Common Sense Democracy

Via MSNBC.com

Several news agencies have broke with the story that former deputy director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, was “Deep Throat”, the secret source to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Nixon Watergate scandal. Bob Woodward has previously said that the identity of the source would not be revealed until after the person’s death, but Vanity Fair magazine ran with an article revealing the source, which was later confirmed by the Washington Post and Woodward.

Read more at MSNBC.com.
Technorati Tags: Watergate, Nixon, deep throat, President Nixon, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Washington Post, FBI

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Via towleroad: The Hypocrite Speaks

Continuing coverage of the sex scandal with Spokane WA, Mayor James West. He appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer. He continues to claim that he is the victim here.

Let’s separate the gay rights issues from the sexual abuse and misuse of power issues. They are completely different things and for people to attempt to link this as some slanderous attack of a reasonable “closeted” gay man is ridiculous. He is accused of molesting underage boys and offering prominent jobs to gay men he met online on gay.com. These are not gay problems, they are a psychological and criminal problem.

You can view the full video clip at Crooks And Liars.

Technorati Tags: James West, Spokane, Gay.com, anti-gay discrimination

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Via Yahoo! News.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is angry at NBC for airing a recent episode of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, that made a reference to his name.

DeLay’s name surfaced on Wednesday night on the show’s season finale, which centered on the fictional slayings of two judges by suspected right-wing extremists.

In the episode, police are frustrated by a lack of clues, leading one officer to quip, “Maybe we should put out an APB (all-points-bulletin) for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.”

DeLay sent a letter to NBC President accusing the network of manipulating his name and trivializing the issues of judicial security.

It’s ironic that the whole reason NBC used the reference to DeLay was because of DeLay’s inflammatory statement during the Terri Schiavo case. DeLay said, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”

The Producer and creator of “Law & Order”, Dick Wolf, responded to DeLay’s accusations by saying, “I … congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show.”

Honestly, how can DeLay get angry at this? NBC was just following his lead. If it weren’t for his violent rhetoric and outspoken position on rouge judges, then NBC would never have had anything to talk about in the first place.

You reap what you sew.

Read more at Yahoo! News.
Technorati Tags: Tom DeLay, Judiciary, NBC, Law & Order, Terri Schiavo, Majority Leader

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A follow-up to a previous post on a proposal in the US House to limit the role of women in combat support jobs. Via MSNBC.com.

Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, under pressure from the Pentagon and lawmakers of both parties, moved to abandon a proposal that would have required the Pentagon to get congressional approval before opening additional jobs in combat zones to women….

Instead, Hunter, Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, planned to propose that the Pentagon be allowed to continue deciding what positions women can serve in as long as they tell Congress about any proposed changes 60 legislative days beforehand.

“This puts Congress in a position where we have enough time to evaluate a policy change and react to that policy change,” the Californian said in an interview.

At least common sense prevailed in this situation. As I said before, with recruitment at an all time low and our armed forces spread too thin already, this is no time to be further reducing the pool of qualified people needed to get the job done, whether they be male, female, gay or lesbian.

Read the full article at MSNBC.com.
Technorati Tags: military, recruitment, women in combat, Armed Services Committee, combat

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Here’s a link to a good round-up of the different reactions across blogland regarding the compromise Monday night in the Senate on Judicial nominees. Via Crooks and Liars. If you’re looking for a good summary of what’s been happening in the last few days, this is a good place to start.
Technorati Tags: judicial nominees, filibuster, frist, blog,

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According to a 2,000 page US Army internal investigation that was leaked to the New York Times:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar’s face.

“Come on, drink!” the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. “Drink!”

At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan War, George Bush, Prison Abuse

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Last Saturday we made a post that laid out the evidence that George Bush lied about the justification for the war with Iraq. We said that the Bush administration engaged in a elaborate charade to convince the world that we had to invade Iraq because of the urgent need to get rid of his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction, which was a huge let’s-fool-the-public lie.

Today’s New York Times reports that 89 members of the House have sent a letter to the White House asking for an explanation of the facts that were reported in Britain two weeks ago, which we laid out in Saturday’s post. The White House has brushed off the letter, but I forecast that this is going to become a major scandal. Lying to Congress. Lying to the United Nations. Lying to the American people. This is going to be George Bush’s $200 Billion Watergate.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, George Bush

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Wal-Mart, the largest employer in America, is using its economic power to force taxpayers to pay for costs every other large company in the US pays for. They are using the savings to increase the profits to their shareholders. According to Wal-Mart’s latest annual report , their own website, and SEC filings, Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer ($285 Billion in sales) and the largest employer in the US (1.6 million employees around the world). They account for 3% of global retail sales and they are immensely profitable. Said their President to their shareholders, “Our fiscal year ending January 31, 2005 was another record year for Wal-Mart. We topped $10 Billion in net income for the first time in our history and added almost $29 Billion in sales.” The results were so good they increased their dividends to shareholders and gave their President a $4 million bonus. So Wal-Mart isn’t hurting.

Wal-Mart’s average wage is $9.68 an hour. That’s $19,300 a year, $1,600 a month. And that’s the average, many make less. The result is that many of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million US employees live below the poverty line and many are eligable for Medicaid, the state programs that provide healthcare to the indigent. The result is that state governments around the US are having to pay for the cost of healthcare for an employer who last year made $10 Billion in profits. And who paid the bill? The taxpayers, of course. This is going to become a big scandal as more and more states wake up to what’s happening.

In Georgia, 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the states’s Medicaid program. The same report identified a hospital in North Carolina where “31 percent of its 1,900 patients were Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid, and an additional 16 percent were Wal-Mart employees with no insurance at all.” And in California the University of California at Berkley reported that “the healthcare expenses of uninsured Wal-Mart employees were costing the already economically-strapped state $32 million a year in taxpayer funds.” A TV station in Des Moines found the same thing in Iowa. In Alabama 3,864 children of Wal-Mart employees have cost the state as much as $8.2 million. In Florida, 12,300 Wal-Mart workers are eligible for Medicaid and 29,900 Wal-Mart employees and dependents have enrolled in Medicaid. There have been similar findings in West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington State and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

How have the states reacted? The New York Times reported on 5/6/05 that Maryland recently passed a bill requiring employers to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on healthcare benefits. Connecticut is considering the same. Massachusetts and Colorado are considering tracking and publishing the names of employers whose employees’ healthcare is being paid by taxpayers.

The public policy issue is straightforward. Should a company like Wal-Mart, who is wildly successful by any measure, have the right to force many of their employees to look to Medicaid for their healthcare? I can’t think of a single reason that Wal-Mart could use to justify their policy. It’s greed, pure and simple. The largest emplyer on earth is forcing individuals to live below the poverty line just because they can.

Technorati Tags: Medicaid, Wal-Mart, healthcare costs

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Via Boston.com.

The pastor of a Baptist church has kicked out members of the church because they did not support President Bush.

Pastor Chan Chandler had told the congregation before last year’s presidential election that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said Lorene Sutton, who said she and her husband were voted out of the church this week.

Is God a Republican or a Democrat? This is a hot topic with me. I’m a fervent believer in the separation of church and state and I just don’t have one ounce of respect for any religion that uses the bible to promote hate.

As North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek stated, the pastor, “jeopardized his church’s tax-free status by openly supporting a candidate for president.”

When is the hammer going to drop on this issue? Religious organizations are only provided with a tax exempt status if they do not endorse a political candidate. There’s going to be a point when the political lobbying of the religious right converges with the separation of church and state. I’m guessing we have yet to see the full and complete reach of the church’s vengeance.

And Moses said, “Thou shall not vote Democrat”.
Technorati Tags: separation of church and state, religion, republican, democrat

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Decades after America became seemingly selfaware and confronted the civil rights issues facing our country, it seems that discrimination and segregation are getting worse. The Blog, Kicking Ass, for the Democratic National Committee has posted a new report that Republicans in the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee have supported a last-minute amendment to ban women from combat support roles. Women are already banned from direct combat jobs and now they are extending the policy to include support roles.

The Army currently has a ban on women in direct combat roles — this amendment would mean women assigned to combat support roles — like maintenance, supply, or food service specialities would not be able to travel with their units if deployed to the front lines where direct combat could occur.

At a time when recruiting is at an all time low across all services, do we really need to be scaling back the pool of people who are available to meet our military committments around the world? Why can’t our government allow equal access to jobs if those who are qualified can handle the work? Let the merits and qualifications of the people doing the work be the disqualifier, not just a blanket rule to discriminate against an entire population. If a man is unable to perform the duties of his job, then he is removed from that position. He is fired or demoted and kicked out of the service. His job performance is the measure of his success and his ability. Why can’t we afford women, and gay people for that matter, the same chance to prove themselves. If they can’t cut it, then get rid of them, just like the real corporate world of adult America. We are causing an even greater shortage of people in an already overworked and overdeployed military.

The article makes reference to the move as being yet another part of the efforts of Republicans to cater to the right-wing special interests.

Where is the evidence to support these close-minded decisions?

Read the full article at DNC: Kicking Ass – Republicans vote to ban women from combat roles in the Army.
Technorati Tags: combat, women in combat, republicans, armed services committee, civil rights, womens rights

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“The dark underside of the United States has taken center stage in several films at Cannes this year, capped on Monday with a scathing attack of past and present racism in America by Danish director Lars von Trier.”

An article at Yahoo! News discusses a new film released at the Cannes Film Festival called “Manderlay”. The film is directed by Danish director Lars von Trier.

“We are all under the influence — and it’s a very bad influence — from America,” said the 49-year-old Dane. “In my country everything has to do with America. America is kind of sitting on the world.

“America has to do with 60 percent of my brain and all things I experience in my life, and I’m not happy about that,” von Trier said. I’d say 60 percent of my life is American so I am in fact an ‘American’ too. But I can’t go there and vote or change anything there. That is why I make films about America.”

Read more at Yahoo! News.
Technorati Tags: cannes, cannes film festival, america, slavery, film, Lars von Trier, American Imperialism, manderlay

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The budget for the Iraq War is already more than $200 Billion withe no end in sight. The other costs for the war (lives, oil prices) are even more. One of the most interesting issues for historians will be how we got into this mess; and the evidence is mounting that this was a war that our President wanted to do since before he was first elected. It had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or terroritsts.

Specifically: According to Paul O’Neill, Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic “A” 10 days after the inauguration. The excuse came on September 11, 2001. Specific planning to invade Iraq began in ernest only 5 hours after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, before we even knew who was behind it. When we later discovered who was really behind it, the Bush administration had to make up a new excuse: nuclear weapons and other WMD. In July of 2002, long before the UN weapons inspectors had submitted their report or the UN debates had begun, the administration had already made the decision to go war. While the UN was debating and while Condoleezza Rice was telling the world that we wanted the Iraq situation to be resolved peacefully, the administration was making detailed war plans with the British. These were not contingency plans, these were actions plans. The documents make it clear the UN debates were viewed as irrelevant.

In short, the adminstration lied to the UN and to the American people, as did Tony Blair to the British. The fascinating question will be why. One theory is that it was personal. Sadaam tried to kill President Bush’s father. I’d be mad if someone tried to kill my dad. How ironic would it be if the Iraq War was the result of personal hurt and anger. But the irony doesn’t stop here. It is possible that Sadaam had nothing to do with the threat to the President’s father. The noted journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal, isn’t so sure. Wouldn’t that be the classic American story: a Texas family feud, built on a false premise, turns into a war that costs our country hundreds of billions and turns the world against us. And then we re-elected him.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, George Bush

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Although the actual dates vary, May 12th, 1653 marks the date when England took a small step closer to democracy. Oliver Cromwell dissolved the existing parliament in order to establish a new one, thereby creating England’s first written constitution called the Instrument of Government.

After leading the overthrow of the British monarchy, defeating King Charles I and bringing to an end the monarchy’s claim to absolute power, Cromwell ruled England as a Republic from 1653 until his death. Although many agree that Cromwell ruled the commonwealth as a military dictator, his contribution to the written government constitution and thereby the power of the people, is indisputable.

Read more on Oliver Cromwell at Wikipedia.
Read more about the Instrument of Government.
Technorati Tags: Oliver Cromwell, Commonwealth, England, Instrument of Government, Government, constitution, King Charles I, Republic

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Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. — President Dwight D. Eisenhower November 8, 1954

Read the original: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
Technorati Tags: Eisenhower, privatizing social security

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California taxpayers were left holding the bag for the corporate greed at Enron. The same is about to happen on a much larger scale with airline pension plans. In 2002, the established airlines were hit by a sudden drop in revenues (post 9/11) and, because they were highly unionized, they couldn’t reduce their costs fast enough. The federal government set up the Air Transporation Stabilization Board to give the airlines loan guarantees so that they would have more time to sort out their problems and avoid bankruptcy. But the major airlines sent their lobbyists to Washington to campaign the Board to reject United’s request for $1.8 Billion in guarantees. United was the weakest of the majors and the rest thought this an excellent opportunity to reduce competition. The Board agreed that United was too risky and turned them down. United immediately went into bankruptcy.

Yesterday, the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Chicago allowed United to terminate its pension plans. United’s payments into the plans over the next five years would have been $3 Billion. United couldn’t afford that so the court cancelled the obligation. That’s not all. United’s unpaid pension plan obligations are a total of $9 Billion. So what happens now? Another branch of the federal government, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, will now pick up those pension obligations. In other words, the intense lobbying by the other airlines to eliminate a competitor, that saved a potential $1.8 Billion loss on a loan guarantee to United in 2002, has now cost the goverment $9 Billion.

And that’s only the beginning. Do you know who invented this trick of handing off pension obligations to the federal government? USAirways. They did the same thing last year to the tune of $3 Billion and they did get a fedreal loan guarantee back in 2002. And now who’s next? Delta. Their unfunded pension liability is $5 Billion and they’re looking for ways to walk away from that. United’s win is looking like a great strategy about now, for all the majors. The total cost to the US Taxpayer could be $40 Billion.

You wonder how all this might have been avoided if, back in 2002, the discussion weren’t so focussed on short-term corporate greed. And how come the members of the Stabilization Board were so easily convinced? For democracy to work, we have to believe that our government institutions are working for our best interests. That’s not what happened in this case. Short term corporate greed won; the taxpayers lost.

Technorati Tags: United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, corporate greed, pension liabilities, Air Transportation Stabilization Board, Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation

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The news surrounding the sex probe into the activities of the right-wing Mayor of Spokane, WA is spreading quick. (See previous post). A few updates have surfaced:

CNN reports that the computers of the Mayor have been seized.

The Seattle Times has published an editorial; West must resign as Spokane mayor.
Technorati Tags: gay rights, spokane, gay.com, city corruption, Jim West, Spokane Mayor

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A recent series of breaking news reports out of Spokane, Washington, say that City Mayor, Jim West, is being investigated for a series of claims involving gay sexual encounters with young boys. The Spokesman-Review news has published several reports from a 3-year investigation detailing allegations that the Mayor has used positions of public trust over the years to develop relationships with young men. He has served as a Army paratrooper, sheriff’s deputy, Boy Scout Leader, member of the state legislature and Mayor. Allegations range from using city computers to masturbate on gay.com in his City Hall office, having consensual sex with an 18 year old he met online, appointing young gay men to prominent positions within the government, as well as molesting a young boy when he was a sheriff deputy.

An 18-year-old Spokane high school senior meets someone who says he’s 53 in a gay chat room online.

After talking for several weeks using the online alias “Cobra82nd,” the older man suggests the two meet for a dinner date, and the teenager accepts.

The older man arrives in his late-model blue Lexus convertible on a warm June evening, and the two talk face to face for the first time over dinner at a trendy restaurant in north Spokane.

Afterward, the young man picks up the tab. He smiles as he’s given the keys to the convertible in the restaurant parking lot.

Minutes later, while driving curvy roads north of the city, he asks the older man, whom he doesn’t recognize, what he does for a living.

“He basically asked, ‘Can I trust you?’.” the young man said in a recent interview.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah,’.” he continued. “I think this guy’s crazy. What now? Then he says like, ‘I’m the mayor of Spokane.’

“I was kind of silent for a minute,” the young man said, recalling his disbelief, “but then it clicked: his face, TV commercials, stuff like that.”

Until that moment last summer, the young man, who asked that his name not be used, said he had no idea he was on a date with Spokane Mayor Jim West.

The evening ended with consensual sex, according to the young man, who has not told his family about his personal life. “I’ve never wanted to see him again after that.”

The Editor of the Spokesman-Review added a note to the readers saying,

This is not a story about sexual orientation. This is a story about alleged sexual abuse of children and misuse of power and authority. Using the trappings of office to lure and groom young sex partners, barely of legal age, is the public’s business whether those potential partners are men or women. West is the city’s second strong mayor, a powerful political force, the face of our city whose secret life could open him to blackmail or extortion attempts and compromise his ability to do his job.

This isn’t about about whether the Mayor is gay or not. It’s about his abuse of power. It’s about the hypocrisy of government legislating morality. This is another example of how prominent members of the conservative right fake their religous and political beliefs for personal gain while leading a secret life on the side, often pursuing aggressive legislative agendas to discriminate against the gay and lesbian community. Politicians who say one thing and do the other, pushing laws to make private consensual sex acts between members of the same sex, illegal, even in the privacy of their own home, while at the same time secretly luring young boys into their homes to perform these same illegal acts.

I think it’s important that people be made aware of stories like this. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The problem is that the corrupt seek power.

Read the investigative reports at Jim West: Spokesman-Review Investigative Reports.
Technorati Tags: gay rights, spokane, gay.com, city corruption, Jim West, Spokane Mayor

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Political Animal at The Washington Monthly has posted an interesting article on the economy when the President is either republican or democrat.

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There’s just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.

The article ponders why Republican Presidents ever get elected if the economy is always better with a Democratic President at the helm. Their conclusion is that Republicans produce great economic growth for all income classes during election years, and that’s what voters remember most.

Bottom line: if you’re well off, vote for Republicans. But if you make less than $150,000 a year, Republicans are your friends only one year in four. Caveat emptor.

Read the full article at The Washington Monthly
Technorati Tags: economy, democrat, republican, election, economic growth

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“Stable, prosperous democracies are good neighbors, trading in freedom and posing no threat to anyone,” said our President in Riga, Latvia today, the idea being that if tyrants are overthrown and people are allowed to vote, they would choose, as we did, free-enterprise capitalism and the values that go with it, and they’d become our friends. This is our national policy, and tyrants and one-party ‘democracies’ have been overthrown for real democracy from Agentina up to Mexico and east to Ukraine, Georgia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But what are these new democracies voting for? More often than not, anti-American governments and socialism. Huh?

In Latin America, Hugo Chavez (President of Venezuela) is rabidly anti-American. He just came back from a friendship visit to Cuba. Luiz Lula de Silva is Brazil’s new socialist president as is Tabare Vasquez of Uruguay. The leading candidate in next year’s election for President of Mexico is Lopez Obrador, a socialist. The new Secretary General of the Ogranization of American States (OAS) is a socialist from Chile. In Europe, pro-American governements have been thrown out in Spain, and Italy’s next. And in Iraq, after spending hundreds of billions liberating their people, they elect a shiite majority whose leader, Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Husayni Sistani, is an Iranian whose goal is to create in Iraq a state based on Islamic values, like Iran.

Joe McDonald, whose blog this is, has asked me to do some guest blogging. My name is Ned and this is my first post. What you think? If American-style capitalism and values are so teriffic, why are the newly freed, all too often, selecting something quite different? In some cases, they are choosing leaders and policies outright hostle to American interests. Why?

Technorati Tags: George Bush, Iraq War, socialism, American capitalism, democratic elections

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In a not-so-surprising reversal, given the recent heat they’ve received, Microsoft has announced that it has decided to publically renew its support for both federal and Washington State legislation prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender expression.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commented in an email to Microsoft employees “…I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda. Since our beginning nearly 30 years ago, Microsoft has had a strong business interest in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest and most diverse workforce possible. I’m proud of Microsoft’s commitment to non-discrimination in our internal policies and benefits, but our policies can’t cover the range of housing, education, financial and similar services that our people and their partners and families need. Therefore, it’s appropriate for the company to support legislation that will promote and protect diversity in the workplace.”

I think this is a very smart move on Microsoft’s part; albeit late. It sends a clear message that if the religious right wants to use it’s influence, religious values and God to promote hate and discrimination that there is just as much influence on the other side to push back. Common sense will prevail. I think people are just getting sick of their church teaching hate.

I’m still not going to use Internet Explorer though. Mozilla rocks.

Update: Towleroad has posted the internal e-mail from Steve Ballmer in it’s entirety on his website. Read more at Towleroad.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, gay rights, anti-discrimination, religious right, Washington State

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