Tuesday, February 7, 2012
follow up on gmail contact ;->
Friday, February 3, 2012
google where did you hide my contact list for gmail <"_?
K. i tried it. N found it guilty of perjury.
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Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and test of our
civilization.
Mohandas Gandhi
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Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and test of our civilization.
Mohandas Gandhi
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
I JUST CANNOT BELIEVE HR1540 IS SIGNED
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
SOLAR WHERE WE LIVE
Meanwhile, our friends in Labadie, MO are still working hard to convince the EPA that a coal ash dump site out there should not be allowed. It sits right on the Missouri River. Coal use has become a dastardly act in my mind, and Ameren UE is providing us electricity from its use. Well, what can we do?
Couldn't we simply install residence by residence solar that can be plugged into the grid? How long might this concept take to get into successful replacement of fossil fuel? How many panels per residence, etc.?
In a small town in Portugal a solar plant was established within range of the community. How was this worked out, I wonder-- as a countryside version of space use, or integrated into the town itself? These articles don't go into specifics to such a degree.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42351
http://us.oneworld.net/perspectives/peopleof2008/358732-jos%C3%A9-mar%C3%ADa-prazeres-p%C3%B3s-de-mina
Couldn't some of those buildings be advantaged into usefulness for the good of the community in a broader sense? A lot of us are still angry about this slow economy, & some will be suffering until it is really back in business. Perhaps some of us could come together in our own residential areas to stun up some responsibility out of especially the larger chain stores which do want to attract us to shop at their businesses. Couldn't they invest in solar panel gardens on their roofs and unused parking expanses? It would be a simple way for us to demand that they look at their bottom lines as dependent on their shoppers, remembering their good fortune, indicating that they can accept cultural responsibility for the greater good of all. Local ordinances might help. Utility companies could be regulated into cooperating with the right push from responsible legislators.
This is a proposal that I am just thinking up by myself, but if you would like to consider working towards a similar goal for a more sustainable urban environment I hope my good karma will carry me toward you in the coming months, while I am also tending to the home fires of my health and, hopefully, some new residential address that works better for me.
More to come.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Fwd: Fw: Sign Urgent Online Petition: Hands Off Leonard Peltier! Release Him Now!
The first time I heard about the questions raised about Leonard Peltier was more than 2 decades ago-- I know because of how old my daughter was then. I say it is high time for him to be given his freedom again.
And I hope you will agree.
pmb
--- On Fri, 1/30/09, International Action Center <actioncenter@action-mail.org> wrote:From: International Action Center <actioncenter@action-mail.org>
Subject: Sign Urgent Online Petition: Hands Off Leonard Peltier! Release Him Now!
Cc: "Activist alerts and news." <action.news@organizerweb.com>
Date: Friday, January 30, 2009, 7:40 AMLeonard Peltier Petition
Let President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, the Federal Prison system, Congress and the media know you
HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE SAFETY AND WELLBEING OF LEONARD PELTIER, and you WANT HIM RELEASED!
Internationally known Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier has been victimized and brutalized since being transferred to U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Pennsylvania on January 14. Shortly after arrival he was jumped and brutally beaten by gang members, none of whom he knew. He was subsequently put in solitary confinement in the hole and on restricted meals, endangering his diabetic condition, and is being allowed only one telephone call per month. He is being prevented from meeting face-to-face with his lawyers.
Please submit the Hands Off Leonard Peltier - Release Him Now! ONLINE PETITION at
http://www.iacenter.org/native/leonardpeltierpetition to let President Obama, Attorney General Holden, the Federal Prison System, the warden at Canaan penitentiary, congressional leaders and the media know YOU WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR LEONARD'S SAFETY AND WELL-BEING and you demand his release.
The text of the online petition is as follows:
To: President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Penitentiary-Canaan Warden Ronnie R. Holt, Federal Bureau of Prisons Northeast Regional Director D. Scott Dodrill, U.S. Prisons Director Harley G. Lappin
cc: The Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Leaders, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the American Civil Liberties Union and members of the national media
SAFETY, HUMANE TREATMENT AND RELEASE FOR LEONARD PELTIER NOW!
It has come to my attention that internationally known Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier, prisoner #89637-132, has been victimized and brutalized since being transferred to U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Pennsylvania on January 14.
Shortly after arrival he was jumped and brutally beaten by gang members, none of whom he knew. He was subsequently put in solitary confinement in the hole and on restricted meals, endangering his diabetic condition, and is being allowed only one telephone call per month. He is being prevented from meeting face-to-face with his lawyers.
I hold the warden and the prison system responsible for Leonard Peltier's safety, wellbeing and humane treatment. Leonard Peltier is an internationally known Indigenous activist and has become a global symbol of US injustice and prison abuse. Imprisoned in the late 1970s for allegedly murdering two FBI agents, Peltier has never been given a fair trial. Federal authorities have quashed or destroyed thousands of pages of evidence that might have freed Peltier decades ago.
The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee points out that "Amnesty International considers Leonard Peltier to be a political prisoner whose avenues of redress have long been exhausted....Amnesty International recognizes that a retrial is no longer a feasible option and believes that Leonard Peltier should be immediately and unconditionally released."
The LPDOC adds that "Documents show that although the prosecution and government pointed the finger at Peltier for shooting FBI agents at close range during the trial in 1976, for three years the prosecution withheld critical ballistic test results proving that the fatal bullets could not have come from the gun tied to Leonard Peltier. This trial also denied evidence of self defense."
The LPDOC further notes that "The U.S. Prosecutor, during subsequent oral arguments, stated: 'We can't prove who shot those agents' and the Eighth Circuit found that "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been available to him in order to better exploit and reinforce the inconsistencies casting strong doubts upon the government's case."
Judge Heaney who authored the denial, now supports Mr. Peltier's release, stating that the FBI used improper tactics to gain Mr. Peltier's conviction.
Now 64 years old, Peltier is suffering from diabetes and a series of other serious ailments brought on by his decades in prison. He has great- grandchildren he has never seen.
The gross miscarriage of justice in the case of Leonard Peltier has gone on long enough. He should be released immediately. Since he is a member of a sovereign Native nation, I ask that President Obama work "nation to nation" with the Turtle Mountain Chippewa to bring Peltier home to North Dakota.
Furthermore, Peltier has been a model prisoner for decades. He is long overdue for parole, but the FBI is improperly intervening to prevent his release.
At a time when the government is seeking to restore its international reputation by moving to close down the prison at Guantanamo, Leonard Peltier has been languishing unjustly in the U.S. prison system for decades longer than the Guantanamo prison has existed.
Release Leonard Peltier now!
Sincerely,
Please Let President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Penitentiary-Canaan Warden Ronnie R. Holt, Federal Bureau of Prisons Northeast Regional Director D. Scott Dodrill, U.S. Prisons Director Harley G. Lappin, the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Leaders, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the American Civil Liberties Union and members of the national media know you HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE SAFETY AND WELLBEING OF LEONARD PELTIER!
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter online. You will also have the opportunity to edit or personalize the text)
YOUR EMERGENCY ACTION IS NEEDED NOW!
Please submit the Hands Off Leonard Peltier - Release Him Now! ONLINE PETITION at http://www.iacenter.org/native/leonardpeltierpetition NOW!
For more information on Leonard Peltier, go to
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.infoInternational Action Center
c/o Solidarity Center
55 W 17th St #5C
New York, NY 10011
www.iacenter.org
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Saturday, December 6, 2008
Jon Eliot interview with Juan Guerra on Air America
Still, some "pundits" believe they know all about this story just because Mr. Guerra has been crying out to be heard by a deaf, dumb & blind corporate media machine. He has true grit, IMHO.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/12/nutjobs-case-against-cheney-gonzales.html
What, did you expect that exposing scandal in the Bush administration would produce no power struggle, and everyone would just smile and follow the grand jury's directions??? HA HA HA HA!
Case dismissed on (untrue) technicality, not on merits.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=12777
More background from Guerra himself. Does he sound like a "nutcase," or a true patriot who wishes to complete his job?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j38RxHffGsc
UPDATE 12-16-10, links are no longer active. The story refers to Juan Angel Guerras, District Attorney for Willacy County, TX, who indicted Dick Cheney around 2008. He charged the judge to recuse himself for conflict of interest.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Ghosts Walk the Walls of Just Us
In the late nineties a news story here in Missouri came out of a Texas videotape. The videotape had emerged in a suit against our state. In a Texas private prison some of the incarcerated men were being abused by the use of violent restraint techniques and dogs. A Missouri felon had been transferred to that prison because of overcrowding in our own correctional institutions, and he won his case.
Missourians were dismayed by this and soon afterward Missouri prisoners being held in Texas were returned to our state, the contract with the private facility ended. That particular company running prisons was thought by some to be adequately punished by its loss of our business. However the prison industry is still flourishing today. In fact it would seem that one of the chief industries of Texas may have become incarceration, with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency, as its chief customer. What a way to replace the corporate cattle ranches that moved south of the border after NAFTA.
Just now, we are learning of a murder of a prisoner in Texas which occurred in 2001, in a different private prison owned by the GEO Group whose stock is offered by Vanguard Group. This crime finally resulted in a civil judgement costing GEO $47.5 million. Another separate charge of murder in Val Verde County, Texas, has been tried more recently against a GEO guard. This is just the beginning of this story, which has been connected by the District Attorney of Willacy County, Juan Guerra, to Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales, who have now been indicted. One might wonder if this is the beginning of the truth telling that will follow the end of the Bush White House. And could some of those recently revealed illnesses of Bush's current Attorney General Michael Mukasey have any relationship to these revelations? It is enough to make one sick. Yet the story has not been widely reported, no surprise to bloggers.
The latest episode of this unfolding political thriller is a request for removal of the presiding judge who has been playing South Texas games with the local D.A. Guerra, who claims this judge caused him to lose reelection by filing a suit against him which was later dismissed. The judge also has a relationship to one of the local potential defendants, a Texas legislator. With a hearing set for today. Raymondville, the town where the prison is located, could get a little economic boost from the journalists likely to show up if the most famous of the stock holders in the Geo Group, which provides prison beds for federal and state offenders, actually show up. Wouldn't it be ironic if Cheney and Gonzales are indeed standing before a court in a town that dubs itself "Prisonville?'
The Lone Star State is one I have visited several times over the years. It's pretty much a straight shot over Highway 44. The billboards telling drivers things like "You are now in Big Country" always made me laugh. Parts of the state are vast expanses of grass-- other parts are desert. The tourist attractions tend to be along the Gulf Coast or in the larger cities.
Some western Texas towns where cattle are still being shipped north on trains to meat packing plants can have an oppressive odor of animal excrement hanging in the air. St. Louisans may also remember the odor of rotting blood around packing plants from back in the day when we had at least two in the metro area. It's enough to make anyone a vegetarian overnight But sometimes shipping and killing animals just plain stinks. Humans are humans though. I would never want to confuse species.
If you look at where Raymondville sits on a map you notice that it is a short way north of Brownsville, a place where the building of the Border Wall this side of the Rio Grande has been more vocally disputed that anywhere else. Brownsville has been described by some ecologists as an open biome, where people and species of all sorts go back and forth between the two countries, and have for an estimated thirty centuries. Many of the people living on either side are indigenous and have dual citizenships. No one in the vicinity is happy about the building of what has been called by Homeland Security "a fence." Yeah, eight foot tall steel tubes welded together are surely no obstruction to vision. Just ask Boeing, the company whose California branch has the contract to build it. If it's a fence it has Homeland Security specifications. Questions about it linger.
You may have seen this rising monstrosity covered on Now or on Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS. If not I recommend watching those episodes online. This is a federal project that involves four states, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. A Working Group at the University of Texas has cited human rights violations affecting in particular the long standing tribal indigenous peoples who were here before any European immigrants arrived. Their videotaped testimony {link opens your video-player} to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights is also an hour long education. Who, under such circumstances has the first word about this land and how it is used or abused? Most Americans have begun to understand that we owe some form of reparations to the people our previous generations have used as though they are lesser beings. Take some time to inform yourself on this issue, and invite others to do so as well. Then begin to speak out to Congress, often and loudly.
That is what my blog is about, your Write to Be Heard!! Put your thoughts into your own words and tell your Senators and Representatives that reprehensible policies based on false fears do not make us more secure. They instead only incite anger, fear and divisive politics, not to mention injustice. And the use of private prisons by any government ought to be outlawed. Instead of being cost effective they raise costs not only by the per bed rate charged but by the lobbyists who continually seek longer sentences. No public official should ever have financial holdings in a government supported prison industry.
The Rio Grande makes a nice border between ourselves and our neighbors to the south. Do we really want to be capturing people who cross it and charging them with crimes while we ignore the real crimes of our own "leadership?" What is this fear, that terrorists are coming into the U.S., if not a bogus front for profiting from human flesh? Our own legislators and former Presidents accelerated this movement of people with so-called "free trade." It is free only to the corporate entities, which are made up of stockholders, some of whom are severely ethically challenged.
Our southern boundary has a rich history of disputes. Since those earlier times of conflict I would like to believe Americans have grown up as a people. Wouldn't it be so much lovelier to work together, celebrating our distinct cultures, and extending friendship to peoples and nations who have oftentimes served as humble examples of heroism to us? Or should we continue to capture immigrants to our land as prison meat?
As I have written before in this blog, we have nothing to lose but walls. Whether prison walls or border walls, both serve some purpose some of the time. A retaining wall can protect a garden or lawn from erosion. But neither can be used to an extreme against persons without causing injury. Most people relate to each other in a friendly manner, as "just us folks." When people in the upper ranks of the social or political hierarchy forget that they themselves are only human like the rest of us they make wrong decisions, and it is up to us to correct them. In some instances that may require a correctional institution.
For their sake hope the indicted do not end up in private prisons in Texas.
More Sources and suggested sites for information:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21292.htm
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Texas_DA_reveals_evidence_against_Cheney_1127.html
http://www.afscme.org/workers/6845.cfm
http://www.texasobserver.org/border_coverage.php
Who broke the case to the news media?
http://www.valleycentral.com/
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Talking Turkey on the Economy
This year the American people have more than ever to be grateful for. While this might sound contradictory to a lot of us in the face of this economy, we have been given another chance. How often does that happen? Think about it.
Let's talk turkey. We have been the most spoiled brat consumerist country in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood for decades on end. The process accelerated under the Clinton Administration with the internet bubble and the passage of the first so-called "free trade agreements," and then blasted into outer space by the totally criminal Cheney-Bush war machine. Some of the experts are now saying the whole world economy was based on United States consumerism. No matter what the scientists told us about global climate changes threatening the lives of our own children we continued to buy stuff, bottled water, electronics, SUVs, houses, dinners out with ever increasing size of food portions. Nothing seemed to have any force of waking us up from our American Dream, the corrupted version, now available on DVD. We really must acknowledge the problem to begin recovering.
After the disastrous consequences of 9-11 and various Gulf Coast hurricanes we started yapping on and on, angrily blaming all our problems on the Muslim world, as if they could have done anything to have saved us from our hunger for more-- more oil, more bottled water, more corn syrup in our food and drink, more chain restaurants, more travel, more sex toys, more revealing clothing, more swimming pools and luxury homes, not to mention weapons, guns, bombs and the games that replicate them. Things were as they "should be," USA on top of the world, playing king of the hill, a dangerous and delusional game that could not but result in our eventual tumble down the hill alongside our friend jill, the EU.
Finally the inevitable happened and for the first time since our founding we have had to take a thoroughly good look at ourselves in the mirror of destiny. We haven't even begun to see our own image through that frosted up glass. And we may well remain in this fog until reality sets in. That is how delusional thinking works. "No, this can't be true, we are the wealthiest country on the planet, and nothing will ever change that." China chuckles, Russia outright laughs. And Higher Power, if it Be, raps us hard on our knuckles just for starters.
A lot of us, including me, have likened what we are now experiencing as analogous to the Great Depression. But it isn't. Yes, that fall was precipitated by a Gilded Age, a generous dose of materialistic obsession, as well as political corruption. But the real story today has more to do with the bottom line of natural resources. We have gobbled resources up like rats in a grain elevator who have a genetic metabolic disorder. It hasn't mattered to us how much we have or how little some others are living on-- we have still needed desperately to continue to eat, eat, eat, gobble, gobble.
Now, about those turkeys, and I don't mean the ones that are now leaving office. The turkey was the bird that Benjamin Franklin would have chosen for our national symbol instead of the bald eagle. He was, of course, talking about wild turkeys, the kind that I used to have in my rural front and back yards when I once lived in a little cottage up a gravel lane. They were close to extinction by mid twentieth century, with an estimated count of 300,000 birds nation wide.
The Eastern wild turkey is indigenous to Missouri and also a feed into our current state economy. Unlike eagles that soar in the sky these gloriously feathered creatures keep to the limbs of trees for safety, mostly living close to the earth where they consume insects, select grains and nuts. Every spring and fall these birds, related to quail, pheasant and grouse, reinstate themselves as a success story in the history of conservation in our state, bringing hunters out to rural areas to bag themselves a meal. Because of our first rate conservation efforts Missouri can now afford the hunting of over ten thousands of these creatures each year.
Where I was living in the late 80s, in Iron County, the turkeys were probably attracted to the pond on the roadside end of the property, a watering hole inhabited by peeper frogs and surrounded by tall grass and wildflowers. My undisciplined dog had alerted me to their presence by barking at them at night After that I noticed them more often as I traveled the countryside on home visits. They fly in small groups, gathering in flocks in some fields, and once I happened across a pile of feathers left behind by some hungry coyote.
The local people knew when hunting season began and when it ended so they could choose when they themselves would hunt. "Those city folks are going to be out here this weekend like flies on dead roadkill," they would say on the last days of the shotgun season. It was the most likely weekend for hunting injuries to show up in the ER and the worst two days for putting yourself in harm's way. Same with deer season. But it brought money in, which was important of course. Money is important to all of us, each in our own way. Some of us who are used to living more humbly are also more likely to survive the ups and downs because we have developed survival skills along our paths which we never forget.
Others ride individual private jets to Washington, D.C., to beg for a bailout loan. They expect their workers to keep them fat, even when some of us "lower" beings are starving. Here they are now, wearing their depleted money bags like millstones around their collars, having taken a workforce down with their lack of vision, not having planned ahead or faced the facts about the consumption of domestic and foreign oil that they have been selling to us for decades. We should help them out of this fix? Whatever for? So they can build factories in other countries for lower wage workers?
Instead we need to direct our attention to the workers, the people who create the wealth by their own sweat. We need to extend unemployment compensation, place some safe guards on IRAs and retirement funds, create a system of health care that treats everyone equally and covers all of us. We need infrastructure repair jobs created in every large city. We need mortgage assistance for the people who are in danger of losing their homes. And we will have to shore up the conservation efforts everywhere, planting neighborhood gardens, eating food that is within a two hour drive of where we live, and cutting back on the fertilizers that are creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico by farm runoff. We are going to have to start using some of the knowledge we have gained about renewable energy and energy conservation. If we want to remain a viable species in the web of life we will have to steward the planet in a more conservative and responsible way. This will be an exhilarating, wondrous experience as each community begins thinking and acting locally instead of just monetarily.
Globalization is necessary in the realm of human rights but not in the corporate world. The World Bank has not regulated global trade, it has facilitated escalation of exploitation by companies we know as "American," but what have they really become? Truly American corporations will need to be regulated with an eye to benefiting GDP, not CEOs. Capitalism is not in and of itself evil, but the motives behind it often become so.
Do we need any of these fat cats, who have been selling financial products that are essentially empty folders of bad debt? NO! Send them straight to prison. Empty some prison beds for them by creating recovery services for drug users and dealers that include training to work in self motivating neighborhood gardens, cooperatives, local theaters, shops, restaurants, and renewable or passive energy manufacturing. Make small business loans available in downtrodden urban neighborhoods instead of accelerating big business on the interstate edge of suburbia. We need to call a lobbyist what s/he is, a prostitute for corporate bigwigs, and make the job title "lobbyist" represent a felony crime. The johns in Congress need reforming as well as antibiotic shots into their every "but, but, but. . . ."
We are going to have to return to our roots as a community based democracy which is based on an assumption of sharing and responsibility for each other, a naturally occurring hierarchy of cooperation that is inherent in all primates. In the spirit of Thanksgiving perhaps we can remember that the living local model for American democracy was taught to us by the indigenous population of people whom the pilgrims met, and who were later to be exploited by the immigrant European concept of take, take, and take some more.
The reality is that we will have to accomplish this goal of community if we want to survive on a planet that our dear nation has been robbing blind. The word "corporation" in no way actually implies rights recognized by the Constitution. In fact the word has been expanded in meaning from a collection of like minded investors in business together so that it has taken on a connotation of corruption, imperialism, exploitation and downright evil. Money can only be a false idol to a social parasite.
Sometimes I feel kind of sorry for the Ayn Rand fans and other upper one per cent of the top ten percent of our population that control most of the world's wealth. They are so addicted to a way of life that feeds them more, more, more, that they have lost their sanity. If you dropped them off at a house trailer out on old Highway V they wouldn't have the foggiest notion what a turkey looks like or how to hunt for one.
Chances are the one they might spot would be in their own mirror, which is now beginning to defrost. And this is a good sign for the resurgence of true democracy, which has been handed back to the people after a recent significant election.
Just don't let yourselves down, folks. You are going to have some real work ahead of you. Vigilance is ever so. Change is welcome but never easy.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Twelve Points in favor of Impeachment
2. Holding the current administration accountable is required to safeguard the United States Constitution.
3. The press has publicly recognized the fears of some members of Congress related to their inside knowledge of administrative policies that skirted legality. Not only was a sovereign nation illegally invaded and war illegally waged, but also illegal torture was used against persons who had not been given Rights which are sacrosanct to Americans as well as to civil society in the World. Lies were used to produce more lies and violence was initiated without warrant or due process
4. Congress now must act, since the truth has emerged, in order to effect a remedy. This will require courage. Courage is a quality admired by the populace.
5. Failure to pursue all legal means necessary to reign in the powers of the Presidency will result in damage beyond knowing to our nation. The failing economy is only the beginning of the decline that could ensue.
6. The outcome of pursuing every legal remedy, including impeachment proceedings against both persons known as the President and the Vice President, preferably simultaneously, will be to relieve our nation of its now damaged reputation in the eyes of the world and to restore confidence of its citizens in the government.
7. Assuming a political stance of looking forward rather than back as a way of protecting individual Congress members is not a choice. It smacks of cowardice. It is an inside-the-Beltway idea that has no relevance to the people who cast votes in a nation no longer recognizing the sovereignty of The People.
8. Our nation has ventured into the beginning of a reign of fascism, a too close alliance between government and corporate powers. The so-called "Bail-out" is symptomatic of this.
9. The Republican and Democratic Parties have become way too intertwined and mutually corrupt. Their members are deluded by material gain and illusory power rather than serving as our true representatives. Other Parties must be allowed equal access to office.
10. Currently reigning political corruption is most damaging to us in foreign policy. We often label other nations as intolerant and in violation of civil rights. In fact we are a nation of great resources and wealth with an obligation to share with those who are not so blessed. Yet we fail to provide some of our own citizens with "the pursuit of happiness" as could be provided by health care.
11. Money forfeited to the now defunct regime of evil, to be replaced by President-elect Barrack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, has been wasted on violence, personal accrual of assets, false and nefarious propaganda and directives such as the imperial rule of the Department of Justice, blasphemous violations of the Constitution by political operatives for political gain, abuse of the role of Commander in Chief, and establishment of illegal empire in foreign states. These are indeed high crimes and misdemeanors.
12. As a citizen of the United States of America, I demand that the Congress of these United States proceed with impeachment against George W. Bush and Richard (Dick) Cheney.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Lacy Clay is being interviewed. MO has still not been declared either way. It is an emotional moment, electric. Crowd chanting "Yes we did," after campaign slogan "Yes we can" has been accomplished, at least presumably. Tears flow.
And our new Governor is Jay Nixon, no surprise at all. But he has had an impressive lead. He is giving his acceptance speech, and is overjoyed. Of course, he may not have the other State wide offices in his corner.
My daughter calls to share her excitement.
Huh, the real live John Combest, MO bloggers' best friend, is on camera now. I didn't realize he is that young.
10:19 John McCain is conceding already!! OMG! as an election integrity advocate I would advise him to wait until morning, but I guess it looks that solid. My daughter calls to share her excitement.
"Whatever our differences we are all Americans."
The crowd is a bit contentious over his statement of personal blame for the loss. He is very gracious, the crowd is as polarized as ever. Let's hope that they will see the coming change, which has been the theme of the contest, as a transformation that fits their needs as time progresses.
We still don't know the outcome of the Presidential race in MO. I will be curious to see the final results of the polling compared to the counted votes.
So much for now. I have an appointment tomorrow & have to get some sleep. My daughter is elated, and so am I, although still wondering about some of the state offices.
Well, I do need to mention the 7 hour waits in Velda Village today, and Goeke's comment on TV that the Missourians for Honest Elections were to blame, because they advised people to ask for paper ballots, LOL. Everybody with a brain knows by now that paper is quicker as well as safer. You would think that it would be a no brainer to provide all the polling places in North St. Louis which have a majority of black voters with an adequate number of paper ballots.
Nevermind. The truth will emerge. And the BoEC will be newly appointed by a new governor.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
A New Era in American History
Thoughts have been running around in my head since that memorable day, September 19, when the stock market first crashed and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson danced out in front of Congress demanding we turn over all our money. This past week I heard more than once that we are now beginning a new era. George Soros appeared on Bill Moyers' Journal Friday evening, October 10, and he may have been the original source of the new phrase, since he said it there, and has written a new book. That idea rang true as perhaps the culmination of a whole new book genre written by multiple authors about the scandalous Bush administration and the loss of power in Congress.
The elephant in the room is not just a republican, it is “The War,” that illegal incursion and continued invasive occupation of Iraq that was illegal in the first place, illegal now, and ill conceived by global thieves. Representative Nancy Pelosi, current House Speaker, has been videotaped saying, “At the time it seemed like a good idea,” in reference to the secret change in administration policy which included spying on American citizens, only one in numerous violations of our cherished Constitution. This spending of 720 million dollars a day in Iraq, which has chiefly benefited questionable military businesses with connections to government, is the dark underbelly of our fall. We the People themselves have become a cheap commodity. Have we ourselves no inherent value compared to the oil our country drinks for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
The Bush House and its advisers will be forever chiefly known as the robber barons who retreated into history under the guise of saving us from our own greed and addiction to oil by raping every corner of the earth for more, more, more. Act I, Scene I, as I well remember, opened in the first Bush administration, with journalist Dianne Sawyer confronting the then president, H.W., by initiating a question around a toy soldier on a White House mantle. He said, “I have not yet experienced my test of fire.” He sounded, to me, defiant to her critical gaze. When the Gulf War was later declared by him I spent half a day crying, remembering Viet Nam, and placed a candle in my window at night fall. Later on I noted another candle in a window across the street.
Since that time, if not earlier, we have been setting our sights on oil all over the world. To think we could save ourselves now by drilling in the Alaska wilderness or continental shelf is the last sputtering of an addict's demise.
This is not going to be easy, folks. It's like going off tobacco cold turkey. Every one of us is going to feel it in every corner of our individual little bodies. So you think you feel bad now, having lost a lot of money? So your paralyzed cilia are waking back up in your bronchial tubes and hacking up noxious mucus? If you have been in some position of power and responsibility all eyes are on you now. The “underclass” who have been living on less for their entire lives will be in a position of advantage to you, having developed survival skills you know little about. You can't miss what you have never had, and you do not have a desire for what you have never known. How many of us are ready to be good sports about this?
Imagine missing time spent standing with a few friends at a bus stop in a big city on one's way to a job in outer suburbia, where the development has spread further and further out, away from the decline of infrastructure, the rise of crime, the old, dominant brick buildings, the newer skyscrapers, the concentrated population and dirty politics, the white people on some streets and other colors on others, the endless cry for renewal, money spent on a new stadium while schools have been taken over by the state.
You would miss the neighborhood where you live in old flats made of nineteenth century brick. The street corner liquor store, that corner where the dope is sold. The little storefront now converted into a safe house or a church with an evangelical minister. The food pantry that you visit another short bus ride away so as to help your grandma who watches your kids while you spend ten hours at least including transportation time to go to work. The outdoor market where your cousin goes at the end of the day to collect the leftovers the vendors discard as garbage. That park where one of your uncles can be found with his bottle of whiskey in a brown bag, sitting on a bench until he notices the approach of a blue uniform. The old school yard where you played as a child, of the now boarded building. This neighborhood is filled with memories, and still houses those you know as family.
You take the bus way, way out there to the fringes of the metropolitan area through the city to the county, through the inner suburbs to the fringe where neighborhoods of new condos and houses built out of imported lumber from now deforested places in countries that have few environmental laws, and you step off at a high class shopping center where people spend the money they have “worked hard” for, in professional jobs in health care, education, business administration, or whatever, after earning doctorates in their respective fields. You do know where the IT jobs have gone, right? Well, think now back to the days of fifty students in a classroom. We are not going to be able to afford this continued high class/ low class division of labor, with the bus riders unpacking shoes in the back rooms for your preciously covered exquisite little feet.
Either we are going to have to move out to your house or you back into ours. All those highways that you built out to South County or West County (to create jobs, you reasoned) are not going to continue to be needed. We will have to consolidate again, ride bicycles, share rides, and invest in mass transit. Some of us have been saying this for forty plus years now, but most of you have become great fans of Walmart, where poor folks can buy work clothes to wear into office buildings, where they clean offices after you go home.
This is all going to be hugely emotional, and not only emotional. If you are one of the lucky ones who has been spending time in the gym you are unlikely to need to continue when you are depending more on your shoe leather to get you wherever. People in China are glad to hear this because they will be shipping us the footwear until we get back to the geographic reality of needing actual skilled labor and factories again right here where we live ourselves.
These are not easy things to consider, while contemplating the ravages of continued severe and unpredictable weather patterns which have just begun to emerge. The surface of the earth itself is warming up, and it may contribute to geological disturbances and water shifts with some contraction and expansion of solids being altered from recent into new forms. We never know until it happens.
What will tomorrow be like? It is the ever present question which keeps us focused on the mystery and pulls us into the future. These will be exciting times too, not just times of stress and conflict. These challenges may actually pull us together if we choose our leadership wisely and follow our hearts toward the possibilities, the potential for creativity and new communities of diversity as a replacement for our weaknesses and greed. Once again our culture will look to the Sun as a source of inspiration and power, as cultures of old universally did.
Yes, I agree, this is the beginning of a new era. Perhaps instead of Armageddon it will emerge as another marker that has been predicted for years by a different subculture than the extreme right. Reagonomics and Bill O'Reilly will be history.
We have now entered The Age of Aquarius in a tangible way. Celebrate!
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Dogpaddling in Muddy Elections
Our overworked Elections Director argues that the DREs save the municipalities money spent on paper in the smaller elections. (They also can be programmed with more than one ballot style for overlapping voting districts.) In fact they have a host of ongoing expenses the county pays for, and just ask any candidate who has requested a recount what they think of them. There is no way to recount electronic votes with assurance of accuracy. Run the electronic records back through again, and they will come out the same. Recounting the paper trail is of little use since people rarely think to check it, or do not notice errors, if they can read the faint and small print. Sometimes the machine eats the paper. Only hand counted hand marked paper ballots have been shown to be truly accurate.
How can we, as concerned citizens, assure the integrity of our elections? We want to boil it down to an assurance that each citizen of this state and this nation has the right to vote. That right includes having the vote accurately counted. Numerous ways of interfering with that right have been dredged up by jealous minds since humans first drew straws. American history is colorful with stories of election fraud methods and episodes.
The place where we live no longer looks to me like America, though. Does it to you? What has happened to us? Have we fallen to the bottom of the ocean like Atlantis? Are we entering the crux of a lost civilization, or do we still have time to turn around, to heal our water-inundated lungs of this corrupt government drowning in corporatocracy? We simply did not know how to swim in a global electronic age. Computers have become a new literacy test, whether in elections, the stock market, jobs or school. And we have lessons to learn about any process that is electronic.
Let's float with hope for a moment or two. In life energy terms a human who has fallen into cold, clear water has about twenty minutes before rescue efforts will no longer be able to revive the most susceptible neurological pathways. Dirty water, like we have fallen into, complicates the outcome. Magnify this one life into an entire society-- or its middle and lower classes-- and maybe we do still have time to forestall the worst effects. Some of the outcome may depend on faith and courage. A whole lot of it depends on a long course of difficult rehabilitation for the bad actors. Yes, we will have to work to fix our elections systems. And then we will have to start actually voting.
This can be viewed as an exciting time, though perilous. Currently a suit in Ohio seeks to bring to light the egregious web-based shenanigans that occurred in reporting the outcome of the 2004 elections. In 2006 in Sarasota County, Florida, 18,000 votes mysteriously disappeared. Other stories have been reported in many states. Since then two corporations who sell these machines have admitted problems with the equipment's functioning. How can we know how many elections nationwide may have been affected?
We all owe a debt of gratitude to the citizen journalists and activists who have hammered away at the truth since 2000, when outcomes that were outside of the expectation of exit polls became obvious. Our government, instead of making this evidence very public knowledge, has worked against us by stone walling, with news media taking years to recognize the problem. Now most of us know it exists. We owe it to ourselves to increase our vigilance.
Since the passage of HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) the magnifying glass of reform has been showing questionable elections in many ways. Voter roll purging, especially in urban areas, is usually done under the fiction of preventing individual voter fraud. Consider St. Louis City in 2000 when 50,000 voters were removed from the rolls as inactive and at least hundreds of them thereby lost their right to vote. Let's be clear. "Voter fraud," in which one person tries to vote twice or misrepresent oneself as a qualified voter, is so rare that it does not threaten the outcome of our elections. Election fraud, on the other hand has had a long and vigorous life everywhere people vote, and may even be part of the human condition, the querulous competitive part that election laws are written to control.
In some states like Missouri we have open primaries not requiring voters to register with a party. Members of one party can encourage crossing the party line to vote in the opposite primary to defeat a candidate, often based on bigotry. Technically this is not illegal-- it's just dirty.
A particular problem in urban areas is the failure of any given state to make provisions for adequate numbers of qualified, trained personnel to work at the polls. This also constitutes an obstruction to the polling booth.
Posting confusing signs, wrong election dates and places or voting qualifications, threatening arrests or sending uniformed guards to polling places are all standard ploys in the election fraud toolkit. Stuffing ballot boxes and lying about a candidate's history or background fit into this category too. Voter caging, which involves sending out letters to voters and then challenging those whose letters are returned, has been reportedly used recently to challenge even the votes of some of our military service members. So these are some of the ways, from the ground up, that disenfranchisement is still accomplished nowadays.
Holding public office is such a plum position, partly because huge sums of money are paid by corporations to keep their very best friends in office.
More sinister yet is the apparent direct link between an "administration," corporate money, and the obfuscation of America's best interests. Sticking only to issues related to elections, we now know for sure that the U.S. Department of Justice has been diluting its responsibility to protect voting rights. Further, criminal prosecutions have been sought by politicians under nearly imaginary charges against candidates, officials, or organizations of the "wrong" persuasion; Vendettas were played out in the 2006 press against citizen activists in Kansas City who chose to work toward improving voter participation.The second term firing of eight U.S. Attorneys was, at its heart, intended to produce disenfranchisement, with one such incident here in Missouri implicating a Senator.
Since HAVA, newer methods of election fraud have surfaced. Particularly in Ohio fewer DRE voting machines than needed were delivered to some largely Democratic urban precincts, resulting in long lines and some voters unable to vote in the time available. Because each voter takes several minutes to fill out a touchscreen ballot, especially on long ballots typical of urban areas, lines formed covering blocks. DRE machines can break down, and were all that were offered to some voters, including in some precincts in St. Louis County since 2006 when poll workers were trained to direct voters to use them instead of the optical scanners.
Optical scan ballots are quicker and can be hand counted later if necessary. More voters can vote at once by using them.
At a polling place in November of 2006 in University City, Missouri, about eighty people were waiting outside the front door, plus another twenty inside. Individuals said it took them as long as an hour to vote. Can you imagine waiting like this if you are someone who gets around in a wheelchair? If you have small children? If you need to get to work?
One person, already inside the door, was told to use a provisional ballot, but that it was too late to get in a separate inside line. The rule is being in line by 7 p.m.
The use of DREs in and of itself constitutes disenfranchisement in two more ways. First, there is a digital divide. In New Mexico 2004 comparison studies of use of these machines in communities of people of color showed a huge number of undervotes, compared to in white communities.
Even more sinister, though, regardless of whether the machine has a paper trail or not, these machines employ an electronic ballot, which is neither visible nor verifiable by the voter. Who-- or what-- is doing the counting is the question when18,000 votes in Sarasota County, Florida “disappeared” in 2006.
The so-called "paper trail" of the DRE is not a ballot. It is not what is counted by the tabulator. What is counted is the ephemeral bit of information that one enters on the touchscreen, which then disappears into the black box. There it may be flipped to the other candidate, made to disappear, added, subtracted, or multiplied. None of this can be seen by the human eye. All traces of malicious or mistaken programming can be eliminated before forensic examination of that machine. And the corporate holders of the trademarks for the machines claim the right to refuse government oversight of the computer code.
In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, an audit of the spring 2006 primary by Election Science Institute showed that the sums recorded on four sources, 1) the paper trail's computer generated total, 2) the hand counted individual votes on the paper trail, 3) the memory card, and 4) the computer's ballot archive (hard drive file), did not match each other! Four separate but unequal totals were found! These internal inconsistencies were found in all the DREs. No total could be trusted as the correct one.
Thus, it is readily apparent that the effects of HAVA have cost the states more than they imagined possible. Some of the principle players in passing it are now convicted felons (under other corruption charges). The Election Assistance Commission created by HAVA is appointed by the President and has functioned in a partisan way. Benefits to disabled voters of using “more accessible” DREs have not been realized. And it has been largely left up to the states to fix this mess. The vendors of the new machines pocketed the federal funds.
Optical scanners also have problems. The ones we now have in use are programmed with secret code too, which means corporations refuse public review of the computer code. They are also vulnerable to hacking or invasion by viruses, some even by remote wireless connections. And any election administered by private industry is open to corruption.
When a friend and I went to observe the post-election vote counting in St. Louis County in 2006 we were allowed to see a limited view, without audio, while two of the vendor's representatives were inside the room helping with the process. Who might the vendors want elected? Who is doing the oversight?
At least optical scanners do have the paper ballot, though, which can be hand recounted. And the voter, by filling the ballot out by hand, verifies the vote as part of the process, a safeguard that has been proven elusive with the DREs.
HAVA left us all dog-paddling or even on the verge of drowning, whether in the Missouri River, the Gulf of Mexico, or any other body of water touching the United States. We will not arrive back to dry land unless each of us who votes notices what is going on and reports any suspicions to an oversight group, e.g. Election Protection, by calling 1-866- OUR VOTE. If the majority of us participates as citizen witnesses we might just make it onto some safe shore. Keep on hollering "Paper Ballots! They can be recounted!”
revis. Oct. '08
Sunday, October 5, 2008
"Trouble the Water"
It is something that will stay with me for a long time. One of my friends who saw it with me was relating the story to one of the families the Quakers sponsored here in St. Louis, as she recognized parts of the Ninth Ward from photographs she had seen. She also updated me on how they are doing now.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/movietimes.nsf/Movies/851676EE9E004850862574CE005CD861?opendocument
And the sad truth is that we will have more of this occurring as climate change continues and people continue to cling to their homes in dangerous places. What choices will people have left now that the economic landscape is so ravaged?