our troops. But that $40 mil will instead buy martinis, hookers, influence, and contracts here in America. Yet the believers revel while our young soldiers continue to die (and worse) before they’ve even lived their lives. Tomorrow more shall die, these will die secure in the knowledge that their deaths are in vain. For there are no explanations or excuses left as to why they’re being made to die. None will be forthcoming either. No one who can stop the killing, cares any more. They’ve been given “political capital,” you see.

Bush and his buffoons will be the face of America for the next four years. Perhaps they are an accurate visage. The rest of the world thinks so.

To appreciate just how far we’ve fallen as a society, consider inaugurations past. In particular consider that of the man whose social programs will be destroyed by the current crop of Pennsylvania Avenue cretins over the next four years. Consider but two inaugurations of the most reelected president since Washington. Consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

To begin his presidency, FDR spoke the magnificent and more appropriate than ever words we all now know so well: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself... nameless, unreasoning, unjustified fear.” At the time of his last inaugural our nation was at war. It was a fight for our nation’s very survival against an enemy who actually had weapons and armies and the means to prevail. It was not an armed robbery disguised as a war. Nor was it a blood-soaked diversion wherein a bunch of draft-dodgers use the bodies of other men’s children to do their dirty work abroad while they pick our pockets at home. It was a real war, and real war-president Roosevelt came out onto the White House balcony to recite the oath of office. Then, in deference to the carnage extant in the world, he declared that there would be no celebrations of the inauguration. There would be no sycophantic tribute to his imperial magnificence. This was America, a place where honest men respected each other as equals. As Americans we would behave as a nation at war behaves. We don’t throw parties while our children die. FDR knew that. He took the oath, then retired back into the White House for a tuna salad, a cup of coffee, and the business of the commonwealth.

Yes, that was America. It was magnificent. It was nowhere apparent today.

Instead, today finds the most powerful and lethal nation in history in the hands of the irrational, the frightened, the greedy, the ignorant, the criminal, and the bigoted. By many counts our president is the most despised human being on the planet. Yet millions of Americans revel. Our countrymen revel to the tune of a $40 million inaugural bash though we are more deeply in debt than at any time in our nation’s history.

It is into this menagerie that I have wandered. I find myself in Washington this night. But I’m not here to celebrate. I’m simply making my way to Paris on business. There is a transportation strike in that city, it’s raining there, it’s foreign and frankly, both Paris and Parisians can be annoying. Yet it is nowhere near as foreign or annoying to me as is this place on this night. With its concrete barricades and legions of buttoned-down parasites, our nation’s capitol is a reflection of its occupants. Parisians there, Parasites here. The choice is an easy one. I cannot depart soon enough.

Meanwhile, as I walk toward the DuPont Circle Metro station, the shark-smiles are everywhere apparent in our capitol. The greed-mongers are celebrating their successful raid on our national treasure. Tonight and all week there will be parties to celebrate the four-year feeding frenzy about to begin. The parasitic privileged will drink their wine and they will laugh at the very fools who voted for them and their stooges. They will divvy up what’s left of our money. They will do so while laughing at the abject stupidity of a populace half of whom are too dumb to realize they’ve been robbed, and too dumb to understand why the other half are so damned mad. And, as is fitting, those who have robbed us will do what any rational crooks would do when met with such accolades from the majority of their victims, they will rob us yet again. They revel.

As night falls on the streets, the shark smiles are replaced by the slack-jawed smiles of the believers who will foot this bill. They’ll be among the few in this town who are paying for their own food tonight as they fill the fast food joints. The believers might have driven their RVs from far and wide to be here, but they will not be invited to the parties. If they were, they’d know they were being laughed at behind the walls that keep them out. Yet they came. They came resplendent in their cowboy hats and stars-and-stripes shirts to revel and stand in the snow and wave their little flags. But, hey, they’re not here to go to parties. They are here because they are patriots. Just ask them.

A man named Scott Ritter once said, "I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic."

As a nation, as a people we will fall farther than this before it’s over. We’ve not been this divided since the Eighteen-Sixties. Yet I for one will do my best to heed Thomas Jefferson’s words one more time, as I have all of my life. But one more time only. For, however divided, ours remains a nation worth saving. So, as the great man said, “Patience… a little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass.”

Jefferson’s message is an important one, however difficult it might be to accept right now. For, as in times past, the revelers will wake up before this one is over. Eventually they will feel the stranger’s cold hand in their pocket. Then there will be hell to pay. I just hope it doesn’t take them too long this time. My patience is awfully thin right now, Mr. Jefferson, awfully thin.

At the airport, I buy a copy of Le Monde and head for my departure gate.

The Author

Dom Stasi, an engineer, is Chief Technology Officer for an international media network. A pilot, Air Force veteran, and former member of the Project Apollo technical team, he is also a widely published science and technology writer. A father of two, Mr. Stasi lives in Los Angeles with his wife of 38 years. Email ResponDS1@aol.com

Footnotes
1. http://thebushpresidency.org/Economy.htm
2. http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Copyright © Dom Stasi. All rights reserved. You may republish under the following conditions: An active link to the original publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove any text within the article, including this copyright notice.

SOURCE

2005-01-23T20:30:00.000-06:00

I doubt this is the flag King George envisioned...

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to take to make a difference

I have no words for this one... what a concept!

MadeYouThink.org

2005-01-22T18:57:00.000-06:00

Another faux pas for Mr. Culturally Clueless?

SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary

Some Confused By Bush's 'Satanic' Salute
In Texas, Sign Shows Support For School

OSLO, Norway -- President George W. Bush's "Hook 'em, 'horns" salute got lost in translation in Norway, where shocked people interpreted his hand gesture during his inauguration as a salute to Satan.

President George W. Bush gives the "Hook 'em, 'horns" salute to the University of Texas Longhorns marching band as he watches Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C.

That's what it means in the Nordics when you throw up the right hand with the index and pinky fingers raised, a gesture popular among heavy metal groups and their fans in the region.

Residents of the Scandinavian country were taken aback when they saw the First Family appear to salute Satan during the inaugural parade.

"Shock greeting from Bush daughter," a headline in the Norwegian Internet newspaper Nettavisen said above a photograph of Bush's daughter Jenna, smiling and showing the sign.

For Texans, the gesture is a sign of love for the University of Texas Longhorns, whose fans are known to shout out "Hook 'em, 'horns!" at sporting events.

Bush, a former Texas governor, and his family made the sign to greet the Longhorn marching band as it passed during the inaugural parade through Washington during Thursday's festivities, Norway's largest newspaper, Verdens Gang, explained to its readers.

2005-01-22T18:32:00.000-06:00

I hate to say "I told you so"...

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

Who the hell am I kidding? NO I DON'T! I FREAKIN TOLD YA SO!!
(see More ~~coronation~~ inauguration nonsense)

I bet there are a hundred stories like this all over the country.

Inaugural Disappointment: Rockledge students miss presidential inauguration

There are 40 disappointed students from Rockledge High School returning home from Washington today after they booked a trip to see the president's inauguration this week, but missed it altogether.

They were stuck at the capitol because of extra security and protestors.

Some only found out the president was already sworn in by calling parents back home in Rockledge.

"By the time they got to the place they were supposed to be at earlier, the gates were locked and they couldn't get through, so they missed the inauguration and missed the parade.

"So, it's kind of a disappointment and sad that a few people ruined it for everybody, but apparently there were thousands of people stuck in a traffic gridlock in Washington, D.C." [Sadly, I'd bet my last dime we differ in our opinion of who the "few people" are who ruined it for everybody! –L.]

The school's principal is working with the tour company to see if students can get a partial refund of their $700.

[Omitted from this story are the hoops these kids had to jump through to get a seat on this bus! They had to meet certain academic requirements, write essays, and find sponsors if they couldn't come up with the money for the trip. Seats were limited, and the competition was intense. It's a dirty shame that they will be left with the impression that it is the protesters' fault that they weren't able to get to their reserved positions. –L.]

2005-01-21T20:40:00.000-06:00

America has found myriad ways to export death, eh?

FLORA AND FAUNA — Environment and Health

From Dead End (1/21/05):

CHARLIE BELL, FORMER MCDONALD'S CHIEF EXECUTIVE, DEAD AT 44

Former McDonald's chief executive Charlie Bell, who stepped down from his post in November to focus on his battle with cancer, died on Monday in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. He was 44. Bell spent almost 30 years with McDonalds, introducing ideas such as McCafe, now the biggest coffee shop brand in Australia and New Zealand. Bell also oversaw the introduction of McDonald's popular "I'm Lovin' It" global advertising campaign, which has also been credited with helping reverse lagging sales. Bell, considered a charismatic leader, said he ate a McDonald's product almost every day. He was diagnosed with colorectal cancer just weeks after being named to the company's top job in April.{*} Bell is survived by his wife, Leonie, and daughter, Alex.

{*} From CNN:

"Bell had succeeded Jim Cantalupo, who died suddenly of a heart attack after a little more than a year on the job at age 60. He was the company's first CEO to have worked behind the counter since Fred Turner, who retired in 1987."

[God rest both of their souls... but, damn, you can't help but see a pattern here! Wake up, fellas, this stuff is killing people — even you!

Supersize Me, indeed. –L.]

2005-01-18T10:03:00.000-06:00

This is just tooooo easy!

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

Quote of the Week from Quote-a-Day:

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.

~ Akhenaton

and from Personal Achievement Quote of the Day:

"The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others."

~ Carl Rogers

2005-01-17T10:22:00.000-06:00

Bush only exerts himself to make mistakes that have already been made!

MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE — Cover your assets!

My title is another way of saying that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it, I suppose... except that this item is not "history", it is happening right now. Britain has already tried "retirement privatization", and it has been a dismal failure — for average citizens — but a bonanza for investment types, natch. Sound familiar?

Bold emphasis within the story is mine.

The British Evasion

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 14, 2005

We must end Social Security as we know it, the Bush administration says, to meet the fiscal burden of paying benefits to the baby boomers. But the most likely privatization scheme would actually increase the budget deficit until 2050. By then the youngest surviving baby boomer will be 86 years old.

Even then, would we have a sustainable retirement system? Not bloody likely.

Pardon my Britishism, but Britain's 20-year experience with privatization is a cautionary tale Americans should know about.

The U.S. news media have provided readers and viewers with little information about how privatization has worked in other countries. Now my colleagues have even fewer excuses: there's an illuminating article on the British experience in The American Prospect, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at The Financial Times who covers pension issues.

Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions."

The details of British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different. But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts.

The selling of privatization also bore a striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that privatization was the only answer.

The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was better prepared for the transition. Britain's system was backed by extensive assets, so the government didn't have to engage in a four-decade borrowing spree to finance the creation of private accounts. And the Thatcher government hadn't already driven the budget deep into deficit before privatization even began.

Even so, it all went wrong. "Britain's experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state benefits has been a failure," Ms. Cohen writes. "A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn."

Many Britons were sold badly designed retirement plans on false pretenses. Companies guilty of "mis-selling" were eventually forced to pay about $20 billion in compensation. Fraud aside, the fees paid to financial managers have been a major problem: "Reductions in yield resulting from providers' charges," the Pensions Commission says, "can absorb 20-30 percent of an individual's pension savings."

American privatizers extol the virtues of personal choice, and often accuse skeptics of being elitists who believe that the government makes better choices than individuals. Yet when one brings up Britain's experience, their story suddenly changes: they promise to hold costs down by tightly restricting the investments individuals can make, and by carefully regulating the money managers. So much for trusting the people.

Never mind; their promises aren't credible. Even if the initial legislation tightly regulated investments by private accounts, it would immediately be followed by intense lobbying to loosen the rules. This lobbying would come both from the usual ideologues and from financial companies eager for fees. In fact, the lobbying has already started: the financial services industry has contributed lavishly to next week's inaugural celebrations.

Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus in Britain that privatization must be partly reversed. The Confederation of British Industry - the equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has called for an increase in guaranteed benefits to retirees, even if taxes have to be raised to pay for that increase. And the chief executive of Britain's National Association of Pension Funds speaks with admiration about a foreign system that "delivers efficiencies of scale that most companies would die for."

The foreign country that, in the view of well-informed Britons, does it right is the United States. The system that delivers efficiencies to die for is Social Security.

2005-01-16T20:56:00.000-06:00

How did we miss this Christmas gift from the House of Lords?!

POLITICS OF FEAR VS. DEMOCRACY — The Campaign to Oust Bush [and his cronies, wherever they be] and the Progressive Movement to Regain our ~~Country~~ PLANET!

A celebratory email arrived in my inbox today... yet these stories are dated mid-December! I guess they got missed in the holiday rush. It is my pleasure to deliver the good news now!

"The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory."

~ Law Lord Leonard Hoffmann

Judges' verdict on terror laws provokes constitutional crisis

Clare Dyer, Michael White and Alan Travis
Friday December 17, 2004
The Guardian

A scathing law lords judgment condemning the indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects as a threat to the life of the nation left anti-terrorist laws in tatters yesterday.

The ruling by an 8-1 majority held that the indefinite detention without trial at Belmarsh, and Woodhill high security prisons was unlawful under the European convention on human rights (ECHR).

Constitutional lawyers called it one of the most important decisions from Britain's highest court in 50 years.

But 24 hours after David Blunkett, the law's sponsor, was forced to resign as home secretary, Downing St and the new home secretary, Charles Clarke decided to tough it out. They would study the judgment - but made it plain they are more likely to renew the controversial laws than modify them.

Lord Hoffmann, ruled that there is no "state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation" - the only basis on which Britain is entitled to exercise its opt-out from article five of the European convention, the right to liberty.

It was the anti-terror laws introduced by Mr Blunkett which posed a threat, he declared. "The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."

The judgment adds to the clutch of election-sensitive law and order problems in Mr Clarke's in-tray. No 10 signalled it is "clearly minded to renew it" and Mr Clarke chose to stress continuity with Mr Blunkett's policies.

On Channel 4 News Hazel Blears, the police minister, said judges who authorised detentions had seen intelligence data which the law lords did not. "This is a matter for parliament to decide" in line with the European convention. "Our over-riding concern is the protection of this nation."

Sixteen Muslims have been detained under the anti-terror legislation, with 10 still held in Belmarsh, south-east London, and Woodhill, Bucks, and one in Broadmoor mental hospital. They are certified as "suspected international terrorists".

The law lords ruling said the state should decide whether a state of emergency existed. But they argued that the government's response breached the human rights convention because it went further than required.

It was a disproportionate interference with liberty and equality and unlawfully discriminated against foreigners because British terror suspects thought to pose a similar risk cannot be locked up without charge or trial. [Is any of this ringing a bell?! –L.]

Lord Scott described the regime under which suspects can be detained indefinitely on the say-so of the home secretary [Ah, they have their own Ashcroft! –L.] with no right to know the grounds for detention as "the stuff of nightmares, associated with France before and during the revolution, with Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era, and now associated, as a result of section 23 of the 2001 Act, with the United Kingdom". [...and, unfortunately, with Gitmo and other "projects" of the current U.S. government. –L.]

The judgment does not oblige the government to release the detainees immediately, but under the Human Rights Act the government must take steps soon to remedy the situation. These could include legislation - for example, making evidence obtained from telephone tapping admissible in a criminal court - which would make it easier to try detainees.

Another option would be measures allowing them to be released under constant surveillance and monitoring.

Mr Clarke is expected to produce new proposals in the new year and until then the detainees will remain in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons.

Gareth Peirce, solicitor for eight detainees, commented: "The government has to take steps to withdraw the legislation and release the detainees."

The judgment puts Mr Clark under huge pressure to devise a solution or face the prospect of more embarrassing court defeats in the run-up to the general election.

The detainees' solicitors could take the case to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg if the government drags its heels. [Sometimes I regret that we have no "higher authority" to overrule some of the crap spewing from our government... but those "higher powers" can turn on ya! –L.] Lawyers said another possibility was an application in the English courts for a declaration that it was unconstitutional for the home secretary to continue to detain the men in breach of a house of lords ruling.

The case was heard by an almost unprecedented panel of nine law lords, instead of the usual five, because of its constitutional significance.

The attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, who argued the case for the government, had tried to persuade the judges that they were "undemocratic" and should defer to the will of elected representatives. [Dear God, how familiar is THAT?! "You're either with us or against us"... McCarthy... doesn't this line ever run out of gas? –L.]

Jeffrey Jowell, professor of public law at University College London, said: "It establishes that, even where the government claims national security is an issue, the court has authority to delineate the proper boundaries of a rights-based democracy."

Here is the Washington Post's take on the story:

Highest court of appeals rules foreign terror suspects cannot be held indefinitely.
[an alternate copy is available at truthout]

London - Britain's highest court of appeal struck a blow against the government's anti-terrorism policy Thursday by ruling it cannot detain suspected foreign terrorists indefinitely without trial.

In a stinging rebuke to Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, the panel ruled by 8 to 1 that the anti-terrorism act that authorized the detentions violated European human rights laws and were discriminatory because they applied only to foreign nationals and not to British citizens.

"The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these," wrote Leonard Hoffmann, one of the eight Law Lords in the majority, referring to the anti-terrorism provision. "That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory."

The decision was hailed as a triumph by civil libertarians who have labeled as "Britain's Guantanamo Bay" the indefinite detention of 11 suspects, most of whom have been held since December 2001.

Under British law, the last word on the legality of the anti-terrorism act belongs to Parliament and not the courts. But legal observers said the ruling would force the government to amend the law to either bring the men to trial or allow for less restrictive measures such as house arrest.

"It is ultimately for Parliament to decide whether and how we should amend the law," said Home Secretary Charles Clarke in a statement . "Accordingly, I will not be . . . releasing the detainees, whom I have reason to believe are a significant threat to our security." [Stay tuned for the contradiction. –L.]

Parliament adopted an amended anti-terrorism act in December 2001, in response to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, that allowed for the detention and deportation of foreign nationals accused of terrorism. In cases where the detainees argued that deportation to their host country could lead to their torture or killing, the authorities opted for indefinite imprisonment. [There's your contradiction. How dangerous can these guys be if they are willing to RELEASE them to go God-knows-where in the world! –L.]

Eleven men are currently being held under the act, including Abu Qatada, a cleric whom the government has described as being the spiritual inspiration for leaders of the Sept. 11 attacks. Another detainee is Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian who was granted refugee status in Britain after he alleged he had been tortured in Israel. The others have not been identified.

In all, 17 people have been detained under the act. Three others have been freed, one released but charged under another provision of the law and two others voluntarily left the country rather than remain in custody. The detentions have been upheld by a special tribunal in secret hearings. [Again, how much of a threat can these guys pose if they're told, "don't let the plane door hit you in the ass"? –L.]

[Full text of Law Lords' decision]
Lord Hoffmann's remarks begin on page 5 at item #86. I could not find the quotes attributed to him above, but two others caught my eye:

"There have been times of great national emergency in which habeas corpus has been suspended and powers to detain on suspicion conferred on the government. It happened during the Napoleonic Wars and during both World Wars in the twentieth century. These powers were conferred with great misgiving and, in the sober light of retrospect after the emergency had passed, were often found to have been cruelly and unnecessarily exercised."
"This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community."

2005-01-16T18:17:00.000-06:00

...and the propaganda machine played on...

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

While commentators (one pointedly conservative(!)) take aim at BushCo for the Armstrong Williams debacle and previous similarly-themed transgressions, Rove has altered the course of the ship of state ever-so-slightly. Propaganda is no longer being outsourced to the media; rather, public servants will now be called upon to shed their impartiality and pimp the path of righteousness.

Commentator #1: Leonard Pitts Jr.

Armstrong Williams meets strong-arm politics

This is mean of me, so I apologize in advance.

It's just that, once in a while when I've written something that offends their sensibilities, certain of my readers will undertake to steer me toward conservative pundits who might correct my misconceptions. What's interesting is, they never suggest white conservatives. No George Will or Cal Thomas.

These folks invariably feel my role model should be some conservative who is black like me. Armstrong Williams usually makes the list. So I find myself wondering if they still think he's someone I should emulate.

That is, now that he has been unmasked as a paid shill for the Bush administration.

Like I said, mean. Also, off the point.

The things that should concern us about the Williams debacle actually have little to do with the shopworn issues of race and political orientation. Rather, the episode is emblematic of two other issues that have become rather shopworn themselves in recent years: journalistic integrity and the Bush administration's habit of strong-arming reality.

Let's take the last first.

As reported by USA Today, Williams was paid more than $240,000 of your dollars by the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind law to black people. The department apparently assumed — based on what, I couldn't say — that Williams has some pull in the black community.

Granted, every political administration seeks to spin the truth. But has any ever worked quite so energetically to propagandize the people, to subvert their right to know? Has any ever been so dismissive of their right to unvarnished facts? If so, it's news to me.

Under the present administration, facts are routinely varnished like fine wood. That is, when they are not ignored outright. Consider the record. Where official reports have clashed with politics, they have been edited. Where science has offended political supporters, it has been quashed. Where the administration's own experts have contradicted its worldview, they have been ignored.

And henceforth, I suppose, where journalists are for sale, they will be bought.

Which brings us back to journalistic integrity or the lack thereof. Between this, CBS News, Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley, who can blame a journalist for feeling that maybe it's time to find a more reputable profession? Like used-car sales. But what gets me is that, where CBS was motivated by zeal and, I think, partisanship, where Blair was a substance abuser and where Kelley apparently sought to aggrandize himself, Williams was in it for the money.

He talked up No Child in his column, on his radio and television programs and in appearances on various public-affairs programs but somehow never mentioned that he was accepting payola to do so. Williams, who also owns a small public-relations firm, says that when the contract was offered, he was simply thinking like a businessman.

It's becoming an occupational hazard as more and more income opportunities open up to high-profile journalists. I speak as one of the at-risk. Writing this column has led to speaking engagements, teaching positions and book contracts I could never have envisioned when I started it 11 years ago.

I won't lie to you: With apologies to Jimmy Stewart, it's a wonderful life. But the first day I don't understand that it is an ethical crime to rent this podium to the highest bidder, somebody please take me out in a field and shoot me because I have become too stupid to live.

Metaphorically speaking, that's pretty much what has happened to Williams. Tribune Media Services, which distributed his column (as it does mine), dropped him like a hairy spider right after the story broke.

To his credit, he has expressed regret forthrightly. He says he simply never saw himself as a journalist.

I think he's sincere. I also think it doesn't matter. The line he crossed is red neon. And once you've gone over it, you can't go back.

So as for not thinking of himself as a journalist, he needn't worry. No one will ever mistake him for one again.

[ACT thanks SmirkingChimp.com for alerting us to this item. –L.]

Commentator #2 (Conservative): Kathleen Parker

Mainstream media clean house

Between firings at CBS for "Rathergate" and the canceling of Armstrong Williams' syndicated column for taking government money to promote a Bush administration program, it's been a rough week for journalism.

Both instances were the results of ethical breaches that further erode public trust and credibility in an institution that's increasingly viewed as biased. In the CBS case, four employees, including three executives, were fired for their part in rushing an inaccurate [Correction: As yet UNPROVEN (since the documents have conveniently disappeared!) –L.] and potentially slanderous [Only if it weren't true — which it is. –L.] story that questioned President George W. Bush's National Guard service.

An independent investigating panel released a report Monday concluding that the team working on the story had failed to meet basic journalistic standards and that they were compelled by "myopic zeal" but not political bias.

There isn't space here to hit all the points covered in the 224-page report, but the guts of the story are that CBS used allegedly forged documents in its report and failed to authenticate them despite warnings from its own experts that there might be problems.

Myopic zeal surely was a factor — it always is in the news business — but I'm unconvinced about the absence of political bias. The story, if it had been true [Another correction: IF IT COULD HAVE BEEN PROVEN! –L.], could have changed the course of the presidential election, and CBS ran it knowing [SUSPECTING — or not checking — either of which are bad enough on their own –L.] that its material was flawed. In my book, that's political.

Williams, who committed the ultimate professional sin by accepting money ($240,000) to advance a government policy, provides a case study of blurring the line between journalism and something we don't even have a word for. Propaganda seems awfully strong, but I'm not sure what else to call it when the government pays a journalist to push its policies.

Politicians may try to push ethical limits — and this administration may have some legal problems for using taxpayer money to influence policies, as several congressmen are calling for an investigation. But journalists are supposed to know better, and therein lies part of the problem. Williams isn't a journalist, by which I mean he didn't rise through the training grounds by which reporters learn the care and nourishing of public trust.

As a syndicated columnist in the same family as Williams — Tribune Media Services (TMS), which dropped Williams' column last week — I have more than a casual interest in this story. Every journalist knows that you don't take money from people or agencies you intend to cover.

That's not just an ethical understanding in the abstract; it's usually written into a contract. In fact, Williams had such a contract with TMS, which formed the grounds for canceling his column. [So he is guilty not only of breach of ethics, but breach of contract as well! –L.]

I've worked at five newspapers through the years and can remember when the rules were less well-defined than now. But I can't remember a time in recent years when I wasn't required to sign an ethics policy that clearly outlines what one can or can't do. Most of it is common sense. You're always Caesar's wife.

To Williams' credit, he didn't whine, but admitted his "bad judgment" and apologized after USA Today broke the story about his cozy relationship with the Department of Education. Education officials, and not the White House, orchestrated the arrangement with a public relations company.

The deal was that Williams would devote some airtime to promoting the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" education-reform program on his syndicated television show and interview Education Department officials from time to time. The rub came when Williams also promoted the program in his syndicated column, which, given its play in the journalism arena, is perceived as an independent voice.

What happened with Williams affects all of us in the business, as we share the same precious real estate and public trust. To readers seeing columnists clustered together on a page, we appear to be members of the same club. Increasingly, however, commentators are products of think tanks or politics — or renegade blond prosecutors [Does she mean Ann Coulter, who fits the "renegade" part, or Nancy Grace, who fits the "prosecutor" part? –L.] — which can be problematic, but not always bad.

Many of these people, including Williams, can bring unique insights and experiences to the debate. The same is true of the new media genre known as blogs, in which citizen journalists post news links and commentary on the Web, often shadowing the mainstream media, challenging and fact-checking, as well as influencing outcomes in politics and government.

They are a formidable and welcome force, but as non-journalists in the institutional sense, they're accountable to no one. Therein shines the little light we can find among these dark tales of the fallen.

For all their flaws, mainstream (institutional) journalists are accountable where others are not. When they mess up, consequences are real and ruthless, as Williams and the CBS folks can attest. That much consumers can rely upon.

[I must protest her portrayal of bloggers. We are accountable... to each other, and to our visitors. Post drivel, and your hit count tanks — totally self-policing! Also, by and large, we don't make our readers pay for our content, which makes our responsibilities a bit different from subscriber-supported publications. Is she, like other "real" journalists, a bit put off by our "challenging and fact-checking"? –L.]

New Tactic: Conscript government employees as shills

Social Security Agency Is Enlisted to Push Its Own Revision

By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.

The agency's plans are set forth in internal documents, including a "tactical plan" for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action.

Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support President Bush's agenda.

"The system is broken, and promises are being made that Social Security cannot keep," Mr. Bush said in his Saturday radio address. He is expected to address the issue in his Inaugural Address.

But agency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle over the future of the program. They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy.

"Trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda," said Dana C. Duggins, a vice president of the Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 of the agency's 64,000 workers and has opposed private accounts.

Deborah C. Fredericksen of Minneapolis, who has worked for the Social Security Administration for 31 years, said, "Many employees believe that the president and this agency are using scare tactics to promote private accounts."

Social Security trustees say the program's financial problems will grow as baby boomers retire. The program will pay out more in benefits than it collects in revenue in 2018, they say. By 2042, they say, the trust fund will be exhausted, and tax income will be sufficient to pay only 73 percent of scheduled benefits. [I saw a figure elsewhere of a maintained payout of 81% of benefits... not good, but hardly "bankruptcy". Just try filing bankruptcy under the new rules if you could pay 81% of your debts! (or even 73%!) –L.]

In campaign-style speeches, Mr. Bush and other officials have said that Social Security is headed for bankruptcy, and that workers should be allowed to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, as a way to build wealth for themselves and their heirs.

Such comments have prompted inquiries from the public to Social Security offices. Agency managers said they expected a torrent of calls after Mr. Bush's Inaugural Address on Thursday and his State of the Union speech two weeks later.

Mark R. Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said he could not discuss the agency's communications plans because they were "internal documents." The agency, he said, has a duty "to educate the public about the financial challenges facing Social Security," but has not prepared a script for employees to use in answering questions from the public. [SWELL... more lack of planning at the top that leaves the peons holding the bag! ...and average Americans getting the same wrong answers they get from Medicare and the IRS. –L.]

The Bush administration ran afoul of a ban on "covert propaganda" when it used tax money to promote the new Medicare drug benefit and to publicize the dangers of drug abuse by young people. The administration acknowledged paying a conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy. But on Social Security, unlike those issues, the government has not concealed its role.

The agency's strategic communications plan says the following message is to be disseminated to "all audiences" through speeches, seminars, public events, radio, television and newspapers: "Social Security's long-term financing problems are serious and need to be addressed soon," or else the program may not "be there for future generations."

The plan says that Social Security managers should "discuss solvency issues at staff meetings," "insert solvency messages in all Social Security publications" and spread the word at nontraditional sites like farmers' markets and "big box retail stores."

Also, the document says, agency managers should observe and measure how much their employees know about the solvency of the program. [Translated: "how well they parrot the party line". –L.]

Mr. Bush has created a sense of urgency by declaring that "the crisis is now."

A slide show, presented to various audiences by James B. Lockhart III, deputy commissioner of Social Security, says that "benefit cuts would be drastic" after 2042 if the Social Security law and payroll tax rates continue unchanged.

A policy brief prepared by the agency says those benefit cuts "would double the poverty rate of Social Security beneficiaries aged 64 to 78," increasing the number of indigent people in that age bracket to 1.8 million, from 875,000.

Witold R. Skwierczynski, president of the Social Security Council of the federation of government employees, said: "Some of the information being imparted by agency officials is not factual, not accurate. There is no immediate crisis."

In interviews, other Social Security employees expressed similar views. But council members were more willing to allow use of their names because a federal law generally protects them against "penalty or reprisal" when they speak publicly or testify before Congress.

Social Security employees denied that their concerns were motivated by a bureaucratic mentality, a fear of change or a desire to protect their jobs.

"There's a lot more to it than that," said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents lawyers and paralegals at the Social Security Administration. "There's a genuine concern about how people will live when they retire, a real fear that Social Security benefits could be eroded by private accounts."

The official policy brief, analyzing the consequences of inaction, was written by Andrew G. Biggs, the associate commissioner of Social Security for retirement policy. Mr. Biggs, 37, joined President Bush in making the case for private accounts at a White House forum this week.

When he was an analyst at the Cato Institute, Mr. Biggs championed private accounts, saying they "would pay substantially higher retirement benefits than the current Social Security program" because some payroll taxes could be invested in stocks and corporate bonds rather than in government securities.

In 2003, just before he became associate commissioner, Mr. Biggs said that AARP, the lobby for older Americans, was "spreading disinformation" about the risks of private accounts. Mr. Biggs, who has a doctorate from the London School of Economics, said critics were wrong to suggest that personal accounts meant large cuts in benefits. In fact, he said, Social Security cannot pay the benefits it has promised.

The combination of benefits from traditional Social Security and a private account would substantially exceed what the current program can actually pay, Mr. Biggs said.

Other analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, have reached a different conclusion. They say the combination of benefits from the trust fund and individual accounts is likely to be less than actual benefits under the current system.

In a document sent each year to millions of workers, the government emphasizes the looming financial problems. The document shows a worker's earnings history and estimated future benefits. But it says the scheduled benefits could be cut because "without changes, by 2042 the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted."{*}

Agency employees raised their concerns with Reginald F. Wells, a deputy commissioner of Social Security, and two associate commissioners, David L. Feder and Roger McDonnell. Mr. McDonnell confirmed that employee representatives had shared their concerns with him, but he declined to say how he replied.

Robert M. Ball, who worked at the Social Security Administration for three decades and was commissioner under Democratic and Republican presidents from 1962 to 1973, said: "It's fine for the agency to answer factual questions, but it's unusual to use the Civil Service organization to push a political agenda, especially because what they're saying is not true. The program is not going bankrupt."

When asked about the outlook for Social Security, several agency officials pointed to a White House "fact sheet" that says, "By 2042, when workers in their mid-20's begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt - unless we act now to save it."

[All bold emphasis in the above stories is mine.

{*} Reuters published a story today, "WHouse says won't pressure Social Security workers", in which a "senior White House official" — whose name I don't ever remember hearing before — was quoted as saying, "There's no expectation that career employees would be asked to advocate on behalf of any specific prescription for Social Security." Well, considering the contents of the paragraph I underlined above, the cooperation of individual employees will hardly be necessary... the propaganda will be engraved on every piece of informational material leaving the Social Security administration. –L.]

2005-01-16T16:20:00.000-06:00

[RE-BUMP!] It's so unnerving when Nazi quotes ring true today!

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

[Originally published 1/1/05, 7:18pm:]

From Really Good Quotes:

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

~ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

[EDITED 1/13/05 to add a glaring example of current application of the above philosophy.]

Below is a segment from a transcript of last night's Anderson Cooper 360°. In my experience, it is highly unusual for CNN's transcripts to include translation of video clips; they have my gratitude for including the video quotes here! Unfortunately, no transcript can convey the eerieness of the clips of McClellan's face as he parroted the same things over and over and over and over and over...

I took the liberty of adding some formatting to the usual text-only presentation.

COOPER: We were watching the president's spokesman, Scott McClellan, today during his news conference. We couldn't help but notice, he sure knows how to stay on message. No matter what the question, McClellan, like any good spokesman, gets back to his talking points.

What were the talking points today? Well, as our service to you, we've cut out all of those extra words and nosey questions and bring you just the spin.

Talking point number one, Saddam Hussein had the intent and capability to produce WMD.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
1. MCCLELLAN: Saddam Hussein's regime retained the intent and capability to produce weapons of mass destruction...
2. ... that the regime retained the intent and capability...
3. The regime and the regime's intentions and the regime's capabilities...
4. ... that the regime retained the intent and capability...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Talking point number two, the president must confront the threats that we face.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
1. MCCLELLAN: ...confront the threats that we face...
2. ... confront the threats that we face...
3. ... confront the threats that we face...
4. ... confronting the threats that we face. It's important that we act together to confront the threats that we face.
5. ... how we confront the threats that we face.
6. ... to address the threats that the world faces, that we need to confront threats...
7. ... to confront the threats that we face.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Got it, confront the threats.
And talking point number three, the president will look and act on the recommendations made to fix the problem of incorrect intelligence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
1. MCCLELLAN: ...acting on those recommendations.
2. He looks at their recommendations...
3. ...looking at the recommendations...
4. ...who acting on those recommendations...
(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: There you go. Scott McClellan's briefing. It took 29 minutes. We just saved you 28 of them.

[My math says he repeated one of these points 15 times in less than 30 minutes. Considering how long it may have taken him to elaborate each time, and allowing time for reporters' questions, etc., I daresay that leaves approximately ZERO time for any original thoughts! Why don't they just hire a parrot? They'll work for crackers! –L.]

[UPDATE 1/16/04: Is this cartoonist reading ACT? ;o) ]

2005-01-16T14:11:00.000-06:00

Boycotting the plutocracy on ~~coronation~~ inauguration day

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to Take to Make a Difference

This Thursday, go to your elections office and "register" your dissatisfaction with the Republicrats! Just be sure you fill your gas tank beforehand and take a bag lunch, so you won't run afoul of the day's other boycott.

WE DO NOT CONCEDE

Empowering voters who continue to be disenfranchised by party politics

Feel like you've been kicked in the stomach? Kick Back!

Take Action. Today.

###

JANUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTS DAY!

Don't boycott the vote — boycott the political party system!

ACTION ALERT: In recognition of the 40-year anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we stand up for those who were denied the right to vote in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections. We ask those voters registered in the two-party system to re-register to vote as INDEPENDENTs on January 20! Please help send the message that we will no longer be pacified or taken for granted.

We gave the political parties millions of dollars in the last election cycle, and in the end they scoffed at us or failed to stand up for the most basic right we all have as citizens of this nation — the right to vote — ignoring the fact that many African American voters were selectively targeted and prevented from voting! That's unacceptable. Our votes and our voices matter and it's time to let national leadership know it.

[IMHO, it would have the same effect if you registered with one of the third parties available in your state... in fact, at the risk of offending the organizers of this event, it may even have more of an effect. Rather than creating a nebulous pool of undefined voters, mass registrations with third parties would confront the Establishment with a concrete challenge.

For those who may shy away from this protest for fear of being left out of the primaries, check with your voting office to see if there are any limits on how often you may change party affiliation. As far as I know, most people should be able to change back long before there is another election! Then again, by then you may not want to go back. ;o)

Also, for the record, I think African-Americans were but one of many groups whose votes were not counted! And even if you feel your own vote was counted, there are many others whose votes were not, who still deserve your support. –L.]

Not One Damn Dime!
Boycott Bush's inauguration by not spending any money on inauguration day

NOT ONE DAMN DIME DAY

Since our leaders don't have the moral courage to speak out against the war in Iraq, Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending.

During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money, and don't use your credit card. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Nor toll/cab/bus or train ride money exchanges. Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Walmart, KMart and Target. Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter).

For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down. The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. The politicians put the troops in harm's way. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan — a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed.

For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

[NotOneDamnDime.com] is registered and paid for by Laura Carmen and Jesse Gordon, Democratic activists in Cambridge Massachusetts. It uses no funds from any other sources and has no affiliation with any organizations. The text of the letter did not originate with Jesse nor Laura and they do not know its original source (they received it as an email on Dec. 15 2004).

2005-01-16T11:27:00.000-06:00

Top Homeland Security Official: "We Have To Abridge Individual Rights"

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

From the current (1/12/05) Liberator Online:

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

~ James Madison, fourth President of the U.S., co-author of the Federalist Papers, sometimes called "The Father of the Constitution."

Top Homeland Security Official: "We Have To Abridge Individual Rights"

"We have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause."

No, that's not King George III speaking. Those are the words of U.S. Army Lt. Gen. (Retired) Patrick M. Hughes — the top intelligence official of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Gen. Hughes made his anti-Fourth Amendment comments eight months before President Bush appointed him to his DHS post, though they were not reported until a few weeks ago when Congressional Quarterly magazine obtained a transcript. He made them during a March 2003 Harvard University forum on "Future Conditions: The Character and Conduct of War, 2010 and 2020."

"Things are changing, and this change is happening because things can be brought to us that we cannot afford to absorb," Hughes also said. "We can't deal with them, so we're going to reach out and do something ahead of time to preclude them. [Lemme give ya a tip, pal... we "cannot afford to absorb" infringements on the Constitution! –L.]

"Is that going to change your lives? It already has."

At the time of his statement, Gen. Hughes was a private consultant whose clients included the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DIA, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, SRI International, Anteon, Boeing, Rand Corp., and others, according to Congressional Quarterly.

In his current position, Hughes heads up DHS's intelligence analysis efforts and coordinates with the other members of the intelligence community, as well as with such interagency intelligence efforts as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

According to Congressional Quarterly, the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and Gen. Hughes have not responded to questions about these remarks. [Typical disregard for accountability to the citizens! –L.]

(Source: Congressional Quarterly, quoted in Reason magazine)

"Good News, Bad News, Unbelievable News" is written by Liberator Online editor James W. Harris. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Award, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty."

2005-01-13T17:24:00.000-06:00

The Normalization of Horror
American Gulags Become Permanent
By Ted Rall

01/12/05 "ICH" A new documentary, "Hitler's Hit Parade," runs 76 minutes without narration. Comprised entirely of archival footage, the film prompts its reviewers to remark upon Hannah Arendt's famous observation about the banality of evil. German troops subjugated Europe and shoved millions of people into ovens; German civilians went to the movies, attended concerts, and gossiped about their neighbors. People lived mundane, normal lives while their government carried out unspeakable monstrosities.

Sound familiar?

As Congress prepared to rubberstamp the nomination of torture aficionado Alberto Gonzales as the nation's chief prosecutor, the Washington Post broke news that would have torn a saner nation apart. The Bush Administration, the paper reported January 2, is no longer planning to keep hundreds of Muslim prisoners currently rotting away in U.S. concentration camps at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram merely "indefinitely." The Defense Department and CIA are now planning "a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions" for these innocents.

We're locking them up forever. Without due process.

Before gangsters like Alberto Gonzales seduced us into abandoning our values, a person was considered innocent before being proven guilty. Now we're locking people away because "the government does not have enough evidence to charge [them] in courts." And everyone, including Democrats, is OK with this.

Untold thousands of people are being held without charges, tortured and occasionally murdered in the system of gulags hastily strung together by the CIA, FBI, INS and Pentagon. According to the government itself, only a few dozen are former Al Qaeda officials. Most of these postmodern misérables were farmers, truck drivers, grunt militiamen and political enemies sold into bondage by Afghan warlords and similarly trustworthy souls for cash bounties on a no questions asked basis. We know they have no ties to terrorism, but they've already spent years getting beaten up. Releasing them would serve as a tacit admission that we were wrong to describe them as--in Dick Cheney's words--"the worst of the worst." They would sue our government, and eventually win. Worst of all, they have unpleasant tales to tell about systemic sodomy and countless other forms of horrific taxpayer-funded abuse. We can never let them out.

Bush plans to divide U.S. concentration camp victims into two groups. One set of "lifers" will end up in U.S.-run stalags like Gitmo's new Camp 6, built to hold 200 "detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, according to defense officials." But not to worry: Camp 6 would "allow socializing among inmates."

Others captured in the "war on terrorism" will be outsourced "to third countries willing to hold them indefinitely and without proceedings" in foreign-run gulags that pledge to make victims available for torture by American interrogators. This practice, some claim, is "an effective method of disrupting terrorist cells and persuading detainees to reveal information."

"The threat of sending someone to one of these countries [where they are likely to be tortured] is very important," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror."

But the so-called "ticking time bomb" rationale for torture is patently fallacious. We've heard the scenario repeatedly: wouldn't it be worth torturing someone who knew the location of a nuclear bomb that was about to destroy Manhattan? The short answer, to a moral person, is obviously no. Moreover, its logic is ludicrous.

Suppose we had captured Osama bin Laden on 9/10 and immediately gone to work on him with our Alberto Gonzales-approved psychotropic drugs and our Alberto Gonzales-approved "waterboard" dunking technique. It wouldn't take long for Osama's pals to notice that he'd failed to show up at the Terrorcave. They'd assume that we had him and were torturing him. They'd assume that he'd tell us everything he knew. So they'd delay 9/11 to 10/11 or 11/12 or 9/11/02. Or go to Plan B. Or develop a Plan C. No one in an underground organization, not even its top leader, is indispensable. Arrests are inconvenient, not debilitating.

The information a person possesses at the moment of his capture ages like a ripe cheese in hot sun. Even if what he told you at the beginning was true, anything you'd get out of him days and weeks and months and years later would be completely worthless.

Wait a minute.

Look at what we're talking about. Consider the breezy way we Americans--Americans!--are debating the pros and cons of torture. Marvel at our moral bankruptcy. The liberal argument against torture used to be that it was wrong. Now it's that it doesn't work.

So.

Read any good books lately?

© 2005 Ted Rall. Visit his website http://www.tedrall.com

[Emphasis mine. -v]

SOURCE

2005-01-13T11:13:00.000-06:00

More ~~coronation~~ inauguration nonsense

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom

Inaugural Event Security Plans Announced
Road Closures, Security Checkpoints To Be Instated

POSTED: 4:59 pm EST January 11, 2005
UPDATED: 1:21 pm EST January 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Officials have announced security information for the 2005 Presidential Inauguration.

<tedious location details snipped>

All Inauguration attendees are subject to a security check before entering any of the Inaugural event sites. As a security precaution, firearms, coolers, backpacks, laser pointers, glass containers and animals [WTF? Has there been chatter about hamster-bombs or something?! –L.] other than guide dogs will be prohibited.

Individuals attending the Inaugural parade may enter at any of the designated entry points on the north or south side of Pennsylvania Avenue and, after passing through security, will be able to cross the avenue at designated points. There will also be increased security restrictions in Washington’s airspace and waterways during the Inaugural events, officials said.

[In an earlier post, "The people" must be searched to attend "their own" event?!, I mentioned that ~~coronation~~ inaugural attendance is expected to exceed 300,000... and I still haven't heard them explain how the hell they plan to SUCCESSFULLY screen such a huge crowd in a timely fashion. Think about it — they can't even get a few hundred through airport security without "queue constipation"! So what is the ultimate goal? I can't imagine that Der Fuhrer would not want adoring throngs in the streets...???

Wanna bet they'll be culling us contrary types? Long-haired hippies and anybody wearing the "wrong" message on their shirt? (or maybe even sporting the wrong bumper sticker on their car? and don't think for a minute that those "overextended" homeland security types won't know it!) Sorry, you can't come in! Eliminate the anti-W bunch, and PRESTO... the crowd is cut in half!

...which still leaves a far too ambitious project, IMNSHO. –L.]

2005-01-13T09:52:00.000-06:00

The perils of paternalism

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

From Quote-a-Day:

QAD - "What difference does it make..."

Greetings fellow quote lovers:

I really want you to read today's first quote SEVERAL times. Why? QAD is not just some intellectual journey. It is about a spiritual journey that seeks to combine principles into a wworkable philosophy of life.

I have many spoken many times about being being against the Iraq war. While QAD certainly supports freedom and democracy everywhere, it is absurd to impose it. Gandhi tells us why.

I am not a Democrat and not a Republican. Each party has melded into one political philosophy of power. For those who tire of political implications of the quotes we select, QAD is probably not for you. But the quotes are sterile unless they are applied to real life situations.

Gandhi's quotation below SHOULD be applied to Iraq...

Best,

JA

*---- Quote of the Day ----*

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
-- Mahatma Ghandi

Bonus Quote

One of the world's greatest problems is the impossibility of any person searching for the truth on any subject when they believe they already have it.
-- Dave Wilbur

2005-01-13T08:23:00.000-06:00

Our Moral Compass is Spinning Crazily Out of Control

RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections and/or BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

The Right Is Wrong Again

For all of their piousness, the Right just doesn't get it.
Their new tactic for making the prisoner torture scandal
go away is to say that it wasn't really torture.

Man on Man. A rose by any name is still a rose.
Torture by any other name is still torture.
By Angie Pratt

01/12/05 "ICH" -- The Washington Times, Jan. 11, '05, belittles the idea that “prisoners forced to sit for extended periods of time in cramped areas, being draped with an Israeli flag or having a wet blanket wrapped around the head to simulate the sensation of drowning” should be called torture. In the article “The Peter Principles: Torture logic” published by the Washington Times, the author, Peter Roff, goes so far as to suggest that the government was right in using such tactics.

Jonah Goldberg in a Tallahassee Democrat article suggests that the things that went on at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison were “something a bit shy of torture”.

Specifically, “even being "waterboarded" - where a detainee's face is surrounded with a wet blanket and he's made to feel like he's drowning isn't torture either.” To validate his point Mr. Goldberg says “Our own cadets at the Air Force Academy have been water-boarded in training.” He obviously forgets the point that the Air Force Academy uses this as an example in an attempt to prepare cadets for torture.

Mr. Goldberg continues his moral pragmatism by justifying this position by saying that al-Qaida are not “signatories” of the Geneva Convention.

The Right Is Wrong Again.

The quibbling over the meaning of torture and the validity of its use is morally reprehensible in and of itself. Torture is wrong.

The Right has lost its moral compass. They have wrapped themselves in the flag and left their conscience in the dirt below it. You can't be a little bit pregnant. Date rape is still rape.

This country is surely on the wrong course when its leaders and their supporters suggest that torture, in any form, is acceptable.

Allowing this rhetoric to be blathered around as acceptable lowers our resistance to the immorality of the concept. It is an insidious attack on America's values. These fascist ideas have to be stopped dead in their deadly tracks.

It begins with youthereader. The next time you hear someone justifying torture or suggesting that the things that happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison were not torture stand up and disagree. Your silence on this matter is deafening.

Next time someone at the water cooler says such things are not torture and that they deserved it anyway, say "you're wrong." That's how we stop this at the grass roots -- at the foot of the flag.

[Emphasis added. -v]

SOURCE

[This same Orwellian word game is being used in other ways throughout our society and the world and people are suffering because of it. The recent firings at CBS are merely one small example of a true story being denied due to a few minor discrepancies despite the weight of evidence proving its validity! And the careers of four highly respected, award-winning journalists have been sacrificed in the name of fascism. It IS the responsibility of each of us to stand up to the machine whenever possible. -v]

2005-01-12T20:57:00.000-06:00

We just invaded your privacy... " 5¢ please! "

HACKERS, CRACKERS, WEBLOG YAKKERS — The Internet, Privacy, Security, etc.

More like "carte blanche"!

I had to rub my eyes and look again at this one! Has Ashcroft found new employment across the pond?

Government web snooping to add costs for Internet users

Thursday 06 January 2005, 21:44:34
Written by Net 4 Nowt

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has started the New Year by issuing a warning that European plans to force ISPs to collect traffic data will add to costs for Internet users.

"It would be nothing less than a hidden tax on Internet users who will be obliged to pay for the costs of government snooping," said Malcolm Hutty, regulation officer with LINX.

The European Council of Ministers is currently considering legislation which would force ISPs to collect and retain a wide variety of data about the traffic which they handle. It is intended that this data would be made available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Malcolm Hutty said: "At present, ISPs in the UK are required only to store information that they already collect for their own administration and billing purposes — not to collect data specifically for the government.

"The proposals from the European Council of Ministers, as we understand them, mean that the EU will tell ISPs what data to collect and store as well as defining how long it must be kept."

The council's own statement says that the draft Framework Decision on data retention "implies in principle that providers of publicly available electronic communications services or networks must retain specified data allowing for establishing the source, routing, destination, time, date and duration of communications and the location of the telecommunications devices used." [In English: your ISP will have a record of every porn video or pirated mp3 you download... and all your visits to those "subversive" blogs! ;o) –L.]

Mr Hutty said: "The EU is investigating ways of enforcing this level of data retention even where ISPs have no use for the information. For example, an ISP providing a 'permanently on' broadband connection generally has no interest in knowing specifically when the line was in use and for what purpose. The EU is seemingly going to make ISPs collect and store that data.

"The cost implications are huge. As we do not know what data we might be collecting, it is impossible to estimate what the costs will actually be. The sky is the limit.

"At the end of the day, the only source of money to finance this will be Internet users. ISPs will have to put up charges in order to finance data collection and retention for the government."

The European Council of Ministers does say that, in considering new rules, "particular consideration should be given to the proportionality of the measure in relation to costs, privacy (data protection) and efficiency." However, LINX is concerned that since the cost will fall on ISPs — and ultimately on Internet users — the council will not give much weight to this issue.

Mr Hutty said: "The EU is still consulting on these proposals and we will be strongly putting forward the industry's viewpoint that they could represent a huge financial burden to be carried by Internet users."

2005-01-12T18:14:00.000-06:00

Well, that explains a lot!

FLORA AND FAUNA — Environment and Health

I've heard theories that lead leaching from leaded crystal contributed to royal madness and the collapse of empires...

High Lead Levels In Water Found On Capitol Hill
Some Water Fountains Turned Off

POSTED: 8:23 am EST January 12, 2005
UPDATED: 8:31 am EST January 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The architect of the U.S. Capitol has e-mailed a warning to employees after excessive levels of lead were found in the water at the Library of Congress.

The e-mail reportedly advises employees not to use water from the bathrooms or kitchen faucets.

According to a spokeswoman, the action is a precaution until results of more comprehensive testing is known.

For the most part, employees can still use water fountains. Some, however, have been turned off for testing too high.

The architect of the Capitol has been conducting random water tests since last spring but did not find any significant lead contamination until last month.

It's not known how high the lead levels were at the Library of Congress.

2005-01-11T10:25:00.000-06:00

Military operations to benefit Big Bidniss? Who'da thunk?

WORDS AND WORKS — Poetry, Prose, Letters, Essays, Quotes and Quips

The date mentioned in this quote is depressing; little has changed in nearly a century!

From Quote-a-Day:

I was a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.

~ General Smedley Butler - The only two-time Medal of Honor winner in US history

2005-01-09T19:10:00.000-06:00

How many turned backs will we count at the ~~coronation ceremony~~ inauguration parade?

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH — Actions to Take to Make a Difference

If you can't attend, at least you can participate vicariously by counting the "reverse" images in the crowd!

Turn Your Back On Bush

The election is over. The fight is not.

Elections are only one part of democracy. We need to think strategically about direct action, learn from a rich history of nonviolent activism, and develop new tactics to take on this administration.

Let's start from the start: Inauguration Day.

On January 20th, 2005, we're calling for a new kind of action. The Bush administration has been successful at keeping protesters away from major events in the last few years by closing off areas around events and using questionable legal strategies to outlaw public dissent. We can use these obstacles to develop new tactics. On Inauguration day, we don't need banners, we don't need signs, we just need people.

We're calling on people to attend inauguration as they are: members of the public. Once through security and at the procession, at a given signal, we'll all turn our backs on Bush. A simple, clear and coherent message.

Visit Turn Your Back On Bush for more information on how you can help with this protest.

2005-01-09T18:38:00.000-06:00

That "RIGHT" was only half right :o(

POLITICS OF FEAR VS. DEMOCRACY — The Progressive Movement to Regain our Country

How do these bastards manage to spin everything around to the point where it doesn't apply to them?! As I reported in a "RIGHTS AND WRONGS" post a mere few days ago, the House was pressured into keeping what's good for the goose as being good for the gander... but what we didn't hear about was the set of sunglasses they put on the gander so he wouldn't be recognized when he's out, violating the rules. AARRRGGGHH!!

From Congress Watch:

Your Victory... and our next steps

Late on Monday night, House Republicans were forced to reverse their decision on the "DeLay Rule" and reinstate the provision that would force their majority leader (and any other elected House leaders) to step down from their position if indicted by a grand jury (something which Tom DeLay could very possibly face in a Texas money laundering case).

It was your calls and emails over the past two months that forced DeLay to back down — something that the man known among friends and enemies alike as "The Hammer" rarely does. It was your pressure that made DeLay step back from this act of ultimate hubris and arrogance, because the Republicans felt that pressure.

In addition, thanks to your last minute calls to members of Congress, on Tuesday the Republican caucus was forced to withdraw its most noxious proposal to amend the ethics rules. That measure would have removed the primary standard used to determine if a member of Congress has violated ethics rules — that is, the appearance of corruption. Their original plan would have eliminated this standard for ethical conduct and made only actual illegal activity a violation of ethics rules. In essence, it would have changed the ethics standard in the House to "catch me if you can," and would have given a blatant green light to all forms of corruption among government officials.

Public Citizen has been working right alongside you on these issues, and helped organize a major government watchdog coalition press conference on Monday to decry the proposed ethics changes and the "DeLay Rule." A room crammed with reporters and television cameras helped persuade DeLay to change his course. Again, because of your strong and consistent support of Public Citizen, you made this happen.

As you might suppose, though, someone as corrupt as DeLay is not suddenly turning over a new leaf in self-regulation and is certainly not ushering in a new dawn of ethical behavior. His corrupt and autocratic rule of the House has been humbled but not yet defeated.

In fact, DeLay led his colleagues — in a straight party-line vote — in enacting a change to ethics procedures that will put a halt to most investigations of corruption. The new rule change would require a majority vote of the ethics committee to even begin looking into the validity of ethics complaints. (Currently, a complaint automatically triggers an investigation within 45 days if the committee is deadlocked, and since the ethics committee is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, it is often deadlocked.)

This rule change, combined with a Republican leadership plan to replace the current ethics committee chairman, Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), with a DeLay lackey, will likely kill most ethics investigations for the next two years. (Hefley was the one who got the ethics committee to agree unanimously to rebuke DeLay three separate times last year.) The only winners will be those corporate interests that peddle influence with Congress so they can feed at the public trough.

So we won a significant skirmish with DeLay and the Republican leaders of the House. We made DeLay blink. Yet the battle is obviously far from over. In the coming days and weeks we will update you on new developments and our plan to push for an independent ethics panel to replace the dysfunctional ethics system in Congress. It will be a long haul, but with your help, it is a battle we can and will win.

As Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) said after their decision to reverse the DeLay Rule, "I feel like we have just taken a shower." We intend to make members of Congress take a lot more showers before we're done.

To read a Public Citizen op-ed on the ethics battle in the House, please go to tompaine.com

To keep updated on all developments related to DeLay, please go to www.DethroneDelay.org

For more information about this, and the other issues Public Citizen works on, please visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/

Press release: New House Ethics Rule Sure to Deadlock Investigations of Corruption

2005-01-09T18:11:00.000-06:00

How is it that the polls never match the poll polls?!

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

First, the exit polls didn't favor Bush... now, before he is even re-coronated, his poll numbers are once again (still?) below 50%. HOW THE HELL DID HE POSSIBLY "WIN" ANY ELECTION?!

(The short answer? HE DIDN'T.)

Poll: Bush's approval rating at 49 percent
Drop reflects partisan split, reduced 9/11 effect

The Associated Press
Updated: 10:34 a.m. ET Jan. 7, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush prepares to start his second term with an ambitious list of tasks but also a public evenly split about his job performance, an Associated Press poll found.

Bush’s approval rating is at 49 percent in the AP poll, with 49 percent disapproving. His job approval is in the high 40s in several other recent polls — as low as any job approval rating for a re-elected president at the start of the second term in more than 50 years.

Presidents Reagan and Clinton had job approval ratings of around 60 percent just before their inauguration for a second term, according to Gallup polls.

President Nixon’s approval was in the 60s right after his 1972 re-election, slid to about 50 percent right before his inauguration and then moved back over 60 percent. President Eisenhower’s job approval was in the low 70s just before his second inauguration in 1957.

Bush and Congress are about to tackle ambitious projects — creating private accounts for those in the Social Security system, overhauling the federal tax code and limiting lawsuit damages. Those tasks will be all the more difficult with the tepid poll ratings for both Bush and Congress.

About four in 10, 41 percent, approve of the job Congress is doing, while 53 percent disapprove, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos Public Affairs. [I ask you again... HOW THE HELL DID ANY OF THESE PEOPLE GET ELECTED WITH BELOW-50% NUMBERS?! Yeah, I know... "my congressman is OK, it's the other 434 who suck!" –L.]

The nation’s sharply partisan split is responsible for Bush’s job ratings.

Republicans overwhelmingly approve of Bush’s job performance and Democrats overwhelmingly disapprove — a split found to a lesser extent in the congressional numbers.

Democrats shift since 9/11
Only one in six Democrats say they approve of Bush’s job performance, the poll found. In January 2002, six in 10 Democrats approved of the job done by Bush, contributing to an overall job approval rating near 80 percent four months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In January of last year, about one-quarter of Democrats approved of the job done by Bush.

Rick Dickinson, a cabinet maker from Charlottesville, Va., and a Democrat, said he liked what he saw from Bush after the terrorist attacks, but those feelings have faded.

“I thought he did generally well after 9/11. He was decisive and he had some great momentum,” Dickinson said. “But now I basically disapprove of him. The war troubles me. He picks a plan — regardless of the information — and he goes with it.”

Bush has intense support from Republicans, which has kept him on an even keel or above for months. More than nine in 10 Republicans said they approve of Bush’s job performance.

“I very strongly support what he’s been doing,” said Cheryl McGauvran, a teacher in a Christian school who says she lives in the desert southeast of Los Angeles. “If we had somebody in office who waffled we would be in trouble. It’s almost better to be wrong and then correct it, than to vacillate and be stomped.” [In case you haven't noticed, lady, W refuses to admit any wrongs, much less attempt any correction. –L.]

Economy, Iraq, terrorism
People were evenly divided on Bush’s handling of the economy. They take a dim view of his handling of Iraq, with 44 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving, according to the poll of 1,001 adults. It was taken Jan. 3-5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Even on Bush’s strongest area, handling foreign policy and the war on terrorism, people were evenly split — with 50 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving.

For much of the last year, the public has been fairly evenly divided on Bush’s job approval. He was still able to win [You mean STEAL –L.] about 60 million votes — a record number but just 51 percent of votes cast — at a time most people thought the country was headed down the wrong track.

Bush’s willingness to pursue policies even if unpopular is appealing to some voters.

Gene Kuterboch, a state worker who lives in Stowe, Pa., says he’s been a Democrat all his life, but he voted for Bush this time because Democrat John Kerry “seemed to be following the polls.”

“I voted for President Bush because I think he took a stand after what went on with the terrorist attacks,” Kuterboch said. “We need a leader.” [Yeah, so did the lemmings. –L.]

2005-01-09T15:36:00.000-06:00

Swami's New Year: Replace the fear of Nine/OneOne with the hope of One/OneOne

C'MON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BROTHER! — Cultural Creativity, Pop Culture, Art Culture, Lifestyle

Swami Beyondananda's New Year Message

"Let's Declare a State of Emerge `n See ...
and Celebrate January 11th as One One One."

by Swami Beyondananda

In this dogma-eat-dogma world where fear is fueled by terrorism — not to mention antiterrorism — I say it's time to declare all out peace. Those of us who've been developing inner peace all these years, time to let it all out. Time to affirm everyone's right to bear arms — provided those arms are used for hugging. And this year, instead of commemorating an attack, let's celebrate an embrace.

Let's declare an emerge `n see. Time to emerge from beliefs that no longer serve us and see how we humans have been tricked into behaving foolishly. Time to emerge `n see beyond the dueling dualities to find solutions bigger than the problem. Time to emerge n' see there's no escape. God has us surrounded. Might as well surrender. We are all part of the inescapable Oneness.

One Spirit, many paths. One Planet, great diversity. One humanity, each of us totally unique... just like everyone else.

And what better time to celebrate Oneness than One One One?

At exactly 1:11 p.m. on January 11th, look at the person standing in front of you, smile, point, and say, "If I'm One, you're One too!" Then hug (if either of you has been a victim of hug abuse, you can do an air hug instead). I have often said that if we keep doing what we've always done, we will only get what we've always gotten. It stands to reason that if we try doing something new, we increase our chances of getting different results. So while it makes no sense to take up arms against warfare, it makes all the sense in the world to lift up arms and embrace anything that nourishes peace.

Now in this shrinking world that could definitely use a good shrink, it is understandable to look upward in hopes of the Messiah. But I say, we need to look at each other instead, and face the truth that we are looking the Messiah in the face. We have met the Savior and he is us! Here are all these children of God praying for Jesus to intervene, but we cannot expect to be fed intervenously forever. Time for children of God to grow up, for Goodness sake, and become adults of God instead.

I have a dream, so allow me to tell a vision. Each year at Passover, the Jewish people affirm the possibility of the Messiah: "Next year in Jerusalem." Next year always comes, and the Messiah never seems to come with it. Maybe it's time to make a break with the past and actually act as if the Messiah is already here. You know, fake it till you make it. So put it on your calendars. Next year — January 11, 2006 — let's celebrate Past Over in Jerusalem, and declare the past over and a new day begun.

Hold this vision with me please: Leaders of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths together in celebration — doing the Hokey Pokey. They put their whole selves in... that is commitment. They pull their whole selves out... that is detachment. They turn themselves around... that is transformation. And that's what it's all about!

Now this may seem implausible to you, ridiculous even. But I tell you what. It beats the heaven out of what we've been doing.

© 2005 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Visit the Swami online at
http://www.wakeuplaughing.com/

2005-01-08T19:43:00.000-06:00

Is there an echo in here?!

BORN YESTERDAY...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!

Aren't there some "three-strikes-you're-out" laws we can use to get rid of these one-note wonders?! I'm getting tired of posting (and you're likely tired of reading) this same story over and over and over, with nothing changing except the subject matter of the propaganda!

Bush's Drug Videos Broke Law, Accountability Office Decides

January 7, 2005
By JOHN FILES
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Thursday that the Bush administration violated federal law by producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.

The accountability office said the videos "constitute covert propaganda" [There's that phrase again! –L.] because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, which were distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. They were broadcast by nearly 300 television stations and reached 22 million households, the office said.

The accountability office does not have law enforcement powers [how conveeeenient! –L.], but its decisions on federal spending are usually considered authoritative.

In May the office found that the Bush administration had violated the same law by producing television news segments that portrayed the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly. [That was Strike One; scroll down 4 posts for Strike Two, "Didn't they learn anything from the Medicare ad debacle?!" –L.]

The accountability office was not critical of the content of the video segments from the White House drug office, but found that the format — a made-for-television "story package" — violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, who requested the review, said the use of the mock news segments broke "a fundamental principle of open government."

A spokesman for the drug policy office said the review's conclusions made a "mountain out of a molehill."

The spokesman, Tom Riley, noted that Congress had authorized the drug policy office to fashion antidrug messages in motion pictures and television programming and on the Internet. His office stopped distributing the antidrug videos after the G.A.O. report on the Medicare segments, Mr. Riley said, and never acted unlawfully.

The drug policy office told investigators that it would have been difficult for "a reasonable broadcaster" to mistake the videos for independent news reports. [Nice try, fellas... they weren't aimed at "reasonable broadcasters"... they were aimed at impressionable citizens! –L.]

But the G.A.O. said the drug policy office "made it impossible for the targeted viewing audience to ascertain that these stories were produced by the government."

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. The accountability office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they distributed editorials and newspaper articles written by government officials without identifying them.

The accountability office said the administration's misuse of federal money "also constitutes a violation of the Antideficiency Act," which prohibits spending in excess of appropriations.