MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

"If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, we wouldn't have George W. Bush."

Christy Marx

The Mars Society

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother on November 8, 1954

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 28 Feb. 2006

From Organic Consumers.

Congress Poised to Pass Bill Taking Away Right to Know What's in Your Food Tell your Congressman or Congresswoman to vote "No" on House of Representatives Bill H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act"

The House of Representatives will vote this week on a controversial "national food uniformity" labeling law that will take away local government and states' power to require food safety food labels such as those required in California and other states on foods or beverages that are likely to cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, or mercury poisoning. This bill would also prevent citizens in local municipalities and states from passing laws requiring that genetically engineered foods and ingredients such as Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) be labeled.

The House will vote March 2, 2006 on a bill that would gut state food safety and labeling laws. H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," lowers the bar on food safety by overturning state food safety laws that are not "identical" to federal law. Hundreds of state laws and regulations are at risk, including those governing the safety of milk, fish, and shellfish. The bill is being pushed by large supermarket chains and food manufacturers, spearheaded by the powerful Grocery Manufacturers of America.

Big food corporations and the biotech industry understand that consumers are more and more concerned about food safety, genetic engineering, and chemical-intensive agriculture, and are reading labels more closely. They understand that pesticide and mercury residues and hazardous technologies such as genetic engineering and food irradiation will be rejected if there are truthful labels required on food products. Industry-sponsored H.R. 4167 is gaining momentum and must be stopped! Act now! Preserve local and regional democracy and protect yourself and your family from unsafe food by sending an email or calling your Representative and urging them to vote "No" on H.R. 4167.

Please Take Action Now--Send a Message to Your Congress Member in the House of Representatives to Vote "No" on H.R. 4167

http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/labeling.cfm

And please call your Congress Member at 202-224-3121

From Grist on-line magazine.

Illinois nuke-power operator criticized for leaks and "incidents"

Quantity doesn't equal quality with Chicago-based Exelon Corp., which runs all six nuclear plants and 11 nuclear reactors in Illinois. There were at least four "incidents" at Exelon plants last week, including a false alarm at one generating station that initiated the first "site-area emergency" at a U.S. nuclear plant in 15 years. These came on the heels of disclosures that there were eight radioactive leaks and spills at Exelon plants since 1996 that went unreported to the public. One spill of roughly 3 million gallons of tritium-laced water in 1998 wasn't completely cleaned up eight years later. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) plans to introduce legislation this week requiring nuclear facilities to notify state and local officials of unintended or accidental radioactive leaks -- or face possible loss of their operating licenses.


Nigerian court orders Shell to pay $1.5 billion for pollution

A Nigerian court has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to ante up $1.5 billion in damages to communities in the Niger Delta, citing oil spills that polluted regional rivers, spoiled crops, and poisoned fish. The Friday ruling is a major victory for the region's Ijaw people, who have struggled for over a decade to get compensation for environmental damages. Shell says it will appeal. The court ruling comes during an upsurge in violence in the Niger Delta, where local communities live in squalor despite the region's oil riches. The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta kidnapped several employees of a U.S. oil industry subcontractor nine days ago and demanded that foreign oil firms leave the region. The group's attacks over the past two months have shut down almost a fifth of the country's oil production.

Pro-drilling Alaska rep aims to punish anti-drilling Washington senators

In the august halls of government, an unwritten rule has been passed down over the years: If the other kids play mean, don't invite them over. Alaska state Rep. Kurt Olson (R) has sponsored a resolution in the Alaska legislature to end a ferry service that carts about 30,000 people a year between Alaska and Washington state. Olson admits his move is mainly symbolic, intended to put pressure on Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell (D) and Patty Murray (D), who oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "If you don't support us in what we have going, we have to look at how we are supporting you," said state Rep. Mark Neuman (R), a resolution cosponsor. Through a spokesperson, Cantwell stressed that Washington lawmakers are rubber, and Alaska lawmakers are glue, and what bounces off the former will stick to the latter.

And the Bush regime refused to fund organizations that would help with birth control and family planning.

World population hits 6.5 billion
Rapid growth occurring where it can be least afforded, researchers say

A population milestone has been set on this jam-packed planet.

At 7:16 p.m. ET on Saturday, the population here on this good Earth hit 6.5 billion people, according to projections.

Along with this forecast, an analysis by the International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau points to another factoid, Robert Bernstein of the Bureau's Public Information Center advised LiveScience. Mark this on your calendar: Some six years from now, on Oct. 18, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. ET, the Earth will be home to 7 billion folks.

The population on Earth today is nearly four times the number in 1900. Behind that phenomenal global increase is a vast gulf in birth and death rates among the world's countries. But according to population experts, this gulf is not a simple divide that perpetuates the status quo among the have and have-not nations.

READ THE REST.

Scientist Hopes For Stem Cell Success

Feb. 26, 2006(CBS) If paralyzed people are ever going to walk again, it might be because of the scientist in this story. His name is Dr. Hans Keirstead and he has made great strides using human embryonic stem cells. He is among the best and the brightest in his field — a field that shows enormous promise, but has been restricted by a ban on federal funding for research because it involves the destruction of human embryos.

To move the science forward, California allocated its own money to pay for stem cell research, luring some of the top scientists in the nation, who are doing cutting edge work that could change the way we treat disease. No image says more about the remarkable results that have been achieved so far than this one: laboratory rats whose hind legs were completely paralyzed — until they were injected with human stem cells. Remarkably, afterwards, the rats were able to walk again.

Now, Dr. Keirstead, a 38-year-old biologist at the University of California, Irvine, says he is ready to try the same thing in people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries. Pending FDA approval, correspondent Ed Bradley reports that would make him the first scientist in the United States to transplant embryonic stem cells into humans.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 27 Feb. 2006

Important article. Please take the time to read the entire article.

Saving Democracy
by Bill Moyers, copyright 2006

(Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This is the prepared text of his remarks on an eight-day speaking trip in California on the issue of money and politics.)

It is a Dick Cheney world out there – a world where politicians and lobbyists hunt together, dine together, drink together, play together, pray together and prey together, all the while carving up the world according to their own interests.

Two years ago, in a report entitled Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, the American Political Science Association concluded that progress toward realizing American deals of democracy “may have stalled, and even, in some areas, reversed.” Privileged Americans “roar with a clarity and consistency that public officials readily hear and routinely follow” while citizens “with lower or moderate incomes are speaking with a whisper.”

The following year, on the eve of President George W. Bush’s second inauguration, the editors of The Economist, reporting on inequality in America, concluded that the United States “risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society.”

As great wealth has accumulated at the top, the rest of society has not been benefiting proportionally. In 1960 the gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was thirtyfold. Now it is seventy-five fold. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives in the country was 30 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker. A recent article in The Financial Times reports on a study by the American economist Robert J. Gordon, who finds “little long-term change in workers’ share of U.S. income over the past half century.” Middle-ranking Americans are being squeezed, he says, because the top ten percent of earners have captured almost half the total income gains in the past four decades and the top one percent have gained the most of all – “more in fact, than all the bottom 50 percent.”

No wonder working men and women and their families are strained to cope with the rising cost of health care, pharmaceutical drugs, housing, higher education, and public transportation – all of which have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. The recent book, Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity, describes how “thirty zipcodes in America have become fabulously wealthy” while “whole urban and rural communities are languishing in unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, growing insecurity, and fear.”

This is a profound transformation in a country whose DNA contains the inherent promise of an equal opportunity at “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and whose collective memory resonates with the hallowed idea – hallowed by blood – of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The great progressive struggles in our history have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich, share in the benefits of a free society. Yet today the public may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a secure retirement, and clean air and water, but there is no government “of, by, and for the people” to deliver on those aspirations. Instead, our elections are bought out from under us and our public officials do the bidding of mercenaries. Money is choking democracy to death. So powerfully has wealth shaped our political agenda that we cannot say America is working for all of America.

In the words of Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest of our Supreme Court justices: “You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both.”

..............

Look back at the bulk of legislation passed by Congress in the past decade: an energy bill which gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 in profits in 2005 and our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high; a bankruptcy “reform” bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe; the deregulation of the banking, securities and insurance sectors which led to rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors; the deregulation of the telecommunications sector which led to cable industry price gouging and an undermining of news coverage; protection for rampant overpricing of pharmaceutical drugs; and the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opening a PO Box in an off-shore tax haven like Bermuda or the Cayman islands.

..............

It is time to fight again. These people in Washington have no right to be doing what they are doing. It’s not their government, it’s your government. They work for you. They’re public employees – and if they let us down and sell us out, they should be fired. That goes for the lowliest bureaucrat in town to the senior leaders of Congress on up to the President of the United States.

We need that fighting spirit we need today – the tough, outraged and resilient spirit that knows we have been delivered a great and precious legacy, you and I – “government of, by and for the people” – and, by God we’re going to pass it on.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 23 Feb. 2006

There is simply no end to the lies and hypocrisy of the Bush regime.

How Neo-Cons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al Qaeda
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - After the Sep. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing for war in Afghanistan needed Iran's help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organised resistance by the "Northern Alliance" and had provided arms and funding, at a time when the United States had been unwilling to do so.

"The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States," recalls Flynt Leverett, then senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), in an interview with IPS.

In October 2001, as the United States was just beginning its military operations in Afghanistan, State Department and NSC officials began meeting secretly with Iranian diplomats in Paris and Geneva, under the sponsorship of Lakhdar Brahimi, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Leverett says these discussions focused on "how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government".

It was thanks to the Northern Alliance Afghan troops, which were supported primarily by the Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out of Kabul in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan opposition groups were convened in Bonn under United Nations auspices to agree on a successor regime.

At that meeting, the Northern Alliance was demanding 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government, which was blocking agreement by other opposition groups. According to U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a "decisive role" in persuading the Northern Alliance delegate to compromise. Dobbins also recalls how the Iranians insisted on including language in the Bonn agreement on the war on terrorism.

The bureaucracy recognised that there was an opportunity to work with Iran not only on stabilising Afghanistan but on al Qaeda as well. As reported by the Washington Post on Oct. 22, 2004, the State Department's policy planning staff had written a paper in late November 2001 suggesting that the United States should propose more formal arrangements for cooperation with Iran on fighting al Qaeda.

That would have involved exchanging intelligence information with Tehran as well as coordinating border sweeps to capture al Qaeda fighters and leaders who were already beginning to move across the border into Pakistan and Iran. The CIA agreed with the proposal, according to the Post's sources, as did the head of the White House Office for Combating Terrorism, Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing.

But the cooperation against al Qaeda was not the priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the White House and the Pentagon. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" recounts that Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who chaired an inter-agency committee on Iran policy dealing with issues surrounding Afghanistan, learned that the White House intended to include Iran as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in Bush's State of the Union message in January.

Hadley expressed reservations about that plan at one point, but was told by Bush directly that Iran had to stay in. By the end of December, Hadley had decided, against the recommendations of the State Department, CIA and White House counter-terrorism office, that the United States would not share any information with Iran on al Qaeda, even though it would press the Iranians for such intelligence, as well as to turn over any al Qaeda members it captured to the appropriate home country.

Soon after that decision, hardliners presented Iranian policy to Bush and the public as hostile to U.S. aims in Afghanistan and refusing to cooperate with the war on terror -- the opposite of what officials directly involved had witnessed.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 22 Feb. 2006

Bush vs. Constitution
President Bush's conception of his own powers is even more dangerous than his specific abuses.

By Paul Starr

Repeatedly through our history, the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution have been threatened in war by an overreacting government and then reaffirmed in peace by calmer leadership. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, the suppression of free speech during and after World War I, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, McCarthyism, and the wiretapping of Vietnam-era dissenters -- all of these came to be seen, once fears subsided, as violations of our freedoms and embarrassments to our heritage.

George W. Bush’s presidency is another era of overreaction at the expense of constitutional rights, but the prospects for a quick correction are not auspicious. Nothing has helped end earlier bouts of repression so much as the fact that the wars themselves came to a close, and nothing has so exposed our liberties to indefinite jeopardy as the conception of a “war on terrorism” with no end.

The president claims an inherent power to imprison American citizens whom he has determined to be this country’s enemies without obtaining a warrant, letting them hear the charges against them, or following other safeguards against wrongful punishment guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Under his administration, the government has engaged in inhumane treatment of prisoners that amounts to torture, and when Congress passed legislation to ban such treatment, he declared he would simply interpret the law his own way. Although the Constitution says treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” the president has abrogated them on his own. And, we now know, he ordered a secret program of electronic surveillance of Americans without court warrants.

But there is something more dangerous than any of these specific abuses and usurpations, and that is the theory of inherent powers that Bush invokes to justify most of these actions and the possibility of its being effectively institutionalized by a meek Congress and, worst of all, by a deferential Supreme Court.

READ THE REST.

Time to impeach Bush
By BONNIE ERBE
Scripps Howard News Service

Those blasphemously "liberal" media outlets have once again deprived the American public of widespread coverage of nothing less than startling poll results. The non-partisan polling firm Zogby International last month found that by a margin of 52 percent to 43 percent, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush "if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval."

Well, there's no "if" about it anymore. The president approved warrantless wiretaps in 2002. Two years later, during a campaign appearance in Buffalo, N.Y. he volunteered he'd done nothing of the kind. That's called breaking the law and lying about it.

Yes, the poll results have been reported on a few Web sites. But they have not exactly been trumpeted by the Blow Hard Boys on the Fox News Channel, nor even "front-paged" on the New York Times. Nor have they appeared as the lead story on any of the evening newscasts. From the right to the left, this poll has been ignored _ as has a recent Gallup poll showing a majority of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be a failure. Why? Because it's seen as risky.

Media inattention to the growing American pro-impeachment sentiment is not a partisan issue. Reasonable, honest Republicans such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have criticized Bush's wiretapping "sans" court approval as a violation of the law and basic civil liberties.

Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., now a conservative TV commentator, also sees the president's actions as law-breaking. Conservative legal analyst Bruce Fein, who worked in the Reagan Justice Department, wrote in The Washington Times that Bush should face "possible impeachment" if the practice is not stopped.

Personally, I do not find illegal wiretapping to be the worst offense committed against our nation by this president. I'd rate purposefully destructive federal overspending as the most egregious transgression. Did you happen to notice last week Treasury Secretary John Snow "informed Congress that he would begin borrowing from the federal employees' retirement fund to avoid exceeding the nation's statutory debt limit of $8.184 trillion"? That, as reported by my Scripps Howard colleague, Dale McFeatters.

I'd rate "tricking" Americans into a costly, deadly, unwinnable war in Iraq and alienating most other nations as second. I'd rate wanton disregard for science and the promotion of so-called junk science _ to wit, global warming is a gossamer concept _ as an excuse for environmental destruction as third. Abramoff-related partisan corruption and the outing of CIA agent Plame would figure in there somewhere. And somewhere lower down the list would come warrantless wiretaps.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

BLM focuses on drilling at expense of wildlife, critics charge

Wildlife biologists at the Bureau of Land Management office in Pinedale, Wyo., are finding their talents put to unusual use: reviewing drilling-permit requests. Western Wyoming has been a natural-gas drilling mecca for the last five years, during which its populations of mule deer and breeding male sage grouse have declined by roughly half. "The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," says Steve Belinda, who quit his BLM job in protest. An internal evaluation three years ago showed that the BLM spent about one-third of its allocated conservation money on other programs. The oil and gas industry was granted 13,070 permits by the BLM in the last two years, but drilled only 5,844 wells -- yet the BLM is charging ahead to issue more permits. Everything about this story is depressing except the word "biostitutes," which rules.


San Francisco looks to harness the power of pet poop

Renewable energy is the sh*t. No, really. San Francisco Bay Area cities are aiming to generate no trash by 2020, and nearly 4 percent of San Francisco's residential waste is animal excrement. What to do with the doo? Turn it into methane and heat your home or cook your meals with it! (Um, ew.) In the next few months, a San Francisco sanitation company will be collecting feces at a busy dog park -- no doubt employees are jostling for the assignment -- and sending it to be digested by hungry bacteria. The resulting methane could theoretically be used in any natural-gas system. Some officials hope to see methane digesters in individual homes within a few years. While it's a relatively newfangled notion in the United States, some European countries already process poo into energy.

Posted: 15 Feb. 2006

Freedom of religion also means freedom from having someone else's religion jammed down your throat. Unless you're some poor schmuck in the military. I am disgusted with this.

Air Force Eases Rules on Religion
New Guidelines Reflect Evangelicals' Criticism, General Says
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Air Force, under pressure from evangelical Christian groups and members of Congress, softened its guidelines on religious expression yesterday to emphasize that superior officers may discuss their faith with subordinates and that chaplains will not be required to offer nonsectarian prayers.

"This does affirm every airman's right, even the commanders' right, to free exercise of religion, and that means sharing your faith," said Maj. Gen. Charles C. Baldwin, the Air Force's chief of chaplains.

The guidelines were first issued in late August after allegations that evangelical Christian commanders, coaches and cadets at the Air Force Academy had pressured cadets of other faiths. The original wording sought to tamp down religious fervor and to foster tolerance throughout the Air Force. It discouraged public prayers at routine events and warned superior officers that personal expressions of faith could be misunderstood as official statements.

But evangelical groups, such as the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, saw the guidelines as overly restrictive. They launched a nationwide petition drive, sounded alarms on Christian radio stations, and deluged the White House and Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne's office with e-mails calling the guidelines an infringement of the Constitution's guarantees of free speech and free exercise of religion.

Seventy-two members of Congress also signed a letter to President Bush criticizing the guidelines and urging him to issue an executive order guaranteeing the right of military chaplains to pray "in Jesus' name" rather than being forced to offer nonsectarian prayers at public ceremonies.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Oil and gas companies set to receive $7 billion taxpayer windfall

To supplement their already record-breaking profits, oil companies are set to receive around $7 billion in royalty relief over the next five years -- possibly up to $35 billion, depending on the outcome of an ongoing lawsuit -- and the feds claim they are basically powerless to stop it. At issue are royalties charged for oil and gas extracted from federal land and deep waters off shore. Or in this case, not charged: In the mid-90s, oil was cheap and the feds were trying to sweeten the pot to encourage risky, high-cost exploration in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, so they passed a "royalty relief" act that zeroed out royalties. Only now, oil and gas prices are up, oil companies are drowning in cash, and the taxpayer giveaway continues. The feds say the royalty-free bonanza is typically tied to price points for oil and gas, but a lawsuit by oil company Kerr-McGee, if successful, could remove even that modest limitation, jacking up the additional lost royalties to around $35 billion. Congressional Democrats are working to end the royalty relief, but their chances of success are slim.


Landowners awarded $554 million for nuke contamination from Rocky Flats

Thousands of Colorado downwinders got some vindication on Tuesday, when a jury ordered Dow Chemical and the former Rockwell International to pay $554 million in damages for plutonium contamination from Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant. It's the largest civil verdict ever awarded in Colorado -- likely to be reduced to around $353 million, as the jury's award exceeds legal limits. The trial pitted more than 10,000 Denver-area property owners against the corporations, which contracted with the U.S. Department of Energy for decades to make plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads at Rocky Flats (closed in 1989, now being made into a wildlife refuge). The corporations claim the feds are responsible for paying the damages. Some observers think this massive award could crack typical DOE denials of responsibility for illness and pollution caused by its nuclear-weapons facilities -- but others, more familiar with, you know, the real world, aren't hopeful.


NOAA scientists join NASA's with accounts of global-warming censorship

Government censorship: It's what's for dinner. Some climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whose views on global warming contradict Bush administration policy say they're being prevented from giving particular interviews or being closely monitored by press handlers. A recent NOAA press release claiming "consensus" around the fact that global warming had nothing to do with the intensity of 2005's hurricanes was recently changed after outraged protest from agency scientists who don't share that view. Meanwhile, over at NASA, which has been plagued for weeks by censorship charges, some press officers are giving new accounts of interference from political appointees, including pressure to cut the flow of climate-related news during and after the 2004 presidential campaign. And the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on censorship: Australian climate scientists say their government is muzzling them too.

From The Center for American Progress.

HEALTH CARE
Where's The Beef?

"Bush To Discuss Health Care During Visit To Wendy's," Cincinnati's WCPO-TV reported. Their headline isn't a joke - Bush really picked the headquarters of the nation's third-largest burger chain's headquarters as the place to sell his health care schemes to the American people. The White House chose the venue because Wendy's strongly supports Health Savings Accounts. In 2005, the National Journal reported Wendy's International joined a working group, along with other companies such as Fidelity Investments and Pfizer, "aimed at ensuring the success" of HSAs. Today, Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch said the company wants to "tell [Bush] about an innovative program that we believe serves the best interests of employees and shareholders." The "innovative program" is HSAs, paired with high-deductible health insurance. Bush wants to dramatically increase the amount of money that individuals can contribute to such accounts to encourage more high-deductible plans. An increased reliance on HSAs, however, could actually increase the number of uninsured Americans because they won't be able to afford plans with high deductibles. HSAs provide benefits almost exclusively to high-income individuals and big businesses. "The bottom line is that what the Bush administration calls reform is actually the opposite," Paul Krugman wrote. "Driven by an ideology at odds with reality, the administration wants to accentuate, not fix, what's wrong with America's health care system."

MAKING A BAD SITUATION WORSE: The administration's "consumer-driven health care" model would not fix our health care system's major problems, such as "rising costs and rising numbers of Americans without health insurance." Rather, healthy people will have greater incentive to get out of traditional plans, leaving the sick to pay higher premiums and possibly leading to more uninsured Americans as they decide to stop paying prohibitively-expensive premiums. As Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University writes, "A wholesale switch to HSAs would redistribute the nation's overall financial burden of health care from the budgets of chronically healthy families to those of chronically ill families." Second, HSAs would not reduce costs. The theory behind the accounts assumes people are willing to shop between hospitals to find the lowest price for health care. But are people willing to do this? "No," Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson said flatly, "we don't buy hospital care by the hour." Finally, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found the "number of people who would lose coverage due to actions that their employers would take would likely exceed the number of uninsured people who would gain insurance." This is because most Americans are not in a high enough tax bracket to significantly benefit from the tax-free accounts.

MAKING HEALTH CARE DECISIONS NOT LIKE CHOOSING A SUPER VALUE MEAL: Another problem with health savings accounts, Paul Krugman points out, is that "in practice, people who are forced to pay for medical care out of pocket don't have the ability to make good decisions about what care to purchase" because "buying health care isn't at all like buying clothing." Life and death decisions about our health are already difficult to make even with the guidance of trained medical professionals. "Health is simply too complex for people to make smart, waste-reducing decisions," Sebastian Mallaby wrote, "when you go to the hospital with screaming stomach pains, you have no idea how many tests you need - and you're not in a fit state to embark on comparative shopping." Unlike other choices between goods and services which may lead to higher efficiency and lower prices, it is "irrational to assume that the parents of a critically ill child will call for price quotes on an urgently-needed procedure, or that accident victims will consult hospital quality report cards to direct the ambulance to the emergency department of their choice."

NOT FOR PEOPLE SHOPPING FROM THE DOLLAR MENU: According to Political Money Line, the financial services industry was the top PAC contributor to President Bush's presidential campaigns in both 2000 and 2004. These companies stand to make a hefty profit from the transaction costs and financial fees associated with HSAs. Also, like Bush's tax cuts, HSAs disproportionately benefit the wealthy over low- and middle-income Americans. The benefits will become more pronounced if Bush's plans to increase contribution limits and create an additional 15.3 percent tax credit become law. A study by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities' Jason Furman found these policies would mean those with higher incomes would receive higher tax breaks. A hypothetical family making $15,000 a year would receive a $153 tax cut under the plan, while a family making $180,000 would receive over $4,500. Sebastian Mallaby rightly called the study's results "shockingly regressive."

AN UNHEALTHY CHOICE OF VENUE: Bush's choice of fast-food giant Wendy's as a background shot is misguided. Obesity rates among America's children have doubled since the 1970s, and childhood obesity has been shown to increase the risk of asthma, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. Wendy's is part of the problem. Last week, the company announced it "will focus more attention on younger consumers as it tries to turn around the trend at its hamburger restaurants." Research shows children are susceptible to the types of advertising Wendy's will use to convince children they need 960 calorie kids' meals. "Research indicates that the ads children are exposed to do influence their choice of foods," the Kaiser Family Foundation found. Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton announced an $8 million grant his foundation received to fight childhood obesity. "This is a national emergency," Clinton said. "We are looking to halt the growth of childhood obesity by 2010." 285 schools in 13 states will participate in the foundation's pilot program.


Under the Radar

NATIONAL SECURITY -- GOVERNMENT WHISTLEBLOWERS PUNISHED FOR SPEAKING OUT: Whistleblowers from the FBI, National Security Agency, Defense Department, and Energy Department yesterday told a House subcommittee that after they spoke out against alleged government misconduct or criminal activity, they "were retaliated against, in some cases by having their security clearances revoked or their careers ruined." Spc. Samuel Provance said he was demoted and humiliated after telling a general investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal that senior officers had covered up detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib. "Young soldiers were scapegoated while superiors misrepresented what had happened and tried to misdirect attention away from what was really going on," Provance said. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) has called on Congress to pass legislation protecting government employees who speak out. "These agencies are out of control," said Weldon. "If we don't take action we're all in trouble."

IRAN -- AMERICANS TRUST U.N. MORE THAN BUSH ON IRAN: More bad news for President Bush: the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that Americans put more confidence in the United Nations (47 percent) to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons than they do the Bush administration (45 percent). 67 percent are concerned that the United States will not do enough to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and another 69 percent are concerned that the United States will be too quick to use military force against Iran.

VALUES -- WHITE HOUSE CUTS FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING: On his first full day in office five years ago, President Bush acted to"deny federal aid to overseas groups that help women obtain abortions." His recent budget proposes cutting funding for international family planning programs -- touted by the White House as one of the best ways to prevent abortions -- by 18 percent. "It's ironic that an administration outwardly committed to reducing the incidence of abortion would take away valuable tools for preventing unwanted pregnancies," said Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). But the Bush administration's policies toward abortion have been failing abroad. A new study on Uganda published in the journal International Family Planning Perspectives found that "[p]oor access to contraceptives has led to an unusually high rate of abortions in Uganda." In the past, the White House has denied funding programs that provide abortion services or emergency contraception to rape victims in war-torn countries.

INNOVATION -- U.S. MANUFACTURERS FAILING TO CLOSE GAP ON HYBRID VEHICLES: Japanese-produced cars "from Honda Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. occupy 10 of the top dozen spots in the annual 'green car' survey" released yesterday by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The highest-ranked U.S. car was GM's Pontiac Vibe; it tied for 10th place, and was actually built with a Toyota emissions system and engine. Another American vehicle, the Dodge Ram SRT10 pickup truck, was judged the least green car for the second year. "Unfortunately, the domestic manufacturers are not closing the gap with the leading foreign manufacturers on fuel economy,” Therese Langer, ACEEE’s transportation program director, said. “Detroit has had a difficult year, but given high gasoline prices and shifting consumer preferences, offering more fuel-efficient vehicles is not a luxury -- it’s a business necessity." See the full rankings here.

Posted: 14 Feb. 2006

From Grist on-line magazine.

White House wants to auction off 300,000 acres of public land

The Bush administration has proposed a sell-off of over $1 billon worth of public land over the next five to 10 years. Proceeds from the auctions of more than 300,000 acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management holdings would largely go to rural schools and roads, funding for which has been cut by, um, the Bush administration. Environmental historian Char Miller calls the scheme "a fire sale of public lands ... utterly unprecedented." Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary in charge of the Forest Service, claims timber, oil, and gas interests weren't directly consulted on that agency's sale plans -- though some of the plots might have been chosen based on such "conversations in recent months and years." Ahem. While Rey says the national forest parcels on the block are not ecologically vital, some conservationists worry that the sales may break up important wildlife corridors and bring development to the banks of scenic rivers. Congress would need to approve the plan before it could go into effect.


Japan rules, U.S. drools in new list of greenest vehicles

An annual list of the world's greenest cars placed the top American car at an impressive, uh, No. 10, while Japanese cars took all of the top five spots. (But American cars dominated the Totally Un-Gay Testostero-Manly Mean Machine list!) The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy gave the two-door hybrid Honda Insight top marks, based on fuel economy and air-polluting emissions. The natural-gas-powered Honda Civic GX, Toyota's Prius hybrid, the Honda Civic hybrid, and Toyota's gasoline-powered Corolla rounded out the top five. The first U.S. car on the list was GM's Pontiac Vibe -- built with a Toyota emissions system and engine -- which tied for 10th place with its Toyota twin, the Matrix. The Dodge Ram SRT10 pickup truck was judged the un-greenest for the second year running (congrats!). But even the best car got only 57 points on the council's 100-point scale. Better luck next year.

From The Center for American Progress.

Bush's Priorities: Found in Translation

In a speech last week to the Business and Industry Association for New Hampshire, President Bush explained his mindset when determining how to spend American taxpayer dollars. "Of course, you'd like to take a vacation every week, you know, some exotic place -- but you've got to set your priorities -- you can't do that. You want do this or do that, go to a fancy restaurant every night, but that's not setting priorities." Given the make-up of his budget, President Bush apparently thinks that funding priorities like education, veterans' health, and a strong defense is akin to buying a cruise to Tahiti. Below, we've translated some other Bush's other priorities, as evidenced in his proposed 2007 budget. (For the best coverage of the latest budget news, visit American Progress' new Budget Blog.)

BUSH: 'TOO MANY POOR KIDS GO TO COLLEGE': Federal programs to help students pay for higher education "take significant hits" in President Bush's budget: "The Perkins Loan program would be eliminated, and Pell grant funding for college students would drop by $4.6 billion."

BUSH: 'OIL COMPANIES AREN'T MAKING ENOUGH MONEY': "The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years," the New York Times reports today. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government."

BUSH: 'LEAVING NO CHILD BEHIND ISN'T WORTH THE COST': Department of Education spending on vital programs -- Upward Bound, GEAR UP, dropout prevention, etc. -- would fall by $2.1 billion, or 3.8 percent, under the president's budget. In all, Bush proposes to cut "42 Education Department programs to save $3.5 billion" while flat-funding two of education's most important programs, Title I and IDEA.

BUSH: 'NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE ARE ENTERING OUR COUNTRY UNDETECTED': While some want to make border security the only answer to illegal immigration, it must be a significant part of the solution to the estimated 700,000 people who slip through our borders undetected each year. Despite congressional approval to hire 10,000 new border agents over five years, the administration only requested funding for 210 new hires for 2006. For 2007, the administration wants to hire 1,500 new border agents, a move in the right direction but still less than what was authorized by the December 2004 intelligence reform legislation.

BUSH: 'VETERANS SHOULD PAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE': Veterans younger than 65 would pay up to two or three times more for the military's health care program "under a controversial set of fee increases" proposed in the latest budget. "About 3.1 million retirees and their families nationwide would be affected," the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

BUSH: 'TRUST ME -- TERRORISTS WILL NEVER TRY TO HIDE EXPLOSIVES IN AIRLINE CARGO': The Department of Homeland Security once again fails to address air cargo security, the Achilles heel of aviation security. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) continues to devote a disproportionate share of its resources to passenger aviation security, in essence, fighting the last war. However, while adding significant amounts in new technology for air passenger checkpoints and in-line luggage screening, only 1 percent of TSA's 2007 $4.7 billion budget, or $45 million, is devoted to the air cargo that is carried in passenger aircraft. While passengers and their baggage are thoroughly scanned, the vast majority of air cargo is not, a vulnerability well known since September 11.

BUSH: 'I STILL WANT TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY': When President Bush first launched his campaign to privatize Social Security last year, just 39 percent of Americans approved of how he was handling the issue. A year later, that number has dropped to 35 percent. Apparently, Bush didn't get the message. "[T]his year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal," Newsweek reports. Beginning in 2010, people could set up private accounts at a cost of $700 billion dollars over seven years, all funds diverted from Social Security tax revenues.

BUSH: 'DRINKING CLEAN WATER IS A PRIVILEGE': President Bush's budget would dramatically reduce community environment funding by 13 percent, with cuts proposed for the Environmental Protection Agency eight times larger than other agencies on average. A very short list of cuts: Clean Water State Revolving Fund (provides states with low-interest loans for infrastructure so they don't have to drink polluted water), Superfund Toxic Cleanup (funds clean-up of toxic waste sites), State and Tribal Air Grants (funds local community efforts to improve healthy air quality), Clean School Bus Initiative (completely eliminated).

BUSH: 'MY HIGHEST PRIORITY: TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHIEST': American Progress fellow Gene Sperling has spelled out Bush's budget narrative: "in the face of unpredictable, external, deficit-exploding forces beyond their control [like Katrina and Iraq], these brave budget warriors are successfully battling to return Washington to fiscal sanity." Actually, we could fund our legitimate priorities and reduce the deficit if not for Bush's tax cuts and his costly Medicare prescription drug benefit. If the tax cuts are made permanent, those two programs combined will cost more than $550 billion in 2011 and each year after.


Under the Radar

INTELLIGENCE -- TOP COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL FIRED FOR OPPOSING TORTURE: Robert Grenier, the CIA's top counterterrorism official, was fired last week for opposing "detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as 'water boarding.'" CIA head Porter Goss has been angry over leaks to the media about secret CIA prisons abroad and blamed Grenier for allowing such leaks to occur on his watch. Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said, "It is not that Grenier wasn't aggressive enough, it is that he wasn't 'with the programme.' He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists." Grenier's ouster fits with the Bush administration's orders to Goss "to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush," including "liberals" and others who are perceived as "obstructing the president's agenda."

ADMINISTRATION -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS SPENT $1.62 BILLION ON PUBLIC RELATIONS: In the past two and a half years, the Bush administration has spent $1.62 billion of taxpayer money on public relations and media spending, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The bulk of the money -- 87 percent -- went to advertising agencies; the Defense Department spent the most on media contracts, worth $1.1 billion. "The extent of the Bush administration's propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing," said Rep. George Miller (D-CA). The Bush administration has come under criticism in the past year over its covert propaganda efforts, including paying a commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote White House policies. Abroad the administration has also been secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to run positive propaganda stories written by U.S. troops.

LOBBYING -- THE POLITICS OF INFLUENCE SHOW LITTLE SIGNS OF SLOWING: The Wall Street Journal reports today that U.S. corporations and interest groups spent a record total of $1.16 billion to lobby Washington in the first six months of 2005. "Spending on lobbying rose $85 million, or 8%, between January and June 30, 2005, compared with the previous six-month period. Corporations, trade associations, lawyers and unions spent about $6.5 million a day to lobby Congress and the Bush administration during the latest period." The Washington Post explains corporations often experience a huge return from their investment in a lobbying operation. "The return on investment in lobbying is often so substantial that experts and insiders agree that Washington's influence industry will continue to thrive no matter how lawmakers decide to rein it in." It comes as no surprise, then, that good-government advocacy groups, while supporting the congressional lobbying reform efforts, "say the fixes currently on the congressional table barely scratch the surface of a system sullied by corporate money."

Posted: 13 Feb. 2006

We must not forget that the Bush regime artificially created the "need" for the Iraq war. We're already stretched thin across two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the neocon loonies want to attack Iran. It's insanity.

From The Center for American Progress.

Think First

A renewed sense of urgency has returned to the nuclear impasse with Iran. Media reports published this weekend suggest that U.S. strategists are planning for potential military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and hawkish conservatives eager to take the focus off Iraq have turned their attention to Iran. Yet beneath these sensational headlines, more important developments are occurring. The near-unanimous vote to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear program, and the growth of the international coalition working to convince Iran to shift course, represent serious diplomatic victories. Americans should be focusing on these developments, rather than the "atmosphere of panic and hysteria" being promoted by the right wing. As Matthew Yglesias argues, "The one aspect of the Iran question that does enjoy universal agreement is that it involves difficult, unappealing choices and a notable absence of easy answers. Under the circumstances, it's vital that the public have a clear understanding of what is genuinely at issue here."

REALITY CHECK: Last August, a National Intelligence Estimate representing the "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies" projected that Iran is "about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years." Likewise, a report by the Institute for Science and International Security determining the "worst-case scenario" for Iran concluded that "at a minimum, it would take about three years for the Iranians to build a bomb even if one assumes that, contrary to the historical record, their scientists face no technical problems whatsoever along the way." In other words, Iran's nuclear program is a problem, but not a crisis. The Bush administration must keep the Iran issue on the front burner, as it has neglected to do consistently over the past five years. Yet the United States also has time -- time to engage Iran directly, to draw together a real coalition to persuade Iran to shift course, and time to help advance real democracy in a country whose citizens have higher regard for the United States than almost any other in the region.

SOME SIGNS OF AN OPENING: "The great void of Iranian-American relations is also the great, and perhaps most dangerous, anomaly of international relations today," Roger Cohen wrote last week in the International Herald Tribune. The Bush administration has for too long ceded leadership on Iranian diplomacy to "Old Europe." Instead, as American Progress has argued for months, the United States must engage Iran. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said yesterday, "It may well be that the United States is going to have to find some way to engage the Iranians off channel," pointing out that "one of the results of us having no relationship with Iran, when all of our allies do, is that the intelligence we get pretty much is third-hand. We don't have any presence in Iran." Roger Cohen suggests an appropriate opening: Iraq. The interests of the United States and Iran mostly converge there, since both governments will gain when Iraq moves on a course towards stability and development. Moreover, there appear to be some elements of Iran's power structure that seek a less confrontational approach. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the powerful Expediency Council, said at a rally last week that "instead of relying on strength, we must try to fix the situation wisely," while a former speaker of Parliament told demonstrators that officials must "try to adopt dialogue and act wisely." Says Cohen: "In the long term, engagement with Iran, even that of Ahmadinejad, is in America's interest. Iraq offers an avenue, and a venue, to start talking. It will not happen soon, but a Nixon-to-China moment in American-Iranian relations is the only way to turn events from a destructive spiral."

HAWKS WANT U.S. TO PLAY ITS WEAKEST HAND: The UK Telegraph reported this weekend that Pentagon strategists are drawing up "last resort" plans for "devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites." Meanwhile, Reuters reported that during a private meeting last week, "a former senior U.S. official raised the idea of launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at crippling key Iranian nuclear facilities." If true, these reports should be considered skeptically. There is widespread agreement among Iran experts and U.S. defense analysts that, while the military option should always remain on the table, there are few good military solutions to the Iran conflict. As Hagel (R-NE) said this weekend, "I hope we are a long way from seriously considering a military option...because I don't think it would result in the objective here. What is the objective? The objective is to deal with the reality that Iran is moving closer to getting the capability to develop a nuclear weapon." Of course, that hasn't stopped headline-chasing politicians like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from blustering about military attacks, even as they support the disastrous Bush policy in Iraq that has allowed an historic expansion of Iranian influence in the region. They are advocating a path of confrontation with a weak hand. Their policy is ill-fated and, in essence, a dead-end.


Under the Radar

HUMAN RIGHTS -- U.N. REPORT FINDS UNITED STATES IS ABUSING DETAINEES: A new United Nations report on the nearly 500 detainees at Guantanamo Bay "concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture." The report's authors, who were not allowed access to the prisoners, call on the United States to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison and allow the detainees to go to trial, arguing that the U.S. justification for continued detention is a "distortion of international law." Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and one of the U.N. envoys, said his team was "'particularly concerned' about the force-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes that detainees said were brutally inserted and removed, causing intense pain, bleeding and vomiting."

POLL -- AMERICANS REJECT PRESIDENT'S RIGHT TO SUSPEND CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOMS: A new poll commissioned by the American Bar Association (ABA) found 52 percent of the American public say the president cannot suspend constitutional freedoms in the fight against terrorism. Seventy-seven percent of the respondents expressed deep reservations about Bush's secret domestic surveillance program. "[O]ur poll shows that average Americans and legal scholars alike agree that the awesome power of the government to penetrate citizens' most private communications must not be held in one set of hands," ABA President Michael Greco said. The ABA has also issued a policy proposal that, among other clauses, calls "on the President to abide by our constitutional system of checks and balances and respect the roles of Congress and the judiciary in protecting national security consistent with the Constitution."

IRAQ -- CONSERVATIVE SENATOR WARNS 'WE'RE IN MORE TROUBLE TODAY' IN IRAQ THAN EVER BEFORE: President Bush continues to paint an upbeat picture of the war in Iraq. In his recent State of the Union address, Bush said that he has a "clear plan for victory" and "we are in this fight to win, and we are winning." But on Sunday's CNN Late Edition, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (NE) sounded a different note: "[T]hings haven't gone the way the administration said and others said it was going to go. In fact, I think we're in more trouble today than we've ever been in Iraq." On the same program, former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi said he is "worried" about a civil war erupting in the country.

ETHICS -- NEW PHOTO OF BUSH AND ABRAMOFF REBUTS ADMINISTRATION'S SPIN: The New York Times and TIME magazine have released a photograph of fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff standing near President Bush at the White House on May 9, 2001. At the 2001 meeting, Bush met with 21 state legislators, Abramoff, and several of the lobbyist's tribal clients. Abramoff charged his clients $25,000 for arranging the meeting. The New York Times reports, "[The picture] leaves unanswered questions about how Mr. Abramoff and the tribal leader, whom he was trying to sign as a client, gained access to a meeting with the president on the White House grounds that was ostensibly for a group of state legislators who were supporting Mr. Bush’s 2001 tax cut plan." The White House previously tried to deny Abramoff's presence at the May 2001 meeting. "The White House has no record of the Coushattas or Abramoff at the May 9, 2001," said White House spokeswoman Erin Healy in June 2005.

Posted: 11 Feb. 2006

The Morality Police are alive and well in this country, and they are doing their best, or I should say their worst, to promote fear and censorship. Here is a prime example.

In Small Town, 'Grease' Ignites a Culture War
Don Ipock for The New York Times

FULTON, Mo. — When Wendy DeVore, the drama teacher at Fulton High here, staged the musical "Grease," about high school students in the 1950's, she carefully changed the script to avoid causing offense in this small town.

She softened the language, substituting slang for profanity in places. Instead of smoking "weed," the teenagers duck out for a cigarette. She rated the production PG-13, advising parents it was not suitable for small children.

But a month after the performances in November, three letters arrived on the desk of Mark Enderle, Fulton's superintendent of schools. Although the letters did not say so, the three writers were members of a small group linked by e-mail, all members of the same congregation, Callaway Christian Church.

Each criticized the show, complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized "immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play."

Dr. Enderle watched a video of the play, ultimately agreeing that "Grease" was unsuitable for the high school, despite his having approved it beforehand, without looking at the script. Hoping to avoid similar complaints in the future, he decided to ban the scheduled spring play, "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller.

"That was me in my worst Joe McCarthy moment, to some," Dr. Enderle said.

He called "The Crucible" "a fine play," but said he dropped it to keep the school from being "mired in controversy" all spring.

To many, the term "culture war" evokes national battles over new frontiers in taste and decency, over violence in video games, or profanity in music or on television. But such battles are also fought in small corners of the country like Fulton, a conservative town of about 10,000, where it can take only a few objections about library books or high school plays to shift quietly the cultural borderlines of an entire community.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 10 Feb. 2006

If even CNN is saying it, can there be any doubt? Bush lied. Cheney lied.

Ex-CIA official: Bush administration misused Iraq intelligence

(CNN) -- The Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war, a former CIA senior analyst alleged.

In an article published on Friday in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken."

"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," Pillar wrote.

The Bush administration "used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Pillar wrote. "It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

Pillar described a "poisonous atmosphere" in which intelligence officers, including himself, were accused by administration officials of trying to sabotage the president's policies.

"This poisonous atmosphere reinforced the disinclination within the intelligence community to challenge the consensus view about Iraqi WMD programs; any such challenge would have served merely to reaffirm the presumptions of the accusers."

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Feds to consider listing polar bears as threatened

Congressional Republicans waging jihad against the Endangered Species Act may soon have a new reason to hate it: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering giving polar bears federal endangered-species protections because climate change is melting their Arctic sea-ice habitat. If the feds are compelled to protect polar-bear habitat, and the habitat is threatened by climate change, then the feds may be forced -- horrors! -- to do something about climate change. Recent data show that Arctic sea ice has declined by 15 to 20 percent in the past 30 years; some climate experts think that there will be no summer sea ice in about 50 years. Some polar bears in Alaska and Canada have become thinner and less able to breed in recent years, and there's evidence that they're drowning as they try to make the lengthening swims between land and ice. The FWS will take public comments for 60 days, review climate-change studies, and announce its decision in 12 months.


Expert panel backs Energy Department nuke-waste transport plan

An expert panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that it's likely safe to ship tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel to Nevada for disposal. After all, what could go wrong? [Spends a moment in terrified contemplation.] The panel reviewed the Department of Energy's plans for trucking and train-transporting about 70,000 tons of nuclear waste from some 70 sites in over 30 states to Nevada's Yucca Mountain disposal facility -- a process DOE estimates could take 24 years. It found that risks of radiation and other health-negative impacts from shipments were "generally low." But the experts also noted that they couldn't assess risks to shipments because they couldn't access classified information, and called for an investigation of such security issues by a body independent of both the nuclear industry and the government. We're sure the Bush administration will get all over that.

From The Center for American Progress.

The Cheney Factor

Fresh evidence emerged yesterday that the CIA leak scandal extends to the highest levels of the White House. Court documents filed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald reveal that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, "told a grand jury that he was authorized by his 'superiors' to disclose classified information to reporters." In October, Libby was indicted "on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice" for "willfully misleading...investigators about his role in exposing Valerie Wilson as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency." The National Journal reports that those superiors were "Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials." Cheney and others "encouraged and authorized him [Libby] to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war." After the war began, "Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE], to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence."

REVELATION IS NOT A DEFENSE FOR LIBBY: On CNN, former presidential advisor David Gergen said, "Legally it does mean that Scooter Libby may be arguing as Oliver North did earlier, basically a lot of what he did was authorized by others. Therefore, as in the Oliver North case, legally he may be a lot closer to acquittal than anybody thought." His analysis is wrong, legally and factually. The fact that Cheney authorized Libby's disclosures is irrelevant to the crimes charged against him. If anything, it weakens his case. He was indicted for misleading prosecutors, specifically claiming that he "was only passing along what he understood to be unverified gossip that he had heard from other journalists." The new evidence reinforces the falsity of this claim, and it indicates that Libby would be unlikely to forget that Cheney was his original source. It was not a casual, off-hand conversation, but part of a specific job assignment that Libby executed. Libby's lawyers acknowledge that Cheney's orders are not a get-out-of-jail free card. William Jeffress, Libby's lawyer, said, "'There is no truth at all' to suggestions that Libby would try to shift blame to his superiors as a defense against the charges."

CHENEY'S ROLE ESTABLISHES MOTIVE: The new information helps explain why Libby would take the extraordinary risk of providing false information to the special prosecutor. Libby could have been attempting to conceal that he was "broadly authorized by Cheney and others to rebut former Ambassador Wilson's charges" to disclose classified information to journalists and avoid political embarrassment.

CHENEY'S READING LIST: Cheney should take a look at the column by CIA Director Porter Goss in today's New York Times called "Loose Lips Sink Spies." Goss writes, "At the Central Intelligence Agency, we are more than holding our own in the global war on terrorism, but we are at risk of losing a key battle: the battle to protect our classified information." He explains that those who disclose classified information are "committing a criminal act that potentially places American lives at risk. It is unconscionable to compromise national security information."

Posted: 8 Feb. 2006

State of Delusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN

So President Bush's plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out to be no more substantial than his plan — floated two years ago, then flushed down the memory hole — to send humans to Mars.

But what did you expect? After five years in power, the Bush administration is still — perhaps more than ever — run by Mayberry Machiavellis, who don't take the business of governing seriously.
Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address Mr. Bush suggested that "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol" and other technologies would allow us "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East."

But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what he said. "This was purely an example," said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped Tuesday night: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. "A veteran researcher," reports The New York Times, "said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol."

Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them? The best guess is that the energy "plan" was hastily thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say.

For weeks administration sources told reporters that the State of the Union address would focus on health care. But at the last minute the White House might have realized that its health care proposals, based on the idea that Americans have too much insurance, would suffer the same political fate as its attempt to privatize Social Security. ("Congress," Mr. Bush said, "did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security." Democrats responded with a standing ovation.)

So Mr. Bush's speechwriters were told to replace the health care proposals with fine words about energy independence, words not backed by any actual policy.

What about the rest of the speech? The State of the Union is normally an occasion for boasting about an administration's achievements. But what's a speechwriter to do when there are no achievements?

One answer is to pretend that the bad stuff never happened. The Medicare drug benefit is Mr. Bush's largest domestic initiative to date. It's also a disaster: at enormous cost, the administration has managed to make millions of elderly Americans worse off. So drugs went unmentioned in the State of the Union.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Deal will protect vast Great Bear Rainforest in Canada

We love the smell of vast tracts of protected rainforest in the morning. Smells like ... victory. Today in British Columbia, Canada, a coalition including the provincial government, Native groups, forest advocates, and timber companies is expected to announce an unprecedented agreement to protect the 15 million-acre Great Bear Rainforest -- fully a quarter of the world's remaining coastal temperate rainforest. Almost 5 million acres will be closed to logging, while 10 million will remain open to selective cutting in consultation with Native nations. The pact, which ends a 10-year battle, will help preserve one of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears in North America, unique subspecies of goshawks, coastal wolves, and other critters, and habitat for 20 percent of the world's wild salmon. And over $100 million may be raised from governments and foundations to seed ecotourism and other sustainable development. Cool.


Bush's 2007 budget includes Arctic Refuge drilling, cuts EPA funding

Unsurprisingly, greens will find little to love in President Bush's proposed $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal year 2007. It calls for oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, estimating $7 billion in revenue by 2008 from leasing drilling rights -- nearly triple the $2.4 billion forecast in last year's budget (how'd that work out?). The U.S. EPA's allocation would decrease by 4 percent to about $7 billion, with cuts to many clean-water programs -- that would be the fourth annual decrease to EPA's budget in a row. $10.8 million would be slashed from clean-air and climate-change research, but grants to promote less-polluting off-road diesel engines would rise dramatically, from $7 million to $50 million. The budget includes an expected initiative to revivify nuclear power, via $250 million for research into the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Sadly, the $10 million in funding for scrappy little environmental internet magazines again failed to pan out.


BLM suspends funding for forestry research that contradicts Bush policy

The Bureau of Land Management has abruptly suspended funding for a team of scientists who published findings undercutting a Bush administration timber policy. The Oregon State University researchers' report, published last month in the journal Science, suggested that forests scorched in southwest Oregon's 2002 Biscuit fire recovered more quickly if left alone to regenerate, rather than being logged and replanted. OSU administration says it has no doubts about the integrity of the research. The funding suspension is "totally without precedent as far as I can recollect," said University of Washington forest researcher Jerry Franklin. "It says, 'If we don't like what you're saying, we'll cut off your money.'" However, federal officials deny the action was political retaliation, saying the researchers violated some terms of the funding agreement. For instance, part B, subsection E4, where it says "don't effing cross us, punks."

Time for some chuckles.

The Founding High-Tech Fathers, a Story by Alberto Gonzales
Patt Morrison

It's wonderful that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has a lively imagination, and more wonderful still that he shared it with United States Senators.

Atty. Gen. Gonzales: "... President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale. ''

Perhaps he gets it from his fellows in the Bush Administration; if you can believe, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that WMDs were real, then it's a snap to believe that George Washington had a PDA:

READ THE REST.

Posted: 6 Feb. 2006

Check this out -- a fascinating new method of solar power green energy.

The EnviroMission Solar Tower.

The sun’s radiation is used to heat a large body of air under an expansive collector zone, which is then forced by the laws of physics (hot air rises) to move as a hot wind through large turbines to generate electricity. A Solar Tower power station will create the conditions to cause hot wind to flow continuously through 32 x 6.25MW pressure staged turbines to generate electricity.

From Grist on-line magazine.

EPA chief twisted particulate pollution advice, say scientists

U.S. EPA chief Stephen Johnson "twisted" and "misrepresented" recommendations on regulating soot and dust pollution from the agency's own air-quality experts, according to, um, the agency's own air-quality experts. In an unprecedented move, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is urging Johnson to change course on the pollution proposals he announced in December, which ignore the scientists' haze-reduction advice, significantly weaken their recommendations on controlling the smallest, most health-hazardous particles of soot, and -- most controversially -- propose entirely eliminating regulation of dust in the agriculture and mining industries in rural areas. Several panel members say Johnson misleadingly credited the committee with supporting these exemptions. Bart Ostro of the California EPA says the White House Office of Management and Budget, along with industry trade associations, played major roles in gutting the particulate controls

Bush, Congress get D+ on ocean protection efforts

Ocean advocates are urging the Bush administration to wake up and smell the marine decay. The Joint Ocean Commission -- a collaboration of two expert panels -- has given the U.S. a D+ for efforts to reverse the deterioration of the world's oceans, and warned that this failure of federal will is putting the American economy at serious risk. Former energy secretary and retired Adm. James Watkins, chair of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy created by President Bush, says the administration has failed to invest in vital marine science. And former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, chair of the Pew Oceans Commission, criticizes Congress for draining the funding allocated to ocean issues into earmarks -- pet projects in their home districts and states. In 2004, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy made more than 200 recommendations for turning the oceans around, including improved fisheries management and increased research funding -- and most have been ignored.

Posted: 3 Feb. 2006

Take action on this if you value the freedom of the internet.

The End of the Internet?
Jeff Chester

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 3 Feb. 2006

The Bush regime gives lip service to the notion of freedom of speech, but they don't truly believe in it.

What Really Happened
By Cindy Sheehan

Wednesday 01 February 2006

As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union address last night.

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press (shocker). So this is what really happened:

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC, where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me, and I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket, and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns, who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn's office had already called the media, and everyone knew I was going to be there, so I sucked it up and went.

I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara Lee's staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went to the Capitol via the underground tunnel. I went through security once, then had to use the rest room and went through security again.

My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.

READ THE REST.

What I would give to know the truth...

Experts Claim Official 9/11 Story is a Hoax

Duluth, MN (PRWEB) January 30, 2006 -- A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11.

They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about critical events in New York and Washington, D.C.

These experts suggest these events may have been orchestrated by elements within the administration to manipulate Americans into supporting policies at home and abroad they would never have condoned absent "another Pearl Harbor."

They believe that this White House is incapable of investigating itself and hope the possibility that Congress might hold an unaccountable administration accountable is not merely naive or wishful thinking.

They are encouraging news services around the world to secure scientific advice by taking advantage of university resources to verify or to falsify their discoveries. Extraordinary situations, they believe, require extraordinary measures.

If this were done, they contend, one of the great hoaxes of history would stand naked before the eyes of the world and its perpetrators would be clearly exposed, which may be the only hope for saving this nation from ever greater abuse.

They hope this might include The New York Times, which, in their opinion, has repeatedly failed to exercise the leadership expecedt from our nation's newspaper of record by a series of inexplicable lapses. It has failed to vigorously investigate tainted elections, lies leading to the war in Iraq, or illegal NSA spying on the American people, major unconstitutional events. In their view, The Times might compensate for its loss of stature by helping to reveal the truth about one of the great turning-point events of modern history.

Stunning as it may be to acknowledge, they observe, the government has brought but one indictment against anyone and, to the best of their knowledge, has not even reprimanded anyone for incompetence or dereliction of duty. The official conspiracy theory--that nineteen Arab hijackers under control of one man in the wilds of Afghanistan brought this about--is unsupportable by the evidential data, which they have studied. They even believe there are good reasons for suspecting that video tapes officially attributed to Osama bin Laden are not genuine.

READ THE DETAILS.

If we don't stop this now, we are screwed.

The End of 'Unalienable Rights'
By Robert Parry

Every American school child is taught that in the United States, people have “unalienable rights,” heralded by the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Supposedly, these liberties can’t be taken away, but they are now gone.

Today, Americans have rights only at George W. Bush’s forbearance. Under new legal theories – propounded by Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and other right-wing jurists – Bush effectively holds all power over all Americans.

He can spy on anyone he wants without a court order; he can throw anyone into jail without due process; he can order torture or other degrading treatment regardless of a new law enacted a month ago; he can launch wars without congressional approval; he can assassinate people whom he deems to be the enemy even if he knows that innocent people, including children, will die, too.

Under the new theories, Bush can act both domestically and internationally. His powers know no bounds and no boundaries.

Bush has made this radical change in the American political system by combining what his legal advisers call the “plenary” – or unlimited – powers of the Commander in Chief with the concept of a “unitary executive” in control of all laws and regulations.

Yet, maybe because Bush’s assertion of power is so extraordinary, almost no one dares connect the dots. After a 230-year run, the “unalienable rights” – as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Founding Fathers – are history.

.........

In its legal analysis, the Justice Department added, “The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States.”

While the phrase “consistent with the Constitution” sounds reassuring to many Americans, what it means in this case is that Bush believes he has unlimited powers as Commander in Chief to do whatever he deems necessary in the War on Terror.

Since the War on Terror is a vague concept – unlike other wars the United States has fought – there also is no expectation that Bush’s usurpation of traditional American freedoms is just a short-term necessity. Instead it is a framework for future governance.

Now, Americans have learned that Bush considers his powers to extend to a much broader category of citizens. That is the significance of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program directed against hundreds of American targets at any one time.

In bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Bush demonstrated his belief, too, that he has the power to ignore specific laws as well as broader constitutional principles.

...........

The reality is that Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to scoop up a vast number of calls and e-mails. The operation is so large that it has generated thousands of tips each month, which are passed on to the FBI.

“But virtually all of [the tips], current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans,” the New York Times reported. “FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. … Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.” [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006]

Another example of Bush’s assertion of his supremacy over laws enacted by Congress came in December 2005 when he signed Sen. John McCain’s amendment barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

Bush then issued a so-called “signing statement” that reserved his right to ignore the law.

READ THE REST.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Yet more proof that Bush is a liar.

Blair 'made secret US Iraq pact'

Tony Blair and George W Bush decided to invade Iraq weeks earlier than they have admitted, a new book by a human rights lawyer has claimed.

The book by Philippe Sands says the two leaders discussed going to war regardless of any United Nations view.

And it suggests the US wanted to provoke Saddam Hussein by sending a spy plane over Iraq in UN colours.

.....Mr Bush said the military campaign was pencilled in for March. Mr Blair is quoted as saying he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".

The book claims Mr Blair only wanted a second UN Security Council resolution because it would make it easier politically to deal with Saddam.

And it says Mr Bush told Mr Blair the US "was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours".

If Saddam fired on them, the Iraqis would be in breach of UN resolutions, he suggested.

Mr Bush is also quoted saying it was possible an Iraqi figure would defect and be able to give a "public presentation" of weapons of mass destruction.

The note said Mr Bush thought there was also "a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated".

The book also claims the president "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups".

READ THE REST.

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