More giveaways for corporations

Written by: Drew Monthie on May 15, 2006 8:26 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Supreme Court Emasculates Taxpayers


In a unanimous decision today, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling that would have invalidated massive taxpayer giveaways to Corporate America. The Supreme Court has long been the victim of a hostile takeover by Big Money interests - it is a court now headed by a corporate lawyer that has repeatedly gone out of its way to protect Corporate America's ability to bleed the middle class dry. Today's ruling, though, is particularly egregious. Not only did the court strike down an important ruling, but it essentially emasculated taxpayers' ability to bring any such lawsuits against their own government in the future.

The details are as shocking as they are disgusting. As the Associated Press reports, "Two years ago, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Ohio's tax credit on new equipment, saying the practice hinders interstate commerce because the incentives are available only to businesses that invest in Ohio." In other words, the credits are creating a race to the bottom that taxpayers argue violates interstate commerce laws, whereby states and cities are competing with each other to give away more and more taxpayer cash to Big Business. In the Ohio case, the tax credit was used to give DaimlerChrysler roughly $300 million in taxpayer cash - cash that Toledo's county auditor says was siphoned away from local schools, forcing the city to close up to nine schools or fire 380 school workers.

In striking down the lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court not only ruled against Ohio taxpayers, but against all taxpayers. Chief Justice John Roberts, formerly a corporate lawyer, said in the official opinion that "State taxpayers have no standing "¦ to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers." In other words, not only will the Ohio law remain, but state taxpayers throughout the country now have no legal right to challenge the decisions of their bought-and-paid-for elected officials who are selling off our government to the highest bidder.

To get a sense of just how far reaching an affront to taxpayers' rights this ruling is, consider that USA Today earlier reported that taxpayers in other states were moving forward with similar cases. As just one example, in North Carolina, taxpayers have challenged the state's $242 million giveaway to Dell Computer. Now, the Supreme Court has essentially said they aren't even allowed to bring such a case.

Remember - these taxpayer giveaways are accelerating and come at a huge cost in terms of higher taxes for individuals. As USA Today noted, "In 1977, nine states gave tax credits to corporations [but] by 1998, that number had grown to 36." At the same time, "individual income taxes are growing at a faster rate than corporate income taxes" because state/local governments are recovering the tax giveaways from ordinary citizens. According to the Census Bureau, "corporate income taxes collected rose 6.5% from 1994 to 2004, while individual income taxes collected went up 49.7%."

Also remember that, as Greg LeRoy notes in his book The Great American Jobs Scam, these taxpayer giveaways often do not result in the benefits Big Business promises. In fact, many of the corporations that receive these taxpayer giveaways never even follow through on the economic development or job creation they promise.

But then, that's what this is really all about: bought-off politicians giving away our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to already wealthy corporations without demanding anything in return. We see this with the Medicare bill and how it gives away more than $1 trillion to the health care/pharmaceutical industries without demanding these industries lower their prices (in fact, the bill prohibits the government from negotiating lower prices for medicines). We see it with the energy bill and how it gives away billions in new tax breaks to oil companies without asking them to lower their prices. And we see it with corporate welfare.

As I note in my new book Hostile Takeover, this is the best we can hope for from our corrupt government: policies that shower Big Business with taxpayer cash in order to bribe companies to do things. This throw-money-at-the-problem corruption substitutes for a government that should be asserting itself as a protector of ordinary citizens by forcing powerful economic institutions to play by a set of rules. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, taxpayers have even less of a right to fight back against this hostile takeover in our own legal system.

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posted 5/15/2006 by David Sirota @ 2:16 pm | Permalink

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

Written by: Drew Monthie on Feb 26, 2006 11:41 AM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

By Nat Parry, Consortium News. Posted February 23, 2006.


Is the Pentagon building U.S.-based prison camps for Muslim immigrants? Evidence points to the possibility.

Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

"The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements," Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

"I stand by this president's ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

"Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the president already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways -- ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers," in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Detention centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said.

Later, the New York Times reported that "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space."

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services. "It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Less attention centered on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these "new programs" might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees," in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because "another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge" of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Labor camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army website, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid action revision" on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the attorney general to "establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him" and "make available … the services of United States prisoners" to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document's posting -- within the past few weeks -- may just be a coincidence, the reference to a "rapid action revision" and the KBR contract's contemplation of "rapid development of new programs" has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in "counter-terrorism" operations inside the United States.

Pentagon surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States.

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don't seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005, the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information."

Drawing a distinction between "collecting" information and "receiving" information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that "MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime."

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the "special access" surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. With this expanded surveillance, the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since the fall of 2003. Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

Homeland defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates," used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complained that the House and Senate Intelligence committees "have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program."

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees "have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaida or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place."

The combination of the Bush administration's expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to "transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland."

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges "threats" and who falls under the category "those who would harm us." A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a "threat."

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap," approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "full spectrum" information operations and notes that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice versa."

"PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

It calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between "collecting" and "receiving" intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally "targeted," any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the web as a potential military adversary. The "roadmap" speaks of "fighting the net," and implies that the internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

"Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place," Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched "heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans," reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as "some of the most feared professional killers in the world," Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater's presence in New Orleans "raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here."

U.S. battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

"The president decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian president," wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book "Guantanamo: What the World Should Know." "He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general."

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaida operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts.

Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as commander in chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, "Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is 'yes,' then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?"

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the "rapid development of new programs," which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

A great article on the value of blogs

Written by: Drew Monthie on Feb 14, 2006 8:16 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, In These Times. Posted February 8, 2006.


Bloggers tout the rise of the netroots as changing how politics works, but will the internet just become a new method of conducting politics as usual? Tools
We have no interest in being anti-establishment," says Matt Stoller, a blogger at the popular Web site MyDD.com. "We're going to be the establishment."

That kind of flamboyant confidence has become the hallmark of blog evangelists who believe that blogs promise nothing less than a populist revolution in American politics. In 2006, at least some of that rhetoric is becoming reality. Blogs may not have replaced the Democratic Party establishment, but they are certainly becoming an integral part of it. In the wake of John Kerry's defeat in the 2004 presidential elections, many within the Democratic leadership have embraced blog advocates' plan for political success, which can be summed up in one word: netroots.

This all-encompassing term loosely describes an online grassroots constituency that can be targeted through Internet technologies, including e-mail, message boards, RSS feeds and, of course, blogs, which serve as organizing hubs. In turn, these blogs employ a range of features -- discussion boards, Internet donations, live e-chat, social networking tools like MeetUp, online voting -- that allow ordinary citizens to participate in politics, be it supporting a candidate or organizing around a policy issue. Compared to traditional media, blogs are faster, cheaper, and most importantly, interactive, enabling a level of voter involvement impossible with television or newspapers.

No wonder, then, that many in Washington are looking to blogs and bloggers to counter the overwhelming financial and ideological muscle of the right -- especially in an election year. Just 18 months ago, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story depicting progressive bloggers as a band of unkempt outsiders, thumbing their nose at party leadership. But now, it's the party leaders themselves who are blogging. Not only has Senate Minority leader Harry Reid started his own blog -- Give 'em Hell Harry -- and a media "war room" to "aggressively pioneer Internet outreach," he's also signed up to be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the top political blog, Daily Kos.

Stoller predicts that as an organizing tool, "blogs are going to play the role that talk radio did in 1994, and that church networks did in 2002."

An Internet-fueled victory at the polls would certainly be impressive -- no candidate backed by the most popular progressive blogs has yet won an election. But electoral success may merely confirm the value of blogs as an effective organizing tool to conduct politics as usual, cementing the influence of a select group of bloggers who will likely be crowned by the media as the new kingmakers.

Winning an election does not, however, guarantee a radical change in the relations of power. Technology is only as revolutionary as the people who use it, and the progressive blogosphere has thus far remained the realm of the privileged -- a weakness that may well prove fatal in the long run.

In 2006, the biggest question facing blogs and bloggers is: Will their ascendancy empower the American people -- in the broadest sense of the word -- or merely add to the clout of an elite online constituency?

The birth of a revolution

Alienation may not have been the mother of blogging technology, but it most certainly birthed the "political blogosphere." The galvanizing cause for the rapid proliferation of political blogs and their mushrooming audience was a deep disillusionment across the political spectrum with traditional media -- a disillusionment accentuated by a polarized political landscape.

In the recent book Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture, Web guru Craig Shirky links the rise of political blogs to the sharpening Red/Blue State divide. Both 9/11 and the Iraq war reminded people that "politics was vitally important," and marked the "moment people were looking for some kind of expression outside the bounds of network television," or, for that matter, cable news or the nation's leading newspapers.

Progressives were angry not just with the media but also with Democratic Party leaders for their unwillingness to challenge the Bush administration's case for war. That much-touted liberal rage found its expression on blogs like Eschaton, Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo, and continues to fuel the phenomenal growth of the progressive blogosphere. Like the rise of right-wing talk radio, this growth is directly linked to an institutional failure of representation. Finding no mirror for their views in the media, a large segment of the American public turned to the Internet to speak for themselves -- often with brutal, uncensored candor.

As blogs have grown in popularity -- at the rate of more than one new blog per second -- they've begun to lose their vanguard edge. The very institutions that political bloggers often criticize have begun to adopt the platform, with corporate executives, media personalities, porn stars, lawyers and PR strategists all jumping into the fray. That may be why Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder and primary voice of Daily Kos, thinks the word "blog" is beginning to outlive its usefulness. "A blog is merely a publishing tool, and like a tool, it can be used in any number of ways," he says.

But for many, to rephrase director Jean Renoir, a blogs are still a state of mind. To their most ardent advocates, blogs are standard-bearers of a core set of democratic values: participation, egalitarianism and transparency. Books like Dan Gillmor's We the Media, Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, and Joe Trippi's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised have become the bibles of progressive politics. Taken together, they express the dream of Internet salvation: harnessing an inherently democratic, interactive and communal medium, with the potential to instantaneously tap into the collective intellectual, political and financial resourcesof tens of millions of fellow Americans to create a juggernaut for social change.

According to Moulitsas, "The word 'blog' still implies a certain level of citizen involvement, of giving power to someone who is not empowered" -- especially to progressives who, according to a study released last year by the New Politics Institute, have overtaken conservatives as the heavyweights of the political blogosphere.

Vox Populi

Political blogs have often been most effective as populist fact-checkers, challenging, refuting and correcting perceived errors in news coverage.

"Independent bloggers have challenged the mainstream media and held them accountable, whether it's with Judy Miller or Bob Woodward," says Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. The most significant effect of this "we can fact-check your ass" credo has not been merely to put journalists on notice, but to change the way public knowledge is produced on a daily basis. "It's hard now for an important story to hit the front page of the New York Times and just die there," says Huffington. A news article is now merely the beginning of a public conversation in the blogosphere, where experts, amateurs and posers alike dissect its merits and add to its information, often keeping it alive long after journalists have moved on.

Popular understanding of what blogs are and what they can do has been muddled by an inevitably hostile relationship between political bloggers and traditional media. Writing in the Dec. 26 issue of The New Republic, Franklin Foer took bloggers to task for nursing "an ideological disdain for 'Mainstream Media' -- or MSM, as it has derisively (and somewhat adolescently) come to be known." But Foer, like so many traditional journalists who criticize blogs, failed to grasp the very nature of his intended target.

Blogs are literally vox populi -- or at the least the voice of the people who post entries and comments, and, to a lesser extent, of their devoted readers. Telling bloggers that they're wrong or to shut up is somewhat like telling respondents to an opinion survey to simply change their mind. When journalists reject bloggers as cranks or wingnuts, they also do the same to a large segment of the American public who seeblogs as an expression of their views. Such dismissals feed the very alienation that makes blogs and bloggers popular.

The irony is that bloggers are most powerful when they work in tandem with the very media establishment they despise. "Bloggers alone cannot create conventional wisdom, cannot make a story break, cannot directly reach the vast population that isn't directly activist and involved in politics," says Peter Daou, who coordinated the Kerry campaign's blog outreach operations. Blogs instead exert an indirect form of power, amplifying and channeling the pressure of netroots opinion upwards to pressure politicians and journalists. "It's really a rising up," says Daou.

Can this online rebellion lead to real political change? The prognosis thus far is encouraging, but far from definitive.

Can the netroots grow the grassroots?

If television made politics more elitist and less substantive, blogs -- and more broadly, netroots tools -- have the potential to become engines of truly democratic, bottom-up, issue-rich political participation.

Blogs allow rank-and-file voters to pick the candidate to support in any given electoral race, influence his or her platform, and volunteer their time, money and expertise in more targeted and substantive ways. Democratic candidates in the midterm elections are already busy trying to position themselves as the next Howard Dean, vying for a digital stamp of approval that will bring with it free publicity, big money and, just maybe, a whole lot of voters.

When Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) decided to take on Iraq veteran Paul Hackett in the Democratic primary for the Senate race in Ohio, he moved quickly to neutralize his opponent's advantage as the unquestioned hero of the progressive bloggers. The ace up Brown's sleeve: Jerome Armstrong, founder of the influential MyDD.com and veteran of Howard Dean's online campaign. Brown's next move was a blog entry on The Huffington Post titled, "Why I am a Progressive."

But not everyone is convinced that blogs can be as influential in a midterm election, when there are a large number of electoral contests spread across the country. "Raising money at a nationwide level for a special election is one thing," Pew scholar Michael Cornfield says, "but raising it and developing a core of activists and all the ready-to-respond messages when you have to run hundreds of races simultaneously -- which is what will happen in 2006 -- is another thing." Moreover, the ability of the Internet to erase geographical distances can become a structural weakness in elections where district lines and eligibility are key.

An effective netroots strategy in 2006 will also have to master the shortcomings of the Dean's campaign, which stalled mainly because it failed to grow his support base beyond his online constituency -- antiwar, white and high-income voters. In contrast, the Bush/Cheney operation used the Internet to coordinate on-the-ground events such as house parties, and rallies involving church congregations.

Cornfield describes the Republican model as, "one person who is online and is plugged into the blogosphere. That person becomes an e-precinct captain, and is responsible for reaching out offline or any means necessary for ten people."

This time around, Armstrong is determined to match the GOP's success. GrowOhio.org, which he describes as "a community blog for Democratic Party activists," will coordinate field operations for not just Brown but all Democratic candidates in each of Ohio's 88 counties. Its primary goal is to reach rural voters in areas where the campaign cannot field organizers on the ground.

"This isn't just about using the net for communications and fundraising, but for field organizing," Armstrong says.

What is also new in 2006 is the effort to redirect attention from the national to the local. "It's not just about focusing the national blogosphere on Ohio, but about building from the ground up in Ohio," Armstrong says. "Over 90 percent of our signups on GrowOhio.org are Ohio activists, and we will soon have Internet outreach coordinators in all 88 counties."

But many like Daou remain skeptical about the power of blogs to directly impact politics at the grassroots level. "You're not going to go out there and mobilize a million people and have them all come to the polls and donate money. Blogs will never do that," he says

And they may be even less effective in areas that are traditionally not as internet-savvy as the rest of the country, be it the rural red states or impoverished inner cities. Creating a virtual "community center" is unlikely to compensate for the Democrats' disadvantage on the ground. Due to the eroding presence of unions, Democrats no longer possess a physical meeting place where they can target and mobilize voters -- unlike Republicans, who rely on a well-organized network of churches, gun clubs and chambers of commerce.

What is clear is that the 2006 elections will test the claim of blog evangelists that online activism can radically transform offline politics -- a claim that is central to their far more ambitious vision for the future. In their book Crashing the Gate (to be released in April), Moulitsas and Armstrong envision blogs as the centerpiece of a netroots movement to engineer an imminent and sweeping transformation of the Democratic Party:


We are at the beginning of a comprehensive reformation of the Democratic Party -- driven by committed progressive outsiders. Online activism on a nationwide level, coupled with offline activists at the local level … can provide the formula for a quiet, bloodless coup that can take control of the party. Money and mobilization are the two key elements of all political activity, and if the netroots have their way, the financial backbone of the Democratic Party will be regular people.

Whether a truly decentralized and "leaderless" netroots can function like a political party is debatable, but the latest wave of technological innovation does offer unprecedented opportunities for constructing a progressive movement for the digital age. Such an outreach effort would use the Internet very much like conservatives such as Richard Viguerie used direct mail to build a powerful political force. But in order to craft a genuinely democratic form of politics, the progressive blogosphere will have to overcome its greatest weakness: lack of diversity.

The rise of the blogerati

In Newsweek, Simon Rosenberg, a beltway insider who lost the DNC chair to Dean, described the progressive blogosphere as the new "Resistance" within the Democratic Party, engaged in a civil war to wrest power from a craven and compromised beltway leadership. According to Rosenberg, the leaders of this "resistance" are the top progressive bloggers, more specifically the most popular and increasingly influential Moulitsas. Rosenberg told the Washington Monthly, "Frankly I don't think there's anyone who's had the potential to revolutionize the Democratic Party that Markos does."

Yet both the progressive blogosphere and the "revolutionaries" who dominate its ranks look a lot like the establishment they seek to overthrow.

The report by the New Politics Institute -- which was launched by Rosenberg's New Democracy Network -- notes: "Clearly, blogging is a world with a handful of haves, and a nearly uncountable number of have-nots. There are likely a few hundred thousand blogs in this country that talk about politics, but less than one-tenth of one percent of them account for more than 99 percent of all political blogging traffic."

For better or worse, traffic numbers have become an endorsement of the political agenda of specific individuals. While A-list bloggers repeatedly deny receiving any special treatment, the reality is that both the media and political establishment pay disproportionate attention to their views, often treating them as representative of the entire progressive blogosphere.

In a Foreign Policy article, political scientists Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell cheerfully note, "The skewed network of the blogosphere makes it less time-consuming for outside observers to acquire information. The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue." Why? Because the "elite blogs" serve as a filtering mechanism, deciding which information offered up by smaller blogs is useful or noteworthy. In effect, A-list blogs get to decide what issues deserve the attention of journalists and politicians, i.e., the establishment.

The past two years have also marked the emergence of a close relationship between top bloggers and politicians in Washington. A number of them -- for example, Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, Tim Tagaris of SwingStateProject, Stoller and Armstrong -- have been hired as campaign consultants. Others act as unofficial advisers to top politicos like Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.), who holds conference calls with preeminent bloggers to talk strategy. When the Senate Democrats invite Moulitsas to offer his personal views on netroots strategy -- treating him, as a Washington Monthly profile describes, "a kind of part-time sage, an affiliate member" -- the perks of success become difficult to deny.

Armstrong sees the rise of the blogger-guru -- or "strategic adviser," as he puts it -- as a positive development. Better to hire a blogger who is personally committed to the Democratic cause than a D.C.-based mercenary who makes money irrespective of who wins.

But the fact that nearly all these "advisers" are drawn from a close-knit and mostly homogenous group can make them appear as just a new boys' club, albeit one with better intentions and more engaged politics. Aside from notable exceptions like Moulitsas, who is part-Salvadoran, and a handful of lesser-known women who belong to group blogs, top progressive bloggers tend to be young, well-educated, middle class, male and white.

Reach, representation and credibility

The lack of diversity is partly a function of the roots of blogging in an equally homogenous tech-geek community. Nevertheless, women and people of color constitute the fastest rising segment of those joining the blogosphere. Feminist and female-authored political blogs like Feministing, Bitch Ph.D, Echidne of the Snakes, and Salon's Broadsheet made considerable gains in traffic and visibility in 2005, as did Latino Pundit, Culture Kitchen, and Afro-Netizen. Better yet, they're forging networks and alliances to help each other grow. There is no doubt the membership of the blogosphere is changing, and will look very different five years from now. "We're just a step behind, just like any other area," says Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte.

But while the growth of the blogosphere may increase the actual traffic to a greater number of blogs, it also makes visibility far more scarce and precious for each new blogger. As one of the top women bloggers, Chris Nolan, noted on the PressThink blog, "The barrier to entry in this new business isn't getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience."

Elite bloggers can play a key role in generating that audience. As Marcotte points out, "A lot more women are moving up in the Technorati rankings" (Technorati is a search engine for the blogosphere) because A-listers like Duncan Black and Kevin Drum in 2005 made it a priority to promote female bloggers. But when someone like Moulitsas decides to stop linking to other blogs -- as he has recently done because he doesn't want to play "gatekeeper" -- or when top bloggers repeatedly cite their fellow A-listers, it has enormous consequences. "It's pretty darn hard today to break in to the A-list if the other A-listers aren't linking to you," says Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon.

If blogs derive their credibility from being the "voice of the people," surely we should be concerned about which opinions get attention over others. The question of representation affects not just who is blogging -- and with great success -- but also the audience of these blogs. What kind of democratic consensus does the blogosphere reflect when the people participating in it are most likely to be white, well-educated men?

Yet when it comes to issues of diversity, A-list bloggers like Moulitsas and Stoller can get defensive, and at times, dismissive. "Take a look at what you have today. Take a look at the folks who're leading the party, dominating the media, or even within corporations. Do you think the top ranks of any of those institutions is any more representative?" responds Stoller, his voice rising in indignation.

Where Stoller openly acknowledges the problem -- describing blogs in one of his posts as "a new national town square for the white progressive base of the Democratic party" -- and the need to take steps to tackle the disparity, Moulitsas is less generous. In his view, it's simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an "affirmative action of ideas" within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere: "I don't see how you can say, 'Well, let's give more voice to African American lesbians.' Create a blog. If there's an audience, great. If there isn't, not so great." Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee -- in his words, a "political nobody" -- like him can make it on the Internet, there's nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent: "I haven't given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I'm interested in is winning elections, and I don't give a shit what you look like." It's an odd and somewhat disingenuous response from an advocate of blogging as the ultimate tool of democratic participation.

Keith Jenkins, who authors Good Reputation Sleeping and works a day job as the picture editor at the Washington Post, says the low barriers to entry do not in themselves offer a sufficient guarantee of equal participation. "It's less about actively stopping and standing in the way and more about affirmatively enabling access, which was the underlying argument of civil rights movements and freedom movements across the board," he says. "It's about affirmatively making it possible for everybody to have a seat at the table, which benefits not only the people who are sitting down, but also the people who are already seated."

"We need to be encouraging a more diverse group of people to blog," agrees Global Voices' MacKinnon. "But we also need to be linking to them and giving them traffic so that they have a chance to make it to the A-list."

While the organic growth of the blogosphere may resolve issues of race and gender over time, it will do little to address its overwhelming bias toward urban professionals. And that can't be good news for a party that is already being punished at the polls for its weak connection to working-class Americans.

"For me the greatest problem is low-income people," Cornfield says. "The irony is that it's not because they don't have money to get a laptop -- especially with the $100 laptop now. It's that people who are poor don't have the civic skill sets and motivation to go online and do these sorts of things. That will take a concerted effort."

At a time when the visible digital divide may be shrinking as increasing numbers of Americans come online, it may be replaced by an invisible version that benefits those who are well-educated, well-connected and organized.

Stoller does not think that it's important for blogs to reach a less-affluent audience: "Not everybody has to be part of that conversation. If someone wants to have access to those discussions, they should be able to do that. But for the most part, people -- like that person working two shifts -- will go on with their lives knowing that good people are making good decisions and policies on their behalf." Bloggers like Moulitsas -- who is equally unconcerned that his blog will never reach "someone working at the DMV" -- are likely betting that the cadre of activists they reach will be able to form connections across those differences within their community.

Perhaps sites like GrowOhio.org will prove them to be right if it manages to mobilize a constituency -- e.g. rural voters -- that is least likely to be wired, and in a region where the party's on-the-ground resources are weak. But any such strategy is unlikely to work if those in charge of crafting it -- be they bloggers, politicians or so-called netizens -- show little interest in expanding the reach of the progressive blogosphere to include the largest, most diverse audience possible. If the blogs are unable to bridge the class divide online, there is no reason to think they can create a grassroots movement that can do so in the real world.

"If you do make an active effort, it is easier to accomplish through the Internet than through pretty much any other medium including direct mail," Cornfield says. "But it will not happen on its own. It has to be a concerted effort." Social movements are built by people not ghosts in some virtual machine.

The Washington Monthly profile of Moulitsas included a revealing quote, in which he expressed disappointment at not being able to fulfill his dream of making it big in the tech industry back in 1998: "Maybe at some time, Silicon Valley really was this democratic ideal where the guy with the best idea made a billion dollars, but by the time I got there at least, it was just like anything else -- a bunch of rich kids who knew each other running around and it all depended on who you knew."

The danger is that many may come to feel the same way about the blogosphere in the coming years.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is a senior editor at In These Times, and a former senior editor at AlterNet.

Programs Bush Wants to Cut or Kill

Written by: Drew Monthie on Feb 10, 2006 8:52 AM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Programs Bush Wants to Cut or Kill By The Associated Press
Thu Feb 9, 6:21 PM ET



The 141 programs that President Bush proposed to eliminate or cut in his 2007 budget, with potential savings in millions:



TERMINATIONS:

AGRICULTURE

Microbiological data program, $6 million.

Community Connect broadband grants, $9 million.

Commodity supplemental food program, $107 million.

Research and extension grant earmarks, $196 million.

Ocean freight differential grants, $77 million.

Forest service economic action program, $10 million.

High cost energy grants, $26 million.

Public broadcast grants, $5 million.

Watershed protection and flood prevention operations, $75 million.

Total $511 million

___

COMMERCE

Advanced technology program, $79 million.

Emergency steel guarantee loan program $49 million

Telecommunications construction grants $22 million

Total $150 million

___

EDUCATION

Educational technology state grants, $272 million

Even Start, $99 million

High school programs terminations:

Vocational education state grants, $1,182 million

Vocational education national programs, $9 million

Upward Bound, $311 million

GEAR UP, $303 million

Talent search, $145 million

Tech prep state grants, $105 million

Smaller learning communities, $94 million

Safe and Drug-Free Schools state grants, $347 million

Elementary and secondary education program terminations:

Parental information and resource centers, $40 million

Arts in education, $35 million

Elementary and secondary school counseling, $35 million

Alcohol abuse reduction, $32 million

Civic education, $29 million

National Writing Project, $22 million

Star Schools, $15 million

School leadership,$15 million

Ready to Teach, $11 million

Javits gifted and talented education, $10 million

Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners, $9 million

Comprehensive school reform, $8 million

Dropout prevention program, $5 million

Mental Health integration in schools, $5 million

Women's Educational Equity, $3 million

Academies for American History and Civics, $2 million

Close-Up fellowships, $1 million

Foundations for Learning, $1 million

Excellence in Economic Education, $1 million

Higher Education Programs:

Education demos for students with disabilities, $7 million

Underground Railroad Program, $2 million

State grants for incarcerated youth offenders, $23 million

Postsecondary Student Financial Assistance Programs:

Perkins Loan cancellations, $65 million

Leveraging educational assistance programs, $65 million

Byrd Scholarships, $41 million

Thurgood Marshall Legal Educational opportunity, $3 million

B.J. Stupak Olympic scholarships, $1 million

_Vocational rehabilitation programs:

Supported employment, $30 million

Projects with industry, $20 million

Recreational programs, $3 million

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers,$2 million

Teacher Quality Enhancement, $60 million

Total $3,468 million

___

ENERGY

University nuclear energy program, $27 million

Oil and gas research and development, $64 million

Geothermal technology program, $23 million

Total $114 million

___

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control preventive block grant, $99 million

Real Choice System Change grants, $25 million

Community services block grant, $630 million

Community economic development, $27 million

Rural community facilities, $7 million

Job opportunities for low-income individuals, $6 million

Maternal and child health small categorical grants, $39 million

Urban Indian Health Program, $33 million

Total $866 million

___

HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of grants and training, $229 million

___

HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

HOPE VI, $198 million

___

INTERIOR

Bureau of Indian Affairs Johnson-O'Malley assistance grants, $16 million

Land and water conservation fund state recreation grants, $28 million

National Park Service statutory aid, $7 million

Rural fire assistance, $10 million

Total $61 million

__

JUSTICE

Byrne discretionary grants, $189 million

Byrne justice assistance grants, $327 million

Community Oriented Policing Services technology grants, $128 million

Juvenile accountability block grants, $49 million

National Drug Intelligence Center, $23 million

State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, $400 million

Total $1,116 million

___

LABOR

America's Job Bank, $15 million

Denali Commission job training earmark, $7 million

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers training program, $79 million

Reintegration of youthful offenders, $49 million

Susan Harwood training grants, $10 million

Work incentive grants, $20 million

Total $180 million

___

TRANSPORTATION

National defense tank vessel construction program, $74 million

Railroad rehabilitation financing loan program, $0 million (no funds were enacted in 2006)

Total $74 million

___

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Unrequested projects, $277 million

___

OTHER AGENCIES

National Civilian Community Corps, $22 million

President's Freedom scholarships, $4 million

National Veterans Business Development Corporation, $1 million

Small Business Administration microloan program, $14 million

Postal Service forgone revenue appropriation, $29 million

Total $70 million

_____

MAJOR REDUCTIONS:

__

AGRICULTURE

Conservation operations, $77 million

Resource conservation and development program, $25 million

State and private forestry, $100 million

In-house research, $123 million

Environmental quality incentives program, $270 million

Market access program, $100 million

Rural Economic development grants, $89 million

Watershed rehabilitation program, $ 65 million

Farmland protection program, $47 million

Value-added marketing grants, $40 million

Wildlife habitat incentives program, $30 million

Agricultural management assistance, $14 million

Broadband, $10 million

Ground and surface water conservation, $9 million

Renewable energy program, $3 million

Biomass research and development, $2 million

Total $1004 million

___

COMMERCE

Manufacturing extension partnership, $59 million

Technology administration, $5 million

Total $64 million

___

EDUCATION

Perkins Loans Institutional Fund recall, $664 million

Teaching American history, $71 million

Physical education, $47 million

Mentoring program, $30 million

Total 811 million

___

ENERGY

Environmental management, $762 million

Weatherization assistance program, $79 million

Clean Coal Power initiative, $45 million

Total $886 million

___

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Health Resources and Service Administration- Children's Graduate Medical Education, $198

HRSA Health professions, $136 million

HRSA Poison control centers, $10 million

HRSA Rural health, $133 million

Social Services block grant, $500 million

Substance abuse and mental health programs, $71 million

Total $1,048 million

___

HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of grants and training, $694 million

__

HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Public housing capital fund, $261 million

___

INTERIOR

BIA school construction, $50 million

Bureau of Reclamation reductions, $127 million

USGS Mineral Resources program, $22 million

Total $199 million

___

LABOR

State job training grants consolidation, $514 million

International Labor Affairs Bureau, $61 million

Office of Disability Employment Policy, $8 million

Total $583 million

___

TRANSPORTATION

Amtrak, $394 million

Federal Aviation Administration, Airport improvement program, $765 million

Total $1,159 million

TREASURY

Internal Revenue Service business systems modernization, $30 million

___

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Alaska Native villages, $19 million

Clean water state revolving fund, $199 million

Total $218 million

___

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

Assistance for Eastern European democracy, $83 million

Assistance for the state of the former Soviet Union, $68 million

Total $160 million

___

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

Aeronautics Mission Research Directorate, $160 million

___

OTHER AGENCIES

Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $114 million

Denali Commission, $47 million

National Archives and Records Administration, $8 million

Total $169 million

IRS information collection

Written by: Drew Monthie on Jan 6, 2006 6:08 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Just came across this today on Americablog-we should all be worried that the IRS is collecting information on our political affiliations.
Drew


IRS tracked taxpayers' political affiliation
by John in DC - 1/06/2006 11:42:00 AM


Why? Because they could.
As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust� that could undermine the agency's credibility.

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,� said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.�
Ah yes, that same talking point. It's illegal, so we're innocent. Huh?

Here are the states the IRS playing politics with:
According to Murray's office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
More implications of this from MyDD.

Military Service-Who Served, Who didn't

Written by: Drew Monthie on Nov 15, 2005 6:44 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Lt. Bush Heads the GOP Hero-Wannabe Unit

There's this myth that's been perpetuated for years in conservative Washington and among the right wing press that the Republican Party is the party of strong, courageous, heroic defenders of America, while the Democrats are namby-pamby sissy-boys that cannot and should not be entrusted with the nation's security. How and when this started--although I'll give much of the credit to Karl Rove--I'm not exactly sure. But a simple look into the military service, or lack thereof, of prominent politicians and spin monkeys offers a not so surprising revelation into who the real tough guys are in Washington:

Democrats

* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. J.G. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
* Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
* Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, and Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
* Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters.
* Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans

* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did not serve.
* Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
* John M. McHugh: did not serve.
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years.
* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
* John Engler: did not serve.
* Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.
* Sean Hannity: did not serve.
* Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
* Michael Savage: did not serve.
* George Will: did not serve.
* Chris Matthews: did not serve.
* Paul Gigot: did not serve.
* Bill Bennett: did not serve.
* Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
* John Wayne: did not serve.
* Bill Kristol: did not serve.
* Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
* Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
* Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
* Ralph Reed: did not serve.

Many of these conservatives did everything in their power--including using their family's wealth and political connections--to avoid military service. No wonder then that they over-compensate for this lack of bravery by attempting to tear down the real heroes at every turn.

Entrust our security to these jokers? Puhleeeeze. I'll jump in a trench with Kerry, Cleland, Kennedy, Daschle and Gore any day of the week over Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Frist and Limbaugh. At least our guys don't have to play dress up.


posted by The Ostroy Report @ 12:23 PM 2 comments

Link

Electronic Voting Machines

Written by: Drew Monthie on Nov 11, 2005 6:47 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

Friday, November 11, 2005
Diebold source code broken!

From Joanna:

!!! BREAKING - DIEBOLD SOURCE CODE !!!

Dr Avi Rubin is currently Prof of Computer Science at John Hopkins U.

He "accidently" got his hands on a copy of the Diebold software program--Diebold's source code--which runs their e-voting machines. Dr Rubin's students pored over 48,609 lines of code that make up this software. One line in particular stood out over all the rest:

#defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4"

All commercial programs have provisions to be encrypted so as to protect them from having their contents read or changed by anyone not having the key... The line that staggered the Hopkin's team was that the method used to encrypt the Diebold machines was a method called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), a code that was broken in 1997 & is NO LONGER USED by anyone to secure prograns. F2654hd4 was the key to the encryption. Moreover, because the KEY was IN the source code, all Diebold machines wld respond to the same key. Unlock one, you have then ALL unlocked.

I can't believe there is a person alive who wldn't understand the reason this was allowed to happen. This wasen't a mistake by any stretch of the imagination. This was a fixed election, plain & simple. [DUH]

This 2nd coup d'etat is either stopped now or America ceases to be.

Read more.

posted by MCM at 2:42 PM Permalink | 0 comments

Link

Voting

Written by: Drew Monthie on Nov 7, 2005 4:43 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

20 Amazing Facts About
Voting in the USA

Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
Link

Link



2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
Link

Link



3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
Link

Link



4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Link

Link



5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
Link

Link



6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
Link

Link

Link



7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
Link

Link



8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
Link

Link



9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
Link

Link



10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
Link

Link



11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
Link



12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
Link,2645,61640,00.html

Link



13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
Link
Link

Link



14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
Link

Link



15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
Link

Link



16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: Link)
Link,2645,63298,00.html

Link



17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
Link



18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
Link,2645,65757,00.html

Link

Link

Link

Link



19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
Link

Link



20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
Link

Link,10801,97614,00.html

Link

Link

Link

Link


NOTE: Please copy the above list and distribute freely!
LET THE FACTS BE KNOWN! Thank you!

Want a cheap, fair, reliable, and efficient alternative? It exists!
Check out the Swiss Voting System
at Link


DECEMBER 2004 GALLUP POLLS
1 in 5 Americans believe the elections were fraudulent.
That's over 41 Million Americans.
You are NOT alone!

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

Get educated. Tell your friends what's going on.
Go visit Link

Voting

Written by: Drew Monthie on Nov 7, 2005 4:41 PM EST

Linked to groups: Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area

20 Amazing Facts About
Voting in the USA
by Angry Girl


Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
Link

Link



2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
Link

Link



3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
Link

Link



4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Link

Link



5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
Link

Link



6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
Link

Link

Link



7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
Link

Link



8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
Link

Link



9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
Link

Link



10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
Link

Link



11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
Link



12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
Link,2645,61640,00.html

Link



13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
Link
Link

Link



14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
Link

Link



15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
Link

Link



16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: Link)
Link,2645,63298,00.html

Link



17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
Link



18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
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19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
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20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
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NOTE: Please copy the above list and distribute freely!
LET THE FACTS BE KNOWN! Thank you!

Want a cheap, fair, reliable, and efficient alternative? It exists!
Check out the Swiss Voting System
at Link


DECEMBER 2004 GALLUP POLLS
1 in 5 Americans believe the elections were fraudulent.
That's over 41 Million Americans.
You are NOT alone!

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

Get educated. Tell your friends what's going on.
Go visit Link