Why do Gopers keep getting away with corrunption?

Vegas firm factors in Ensign inquiry By: John Bresnahan and Manu Raju March 26, 2010 05:04 AM EDT

R&R Partners is famous for creating the Las Vegas slogan “What happens here stays here.” But it’s the firm’s Washington connections — and its deep ties to scandal-plagued Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) — that have drawn it into a Senate Ethics Committee investigation and, potentially, a Department of Justice inquiry. A top R&R executive, Pete Ernaut, has been subpoenaed by the Ethics Committee as part of its investigation into Ensign’s extramarital affair with Cindy Hampton, his former campaign treasurer. John Lopez, Ensign’s former chief of staff, who now lobbies for R&R, has been subpoenaed by the Ethics Committee as well. The $40 million-per-year company is a power player on the political scene, with connections to virtually every major politician in Nevada. CEO Billy Vassiliadis — or Billy V., as he’s known in Nevada — has close relationships with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his son, gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid, and was a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s Nevada campaign in 2008. But it’s the Ensign connections that are bringing unwelcome scrutiny. The Ethics Committee and the Justice Department are conducting parallel probes into the senator’s efforts to steer lobbying work to Doug Hampton, a former top Ensign aide married to Cindy Hampton, after both Hamptons left Ensign’s office in April 2008. The Department of Justice is also reportedly reviewing allegations that Ensign offered to help Nevada credit card companies derail pending legislation in return for donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which he chaired in 2007-08. Ernaut, a former state assemblyman who served as campaign manager for Ensign’s 2000 and 2006 Senate races, said R&R received a subpoena from the Ethics Committee late last month, demanding that it turn over a “broad brush” of documents to the panel by March 31. R&R has represented NV Energy, Nevada’s biggest utility company, on the federal level since May 2008, although there are much longer ties at the state level. Doug Hampton also lobbied for NV Energy while working for November Inc., a company run by two top political operatives for Ensign, Mike and Lindsey Slanker. Hampton never formally registered as a lobbyist. Ernaut has also worked closely with the Slankers on Nevada political campaigns, according to a source tied to the firm. R&R has not yet been contacted by the Justice Department, Ernaut said last week. Ernaut said that while R&R is “disappointed in the entire situation,” it has acted ethically and is cooperating fully with Senate investigators. Federal investigators and the Senate Ethics Committee are likely to focus their attention heavily on Lopez, whom Ensign reportedly asked to serve as a middleman between the senator and Doug Hampton. Lopez, like Ensign, has denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Hampton. Lopez’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, declined to say whether Lopez had been subpoenaed by the DoJ, though FBI agents sought to interview the ex-Ensign aide back in January. R&R also discussed working with Allegiant Air — another Las Vegas company that Doug Hampton unofficially lobbied for while working for November Inc. — to represent its interests in Washington, according to sources familiar with the talks. R&R has not registered Allegiant as a federal lobbying client at this time. Maurice Gallagher, Allegiant’s CEO, has been a major financial backer of Ensign’s. “Certainly, when you have a company in the public eye, these types of things are always possible,” Ernaut said of R&R’s connection to the Ensign investigation. Ernaut’s background is typical of the background of the high-profile political players who run R&R. Whichever Nevada candidate or party wins office, he or she typically has close ties to R&R even before being sworn in. “It doesn’t matter who holds office in Nevada, R&R is always on the winning side,” said a source familiar with the firm’s operations. This source added: “There is no conflict of interest when you already control everything.” Ernaut is a “prominent political player in the state,” said Jon Ralston, a well-regarded political commentator in Las Vegas. Ralston called R&R “powerful,” noting its ties to many companies and politicians throughout the Silver State. Ernaut attended the University of Nevada at Reno with Brian Sandoval, the former state attorney general and federal judge now seeking the governor’s mansion, and Sandoval’s wife. Ernaut later served in the state Assembly with Sandoval, and now he’s a top adviser for Sandoval’s campaign for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. In 1984, Ernaut transferred to the University of Southern California, where he was a fraternity brother of Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller, who may run for Ensign’s seat in 2012. Ernaut, who was a campaign manager and chief of staff to former Nevada GOP Gov. Kenny Guinn, first met Ensign during his successful run for a House seat in 1994. Ernaut managed Ensign’s 2000 and 2006 Senate campaigns. Before the sex scandal broke last summer, Ernaut remained close to Ensign; the two attended social events together and played golf when the senator was back home in Nevada. Ernaut said he met Doug Hampton, a longtime Ensign friend, some five years ago, when Hampton moved to Las Vegas. Doug and Cindy Hampton went to work for Ensign in late 2006 — Cindy as campaign treasurer and Doug as deputy chief of staff, with Lopez as his boss. But Ernaut said he had no clue about the senator’s affair until Ensign called him the day before he publicly disclosed it in mid-June, a call that Ernaut said “made me sick to my stomach.” Ernaut said he hasn’t spoken frequently to either Ensign or Doug Hampton since last year, adding that the controversy “certainly strained the relationship.” Ernaut said he has been close to Lopez for some 25 years and that he had tried to woo Lopez to join R&R over the past decade. Lopez left Ensign’s office in late July. Even though Ernaut is receiving more scrutiny because of his ties to Ensign, Vassiliadis has also been questioned in the Ensign case. Vassiliadis’s ties to Washington run as deep as Ernaut’s. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) was Vassiliadis’s political science professor when he attended the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “It’s a small state. I have to tell you, if there was an issue that had to [do] with tourism, gaming, travel — although Billy is much more knowledgeable than just on those issues — I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to pick up the phone and ask him what he thought,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley, the Las Vegas-area Democratic congresswoman, who has known Vassiliadis for some 30 years. Vassiliadis, even though he’s a Democrat, aided Ensign during his 2000 Senate campaign, just two years after Ensign and Reid were engaged in a bitter contest that Reid won by only 428 votes. He has also donated to Republican candidates and incumbents. He said his firm will continue to have deep connections to Nevada politics. In a recent interview, Vassiliadis said that R&R “encourage[s] our people to get involved in politics. It’s part of who we are.”

© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

Let The Sun Shine In......

Is This It? Have we all gone round the Bend?

The Confederacy no longer exists. It hasn't for a very long time. We lost the war, thank God. 

Why is it that some of us can't seem to get over it, for Pete's sake.

Race and the U.S. Census: ‘Confederate Southern’ Whites Want Separate Category

By Jessie

There is a push among some southern whites in the U.S. for a separate category on the census. The Southern Legal Resource Center is calling on self-proclaimed “Confederates” to declare their heritage when they are counted in the 2010 Census. According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the organization is urging white Southerners to declare their “heritage and culture” by classifying themselves as “Confederate Southern Americans” on the line on the form, question No. 9, that asks for race. Check “other” and write “Confed Southern Am” on the line beside it.

In a move that appropriates the language of multiculturalism, the director this organization says:

“In this age of honoring diversity, Southern/Confederate people are the last group in America that can be maligned, ridiculed and defamed with impunity. Using the Census to unite the Southern/Confederate community can be a significant first step to our obtaining rights and recognition that all American ethnic groups are entitled to.”

Scholar Tara McPherson, USC, has written about neo-confederate groups such as this in a chapter called “I’ll take my stand in Dixie-Net: White guys, the South, and cyberspace,” in Kolko, B. E., L. Nakamura, and G. B. Rodman’s edited volume, Race in Cyberspace, New York:Routledge (2000), and in her book, Reconstructing Dixie,  Durham, NC: Duke University Press, (2003). McPherson’s take on these groups is complex, nuanced and theoretically informed by cultural studies.

A key point from her work are important to note here about this move to racialize the census in a new way by “Confed Southern Am’s.”   Although it would be easy to place these neo-Confederates in a group with other white supremacist groups, McPherson cautions that this is too simplistic and facile.   In contrast to other white southern groups may affiliate themselves with a “Lost Cause” ideology that characterize blacks as racial Others who are either loyal ex-slaves who benefited from plantation life or a dangerous ‘cancer,’ the neo-confederates focus almost exclusively on whiteness, albeit a whiteness that is naturalized and taken-for-granted (McPherson, 2003, p.110).

Thus, rather than engaging in overt expressions of racism, the neo-Confederates that McPherson studies adopt the language of multiculturalism in an attempt to place regional, Southern, whiteness as equivalent to African American or any of the other identities now represented in Questions 8 and 9 on the 2010 census.    Why do this?  It’s a rhetorical and political strategy that seeks to undermine moves toward racial equality by de-emphasizing the power and social resources associated with ‘whiteness.’    Once again, the census proves to be useful a lens through which we can view the current landscape of racial politics in the U.S.

Let The Sun Shine In......

We Are All Either Teabaggers or Communists

I am absolutely speechless. 

These folks really bear watching by anyone who can stand it.

By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2010; A01



IOWA CITY, IOWA -- He had no plans to throw bricks, issue death threats, spit in faces or scream racial slurs. But Randy Millam, 52, intended to make a scene, so he woke up early Thursday morning to prepare for President Obama's visit.

Millam sat at his kitchen table in Lowden, Iowa, with 14 Sharpie markers and a piece of foam board, working to condense a year of frustration into a 3-by-3-foot catchphrase. "Chains We Can Believe In," he wrote, drawing the communist hammer and sickle on the poster's top left corner. Then he grabbed an American flag, inserted batteries into a megaphone bought on the cheap for $25 and guzzled a 24-hour energy drink. Just as Obama took off in Air Force One for Iowa City, Millam loaded into his muddy Ford Fusion and drove 50 miles across the cornfields of eastern Iowa.

"The president just about declared war against the American people last weekend," he said. And it is a war Millam intends to fight.

Millam's resolve Thursday was reinforced by the sense that he was taking part in a movement -- a rising tide of anger, fear and vitriol in the wake of the health-care overhaul signed into law by Obama this week. Millam joined a chorus of discontent surrounding the president's visit: a warm-up protest Wednesday night, a greeting party of protesters waiting at the airport and hundreds more with plans to chant outside the downtown arena while Obama spoke. In the hours before he left for Iowa City, Millam watched reports on Fox News Channel about vandalism at Democratic offices and visited a Web site of the conservative "tea party" movement, where he was inspired by a Thomas Jefferson quote about how bloodshed might be necessary to protect a country from tyranny.

"I'm not ready for outright violence yet. We have to be civil for as long as we can," Millam said. But, he added, "we are watching the infrastructure of this country crumble under our feet. The government doesn't want to hear us. We have to make them listen."

With that as his goal, Millam arrived in Iowa City wearing an "Army Dad" T-shirt and a cap inscribed with the words of the Second Amendment. He parked his car and joined a crowd of about 300 protesters, who carried signs that addressed most of Millam's frustrations. "America's Disastrous Economy," read one; that was the economy that had contributed to him losing a job on the assembly line at Kraft Foods a few years ago and had left him unemployed since. "Insane Overspending!" read another; that was the overspending that made him fear for the futures of his two teenage children: a high school honors student and a daughter who recently enlisted in the military. "Obama Lies!" was the reason he no longer trusted government, stockpiling firewood and bricks and starting his own vegetable garden. "ObamaCare," was what he considered the final insult to the Constitution. Even though he has health insurance through his wife's job, the politics of the past few weeks confirmed his fears about the direction of his country and gave him a "locked-and-loaded focus."

He walked to the front of the protest crowd and lifted the megaphone to his mouth.
"Fellow patriots," he bellowed. "We are standing outside the arena right now because the president controls the crowd, controls the message, controls the people of this country. That is not freedom! That is not democracy! That is not the America I grew up in!"

The demonstrators cheered and began to gather around Millam, and two police officers came to stand nearby. "If you're going to deny me my constitutional rights, you can arrest me," Millam told the officers. Then he leaned into the megaphone and started shouting again.

"I got news for you, Barack," Millam said. "You can't blame everything on Bush anymore. You either are the president, or you're not. We've got 17 percent real unemployment. Home sales are at historic lows. . . . And now the most pro-choice president this nation has ever elected is forcing us to have health care. Every single person's body in this whole country belongs to the government now."

Millam swayed from side to side, waving the American flag and catching his breath. He was silent now, but the crowd continued to swell around him. Tommy Leforce, a 19-year-old student at Cornell College in Iowa, tapped Millam on the shoulder and asked for the megaphone. "My dad is unemployed right now," Leforce shouted, "but this government is more focused on what their political party wants instead of what Americans need."

Another person took the megaphone: "I want nothing to do with Washington, D.C."

Another: "It's communism!"

Another: "Obamunism!"

By now a group of about 200 Obama supporters had stopped to watch and listen, congregating across the street from the protesters. Seven police officers stood in the middle of the road, monitoring both sides. On one sidewalk: Obama T-shirts, health-care-reform advocates, and students from the University of Iowa, one of whom held a sign inviting Obama to join him at a local bar for Thursday night's $1 you-call-it drink special. On the other sidewalk: college Republicans, middle-aged conservatives and retirees who waved homemade signs, bullhorns, doctored pictures of Obama and yellow tea party flags, which showed coiled snakes under the motto "Don't Tread on Me."

Millam looked across the street at the students and shook his head. "They don't understand that our government doesn't listen," he said. He had spent the past week calling congressional offices and the White House to tell them about his feelings on health-care reform, waiting through hold times only to reach answering machines and busy signals. Maybe he could enlighten these Obama supporters. He stepped closer to the street and raised the megaphone.

"I voted for a Democrat once," he said. "I was young once. Kumbaya and all that. Then I grew up. If you believe in freedom, you need to come to this side of the street."
Nobody moved.

"If you don't think it takes 2,700 pages to explain a health-care plan, come to this side of the street."

Still nothing.

"If you haven't given up on our Constitution, on our founders, on the hope and dream of a free country, then come to this side of the street."

Finally, one student walked across. He wore dark sunglasses and carried a poster-board sign, made moments earlier. It read: "These People are Idiots." He stood with the protesters, his sign mocking them, while he listened to an iPod.

Millam rested the megaphone on his stomach. His voice was getting hoarse, and his legs ached. He'd been shouting for almost two hours now, and some protesters were beginning to leave. "Where is Obama?" he asked. Another demonstrator told him that the president had finished his speech, entering and exiting the arena through a different entrance, and Millam snorted in disgust.

"Why does the president of the United States have to sneak in the back door to avoid seeing the real people in this country?" he shouted into the megaphone. "That's not right. That's just not right."

His words died out. The rally was over. He turned off the megaphone and walked to his car. While the president flew back to Washington, Millam drove home on the rural highways of Iowa. He wondered: What would it take to be heard, and what would he try next?

He carried the sign and megaphone into the house and stored them in the closet, knowing he would use them again.


Let The Sun Shine In......

Where was all the anger during the Bush years?

It was out here. I know I was mad as hell. The anger now is years late and trillions short, and it is stoked by the very people who allowed Bush and Cheney to get by with murder, and I do not exaggerate.

STEPHEN PIZZO FOR BUZZFLASH

Where were all these “freedom-loving” right wingers during the Bush years?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. But one that should be asked of the morons now breaking windows and cutting gas lines, all in the name of “freedom from big government.”

Well an old gentleman from Chico, California is asking it. From what I’m told the fellow worked as a volunteer teaching retirees about Medicare and COBRA. Here’s his open letter to Republicans. Sorry, don’t know his name, but if you do, let me know. Pass it on to your favorite Republican/Tea Party member:

We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad? 

• You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

• You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy. 
• You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed. 
• You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.. 
• You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. 
• You didn't get mad when we spent $1 trillion on said illegal war. 
• You didn't get mad when over $10 billion dollars (in hard cash) just “disappeared" in Iraq . 
• You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people. 
• You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans. 
• You didn't get mad when they didn't catch Bin Laden. 
• You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed hospital. 
• You didn't get mad when they let a major US city drown. 
• You didn't get mad when they gave a $1.6 trillion in tax breaks to the rich. 
• You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars  were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage -- which cost more than 20% more for the same services that Medicare provides. 
• You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark. 

No, but you did get mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans... oh hell no!

Let The Sun Shine In......

Financial Reform: Where's The Debate?

By Simon Johnson

The New York Times reports that financial reform is the next top priority for Democrats.  Barney Frank, fresh from meeting with the president, sends a promising signal,

“There are going to be death panels enacted by the Congress this year — but they’re death panels for large financial institutions that can’t make it,” he said. “We’re going to put them to death and we’re not going to do very much for their heirs. We will do the minimum that’s needed to keep this from spiraling into a broader problem.”

But there is another, much less positive interpretation regarding what is now developing in the Senate.  The indications are that some version of the Dodd bill will be presented to Democrats and Republicans alike as a fait accompli – this is what we are going to do, so are you with us or against us in the final recorded vote?  And, whatever you do – they say to the Democrats – don’t rock the boat with any strengthening amendments.

Chris Dodd, master of the parliamentary maneuver, and the White House seem to have in mind curtailing debate and moving directly to decision.  Republicans, such as Judd Gregg and Bob Corker, may be getting on board with exactly this.

Prominent Democratic Senators have indicated they would like something different.  But it’s not clear whether and how Senators Cantwell, Merkley, Levin, Brown, Feingold, Kaufman, and perhaps others will stop the Dodd juggernaut (or is it a handcart?)

This matters, because there is more than a small problem with the Dodd-White House strategy: the bill makes no sense.

Of course, officials are lining up to solemnly confirm that “too big to fail” will be history once the Dodd bill passes.

But this is simply incorrect.  Focus on this: How can any approach based on a US resolution authority end the issues around large complex cross-border financial institutions?  It cannot.
The resolution authority, you recall, is the ability of the government to apply a form of FDIC-type intervention (or modified bankruptcy procedure) to all financial institutions, rather than just banks with federally-insured deposits as is the case today.  The notion is fine for purely US entities, but there is no cross-border agreement on resolution process and procedure – and no prospect of the same in sight.

This is not a left-wing view or a right-wing view, although there are people from both ends of the political spectrum who agree on this point (look at the endorsements for 13 Bankers).  This is simply the technocratic assessment – ask your favorite lawyer, financial markets expert, finance professor, economist, or anyone else who has worked on these issues and does not have skin in this particular legislative game.

Why exactly do you think big banks, such as JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have been so outspoken in support of a “resolution authority”?  They know it would allow them to continue not just at their current size – but actually to get bigger.  Nothing could be better for them than this kind of regulatory smokescreen.  This is exactly the kind of game that they have played well over the past 20 years – in fact, it’s from the same playbook that brought them great power and us great danger in the run-up to 2008.

When a major bank fails, in the years after the Dodd bill passes, we will face the exact same potential chaos as after the collapse of Lehman.  And we know what our policy elite will do in such a situation – because Messrs. Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, and Summers swear up and down there was no alternative, and people like them will always be in power.  If you must choose between collapse and rescue, US policymakers will choose rescue every time – and probably they feel compelled again to concede most generous terms “to limit the ultimate cost to the taxpayer” (or words to that effect).

The banks know all this and will act accordingly.  You do the math.

Once you understand that the resolution authority is an illusion, you begin to understand that the Dodd legislation would achieve nothing on the systemic risk and too big to fail front.
On reflection, perhaps this is exactly why the sponsors of this bill are afraid to have any kind of open and serious debate.  The emperor simply has no clothes.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Tea Party protest heads to Reid's hometown in Nevada

Caravans of Tea Party activists will roll into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hometown in rural Nevada today to rally for his defeat in November. ...

The Tea Party: More Like Al-Qaeda by the Day

Patriots Standing Against the New Threat to America

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March 24, 2010

by Dan

8 Votes

 

Is it time to start calling their spiritual leader…
 
GLENNSANA BIN BECKDEN?

One does have to wonder what is in the minds of the Tea Party.  Really…what are they thinking?
Listen folks, I know about disappointment, and losing when you felt you had a moral imperative to win.  Hell, I grew up in Cleveland and I’m a lifelong Browns, Cavaliers and Indians fan.  I lived through the Drive, the Fumble, the shot by Jordan (1) and the shot by Jordan (2), Jose Mesa’s 9th inning melt down in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, and the Cavaliers choke versus the Magic just last year.  Yea, I’ve seen my share of heartbreaks and gut
wrenching losses.

But at my lowest I never threatened the fans of the winning team with death and destruction.  I never spit on them.  I never went to their homes and severed gas lines, threw bricks thru their windows, or left messages on their voice mail promising them they would die.

I know, I know…how can I compare the loss of a pro sports team to the Armageddon of the Health Care reform bill, which will bring the Republic down and represents the end of times.  Well, the truth is, none of those things that Republicans, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or any of the other extremists have claimed will be a result of the healthcare reform passing, will actually come true.  So at the end of the day, what the sadly stupid core of the Tea Party is left with is really something that is similar to their favorite team losing the Super Bowl.
Why do I say that?  Because only 48 hours after the vote to pass the Healthcare Reform, many of those that led the charge that enraged the Tea Party, the leaders in the GOP who raged against death panels, are now subtly shifting their positions and claiming they helped contribute to parts of the bill that they think will help them get re-elected. So, much like a disappointing end to a championship season, the fans feel betrayed, but the team and the players move on to the next season and the next game.

The problem for the GOP is what they are now left with.  The insurance companies, pharma companies, and other rich fat cats on Wall St., accomplished what they wanted; they ramped up a core of Americans who usually pay more attention to voting for American Idol than they do voting for their elected representatives, and who will soon figure out that what they railed against are the things that will help them most.  And as they were doing it, the CEO’s, the Lobbyists and the politicians pulling the strings were laughing their asses off.

But now, it has vectored out of control.  The insane ranting of Glenn Beck (just watch Jon Stewart of the Daily Show reveal the insanity), the extreme hyperbole of Limbaugh, and the serial lying of Fox News will not stop.  And the Tea Party folks, so enraged and so indoctrinated by the pied pipers from Fox and the GOP, will not stand aside and move on quietly to the next season.  No…they actually believed the lies and disinformation they were fed.  They actually think the nonsense about death panels, socialism and the death of our country will come true.  And consistent with their limited ability to process complex thought, their default is to turn to that which they understand best…KICK ASS BABY!

So now we have bricks thrown through windows of government facilities, death threats on voice mail, gas lines cut at the homes of government officials, and congress members being spit on and called vile names.
In other words, what we have is a de-centralized group of loosely affiliated cells across the country, following the Fox News and Heritage Foundation version of a fatwa, delivered by spiritual leaders wrapped in messianic fantasies, all dedicated to the destruction of American property and democratic institutions, as well as the murder of American citizens. What do you call that?

Will Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, John Boehner, or any of the other cheerleaders of this madness step up and say enough is enough?  Well, to quote the aforementioned Mr. Boehner…HELL NO!  And why should they? They are still making millions and getting fat and rich on the backs of the ‘proletariat’ who they twist into doing their dirty work while keeping their hands relatively clean and raking in the money.

Wake up Tea Party people.  Stop being used and abused.  Your movement is in a death spiral, so you might as well accept it and go back to watching American Idol.  They were only using you for their gain, and it will only hurt you in the long run.
 
UPDATE: White powder sent to Cong. Anthony Weiner’s office

March 24, 2010

by Dan

8 Votes

Is it time to start calling their spiritual leader…
GLENNSANA BIN BECKDEN?
One does have to wonder what is in the minds of the Tea Party.  Really…what are they thinking?
Listen folks, I know about disappointment, and losing when you felt you had a moral imperative to win.  Hell, I grew up in Cleveland and I’m a lifelong Browns, Cavaliers and Indians fan.  I lived through the Drive, the Fumble, the shot by Jordan (1) and the shot by Jordan (2), Jose Mesa’s 9th inning melt down in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, and the Cavaliers choke versus the Magic just last year.  Yea, I’ve seen my share of heartbreaks and gut wrenching losses.
But at my lowest I never threatened the fans of the winning team with death and destruction.  I never spit on them.  I never went to their homes and severed gas lines, threw bricks thru their windows, or left messages on their voice mail promising them they would die.
I know, I know…how can I compare the loss of a pro sports team to the Armageddon of the Health Care reform bill, which will bring the Republic down and represents the end of times.  Well, the truth is, none of those things that Republicans, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or any of the other extremists have claimed will be a result of the healthcare reform passing, will actually come true.  So at the end of the day, what the sadly stupid core of the Tea Party is left with is really something that is similar to their favorite team losing the Super Bowl.
Why do I say that?  Because only 48 hours after the vote to pass the Healthcare Reform, many of those that led the charge that enraged the Tea Party, the leaders in the GOP who raged against death panels, are now subtly shifting their positions and claiming they helped contribute to parts of the bill that they think will help them get re-elected. So, much like a disappointing end to a championship season, the fans feel betrayed, but the team and the players move on to the next season and the next game.
The problem for the GOP is what they are now left with.  The insurance companies, pharma companies, and other rich fat cats on Wall St., accomplished what they wanted; they ramped up a core of Americans who usually pay more attention to voting for American Idol than they do voting for their elected representatives, and who will soon figure out that what they railed against are the things that will help them most.  And as they were doing it, the CEO’s, the Lobbyists and the politicians pulling the strings were laughing their asses off.

But now, it has vectored out of control.  The insane ranting of Glenn Beck (just watch Jon Stewart of the Daily Show reveal the insanity), the extreme hyperbole of Limbaugh, and the serial lying of Fox News will not stop.  And the Tea Party folks, so enraged and so indoctrinated by the pied pipers from Fox and the GOP, will not stand aside and move on quietly to the next season.  No…they actually believed the lies and disinformation they were fed.  

They actually think the nonsense about death panels, socialism and the death of our country will come true.  And consistent with their limited ability to process complex thought, their default is to turn to that which they understand best…KICK ASS BABY!

So now we have bricks thrown through windows of government facilities, death threats on voice mail, gas lines cut at the homes of government officials, and congress members being spit on and called vile names.

In other words, what we have is a de-centralized group of loosely affiliated cells across the country, following the Fox News and Heritage Foundation version of a fatwa, delivered by spiritual leaders wrapped in messianic fantasies, all dedicated to the destruction of American property and democratic institutions, as well as the murder of American citizens. What do you call that?
Will Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, John Boehner, or any of the other cheerleaders of this madness step up and say 

enough is enough?  Well, to quote the aforementioned Mr. Boehner…HELL NO!  And why should they? They are still making millions and getting fat and rich on the backs of the ‘proletariat’ who they twist into doing their dirty work while keeping their hands relatively clean and raking in the money.
Wake up Tea Party people.  Stop being used and abused.  Your movement is in a death spiral, so you might as well accept it and go back to watching American Idol.  They were only using you for their gain, and it will only hurt you in the long run.
UPDATE: White powder sent to Cong. Anthony Weiner’s office

Let The Sun Shine In......

Boehner: The Zeitgiest Continues

With several different Democrats receiving threats of violence and receiving protective detail after voting for the new health insurance reform law (I haven't yet tired of saying that), it's worth highlighting something that Minority Leader John Boehner said last week about one of the Congressmen who has been subjected to this sort of vitriolic abuse: his neighbor from an adjacent Ohio district, Rep. Steve Driehaus.

"Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, for example," he says. "He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati."

As mcjoan noted earlier, Congressman Driehaus has been subjected to a litany of intimidating tactics, including death threats, having pictures of his children used in an attack ad, and having the address of and directions to his private residence posted on conservative blogs--and we've all seen how well that worked out in the case of case of Rep. Periello's brother.

Predictably, Driehaus has called Boehner out about his words, which are ill-chosen at best:

"I think it's really important for folks around here, especially leader Boehner, to understand that his words have consequences," Driehaus said. "Leader Boehner suggested that if I vote yes on this bill and go home to the west side of Cincinnati, that I could be a dead man.... It really calls into question his ability to lead. He should be a statesman."

Driehaus confronted Boehner about the interview on the floor of the House. "I told him it was inexcusable," Driehaus said. "It doesn't really matter the way you meant it, nor the way I accept it. It's how the least sane person in my district accepts it."

That's a pretty important point, because the least sane person in Western Cincinnati could be a Sarah Palin fan who wants to put SarahPAC's rifle scope imagery into practice.
I'd normally say that it's up to the minority GOP leadership to take a principled stand in opposition to the violence and the eliminationist rhetoric. But they can't, and they know it. They've spent the entire past year in cahoots with Fox News to convince America that health care reform would turn the United States into the Soviet Union--and they know they can't back down now without losing their base.

The GOP leadership and their allies on Fox and on the AM dial had better pray that nobody gets hurt or killed on account of this--because if that happens, the blood will be on their hands.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Pope Benedict's apology for church sex abuse rings hollow

It's not surprising that this Pope would get caught up in this mess. Was he not the advisor to Pope John Paul II who falsely advised him that the scandal was a creation of the American media. Now we know why he have such poor advice.

By Sinead O'Connor
Sunday, March 28, 2010; B01



When I was a child, Ireland was a Catholic theocracy. If a bishop came walking down the street, people would move to make a path for him. If a bishop attended a national sporting event, the team would kneel to kiss his ring. If someone made a mistake, instead of saying, "Nobody's perfect," we said, "Ah sure, it could happen to a bishop."

The expression was more accurate than we knew. This month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology -- of sorts -- to Ireland to atone for decades of sexual abuse of minors by priests whom those children were supposed to trust. To many people in my homeland, the pope's letter is an insult not only to our intelligence, but to our faith and to our country. To understand why, one must realize that we Irish endured a brutal brand of Catholicism that revolved around the humiliation of children.

I experienced this personally. When I was a young girl, my mother -- an abusive, less-than-perfect parent -- encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored "Magdalene laundries," which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests' clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.

An Grianán was a product of the Irish government's relationship with the Vatican -- the church had a "special position" codified in our constitution until 1972. As recently as 2007, 98 percent of Irish schools were run by the Catholic Church. But schools for troubled youth have been rife with barbaric corporal punishments, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. In October 2005, a report sponsored by the Irish government identified more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Ferns, a small town 70 miles south of Dublin, between 1962 and 2002. Accused priests weren't investigated by police; they were deemed to be suffering a "moral" problem. In 2009, a similar report implicated Dublin archbishops in hiding sexual abuse scandals between 1975 and 2004.

Why was such criminal behavior tolerated? The "very prominent role which the Church has played in Irish life is the very reason why abuses by a minority of its members were allowed to go unchecked," the 2009 report said.


Despite the church's long entanglement with the Irish government, Pope Benedict's so-called apology takes no responsibility for the transgressions of Irish priests. His letter states that "the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children." What about the Vatican's complicity in those sins?

Benedict's apology gives the impression that he heard about abuse only recently, and it presents him as a fellow victim: "I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them." But Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence."

Benedict, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was a mere cardinal when he wrote that letter. Now that he sits in Saint Peter's chair, are we to believe that his position has changed? And are we to take comfort in last week's revelations that, in 1996, he declined to defrock a priest who may have molested as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin?

Benedict's apology states that his concern is "above all, to bring healing to the victims." Yet he denies them the one thing that might bring them healing -- a full confession from the Vatican that it has covered up abuse and is now trying to cover up the cover up. Astonishingly, he invites Catholics "to offer up your fasting, your prayer, your reading of Scripture and your works of mercy in order to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland." Even more astonishing, he suggests that Ireland's victims can find healing by getting closer to the church -- the same church that has demanded oaths of silence from molested children, as occurred in 1975 in the case of Father Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest later jailed for repeated sexual offenses. After we stopped laughing, many of us in Ireland recognized the idea that we needed the church to get closer to Jesus as blasphemy.

To Irish Catholics, Benedict's implication -- Irish sexual abuse is an Irish problem -- is both arrogant and blasphemous. The Vatican is acting as though it doesn't believe in a God who watches. The very people who say they are the keepers of the Holy Spirit are stamping all over everything the Holy Spirit truly is. Benedict criminally misrepresents the God we adore. We all know in our bones that the Holy Spirit is truth. That's how we can tell that Christ is not with these people who so frequently invoke Him.

Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.

Almost 18 years ago, I tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on an episode of "Saturday Night Live." Many people did not understand the protest -- the next week, the show's guest host, actor Joe Pesci, commented that, had he been there, "I would have gave her such a smack." I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist. All I regretted was that people assumed I didn't believe in God. That's not the case at all. I'm Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation.

As Ireland withstands Rome's offensive apology while an Irish bishop resigns, I ask Americans to understand why an Irish Catholic woman who survived child abuse would want to rip up the pope's picture. And whether Irish Catholics, because we daren't say "we deserve better," should be treated as though we deserve less.

lucille6@mac.com

Sinead O'Connor, a musician and mother of four, lives in Dublin.
Recent Outlook coverage on Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church includes "Is Pope Benedict a closet liberal?" and "Who is a real Catholic?"

Let The Sun Shine In......

GOP Psychosis Not Flying.....

With anyone but those who are psychotic or bordering on it. This is not good news for the GOP.

For a long time anyone who opposed foreign-policy decisions, e.g. the war in Viet Nam, was called un-American and accused of disrespecting the troops - - 38,000 of them - - who fought and died there. And questioning defense appropriations was considered tantamount to giving aid and comfort to our enemies. The national-security gambit was used repeatedly by Republicans to great advantage. On last Sunday’s This Week, when David Plouffe alluded to the ill-timed “Mission Accomplished” banner hung aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln for the Bush visit, Karl Rove charged him with dishonoring the service of the ship’s crew - - the same outrageous sort of tactic he found so effective in manipulating the electorate during the Bush years..


According to conservatives government should keep taxes low, create war materiel, uphold states rights, support market-based endeavors and return to a simpler version of itself. But the “good old days” weren’t good for everyone; a Darwinian survival-of -the-fittest paradigm defined our social construct. It wasn’t until news footage of fire hoses and dogs being used on protesters in the south that it began to dawn on the rest of the country that violent suppression of basic human rights was occurring. Still it was generally understood that voting rights didn’t necessarily accrue to all citizens and the existence of “colored” water fountains, schools, and bathrooms didn’t seem all that remarkable. That’s just the way it was, back then.


Civil Rights advocates fought the bloody battles of the period and won in the court of public opinion and the federal courts as well. In time equality of purpose and opportunity emerged as national goals. It wasn’t quite so simple but doors opened and progress, however halting, was made. The high point of the country’s evolving social awareness and acceptance of diversity appeared to culminate with the election of Barack Obama.


Not so fast we have been forced to acknowledge. No matter how hard Tea Baggers and other administration foes try to paint themselves as grass roots activists supporting basic, albeit Republican tending, American values, their ranks swell with angry white people engaged not just in philosophical arguments but in unprecedented ad-hominem attacks on the president. A recent poll indicated large numbers of Republicans believe him to be a Muslim, a socialist, not native born and for 24% of respondents the “anti-Christ.”


The Republican Party denies that racist angst invigorates much of its base, but, obscured by verbiage about taxes and freedom, there runs an ugly undercurrent of bigotry. That and religious fanaticism animate Republican rhetoric in ways both subtle and overt and recall struggles mistakenly thought to be a thing of the past. However Republicans may live to regret their continued reliance on a “southern strategy” that appeals to the baser elements of society. The sight of congressional figures like Michele Bachman waving from a House balcony to a fractious crowd during the health-care debate may not resonate positively among the majority of Americans, no matter how they feel about the bill itself. Sadly, some legislators spend too much time sharpening their gamesmanship skills and pursuing narrow personal agendas instead of addressing critical national concerns.


It is undemocratic if not downright un-American for Republicans to choose the path John McCain has charted for the remainder of this congressional session, which is not to cooperate with Democrats on anything although, since his party has been obstructing and delaying everything on the president’s to-do list all along, this may not be the shocker it seemed when this silly man who wanted to be president made his churlish remarks. But can even party loyalists take pride in their leaders’ use of arcane Senate rules to bring all Senate business to a standstill?


That not one Republican chose to work in a constructive manner on health care legislation speaks to a leadership that has a poorly developed sense of duty - - a venal and ideologically driven clan that preaches principles but behaves in a manner that defies standards of decency and good government. The party would do well to focus less on self-righteous grandstanding and concentrate instead on conduct more in keeping with the democratic ideals most Americans embrace.

Please respond to Ann Davidow's commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community.

FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow

Let The Sun Shine In......

Frum Get Boot From AEI

For telling the truth.

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum has resigned from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Frum announced on his Web site Thursday afternoon -- a move which suggests the conservative movement has cut ties with Frum over the straight talk he has been providing all week.

[UPDATE: Frum tells Greg Sargent he and AEI parted ways over money, not ideology -- they offered him the chance to continue on at a salary of zero -- and that his criticisms of the Republican Party were "welcomed and celebrated" at the conservative think tank.]

Following the passage of health care reform in the House, Frum made waves with a column for CNN.com declaring that health care had proven to been "Waterloo" for the GOP, not for Obama as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) infamously suggested. Republican lawmakers quickly dismissed Frum, a prominent reformist conservative, as a mere "former staffer."

Then Frum said on "Nightline" that the Republican Party's lockstep with the Fox News attack machine has hurt the party, and that "we're discovering we work for Fox." That may have been the last straw for AEI.

"I have been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2003. At lunch today, AEI President Arthur Brooks and I came to a termination of that relationship," Frum wrote on his Web site. The full text of his "resignation" letter is below:

Dear Arthur,
This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.

I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Fox, Insists On Stoking More Threats of Violence if not Violence.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Now that the healthcare reform debate appears mostly over and FOX's campaign against it mostly lost, some might have expected the nation to move on to the next great issue. 

Unfortunately, so much of the vitriolic rhetoric that surrounded the reform bill appears to have incited violence after the bill's passage. In response, many FOX personalities have made deplorable attempts to excuse the actions much of their own coverage helped produce.

The threats against Democratic lawmakers have increased in number and ferocity to the point where the FBI has had to investigate threats and attacks against them. Now even GOP Rep. Eric Cantor claimed in a relatively terse press conference that he, too, has received similar threats including a bullet through one of his campaign offices. As often noted by media analysts, much of the blame for the hyperbolic rhetoric goes right to FOX news. When FOX boasts of a personality such as Glenn Beck who is willing to write off political opponents as "Marxists," analysts have a hard time laying much of the blame on people outside the FOX network.

Unsurprisingly, FOX has made several efforts to diminish the severity of the attacks. Steve Doocy referenced the attacks against Democrats and suggested with a smile that it resulted from people who "maybe...didn't want this bill." The Fox & Friends hosts did speak out against violence, but illustrating an inability to grasp the severity of the attacks, Gretchen Carlson compared them to "a kid who acts up at a birthday party."

More offensive than failure to comprehend the serious nature of the violence was the effort to blame the Democrats for the violence perpetrated against them. Beck accepted a call from a listener suggesting the Democrats walked through the Tea Party protesters to intentionally provoke the crowd for political purposes. In fact, Beck took it a step further and said, "I can guarantee you they walked out and said, 'What the hell do you have to do to these people to get them to kill us?' I swear to you!"

Karl Rove failed to go so far as to say Democrats willfully manipulated opponents into violence against them initially, but he did the next best thing -- accusing Democrats of using the attacks for political purposes and only encouraging more. Rove expressed sympathy for those subjected to potential violence, but he continued, "I don't think, however, it is useful for those in a position of authority to fan the flames and to try and draw attention to these because it simply is going to encourage copycats." By that logic, no one should mention the attacks, even to condemn them, and anyone who becomes a victim would only have themselves to blame. Since so many of those attacked had been, up to that point, people politically opposed to Rove, taking such a ridiculous stance probably made sense to him. Ironically, Cantor echoed Rove's sentiments about not publicizing the violence while simultaneously publicizing the violence at his press conference where he told the nation about the violence reaching his own office.

The closest FOX has come to having a host hold accountable some of those responsible for inciting the violence came in the form of Shepard Smith's interview with Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele. Smith laudably chided Steele for responding to questions about the Republicans' approach to healthcare reform with talking points and went on to ask Steele, "I want to talk about the message a little bit. Leader Boehner called this 'Armageddon.' You've talked about a 'loss of freedoms.' The bill, said one Republican Congressman from Texas we now know, it's a baby-killer if we're to believe what he says about it today. Is this rhetoric helpful in these times in this nation? And if not, how might it be changed to where both sides could make their points without leaving a level of division that...is not good for this country?" Steele tried to explain that it was what "average folks out there are saying around the kitchen table." Smith handily replied, "Armageddon? Seriously?"
Smith had a valid point in suggesting that the leaders of the GOP had a lot to do with the rhetoric. Besides talk of Armageddon, Minority Leader Boehner also said of Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Democrat, that if he considered voting for healthcare reform, "He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati." Smith's main shortfall comes from failing to similarly take his FOX colleagues to task. Preceding his questioning of Steele, Smith read a piece from noted conservative columnist David Frum describing healthcare reform passage as the GOP Waterloo. Another telling comment from Frum came in his explaining the association between FOX and the GOP when he said, "Republicans originally thought that FOX worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for FOX." If, as Smith suggests, the GOP shares much of the blame for the vitriol in politics today, then FOX also carries much of, if not the bulk of, the same blame.

Violence against any politician in the U.S., regardless of political leaning, deserves condemnation. FOX's refusal to accept some of the responsibility for the rhetoric it fostered and the real violence that has apparently spilled over to both sides as a consequence seems ignorant. Trying to blame the Democrats for it by belittling the severity of the issue and the impulse to speak out against it or for insidiously willing it upon themselves, seems shamelessly self-serving. People should turn away from the violence and vitriol until people like Smith turn to the entire network for accountability -- and choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.
Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.

Let The Sun Shine In......

CA To Vote On Legalizing Cannabis

It's about time!

Reuters) - A California voter initiative that would legalize possession and sale of marijuana has qualified for the November ballot, state election officials said on Wednesday, in what supporters called a "watershed moment" for their cause.

U.S.  |  Barack Obama  |  Lifestyle

Passage of the measure, by no means certain, would make California the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana. Backers believe the state could be at the vanguard of a national movement toward decriminalizing the drug.

"This is a watershed moment in the decades-long struggle to end marijuana prohibition in this country," said Stephen Gutwillig, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which has spearheaded the ballot initiative.


"Banning marijuana outright has been a disaster, fueling a massive, increasingly brutal underground economy, wasting billions in scarce law enforcement resources and making criminals out of countless law-abiding citizens," he said.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in a written statement that her office had certified the measure for the November 2 general election ballot after backers submitted the required number of signatures on petitions.

Bowen said that proponents, who needed 433,971 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, had submitted 694,248 that were verified through a random sampling.

POLLS SHOW MANY SUPPORT MEASURE

Legalizing marijuana appears to have broad support in the state, with some 56 percent of Californians surveyed in an April, 2009 Field Poll saying they favored making it legal for social use and taxing the sales proceeds.

In October, Gallup found 44 percent of Americans favored legalization.

Activists have suggested that taxing marijuana sales could help bail out the cash-strapped state, but plenty of Californians still oppose marijuana.

"With legalization of recreational marijuana use, impaired driving, fatalities, injuries and crashes will go up, and we don't want to see that," California Mothers Against Drunk Driving spokesman Silas Miers said.

The measure's qualification for the ballot was "the first step toward its defeat," said John Lovell, a lobbyist who represents a number of law enforcement groups.

Critics also say the social costs of a free-smoking state far outweigh the money it would bring in.

They say that the already enormous societal damage from alcohol and tobacco use would only increase if people were allowed to legally sell and smoke pot.

Under the initiative, simple possession of an ounce (28.5 grams) or less of marijuana, currently a misdemeanor offense punishable by a $100 fine, would be legal for anyone at least 21. It also would be lawful to grow limited amounts in one's own home for personal use.

While sales would not be legalized outright, cities and counties could pass laws permitting commercial distribution subject to local regulations and taxes. Retail sales would still be limited to an ounce for adults 21 and older.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson in San Francisco and Steve Gorman in San Diego, Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Let The Sun Shine In......

Good Bye.......

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. 

High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which  NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting  a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders.  In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion  alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government. 

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth.  It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Let The Sun Shine In......

Why East Jerusalem Does Not Belong To The Jewish People of Israel.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

2. Israeli governments have not in fact been united or consistent about what to do with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to what Netanyahu says. The Galili Plan for settlements in the West Bank was adopted only in 1973. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the Israeli far right (elements of which are now supporting Netanyahu's government). As late as 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims that he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of the West Bank and could have some arrangement by which East Jerusalem could be its capital. Netanyahu tried to give the impression that far rightwing Likud policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been shared by all previous Israeli governments, but this is simply not true.

3. Romantic nationalism imagines a "people" as eternal and as having an eternal connection with a specific piece of land. This way of thinking is fantastic and mythological. Peoples are formed and change and sometimes cease to be, though they might have descendants who abandoned that religion or ethnicity or language. Human beings have moved all around and are not directly tied to any territory in an exclusive way, since many groups have lived on most pieces of land. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.

4. Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem."

5. The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 12 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.

6. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,' since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.

7. Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.

The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.

Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.

8. Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:

A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.

B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.

C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.

D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.

E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.

F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.

G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.

9. Of course, Jews are historically connected to Jerusalem by the Temple, whenever that connection is dated to. But that link mostly was pursued when Jews were not in political control of the city, under Iranian, Greek and Roman rule. It cannot therefore be deployed to make a demand for political control of the whole city.

10. The Jews of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine did not for the most part leave after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 136 CE. They continued to live there and to farm in Palestine under Roman rule and then Byzantine. They gradually converted to Christianity. After 638 CE all but 10 percent gradually converted to Islam. The present-day Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Jews and have every right to live where their ancestors have lived for centuries.

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posted by Juan Cole @ 3/23/2010 02:01:00 AM

Let The Sun Shine In......