Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Bush on Taxing the Extremely Rich [in Virginia]: Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--bushvisit0809aug09,0,6920595.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia
Kerry: Knowing what I now know, I’d still vote for the war
Speaking of holding your nose…
Senator John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda.
"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," said Mr. Kerry, who has faced criticism throughout his presidential campaign for that October 2002 vote.
But Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, extended his attack on President Bush's prosecution of the war, saying he had not used the Congressional authority effectively. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/politics/campaign/10kerry.html
Khan Follow-up: How the U.S. blew an apparently important al-Qaeda sting by identifying the key source. From the BBC
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice strongly denied that US officials were responsible for the leak. "We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Ms Rice told CNN television on Sunday. She said Mr Khan's identity had been given "on background" - that is for the journalists' information, not publication. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3548678.stm
Uh, Condi, giving the name ‘on background’ IS disclosing the name.
Juan Cole:
Bush Administration outing of Khan Enabled 5 al-Qaeda Cell Members to Escape CaptureNeville Dean of PA News reports that a magistrate has given British police only until Tuesday to finish questioning 9 of 13 men arrested August 3 on suspicion of being part of an al-Qaeda cell. The men had been in email correspondence with Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who since mid-July has been functioning as a double agent for the Pakistani government. He was arrested in Lahore on July 13 and "flipped." The Bush administration revealed Khan's name to US journalists on Sunday August 1 on background, and it appeared in the US press on Monday. The Bush administration thus effectively outed Khan as a double agent (he sent emails to his London contacts as late as Monday).The British MI5 was forced to have the London cell of 13 arrested immediately on Tuesday, fearing that they would flee now that they knew Khan had been arrested two weeks earlier. The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully. It now turns out, according to Neville, that "Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids." If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest. http://www.juancole.com/
Ross Gelbspan: C’mon progressives; a Prius isn’t the solution. He writes of the need to organize to confront the quickly deteriorating environmental situation.
The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue. But by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. Moreover, this message blames the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity.
What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of a personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people--who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for shiny new Toyota Priuses--are deprived of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be.
Given the lock on Congress and the White House by the carbon lobby, there is no way the US government will pursue a rapid global energy transition without a massive uprising of popular will. Environmentalists should therefore be forging alliances with other activists who focus on international development, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice and human rights--not to mention with communities of faith--to mobilize a broad, inclusive constituency around the issue. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=gelbspan
Greed: The Greed Standard. Doug Dowd, on ZNet
The greed standard we have allowed to be set for ourselves is fully and dangerously represented among our CEO's, most obscenely in the pharmaceutical industry. Its top nine CEO's average $19 million a year in pay and between them they own $900 million in unexercised stock options. What does this have to do with greed?
A little arithmetic concerning those numbers reveals their meaning. Suppose each of the CEOs finds ways to spend $1,000 every day, 365 days a year. That would come to a bit more than $1 million every three years. At the end of that three years, assuming they hadn't invested the remaining $18 million or the incoming other two $19 millions and hadn't cashed in their options, they would still have $56 million in the bank.
As CEOs of the parmaceutical companies -- whose average profits are the highest of all the Fortune 500 industries -- they are the ones who succeed in keeping prescription drug prices high and rising in double-digits every year; they who prevent less expensive imports, they who spend who knows how much on their more than 600 lobbyists, they who are at least partially responsible for premature deaths and desperate lives for millions of people… http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/02dowd.cfm
Fun: Bush audio on “sovereignty” Short, humorous moment as Bush speaks to ‘minority journalists’. Listen for the audience reaction. http://www.majorityreportradio.com/weblog/archives/000581.php
For those who lack sound, time, or prefer print, this is Albor Ruiz’ take from the NY Daily News:
It was a tough crowd, no doubt, made up of professional journalists of color from all over the U.S. who gathered last week in the nation's capital to attend Unity 2004. With more than 7,500 registrants, Unity 2004 was, by far, the largest journalistic convention ever in the U.S.
The President and his campaign people were, or course, aware of the fact that whatever was said in the gigantic Washington Convention Center ballroom would resonate well beyond its walls. Actually, they - like Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who addressed the convention the day before - knew it would be news across the country.
That is why it was surprising, disconcerting and even a little frightening to listen to his opening remarks, punctuated by a strange syntax and mysterious logic.
"You can't read a newspaper if you can't read," the President said at one point when he spoke about the success his administration has had in teaching children how to read. When responding to a question posed by a Native American journalist on what he thought about the sovereignty of the Indian tribes in the U.S., Bush could only respond with something like "sovereignty is well ... sovereignty, and if you have sovereignty you are sovereign." Say what? http://www.nydailynews.com/08-08-2004/news/politics/v-pfriendly/story/220138p-188900c.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Much more fighting, especially intense in Najav. And, Aljazeera shut down. Rummy may have had a hand. Their response:
“Aljazeera expressed regret for the unjustified move, and said it was contrary to pledges made by the interim Iraqi government to start a new era of free speech and openness. Aljazeera said it held the Iraqi authorities responsible for the safety of Aljazeera staff in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.”
Plame Scandal Follow-up
A federal judge ordered a reporter held for civil contempt on Monday and ruled that journalists at NBC News and Time magazine must testify in the investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the media. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine for violating their First Amendment rights.
The subpoenas, issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, require that Russert and Cooper appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations with an unidentified government official who was a confidential source. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20040809/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc
Clinton on Kerry: On a national radio interview. ‘He was a terrific senator; he should talk about his record. He supported welfare reform, balanced budget amendment, putting more police on the street, etc…’
Gads. Some liberal.
Observing the U.S. Election: Very needed.
A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.
"The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections." http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+International+team+to+monitor+presidential+election+-+Aug+8%2C+2004&expire=-1&urlID=11261375&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F08%2F08%2Finternational.observers%2F&partnerID=2001
On the Democratic Platform: Stephen Zunes of ZNet:
Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims they might some day be a potential security threat.
Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration “did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission.” The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces.
The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.” As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it.”
A Platform in Defense of Unilateralism
While the foreign policy segments of this year’s Democratic Party platform had some positive elements, there are serious problems not only in what it did not say, but also in much of what it did say.
For example, the platform justifies the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq by claiming “having gone to war, we cannot afford to fail at peace. We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.” This ignores the fact that Iraq’s instability and the influx of foreign terrorists is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation authorized and supported by the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.
----
For example, the platform calls for strategies to “end the Castro regime as soon as possible and enable the Cuban people to take their rightful place in the democratic community of the Americas.” Significantly, there are no similar calls anywhere in the platform to end any of the scores of non-socialist dictatorships currently in power throughout the world or of enabling the people oppressed by these regimes—many of which receive significant U.S. military and economic support—to join the democratic community of nations. http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0408shift.html
More on Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator, whistle blower. Ritt Goldstein
… perhaps the most explosive charge she makes concerns information the bureau was said to have received four months prior to September 2001, information warning of the September 11 plan. While both President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have repeatedly denied that there was any indication that airplanes would be used as a terror weapon, Edmonds revealed that in April 2001 the bureau had information that bin Laden was "planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four to five major cities"; "the attack was going to involve airplanes"; some of those involved were already "in the United States"; and the attack would be "in a few months". Edmonds states that the information came from "a long-term FBI informant/asset" and that it was sent to the "special agent in charge of counter-terrorism" in Washington. She also charges that after September 11 "the agents and translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue". Further to that, she writes, "The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the [September 11] attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the 'use of airplanes', 'major US cities as targets', and 'Osama bin Laden issuing the order' ... "All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC. Yet your report claims that not having a central place where all intelligence could be gathered as one of the main factors in our intelligence failure. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa03.html
Jobs : Follow-Up: The quality of the new jobs. From the NY Times (Edmund Andrews) and the LA Times (Warren Vieth):
But a growing number of analysts say the evidence increasingly suggests that the current recovery has indeed been tilted toward lower-paying jobs. Industries ranked in the bottom fifth for wages and salaries have added 477,000 jobs since January, while industries in the top fifth for wages had no increase at all, according to an analysis of Labor Department payroll data by Economy.com, an economic research firm.
"Since employment peaked, we've lost many more higher-paying jobs than lower-paying jobs,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "In recovery, we've created more lower-paying jobs than higher-paying jobs." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/business/09jobs.html
"Supposedly there's a whole mess of new jobs being created, but they're not jobs we can live with," said Anderson, a 50-year-old factory worker whose career in manufacturing will come to an end today."Look at this," he said, leafing through a stack of recent job postings. "They're paying $9 an hour. Five years ago, it would have paid maybe $18…. This one is paying $12…. Here's one for $8.75…. These are the great new jobs that are opening up in Green Bay."Anderson's frustration reflects a characteristic of the current recovery. Yes, the U.S. economy is creating new jobs. But to some of the workers who have been displaced during the downturn of the last three years, the new jobs look a lot worse than their old jobs.Since December, Wisconsin has recovered all of the jobs it lost over the previous three years, turning a 76,000-job deficit into a net gain of 700.But not all jobs are created equal. Although the lion's share of Wisconsin's losses were in the high-paying manufacturing sector, most of the gains have been in service industries with widely varying pay scales, some quite low. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-wisconsin9aug09,1,1714529.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kuttner and Election Nightmares
Bob Kuttner writes of 3 possible alarms, Florida again having a fraud problem, the touch screen problem bearing ‘fruit, and Kerry winning the popular vote but losing the electoral count. His remedies:
Remedy No. 1: International Election Observers
Jimmy Carter should assemble a team of international human-rights observers to monitor our shaky democracy. At least the cruder forms of ballot theft and intimidation would be tamped down.
Remedy No. 2: Ballot Boxes
Until they get the bugs out of electronic voting, we should go back to old-fashioned paper ballots. Everyone can figure them out, and they leave a perfect paper trail for recounts. Much of the democratic world still uses them.
Remedy No. 3: Abolish the Electoral College and Be a True Democracy
Alas, fat chance.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8255
-R
Kerry: Knowing what I now know, I’d still vote for the war
Speaking of holding your nose…
Senator John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda.
"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," said Mr. Kerry, who has faced criticism throughout his presidential campaign for that October 2002 vote.
But Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, extended his attack on President Bush's prosecution of the war, saying he had not used the Congressional authority effectively. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/politics/campaign/10kerry.html
Khan Follow-up: How the U.S. blew an apparently important al-Qaeda sting by identifying the key source. From the BBC
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice strongly denied that US officials were responsible for the leak. "We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Ms Rice told CNN television on Sunday. She said Mr Khan's identity had been given "on background" - that is for the journalists' information, not publication. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3548678.stm
Uh, Condi, giving the name ‘on background’ IS disclosing the name.
Juan Cole:
Bush Administration outing of Khan Enabled 5 al-Qaeda Cell Members to Escape CaptureNeville Dean of PA News reports that a magistrate has given British police only until Tuesday to finish questioning 9 of 13 men arrested August 3 on suspicion of being part of an al-Qaeda cell. The men had been in email correspondence with Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who since mid-July has been functioning as a double agent for the Pakistani government. He was arrested in Lahore on July 13 and "flipped." The Bush administration revealed Khan's name to US journalists on Sunday August 1 on background, and it appeared in the US press on Monday. The Bush administration thus effectively outed Khan as a double agent (he sent emails to his London contacts as late as Monday).The British MI5 was forced to have the London cell of 13 arrested immediately on Tuesday, fearing that they would flee now that they knew Khan had been arrested two weeks earlier. The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully. It now turns out, according to Neville, that "Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids." If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest. http://www.juancole.com/
Ross Gelbspan: C’mon progressives; a Prius isn’t the solution. He writes of the need to organize to confront the quickly deteriorating environmental situation.
The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue. But by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. Moreover, this message blames the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity.
What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of a personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people--who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for shiny new Toyota Priuses--are deprived of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be.
Given the lock on Congress and the White House by the carbon lobby, there is no way the US government will pursue a rapid global energy transition without a massive uprising of popular will. Environmentalists should therefore be forging alliances with other activists who focus on international development, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice and human rights--not to mention with communities of faith--to mobilize a broad, inclusive constituency around the issue. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=gelbspan
Greed: The Greed Standard. Doug Dowd, on ZNet
The greed standard we have allowed to be set for ourselves is fully and dangerously represented among our CEO's, most obscenely in the pharmaceutical industry. Its top nine CEO's average $19 million a year in pay and between them they own $900 million in unexercised stock options. What does this have to do with greed?
A little arithmetic concerning those numbers reveals their meaning. Suppose each of the CEOs finds ways to spend $1,000 every day, 365 days a year. That would come to a bit more than $1 million every three years. At the end of that three years, assuming they hadn't invested the remaining $18 million or the incoming other two $19 millions and hadn't cashed in their options, they would still have $56 million in the bank.
As CEOs of the parmaceutical companies -- whose average profits are the highest of all the Fortune 500 industries -- they are the ones who succeed in keeping prescription drug prices high and rising in double-digits every year; they who prevent less expensive imports, they who spend who knows how much on their more than 600 lobbyists, they who are at least partially responsible for premature deaths and desperate lives for millions of people… http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/02dowd.cfm
Fun: Bush audio on “sovereignty” Short, humorous moment as Bush speaks to ‘minority journalists’. Listen for the audience reaction. http://www.majorityreportradio.com/weblog/archives/000581.php
For those who lack sound, time, or prefer print, this is Albor Ruiz’ take from the NY Daily News:
It was a tough crowd, no doubt, made up of professional journalists of color from all over the U.S. who gathered last week in the nation's capital to attend Unity 2004. With more than 7,500 registrants, Unity 2004 was, by far, the largest journalistic convention ever in the U.S.
The President and his campaign people were, or course, aware of the fact that whatever was said in the gigantic Washington Convention Center ballroom would resonate well beyond its walls. Actually, they - like Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who addressed the convention the day before - knew it would be news across the country.
That is why it was surprising, disconcerting and even a little frightening to listen to his opening remarks, punctuated by a strange syntax and mysterious logic.
"You can't read a newspaper if you can't read," the President said at one point when he spoke about the success his administration has had in teaching children how to read. When responding to a question posed by a Native American journalist on what he thought about the sovereignty of the Indian tribes in the U.S., Bush could only respond with something like "sovereignty is well ... sovereignty, and if you have sovereignty you are sovereign." Say what? http://www.nydailynews.com/08-08-2004/news/politics/v-pfriendly/story/220138p-188900c.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Much more fighting, especially intense in Najav. And, Aljazeera shut down. Rummy may have had a hand. Their response:
“Aljazeera expressed regret for the unjustified move, and said it was contrary to pledges made by the interim Iraqi government to start a new era of free speech and openness. Aljazeera said it held the Iraqi authorities responsible for the safety of Aljazeera staff in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.”
Plame Scandal Follow-up
A federal judge ordered a reporter held for civil contempt on Monday and ruled that journalists at NBC News and Time magazine must testify in the investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the media. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine for violating their First Amendment rights.
The subpoenas, issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, require that Russert and Cooper appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations with an unidentified government official who was a confidential source. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20040809/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc
Clinton on Kerry: On a national radio interview. ‘He was a terrific senator; he should talk about his record. He supported welfare reform, balanced budget amendment, putting more police on the street, etc…’
Gads. Some liberal.
Observing the U.S. Election: Very needed.
A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.
"The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections." http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+International+team+to+monitor+presidential+election+-+Aug+8%2C+2004&expire=-1&urlID=11261375&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F08%2F08%2Finternational.observers%2F&partnerID=2001
On the Democratic Platform: Stephen Zunes of ZNet:
Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims they might some day be a potential security threat.
Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration “did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission.” The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces.
The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.” As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it.”
A Platform in Defense of Unilateralism
While the foreign policy segments of this year’s Democratic Party platform had some positive elements, there are serious problems not only in what it did not say, but also in much of what it did say.
For example, the platform justifies the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq by claiming “having gone to war, we cannot afford to fail at peace. We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.” This ignores the fact that Iraq’s instability and the influx of foreign terrorists is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation authorized and supported by the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.
----
For example, the platform calls for strategies to “end the Castro regime as soon as possible and enable the Cuban people to take their rightful place in the democratic community of the Americas.” Significantly, there are no similar calls anywhere in the platform to end any of the scores of non-socialist dictatorships currently in power throughout the world or of enabling the people oppressed by these regimes—many of which receive significant U.S. military and economic support—to join the democratic community of nations. http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0408shift.html
More on Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator, whistle blower. Ritt Goldstein
… perhaps the most explosive charge she makes concerns information the bureau was said to have received four months prior to September 2001, information warning of the September 11 plan. While both President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have repeatedly denied that there was any indication that airplanes would be used as a terror weapon, Edmonds revealed that in April 2001 the bureau had information that bin Laden was "planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four to five major cities"; "the attack was going to involve airplanes"; some of those involved were already "in the United States"; and the attack would be "in a few months". Edmonds states that the information came from "a long-term FBI informant/asset" and that it was sent to the "special agent in charge of counter-terrorism" in Washington. She also charges that after September 11 "the agents and translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue". Further to that, she writes, "The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the [September 11] attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the 'use of airplanes', 'major US cities as targets', and 'Osama bin Laden issuing the order' ... "All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC. Yet your report claims that not having a central place where all intelligence could be gathered as one of the main factors in our intelligence failure. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa03.html
Jobs : Follow-Up: The quality of the new jobs. From the NY Times (Edmund Andrews) and the LA Times (Warren Vieth):
But a growing number of analysts say the evidence increasingly suggests that the current recovery has indeed been tilted toward lower-paying jobs. Industries ranked in the bottom fifth for wages and salaries have added 477,000 jobs since January, while industries in the top fifth for wages had no increase at all, according to an analysis of Labor Department payroll data by Economy.com, an economic research firm.
"Since employment peaked, we've lost many more higher-paying jobs than lower-paying jobs,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "In recovery, we've created more lower-paying jobs than higher-paying jobs." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/business/09jobs.html
"Supposedly there's a whole mess of new jobs being created, but they're not jobs we can live with," said Anderson, a 50-year-old factory worker whose career in manufacturing will come to an end today."Look at this," he said, leafing through a stack of recent job postings. "They're paying $9 an hour. Five years ago, it would have paid maybe $18…. This one is paying $12…. Here's one for $8.75…. These are the great new jobs that are opening up in Green Bay."Anderson's frustration reflects a characteristic of the current recovery. Yes, the U.S. economy is creating new jobs. But to some of the workers who have been displaced during the downturn of the last three years, the new jobs look a lot worse than their old jobs.Since December, Wisconsin has recovered all of the jobs it lost over the previous three years, turning a 76,000-job deficit into a net gain of 700.But not all jobs are created equal. Although the lion's share of Wisconsin's losses were in the high-paying manufacturing sector, most of the gains have been in service industries with widely varying pay scales, some quite low. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-wisconsin9aug09,1,1714529.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kuttner and Election Nightmares
Bob Kuttner writes of 3 possible alarms, Florida again having a fraud problem, the touch screen problem bearing ‘fruit, and Kerry winning the popular vote but losing the electoral count. His remedies:
Remedy No. 1: International Election Observers
Jimmy Carter should assemble a team of international human-rights observers to monitor our shaky democracy. At least the cruder forms of ballot theft and intimidation would be tamped down.
Remedy No. 2: Ballot Boxes
Until they get the bugs out of electronic voting, we should go back to old-fashioned paper ballots. Everyone can figure them out, and they leave a perfect paper trail for recounts. Much of the democratic world still uses them.
Remedy No. 3: Abolish the Electoral College and Be a True Democracy
Alas, fat chance.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8255
-R
