By William Fisher
Years from now, we’re likely to remember two things about Hurricane Katrina: The massive human suffering caused by the incredibly dysfunctional response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and President Bush’s iconic kudo to FEMA’S clueless head: “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!”
The ‘Brownie’ the president was referring to was, of course, Michael Brown, then FEMA’s hapless director. Days after Bush’s remark, Brownie was ordered back to Washington and later fell on his sword and resigned in disgrace (though he attempted to defend himself before a Senate hearing and remained on the payroll as a “consultant” for several more months).
But in Washington, there’s always a long line of mediocrities waiting in the wings to serve their country. And President Bush seems to have a particular knack for nominating them.
Here are three of the more recent:
Paul Bonicelli was just appointed to oversee the democracy and governance programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Those programs are mandated to play a central role in Bush's efforts to democratize Iraq and the broader Middle East.
Bonicelli’s background in spreading democracy and good governance? Well, his current post is dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, whose motto is: “For Christ and Liberation”. This ultra-fundamentalist institution requires all its students to sign a "statement of faith" declaring that they believe "Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh," "Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead," and "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."
Bonicelli and PHC have close ties to the Bush Administration and to private right-wing religious groups who form such an important part of Bush’s base. PHC students have been chosen to serve as interns for Karl Rove and for the White House Office of Public Liaison, and students and faculty are frequently invited to White House and inaugural events. In 2002, Bush named Bonicelli along with former Vatican advisor John Klink and Janice Crouse of the ultra-conservative Concerned Women for America, to a U.N. delegation to promote biblical values in U.S. foreign policy – and sparked an outcry of protest from women’s rights advocates.
One has to wonder how Muslims will react to the news that "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."
Then there’s Ellen Sauerbrey, nominated to head the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The mission of the Bureau is to coordinate U.S. response to migration problems arising from war and natural disasters, and to work with international groups on population and reproductive-health issues. The Bureau has a budget of more than $700 million.
Sauerbrey's qualifications? Well, she ran Bush's 2000 presidential campaign in Maryland, and twice ran for governor of that state. And she served as U.S. envoy on women's issues at the United Nations, which means advocating for Bush-administration positions on abortion, abstinence, and reproductive health. Those policies have been widely criticized for frustrating family planning and failing to provide reproductive health services to refugee women.
When asked about her qualifications, Sauerbrey told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she has a big heart: "I think most important you need to have the compassion and caring for helping to protect vulnerable people."
No doubt. But a little experience in refugee affairs wouldn’t hurt either.
Finally, there’s Julie Myers, nominated to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and the second largest Federal investigative agency after the FBI. ICE’s mission is to deal with all Customs and Immigration violations occurring within the U.S., including drug shipments over a U.S. border and the detention and deportation of all illegal aliens involved in removal proceedings. ICE runs the largest and most secretive prison system in the U.S. and accounts for close to 80% of all arrests made within the FBI’s joint terrorism task force. It prosecutes more individuals than any other Federal agency.
Her resume? She was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., for two years, and for the past four years held a variety of jobs at the White House and at the departments of Commerce, Justice and Treasury. At the White House, she was a special assistant to the president for personnel issues. No doubt also helpful was her service as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division before he became a Federal judge and later Secretary of Homeland Security. Equally helpful was her work with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. Perhaps even more helpful: She is the niece of now retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
ICE is a massive bureaucracy with tens of thousands of employees and an annual budget of close to $15 billion. It has been widely criticized as dysfunctional. So one might have expected a nominee with extensive experience in management, not to mention immigration issues.
Matthew Issman, national legislative vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, characterized the Myers appointment most succinctly: She "just doesn't pass the smell test and is another indication that this administration created the Department of Homeland Security as window dressing and does not care whether ICE is successful”, he said, adding, "What we need is a strong, law-enforcement leader, not another inexperienced, well-connected lawyer with friends in the White House."
Washington is a town where the best and the brightest co-exist with well-connected political hacks. It defies credulity that the Bush Administration continues to shoot itself in the foot by stubbornly choosing the latter, and thereby setting itself up for another ‘Brownie’.
My shrink says they must have a death wish.
R.I.P.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Our Mothers (and Thomas Paine) Warned Us about People like the Disciples of Strauss
By Jason Miller
How much more will the American people endure?
"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and abolitionist
229 Years Later Have Passed and True Freedom Still Eludes Most of Us
In support of the brave and intelligent citizens of Vermont who recently passed a resolution to secede from the union, I decided to update and modify our Declaration of Independence to fit the circumstances we are facing in 2005. Despite the numerous distinctions between then and now, in some significant ways, little has changed. Like our Founding Fathers, I enumerated grievances of the Oppressed in my version of the Declaration, and many are similar to those spelled out in the original version drafted in 1776. Even the name of the lead Oppressor remains the same.
I realize this updated Declaration has no authority, and that such a movement towards independence from our corrupt plutocracy would require significant grassroots support and organization to be successful. However, I believe it is crucial to fan the dying embers of the American spirit of independence in a time of unprecedented apathy, conformity, and complicity in the crimes of our abomination of a federal government. George Bush is not fit to lick the boots of a man like Thomas Paine, yet he is one of the most powerful men on the planet. With the might of the US government at their disposal, he and his loyal minions have committed duplicitous, larcenous, and homicidal acts virtually on a continual basis throughout their reign. In a symbolic act of defiance against King George, and an act of support for social justice and human rights, I have signed my revision of the Declaration.
Thomas Paine was one of the few Founding Fathers who championed the rights of the "common people". Paine recognized the universality of human rights, which is why he has not been enshrined in the "American pantheon" with the likes of Washington and Hamilton. Were he alive today, he would once again be vehemently agitating for change as he caught scent of the overwhelming stench emanating from the seemingly grand epicenter of inhumanity rising from the banks of the Potomac River. In deference to Paine's spirit, I wrote this revised version of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence of the Fifty Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class Inhabitants from the Imperialist Federal Government of the United States of America
The unanimous Declaration of the Fifty Colonies of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political chains which have enslaved them to another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God of each person's understanding and choosing entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions to mankind demands that they need declare the causes impelling them to separate.
We hold these truths to be self-evident and irrefutable, that all Humans are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Human Rights (as delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html). ---That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among the People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed, --That whenever any Form of Government usurps powers without the Governed's consent and becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Humans are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of obscene abuses and heinous crimes, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right and responsibility to depose such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Fifty Colonies, their Poor and Middle Classes, and most of the rest of the world; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of the United States [George II], and that of his predecessors [of the Royal Houses of Elephant and Donkey alike] dating back to the reign of King Richard of the Royal Family of Nixon, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [by kings and their trusted advisors], all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class inhabitants. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
They [King George II and his royal advisors: Lords Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, and Lady Rice] have refused their Assent to Laws and Policies, most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
They have engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the city of New Orleans through acts of criminal neglect and gross mismanagement of the aftermath of a natural disaster, the willful creation of a diaspora of the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans, the suspension of labor laws which would have ensured fair wages to those rebuilding the city, and the dispensation of generous federal contracts to crony corporations to rebuild a city favorable to the interests of the wealthy.
They manipulated facts and presented lies to the American People and to Congress to gain necessary approval of a "preventive", illegal war against the sovereign nation of Iraq on the shifting premises that this nation posed an immediate threat to our national security, that the Iraqi people needed a champion to topple a ruthless dictator, and that their purpose was to spread "freedom and liberty". It has now come to light that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, had no connections with Osama bin Laden, and was little or no threat to the United States. They knew this prior to the invasion. They subverted a government led by a former US ally whom the US supported when it knew he was committing genocide. They installed a puppet Iraqi regime fortified by 140,000 US military personnel and call it "Democracy". They are responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Their hands drip with the blood of innocents slaughtered using monies from our Treasury and the blood, sweat and tears of our children.
They recruited and trained US military personnel under the pretext that they would be engaged in defending their nation. After enticing young men and women to serve based on blatant lies, They thrust them into imperial conquests like the one in Iraq. They are responsible for the sacrifice of over 2,000 American lives which They sacrificed at their sacred alter of the almighty Dollar.
They have continued to perpetuate, protect, and expand the powers of corrupt, avaricious corporations These cornucopias of avidity for wealth and power pay sub-standard wages, offer minimal benefits to their employees, increasingly utilize inexpensive "offshore" labor, manufacture products in "sweat shops" which egregiously violate the human rights of their employees, profiteer during wars and natural disasters, rape the environment and plunder our precious natural resources, utilize "creative accounting methods" to increase their stock value, capitalize on laws enabling them to create hostile environments for unions, demand virtually endless increases in corporate welfare, and strangle competition through mergers and acquisitions accomplished with their over-inflated stocks.
They have perpetuated and expanded an executive branch of government which is in many ways indistinguishable from the leviathan corporations and wealthy elite which it serves and represents.
They have forsaken their primary responsibility, which is to preserve the universal human rights of their citizenry, and to secure its general welfare. They have rapidly eroded federal domestic programs promoting health care, education, basic infrastructure, and housing, while directing unconscionable sums of public monies to the military industrial complex comprised of current and former government officials and the wealthy elite. They seize the lion's share of taxes from their citizens and spend obscene amounts to finance a grotesquely powerful military [and their imperial adventures], while a significant number of their citizens want for proper education, housing, transportation, and even nourishment.
They have created a rogue military state which engages in terrorism of such magnitude that terrorist acts committed by the Iraqi Resistance, while equally as morally objectionable, are modest in comparison.
They have, through their willful neglect of the general welfare, allowed 46 million Americans to languish with no health insurance, 13% of their citizenry to experience poverty, 3% to experience homelessness, 24% of their Black populace to live in poverty, and 6% of their citizens to experience unemployment. These glaring blights on humanity are inexcusable in the wealthiest nation in history.
They have continued to loosen federal regulations on the "free market" economy, thus further enriching their plutocratic allies while impoverishing more and more Americans. They have worked tenaciously to perpetuate the exportation of Neoliberal economic policies to Latin America, crushing economies throughout that region, and creating chasms between their rich and poor.
They have employed chemical weapons in Iraq, violating numerous treaties, conventions, and International Laws.
They have exposed their own soldiers and the civilian inhabitants of occupied Iraq to the dangers of depleted uranium.
They have employed a variety of illegal and unethical means to manipulate and taint the results of two presidential elections to ensure their ascendancy to the seat of power.
They have enacted laws and policies hostile to science and intellectual viewpoints, thus leading our nation down a path of ignorance and superstition.
They have grossly usurped their powers by intimidating Congress into enacting the Patriot Act, decimating Habeas Corpus and due process by illegally detaining Jose Padilla [an American citizen] for three years, and violating virtually everything for which the Bill of Rights stands by illegally detaining, torturing and murdering accused terrorists at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay, and other undisclosed locations around the world.
They violated Posse Comitatus in New Orleans and have since stated their intention to crush it by deploying US military personnel on a wide scale in future domestic disasters.
They have consistently rewarded or promoted those members of their Royal Court who have committed criminal or grossly incompetent acts.
They have pillaged the public Treasury, dispersing tax monies to their cronies and collaborators in their corrupt schemes. They have created an astronomical national debt which will hang from the necks of future generations as a millstone of astounding proportions.
They have virtually relieved themselves and their wealthy compatriots of their tax obligations. In so doing, They have placed the burden of filling the public coffers on the backs of those who benefit least from their governance [the Poor and Middle Classes].
They have financed and enabled the ruthless Israeli colonial occupation of Palestinian territory, and have allowed elements closely aligned with the radical Likud to shape their foreign policy decisions, particularly in the Middle East.
We [those amongst us who do not remain entranced by the powerful propaganda of the mainstream media] have Petitioned for Redress in humble, reasonable terms in a variety of ways. Our repeated Petitions have been answered by repeated injury. A Prince of the American Royal Family of Bush, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our brethren in the federal government, their corporate allies or the wealthy elite. We have warned them from time to time of their attempts to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of our inalienable rights derived from Natural Law, the US Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have appealed to their senses of justice and magnanimity, and we have beseeched them to disavow these usurpations based on our common kindred. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Humanity, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the Fifty Colonies of America and their Poor and Middle Classes, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these Fifty Colonies and United Peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent of the United Stated Federal Government; that We are Absolved from Allegiance to the Federal Crown, and that all political connections between them and us, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent People forming a true Constitutional Republic, we have full Power to provide for the General Welfare of the Populace, to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence (by the Higher Power of each person's understanding), we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
How much more will the American people endure?
"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and abolitionist
229 Years Later Have Passed and True Freedom Still Eludes Most of Us
In support of the brave and intelligent citizens of Vermont who recently passed a resolution to secede from the union, I decided to update and modify our Declaration of Independence to fit the circumstances we are facing in 2005. Despite the numerous distinctions between then and now, in some significant ways, little has changed. Like our Founding Fathers, I enumerated grievances of the Oppressed in my version of the Declaration, and many are similar to those spelled out in the original version drafted in 1776. Even the name of the lead Oppressor remains the same.
I realize this updated Declaration has no authority, and that such a movement towards independence from our corrupt plutocracy would require significant grassroots support and organization to be successful. However, I believe it is crucial to fan the dying embers of the American spirit of independence in a time of unprecedented apathy, conformity, and complicity in the crimes of our abomination of a federal government. George Bush is not fit to lick the boots of a man like Thomas Paine, yet he is one of the most powerful men on the planet. With the might of the US government at their disposal, he and his loyal minions have committed duplicitous, larcenous, and homicidal acts virtually on a continual basis throughout their reign. In a symbolic act of defiance against King George, and an act of support for social justice and human rights, I have signed my revision of the Declaration.
Thomas Paine was one of the few Founding Fathers who championed the rights of the "common people". Paine recognized the universality of human rights, which is why he has not been enshrined in the "American pantheon" with the likes of Washington and Hamilton. Were he alive today, he would once again be vehemently agitating for change as he caught scent of the overwhelming stench emanating from the seemingly grand epicenter of inhumanity rising from the banks of the Potomac River. In deference to Paine's spirit, I wrote this revised version of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence of the Fifty Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class Inhabitants from the Imperialist Federal Government of the United States of America
The unanimous Declaration of the Fifty Colonies of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political chains which have enslaved them to another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God of each person's understanding and choosing entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions to mankind demands that they need declare the causes impelling them to separate.
We hold these truths to be self-evident and irrefutable, that all Humans are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Human Rights (as delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html). ---That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among the People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed, --That whenever any Form of Government usurps powers without the Governed's consent and becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Humans are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of obscene abuses and heinous crimes, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right and responsibility to depose such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Fifty Colonies, their Poor and Middle Classes, and most of the rest of the world; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of the United States [George II], and that of his predecessors [of the Royal Houses of Elephant and Donkey alike] dating back to the reign of King Richard of the Royal Family of Nixon, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [by kings and their trusted advisors], all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class inhabitants. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
They [King George II and his royal advisors: Lords Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, and Lady Rice] have refused their Assent to Laws and Policies, most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
They have engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the city of New Orleans through acts of criminal neglect and gross mismanagement of the aftermath of a natural disaster, the willful creation of a diaspora of the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans, the suspension of labor laws which would have ensured fair wages to those rebuilding the city, and the dispensation of generous federal contracts to crony corporations to rebuild a city favorable to the interests of the wealthy.
They manipulated facts and presented lies to the American People and to Congress to gain necessary approval of a "preventive", illegal war against the sovereign nation of Iraq on the shifting premises that this nation posed an immediate threat to our national security, that the Iraqi people needed a champion to topple a ruthless dictator, and that their purpose was to spread "freedom and liberty". It has now come to light that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, had no connections with Osama bin Laden, and was little or no threat to the United States. They knew this prior to the invasion. They subverted a government led by a former US ally whom the US supported when it knew he was committing genocide. They installed a puppet Iraqi regime fortified by 140,000 US military personnel and call it "Democracy". They are responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Their hands drip with the blood of innocents slaughtered using monies from our Treasury and the blood, sweat and tears of our children.
They recruited and trained US military personnel under the pretext that they would be engaged in defending their nation. After enticing young men and women to serve based on blatant lies, They thrust them into imperial conquests like the one in Iraq. They are responsible for the sacrifice of over 2,000 American lives which They sacrificed at their sacred alter of the almighty Dollar.
They have continued to perpetuate, protect, and expand the powers of corrupt, avaricious corporations These cornucopias of avidity for wealth and power pay sub-standard wages, offer minimal benefits to their employees, increasingly utilize inexpensive "offshore" labor, manufacture products in "sweat shops" which egregiously violate the human rights of their employees, profiteer during wars and natural disasters, rape the environment and plunder our precious natural resources, utilize "creative accounting methods" to increase their stock value, capitalize on laws enabling them to create hostile environments for unions, demand virtually endless increases in corporate welfare, and strangle competition through mergers and acquisitions accomplished with their over-inflated stocks.
They have perpetuated and expanded an executive branch of government which is in many ways indistinguishable from the leviathan corporations and wealthy elite which it serves and represents.
They have forsaken their primary responsibility, which is to preserve the universal human rights of their citizenry, and to secure its general welfare. They have rapidly eroded federal domestic programs promoting health care, education, basic infrastructure, and housing, while directing unconscionable sums of public monies to the military industrial complex comprised of current and former government officials and the wealthy elite. They seize the lion's share of taxes from their citizens and spend obscene amounts to finance a grotesquely powerful military [and their imperial adventures], while a significant number of their citizens want for proper education, housing, transportation, and even nourishment.
They have created a rogue military state which engages in terrorism of such magnitude that terrorist acts committed by the Iraqi Resistance, while equally as morally objectionable, are modest in comparison.
They have, through their willful neglect of the general welfare, allowed 46 million Americans to languish with no health insurance, 13% of their citizenry to experience poverty, 3% to experience homelessness, 24% of their Black populace to live in poverty, and 6% of their citizens to experience unemployment. These glaring blights on humanity are inexcusable in the wealthiest nation in history.
They have continued to loosen federal regulations on the "free market" economy, thus further enriching their plutocratic allies while impoverishing more and more Americans. They have worked tenaciously to perpetuate the exportation of Neoliberal economic policies to Latin America, crushing economies throughout that region, and creating chasms between their rich and poor.
They have employed chemical weapons in Iraq, violating numerous treaties, conventions, and International Laws.
They have exposed their own soldiers and the civilian inhabitants of occupied Iraq to the dangers of depleted uranium.
They have employed a variety of illegal and unethical means to manipulate and taint the results of two presidential elections to ensure their ascendancy to the seat of power.
They have enacted laws and policies hostile to science and intellectual viewpoints, thus leading our nation down a path of ignorance and superstition.
They have grossly usurped their powers by intimidating Congress into enacting the Patriot Act, decimating Habeas Corpus and due process by illegally detaining Jose Padilla [an American citizen] for three years, and violating virtually everything for which the Bill of Rights stands by illegally detaining, torturing and murdering accused terrorists at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay, and other undisclosed locations around the world.
They violated Posse Comitatus in New Orleans and have since stated their intention to crush it by deploying US military personnel on a wide scale in future domestic disasters.
They have consistently rewarded or promoted those members of their Royal Court who have committed criminal or grossly incompetent acts.
They have pillaged the public Treasury, dispersing tax monies to their cronies and collaborators in their corrupt schemes. They have created an astronomical national debt which will hang from the necks of future generations as a millstone of astounding proportions.
They have virtually relieved themselves and their wealthy compatriots of their tax obligations. In so doing, They have placed the burden of filling the public coffers on the backs of those who benefit least from their governance [the Poor and Middle Classes].
They have financed and enabled the ruthless Israeli colonial occupation of Palestinian territory, and have allowed elements closely aligned with the radical Likud to shape their foreign policy decisions, particularly in the Middle East.
We [those amongst us who do not remain entranced by the powerful propaganda of the mainstream media] have Petitioned for Redress in humble, reasonable terms in a variety of ways. Our repeated Petitions have been answered by repeated injury. A Prince of the American Royal Family of Bush, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our brethren in the federal government, their corporate allies or the wealthy elite. We have warned them from time to time of their attempts to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of our inalienable rights derived from Natural Law, the US Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have appealed to their senses of justice and magnanimity, and we have beseeched them to disavow these usurpations based on our common kindred. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Humanity, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the Fifty Colonies of America and their Poor and Middle Classes, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these Fifty Colonies and United Peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent of the United Stated Federal Government; that We are Absolved from Allegiance to the Federal Crown, and that all political connections between them and us, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent People forming a true Constitutional Republic, we have full Power to provide for the General Welfare of the Populace, to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence (by the Higher Power of each person's understanding), we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
THOSE PESKY ISSUES THAT WON’T GO AWAY
By William Fisher
As George W. Bush’s poll numbers plummet, questions about how his administration ‘sold’ the invasion of Iraq to the American people and its treatment of prisoners continue to dog the beleaguered president, stalling his second-term agenda.
More than two years after the invasion of Iraq, the President still finds himself facing questions about whether the his Administration exaggerated or lied about intelligence relating to Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
Last week, stung by the president’s declining credibility, the White House went on the offensive, declaring that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein had banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.
In a Veteran’s Day speech in Pennsylvania, President Bush said, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began…These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."
National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley also made a rare appearance in the White House pressroom to rebut administration critics. The administration's position, he said, "represented the collective view of the intelligence community" and was "shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."
He said that when Congress authorized the invasion, its members had access to the same intelligence the president had. But other observers point out that Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material.
In the Senate, Democrats mounted a spirited campaign to insist that its Intelligence Committee complete its investigation of whether the Administration manipulated intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq. The Committee completed Part I of its probe last year, and unanimously found that there had been a massive failure of intelligence about WMD in Iraq. But Part II – how the Administration used – or abused -- intelligence – was never completed. Senate Democrats secured a pledge from the chairman of the committee that the report would now go forward.
The renewed calls for further investigations were strengthened by an investigative article published by the Washington Post, asserting that shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up clandestine jails for al Qaeda suspects in at least eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The paper said some were also located in Eastern Europe, although it withheld the specific countries involved at the request of "senior U.S. officials". But Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, said independent investigation suggests that the secret CIA installations in Eastern Europe are in Poland and Romania.
The disclosure again focused media and public attention on where and how the U.S. treats prisoners captured in the ‘war on terror’.
The Senate voted 91-9 in favor of a measure championed by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republic and a former prisoner of war tortured in Vietnam, that would ban all torture and ‘cruel, degrading or inhumane’ treatment of detainees.
But McCain is locked in a struggle with Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been lobbying the Senate intensely to exempt the CIA from the ban. The White House has hinted that President Bush would veto the measure if the exception were not granted. The legislation is attached to a larger defense bill to fund military operations in Iraq. If the President vetoes it, it would be the first time he has used his veto power.
The Senate also passed an amendment to the defense bill that mandates Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to inform Congress on U.S.-run secret prison facilities in foreign countries,
At the same time, the Republican-led Senate rejected a Democratic effort to establish an independent commission to investigate the U.S. military for its interrogation practices. The 55 to 43 vote was split largely along party lines. The Democrats were trying to set up a panel along the lines of the 9/11 Commission to investigate how the U.S. has been treating detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
The Bush Administration also won another victory in the Senate. The body endorsed a plan introduced by Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republic of South Carolina and a former military lawyer, to limit suspected foreign terrorists' access to U.S. courts. The measure is an effort to reverse a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that has allowed hundreds of detainees held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions.
But a number of Constitutional scholars see the Graham measure as a serious threat to the U.S. justice system. Prof. Ed Herman of the University of Pennsylvania told IPS the suspension of habeas corpus is "a real step on the road to a totalitarian state." He also called attention to "the brazen illegality of U.S. prisoner abuse, its gross violation of the rule of law that the Cabal pretends to be bringing everywhere."
The Graham proposal would give Congress some oversight of the military process set up to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees are terrorists and should continue to be held. It would subject those tribunal decisions to limited review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Bush administration has argued that suspected enemy combatants overseas cannot challenge their confinement in U.S. courts and that all matters related to the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists should be left to President Bush.
The amendment to a defense authorization bill was endorsed three days
after the Supreme Court announced it would rule on the legality of military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. Constitutional authorities
say this could be one of the most important rulings on presidential war powers since World War II.
The White House indicated it would support the plan, but civil liberties
groups called it a step backward and complained it had not received meaningful debate.
The United States would "be free to hold people indefinitely without a hearing and beyond the reach of U.S. law and checks and balances," said a statement by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped many detainees challenge their confinement and treatment in court.
About 260 of the more than 750 prisoners currently or previously held at
Guantanamo Bay have filed habeas corpus petitions in U.S. court, alleging various kinds of abuse, wrongful detention and inadequate medical care.
A large number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been on a hunger strike for several months, and many are being nourished through feeding tubes.
Adding fuel to the prisoner treatment issue are allegations that torture and inhuman treatment persist. Last week, five members of an elite U.S. Army Ranger unit in Iraq were charged with kicking and punching detainees while awaiting movement to a detention facility. And the Pentagon has still not released the ‘second round’ of photos showing detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, despite a court order to do so under a Freedom of Information Act suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
At least 108 people have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them violently, according to government data provided to The Associated Press. Roughly a quarter of those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S. personnel. There have been 21 homicides.
The war in Iraq and other issues have also cast public doubt on the ethical standards of the Bush Administration. Two weeks ago, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted by a Federal grand jury. He is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, whose husband accused the administration of taking the U.S. to war under false pretences.
The toll paid by the Administration for war-related and other issues has been high. According to a new poll, almost six in 10 -- 57 percent - say they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same proportion says President Bush is not honest. The Associated Press / Ipsos survey found that just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest.
As George W. Bush’s poll numbers plummet, questions about how his administration ‘sold’ the invasion of Iraq to the American people and its treatment of prisoners continue to dog the beleaguered president, stalling his second-term agenda.
More than two years after the invasion of Iraq, the President still finds himself facing questions about whether the his Administration exaggerated or lied about intelligence relating to Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
Last week, stung by the president’s declining credibility, the White House went on the offensive, declaring that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein had banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.
In a Veteran’s Day speech in Pennsylvania, President Bush said, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began…These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."
National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley also made a rare appearance in the White House pressroom to rebut administration critics. The administration's position, he said, "represented the collective view of the intelligence community" and was "shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."
He said that when Congress authorized the invasion, its members had access to the same intelligence the president had. But other observers point out that Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material.
In the Senate, Democrats mounted a spirited campaign to insist that its Intelligence Committee complete its investigation of whether the Administration manipulated intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq. The Committee completed Part I of its probe last year, and unanimously found that there had been a massive failure of intelligence about WMD in Iraq. But Part II – how the Administration used – or abused -- intelligence – was never completed. Senate Democrats secured a pledge from the chairman of the committee that the report would now go forward.
The renewed calls for further investigations were strengthened by an investigative article published by the Washington Post, asserting that shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up clandestine jails for al Qaeda suspects in at least eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The paper said some were also located in Eastern Europe, although it withheld the specific countries involved at the request of "senior U.S. officials". But Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, said independent investigation suggests that the secret CIA installations in Eastern Europe are in Poland and Romania.
The disclosure again focused media and public attention on where and how the U.S. treats prisoners captured in the ‘war on terror’.
The Senate voted 91-9 in favor of a measure championed by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republic and a former prisoner of war tortured in Vietnam, that would ban all torture and ‘cruel, degrading or inhumane’ treatment of detainees.
But McCain is locked in a struggle with Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been lobbying the Senate intensely to exempt the CIA from the ban. The White House has hinted that President Bush would veto the measure if the exception were not granted. The legislation is attached to a larger defense bill to fund military operations in Iraq. If the President vetoes it, it would be the first time he has used his veto power.
The Senate also passed an amendment to the defense bill that mandates Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to inform Congress on U.S.-run secret prison facilities in foreign countries,
At the same time, the Republican-led Senate rejected a Democratic effort to establish an independent commission to investigate the U.S. military for its interrogation practices. The 55 to 43 vote was split largely along party lines. The Democrats were trying to set up a panel along the lines of the 9/11 Commission to investigate how the U.S. has been treating detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
The Bush Administration also won another victory in the Senate. The body endorsed a plan introduced by Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republic of South Carolina and a former military lawyer, to limit suspected foreign terrorists' access to U.S. courts. The measure is an effort to reverse a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that has allowed hundreds of detainees held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions.
But a number of Constitutional scholars see the Graham measure as a serious threat to the U.S. justice system. Prof. Ed Herman of the University of Pennsylvania told IPS the suspension of habeas corpus is "a real step on the road to a totalitarian state." He also called attention to "the brazen illegality of U.S. prisoner abuse, its gross violation of the rule of law that the Cabal pretends to be bringing everywhere."
The Graham proposal would give Congress some oversight of the military process set up to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees are terrorists and should continue to be held. It would subject those tribunal decisions to limited review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Bush administration has argued that suspected enemy combatants overseas cannot challenge their confinement in U.S. courts and that all matters related to the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists should be left to President Bush.
The amendment to a defense authorization bill was endorsed three days
after the Supreme Court announced it would rule on the legality of military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. Constitutional authorities
say this could be one of the most important rulings on presidential war powers since World War II.
The White House indicated it would support the plan, but civil liberties
groups called it a step backward and complained it had not received meaningful debate.
The United States would "be free to hold people indefinitely without a hearing and beyond the reach of U.S. law and checks and balances," said a statement by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped many detainees challenge their confinement and treatment in court.
About 260 of the more than 750 prisoners currently or previously held at
Guantanamo Bay have filed habeas corpus petitions in U.S. court, alleging various kinds of abuse, wrongful detention and inadequate medical care.
A large number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been on a hunger strike for several months, and many are being nourished through feeding tubes.
Adding fuel to the prisoner treatment issue are allegations that torture and inhuman treatment persist. Last week, five members of an elite U.S. Army Ranger unit in Iraq were charged with kicking and punching detainees while awaiting movement to a detention facility. And the Pentagon has still not released the ‘second round’ of photos showing detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, despite a court order to do so under a Freedom of Information Act suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
At least 108 people have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them violently, according to government data provided to The Associated Press. Roughly a quarter of those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S. personnel. There have been 21 homicides.
The war in Iraq and other issues have also cast public doubt on the ethical standards of the Bush Administration. Two weeks ago, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted by a Federal grand jury. He is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, whose husband accused the administration of taking the U.S. to war under false pretences.
The toll paid by the Administration for war-related and other issues has been high. According to a new poll, almost six in 10 -- 57 percent - say they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same proportion says President Bush is not honest. The Associated Press / Ipsos survey found that just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest.
Friday, November 11, 2005
MR. JUSTICE ALITO?
By William Fisher
Despite the enormous challenges facing the United States – education, health care, poverty, church and state, race relations, terrorism, Iraq, prisoner abuse, budget deficits, government corruption and inefficiency, to name but a few – a growing number of authorities are finding it revealing that the nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court appears to have come down to a single issue: abortion.
These authorities say the debate over this issue has become not only a thinly-veiled ‘litmus test’ for membership on the High Court, but a barometer of how sharply divided the U.S. is on social issues and the political clout the religious right has achieved over the last two decades.
Since his nomination by President George W. Bush last month, Alito has been engaged in ‘courtesy visits’ with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct hearings on his confirmation beginning in early January.
In these meetings, the word abortion has been studiously avoided by most, with the issue shrouded in such euphemisms as the right to privacy. But the question really being asked by senators on both the right and the left is: Can Judge Alito be counted on to vote to overturn the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision that established a women’s right to have an abortion?
The centrality of this issue was seen a month earlier in the withdrawal of Pres. Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, White House Counsel Harriett Miers. Ms. Miers was the subject of an aggressive revolt by religious right-wingers – Mr. Bush’s base – who raised doubts that Ms. Miers commitment to reversing Roe v. Wade was strong enough to gain their support.
The basis of the intense interest in Alito’s nomination is that, if confirmed by the Senate, he would replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a “pragmatic conservative” who has often represented the swing vote in 5-4 court decisions.
Today, when conservative Republican senators emerge from their private meetings with Judge Alito, they can barely contain their glee. Sen. Sam
Brownback, the conservative Kansas Republican and staunch opponent of abortion rights, said, "This is the type of nominee I've been asking for," adding that he was convinced that Judge Alito was "open to a review of cases." Brownback is one of the senators who led the successful anti-Miers campaign.
Senators in the ideological center have largely shown a cautiously positive attitude on the nomination. Typical is Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the centrist Connecticut Democrat who backs a woman's right to abortion. Lieberman said he was encouraged by what he heard from Judge Alito.
Recounting their conversation, Sen. Lieberman said Alito’s view is that
“Roe was precedent on which people, a lot of people relied, that it had been precedent for decades and therefore deserves great respect."
Other Senate Democrats have apparently been at least provisionally satisfied that Alito’s respect for legal precedent and “settled law” and would make him unlikely to reverse Roe.
Waiting in the wings is a phalanx of left- and right-leaning special interest groups, geared up – some say eager -- for a media and lobbying battle to move the public and the Senate to their different viewpoints. Some have already spoken out.
For example, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice opposes Alito’s nomination. The advocacy group says, “Influential segments of the radical right torpedoed the nomination of Harriet Miers because she didn’t have a proven record of being a 'movement’ conservative, dedicated to carrying out their political agenda on the bench. The right is now giddy about the nomination of Samuel Alito – undoubtedly because he has such a record. Judge Alito would fundamentally change the balance of the Supreme Court, tipping it in a direction that could jeopardize our most cherished rights and freedoms,” stated AJ president Nan Aron.
On the religious right, Focus on the Family Action founder and chairman James C. Dobson, said, "Perhaps the most encouraging early indication that Judge Alito will make a great justice is that liberal senators such as Harry Reid and Charles Schumer and leftist pressure groups such as People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood have been lining up all day to scream that the sky is falling. Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration.”
But that position is not unanimous among religious groups. For example, the newly-formed progressive organization, The Christian Alliance, told IPS, “It is hard to imagine how someone whose vision of justice concludes that a woman has to get her husband's permission to make a decision about her own reproductive health, or that women in the workforce are not unfavorably affected by pregnancy, can effectively sit as a judge on the nation's highest court.”
Rev. Tim Simpson of the Alliance added, “I cannot see how any of the things that he is currently telling Senators during his ‘moderating makeover’ can be taken seriously.”
Observers say that if Alito has managed to convince the right and at least neutralize the left on where he would like come down on the abortion issue, one side or the other is wrong. “They can’t both be right”, said a prominent constitutional law professor who declined to be named.
One reason for the apparent confusion over Alito’s position is his limited but mixed record on this issue.
The best known of Judge Alito's abortion opinions is his dissent in Planned
Parenthood v. Casey, the case the Supreme Court later used to reaffirm and
modify the Roe holding. In Casey, Judge Alito's court reviewed a number of Pennsylvania abortion restrictions and unanimously upheld all but one -- a provision requiring notification of husbands before married women received an abortion.
The provision provided an exception for women who feared physical abuse, but the court majority said it could still constitute an undue burden to women concerned about psychological or economic coercion, harm to their children, or sharing with other relatives what they intended to keep secret.
Judge Alito dissented, reasoning that married women were a minority of those seeking abortions and married women who didn't tell their husbands were a very small minority of those. He concluded that because only a small percentage of women overall would be affected, the provision did not constitute an undue burden to the right of abortion in general.
In at least one case, Judge Alito voted on the pro-choice side of litigation
that split his court. In 1995 he agreed that Medicaid rules that required funding for certain abortions in cases of rape or incest or when the mother's life was at stake, despite contrary Pennsylvania legal restrictions. A judge committed to stop abortions could easily have found a way to an opposite conclusion.
It is unlikely that Alito’s confirmation hearings will shed much more light on how he will rule on abortion-related cases; he is virtually certain to decline to respond to such questions because the issue may well come before the Supreme Court.
So the senate and the special-interest lobbying groups will have to content themselves with trying to read the tea leaves, with the abortion issue seemingly eclipsing all others.
Despite the enormous challenges facing the United States – education, health care, poverty, church and state, race relations, terrorism, Iraq, prisoner abuse, budget deficits, government corruption and inefficiency, to name but a few – a growing number of authorities are finding it revealing that the nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court appears to have come down to a single issue: abortion.
These authorities say the debate over this issue has become not only a thinly-veiled ‘litmus test’ for membership on the High Court, but a barometer of how sharply divided the U.S. is on social issues and the political clout the religious right has achieved over the last two decades.
Since his nomination by President George W. Bush last month, Alito has been engaged in ‘courtesy visits’ with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct hearings on his confirmation beginning in early January.
In these meetings, the word abortion has been studiously avoided by most, with the issue shrouded in such euphemisms as the right to privacy. But the question really being asked by senators on both the right and the left is: Can Judge Alito be counted on to vote to overturn the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision that established a women’s right to have an abortion?
The centrality of this issue was seen a month earlier in the withdrawal of Pres. Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, White House Counsel Harriett Miers. Ms. Miers was the subject of an aggressive revolt by religious right-wingers – Mr. Bush’s base – who raised doubts that Ms. Miers commitment to reversing Roe v. Wade was strong enough to gain their support.
The basis of the intense interest in Alito’s nomination is that, if confirmed by the Senate, he would replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a “pragmatic conservative” who has often represented the swing vote in 5-4 court decisions.
Today, when conservative Republican senators emerge from their private meetings with Judge Alito, they can barely contain their glee. Sen. Sam
Brownback, the conservative Kansas Republican and staunch opponent of abortion rights, said, "This is the type of nominee I've been asking for," adding that he was convinced that Judge Alito was "open to a review of cases." Brownback is one of the senators who led the successful anti-Miers campaign.
Senators in the ideological center have largely shown a cautiously positive attitude on the nomination. Typical is Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the centrist Connecticut Democrat who backs a woman's right to abortion. Lieberman said he was encouraged by what he heard from Judge Alito.
Recounting their conversation, Sen. Lieberman said Alito’s view is that
“Roe was precedent on which people, a lot of people relied, that it had been precedent for decades and therefore deserves great respect."
Other Senate Democrats have apparently been at least provisionally satisfied that Alito’s respect for legal precedent and “settled law” and would make him unlikely to reverse Roe.
Waiting in the wings is a phalanx of left- and right-leaning special interest groups, geared up – some say eager -- for a media and lobbying battle to move the public and the Senate to their different viewpoints. Some have already spoken out.
For example, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice opposes Alito’s nomination. The advocacy group says, “Influential segments of the radical right torpedoed the nomination of Harriet Miers because she didn’t have a proven record of being a 'movement’ conservative, dedicated to carrying out their political agenda on the bench. The right is now giddy about the nomination of Samuel Alito – undoubtedly because he has such a record. Judge Alito would fundamentally change the balance of the Supreme Court, tipping it in a direction that could jeopardize our most cherished rights and freedoms,” stated AJ president Nan Aron.
On the religious right, Focus on the Family Action founder and chairman James C. Dobson, said, "Perhaps the most encouraging early indication that Judge Alito will make a great justice is that liberal senators such as Harry Reid and Charles Schumer and leftist pressure groups such as People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood have been lining up all day to scream that the sky is falling. Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration.”
But that position is not unanimous among religious groups. For example, the newly-formed progressive organization, The Christian Alliance, told IPS, “It is hard to imagine how someone whose vision of justice concludes that a woman has to get her husband's permission to make a decision about her own reproductive health, or that women in the workforce are not unfavorably affected by pregnancy, can effectively sit as a judge on the nation's highest court.”
Rev. Tim Simpson of the Alliance added, “I cannot see how any of the things that he is currently telling Senators during his ‘moderating makeover’ can be taken seriously.”
Observers say that if Alito has managed to convince the right and at least neutralize the left on where he would like come down on the abortion issue, one side or the other is wrong. “They can’t both be right”, said a prominent constitutional law professor who declined to be named.
One reason for the apparent confusion over Alito’s position is his limited but mixed record on this issue.
The best known of Judge Alito's abortion opinions is his dissent in Planned
Parenthood v. Casey, the case the Supreme Court later used to reaffirm and
modify the Roe holding. In Casey, Judge Alito's court reviewed a number of Pennsylvania abortion restrictions and unanimously upheld all but one -- a provision requiring notification of husbands before married women received an abortion.
The provision provided an exception for women who feared physical abuse, but the court majority said it could still constitute an undue burden to women concerned about psychological or economic coercion, harm to their children, or sharing with other relatives what they intended to keep secret.
Judge Alito dissented, reasoning that married women were a minority of those seeking abortions and married women who didn't tell their husbands were a very small minority of those. He concluded that because only a small percentage of women overall would be affected, the provision did not constitute an undue burden to the right of abortion in general.
In at least one case, Judge Alito voted on the pro-choice side of litigation
that split his court. In 1995 he agreed that Medicaid rules that required funding for certain abortions in cases of rape or incest or when the mother's life was at stake, despite contrary Pennsylvania legal restrictions. A judge committed to stop abortions could easily have found a way to an opposite conclusion.
It is unlikely that Alito’s confirmation hearings will shed much more light on how he will rule on abortion-related cases; he is virtually certain to decline to respond to such questions because the issue may well come before the Supreme Court.
So the senate and the special-interest lobbying groups will have to content themselves with trying to read the tea leaves, with the abortion issue seemingly eclipsing all others.
ROSA PARKS: WHY ONE PERSON MATTERS
By William Fisher
Ask any non-American to name three leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and chances are they’ll stop after one: Martin Luther King.
But in fact the movement had many leaders.
Malcolm X went from being a street-wise Boston hoodlum to one of America’s most influential black nationalist leaders, advocating black pride, economic self-reliance, and identity politics. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965.
Stokely Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, and was critical of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, who called for integration of African Americans into the existing institutions of white middle class culture.
Medgar Evers, the first field officer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi, was involved in a boycott against white merchants in the city of Jackson and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi in 1962. Evers was assassinated by white supremacists in 1963.
John Lewis, now a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, led the first march across the now-famous bridge in Selma, Alabama, to confront police armed with riot gear, water cannons and dogs. A few days later, he was joined by Rev. King and their actions led to the passage of historic civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.
There were many others who played key roles in the civil rights struggle. One of them was Rosa Parks, and despite the recent spate of well-publicized events surrounding her death last month at age 92, non-Americans are unlikely to place her in this pantheon of civil rights leaders. Indeed, millions of Americans are among those to whom Mrs. Parks was unknown.
The mythology is that Rosa Parks was just an ‘ordinary black seamstress’, quiet, soft-spoken and retiring, tired after a day’s work, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December, 1955.
But the reality is that Mrs. Parks was an activist long before her arrest on the bus. She had refused to give up her bus seat several times before her well-photographed arrest, and had joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when this simple act alone was potentially life-threatening in the racist atmosphere of America’s deep south in the 1950s.
Parks joined the NAACP at a time when membership could result in murder. She married Ray Parks, a longtime NAACP activist who carried a gun to challenge racial injustice in Alabama.
But December 1, 1955 was not the first time a black person had refused to obey the segregation laws of public transportation. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
According to Prof. William Jelani Cobb of the traditionally black Spelman College, “During one twelve-month period in the 1940s, the city of Birmingham witnessed some 88 cases of blacks who refused to obey the segregation laws on public transportation. Five months prior to Parks, fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin had refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. She had been ejected and arrested and the local NAACP considered bringing a suit that would challenge segregation on the city's buses, but Colvin was pregnant and unmarried… activists thought she would not be a sympathetic example. Another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested shortly after Colvin; but (NAACP leaders) thought her dilapidated home and alcoholic father would be a public relations liability”
Prof. Cobb writes in America Online’s Black Voices, “A combination of factors made (Mrs. Parks’s) refusal a powder-keg moment in civil rights history. Just a year earlier, the Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the segregationist politicians had responded with the "Southern Manifesto," in which they declared their intent to resist integration at all costs. …And contrary to the popular retellings, her actions that day were not staged -- though they did come at the time when a coalition of activists and local lawyers were planning an assault on the structures of segregation in Montgomery. In the early hours, the local civil rights community found itself scrambling to respond to her arrest and imprisonment.
“Nor was the idea of boycotting segregated buses, which grew from Parks' arrest, unique. The 26 year-old Martin Luther King Jr., and the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), called upon the Rev.T.J. Jemison for advice. Jemison had organized a two-week boycott of the buses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1953. Together they formulated a plan by which people would pay the MIA, (which) would then dispense funds for travel to the drivers in the carpools -- in order to avoid tickets for operating unlicensed taxi cabs.”
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then
little-known Baptist minister, Rev. Martin Luther King, who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The boycott eventually led to a landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in all taxpayer-funded public services.
Mrs. Parks’s death last month at age 92 triggered an outpouring of admiration, love and ceremony. She became the first woman to lie in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where her casket was viewed by thousands. Speeches by civil rights leaders, senators and congresspersons hailed her as “the mother of the civil rights movement”. Her memorial services in Washington, D.C. and in her adopted home state, Michigan, attracted tens of thousands of mourners, the singing of Aretha Franklin, and eulogies by former President Bill Clinton, both Michigan senators, the governor of the state, NAACP president Julian Bond, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others.
Clinton said, "Let us never forget that in that simple act and a lifetime of grace and dignity, she showed us every single day what it means to be free. She made us see and agree that everyone should be free. God Bless you Rosa Parks."
President Bush said Mrs. Parks' 1955 refusal to give up her seat "was an act of personal courage." Bush described her as "one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century" and said that she would always have a "special place" in American history. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Now a number of efforts are being made to carry on Rosa’s legacy and to link it to the anti-Iraq-war peace movement.
The Boston City Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting Dec. 1 – the 50th anniversary of her arrest – as a nationwide “Day of Absence and Protest Against Poverty, Racism & War”. In New York, a dozen members of the City Council announced the introduction of a resolution declaring December 1 as Rosa Parks Day and called on businesses and schools to close or allow people to attend protest events.
Organizers of the national day have declared, “a relative handful of people who either own, control or profit from the economy must know that we consider the right to live free of war and the right to a job, to be as much of a civil right as the right to sit in the front of the bus. It is time to declare that poor and working people will not sit in the back of the economic bus that only runs to make the rich richer… (This) is the legacy that Rosa Parks has left us”.
Ask any non-American to name three leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and chances are they’ll stop after one: Martin Luther King.
But in fact the movement had many leaders.
Malcolm X went from being a street-wise Boston hoodlum to one of America’s most influential black nationalist leaders, advocating black pride, economic self-reliance, and identity politics. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965.
Stokely Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, and was critical of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, who called for integration of African Americans into the existing institutions of white middle class culture.
Medgar Evers, the first field officer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi, was involved in a boycott against white merchants in the city of Jackson and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi in 1962. Evers was assassinated by white supremacists in 1963.
John Lewis, now a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, led the first march across the now-famous bridge in Selma, Alabama, to confront police armed with riot gear, water cannons and dogs. A few days later, he was joined by Rev. King and their actions led to the passage of historic civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.
There were many others who played key roles in the civil rights struggle. One of them was Rosa Parks, and despite the recent spate of well-publicized events surrounding her death last month at age 92, non-Americans are unlikely to place her in this pantheon of civil rights leaders. Indeed, millions of Americans are among those to whom Mrs. Parks was unknown.
The mythology is that Rosa Parks was just an ‘ordinary black seamstress’, quiet, soft-spoken and retiring, tired after a day’s work, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December, 1955.
But the reality is that Mrs. Parks was an activist long before her arrest on the bus. She had refused to give up her bus seat several times before her well-photographed arrest, and had joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when this simple act alone was potentially life-threatening in the racist atmosphere of America’s deep south in the 1950s.
Parks joined the NAACP at a time when membership could result in murder. She married Ray Parks, a longtime NAACP activist who carried a gun to challenge racial injustice in Alabama.
But December 1, 1955 was not the first time a black person had refused to obey the segregation laws of public transportation. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
According to Prof. William Jelani Cobb of the traditionally black Spelman College, “During one twelve-month period in the 1940s, the city of Birmingham witnessed some 88 cases of blacks who refused to obey the segregation laws on public transportation. Five months prior to Parks, fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin had refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. She had been ejected and arrested and the local NAACP considered bringing a suit that would challenge segregation on the city's buses, but Colvin was pregnant and unmarried… activists thought she would not be a sympathetic example. Another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested shortly after Colvin; but (NAACP leaders) thought her dilapidated home and alcoholic father would be a public relations liability”
Prof. Cobb writes in America Online’s Black Voices, “A combination of factors made (Mrs. Parks’s) refusal a powder-keg moment in civil rights history. Just a year earlier, the Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the segregationist politicians had responded with the "Southern Manifesto," in which they declared their intent to resist integration at all costs. …And contrary to the popular retellings, her actions that day were not staged -- though they did come at the time when a coalition of activists and local lawyers were planning an assault on the structures of segregation in Montgomery. In the early hours, the local civil rights community found itself scrambling to respond to her arrest and imprisonment.
“Nor was the idea of boycotting segregated buses, which grew from Parks' arrest, unique. The 26 year-old Martin Luther King Jr., and the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), called upon the Rev.T.J. Jemison for advice. Jemison had organized a two-week boycott of the buses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1953. Together they formulated a plan by which people would pay the MIA, (which) would then dispense funds for travel to the drivers in the carpools -- in order to avoid tickets for operating unlicensed taxi cabs.”
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then
little-known Baptist minister, Rev. Martin Luther King, who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The boycott eventually led to a landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in all taxpayer-funded public services.
Mrs. Parks’s death last month at age 92 triggered an outpouring of admiration, love and ceremony. She became the first woman to lie in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where her casket was viewed by thousands. Speeches by civil rights leaders, senators and congresspersons hailed her as “the mother of the civil rights movement”. Her memorial services in Washington, D.C. and in her adopted home state, Michigan, attracted tens of thousands of mourners, the singing of Aretha Franklin, and eulogies by former President Bill Clinton, both Michigan senators, the governor of the state, NAACP president Julian Bond, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others.
Clinton said, "Let us never forget that in that simple act and a lifetime of grace and dignity, she showed us every single day what it means to be free. She made us see and agree that everyone should be free. God Bless you Rosa Parks."
President Bush said Mrs. Parks' 1955 refusal to give up her seat "was an act of personal courage." Bush described her as "one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century" and said that she would always have a "special place" in American history. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Now a number of efforts are being made to carry on Rosa’s legacy and to link it to the anti-Iraq-war peace movement.
The Boston City Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting Dec. 1 – the 50th anniversary of her arrest – as a nationwide “Day of Absence and Protest Against Poverty, Racism & War”. In New York, a dozen members of the City Council announced the introduction of a resolution declaring December 1 as Rosa Parks Day and called on businesses and schools to close or allow people to attend protest events.
Organizers of the national day have declared, “a relative handful of people who either own, control or profit from the economy must know that we consider the right to live free of war and the right to a job, to be as much of a civil right as the right to sit in the front of the bus. It is time to declare that poor and working people will not sit in the back of the economic bus that only runs to make the rich richer… (This) is the legacy that Rosa Parks has left us”.
Friday, September 23, 2005
The GOP’s Fiscal Policies Turned a Natural Disaster into a Man-Made Catastrophe
By Jason Leopold
Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.
If anything, Bush’s tenure as president proves that the Republican tax cuts (which everyone knows truly benefits the wealthiest one percent), drastically slashing funds in the federal budget for much needed improvements to the country’s aging infrastructure (a perfect example being the outdated power grid), and trying to get away with launching wars on the cheap, have cost taxpayers and their unborn grandchildren more money than anyone could have ever imagined.
Simply put, since he became president, Bush has not invested the funds to fix the cracks in the country’s façade, despite repeated warnings from experts and intense lobbying efforts by state officials that ignoring the problem will make it worse in the long run. Instead, the president pumped tens of billions of dollars into an unnecessary war that, when it became evident that attaining victory was tougher than the war planners imagined, required tens of billions of dollars more just to continue the fighting.
Only when devastation and catastrophe struck the nation did the federal government cough up the funds, but by then there wasn’t much of choice and as such a $1 billion restoration project before a devastating hurricane touched down in the Gulf Coast has turned into a $200 billion reconstruction effort and has now saddled taxpayers with economic woes that no tax cut can relieve.
You don’t have to look too far than New Orleans, a city wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, as evidence of the Bush administration’s and Congress’ fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a direct result of Washington’s financial incompetence that the cost for rebuilding The Big Easy is estimated to top $200 billion.
Flooding is the most destructive and costly natural disaster in the United States, accounting for approximately 75 percent of all disasters declared by the President annually. Approximately 160 million acres, or 7 percent of the United States are estimated to be floodplains and urban expansion into floodplains continues at an increasing rate, according to the Public Entity Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank that that aims to educate the public and government on disaster management.
Sadly, no one was becoming any smarter. Instead of funding flood control projects, the Bush administration cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget, forcing the city of New Orleans to loan the agency $1 million back in December of 2003 to keep one crucial flood control project from shutting down entirely.
“It's not every day that New Orleans has to bail out the federal government,” said the Times-Picayune in a January 2, 2004 story. “But that's exactly what happened last month, when the Orleans Levee Board voted to advance the Army Corps of Engineers $1 million to prevent a vital flood control project from shutting down.”
Al Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps told the Picayune that federal funding has all but dried up threatening to put hurricane protection plans that were already underway on hold indefinitely.
Naomi said the corps has been strained for money, as the federal government's priorities have shifted to other concerns, such as homeland security, which prior to Hurricane Katrina meant protection from terrorist threats, and the war in Iraq.
Before Bush delivered his better-late-than-never speech to the nation earlier this month in front of Andrew Jackson’s statue in New Orleans, he personally shot down repeated requests for federal assistance made by Louisiana officials over the past four years to help repair New Orleans’ eroding coastline, the most recent of which was turned down by the president in June. Even prior hurricanes, such as Ivan, which just missed New Orleans last September still wreaked havoc on the city similar to that of Katrina, forcing local officials to evacuate the city and calling on the federal government for help, was not enough to sway President Bush to focus on domestic threats instead of pouring all of his energy into terrorism and the war in Iraq.
So, to hear the president in a televised speech promise to spend whatever it takes to rebuild one of the nation’s great cities is not a sign of progress, rather it’s a symbol of the total breakdown of his administration and an attempt to conceal what could arguably have been a man-made disaster because of Bush’s policies.
The final blow, however, came in June. Louisiana state officials had been hoping that a provision included in the Senate energy bill that called for $500 million in offshore energy revenue from the federal government would finally provide Louisiana and four other coastal states with the funds it desperately needed to repair its damaged wetlands to protect itself, among other things, against possible future weather-related disasters.
But the White House adamantly refused to part ways with the $5 billion it gets from drilling in the Gulf Coast, its second biggest source of revenue (after income the Internal Revenue Service brings in) choosing to use most of those funds to finance the Iraq war.
To ensure that the message came across crystal clear, Bush personally ordered White House aides to take the unusual step of sending a letter to House and Senate negotiators advising them to kill the revenue-sharing plan in the final version of the energy bill.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget released a policy statement paper in June that said the Bush administration opposes “the significant new funding authorizations and diversion” of Outer Continental Shelf revenue included in a national energy bill being discussed in Congress.
"Currently the federal government does share royalties with coastal states -- more than $3 trillion to date, in fact. Changing this amount only increases the budget deficit and diminishes the benefit the rest of the nation receives from these national resources," Scott Milburn, press secretary for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told The Associated Press in June.
“Disheartening,” “frustrating,” “upsetting” and “just another nail in my coffin” is how Louisiana senators, community leaders and coastal advocates responded to the news in June that the White House intervened and advised the Senate to defeat the revenue provision, according to June 16 report in the Houma, La., Courier.
Ironically the erosion to the state’s coastline—which became considerably worse over the past five years—is due, in part, to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, much of which takes place right in New Orleans. Although the state is responsible for repairing its coastline to support its oil and gas infrastructure it barely benefits financially from the drilling that takes place right in its own backyard.
“While inland states enjoy 50 percent of the tax revenue from drilling on their federal lands, Louisiana gets back a mere $35 million of the $5 billion it contributes to the federal treasury each year from offshore drilling, or less than one percent,” the Courier said.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., condemned the White House position. Landrieu said the Bush administration simply can’t comprehend why the state of Louisiana needs compensation for producing a bulk of the nation’s energy supply. It’s a fact that coastal oil-and-gas-producing states account for 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas and 30 percent of oil.
“The president’s statement indicates a failure to appreciate the burdens borne by the people of Louisiana and other coastal oil-and-gas-producing states,” Landrieu said.
It wasn’t long after the White House issued its statement on the revenue sharing concept that Louisiana lawmakers predicted an apocalyptic end to the city of New Orleans.
Clifford Smith, a Houma, La., civil engineer and coastal advocate who is also a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi River Commission, told The Courier in June that without federal assistance New Orleans could very well drown if it took a direct hit from a hurricane.
"We’re not going to get the kind of recognition and concern we deserve until we have a disaster," he said.
Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.
If anything, Bush’s tenure as president proves that the Republican tax cuts (which everyone knows truly benefits the wealthiest one percent), drastically slashing funds in the federal budget for much needed improvements to the country’s aging infrastructure (a perfect example being the outdated power grid), and trying to get away with launching wars on the cheap, have cost taxpayers and their unborn grandchildren more money than anyone could have ever imagined.
Simply put, since he became president, Bush has not invested the funds to fix the cracks in the country’s façade, despite repeated warnings from experts and intense lobbying efforts by state officials that ignoring the problem will make it worse in the long run. Instead, the president pumped tens of billions of dollars into an unnecessary war that, when it became evident that attaining victory was tougher than the war planners imagined, required tens of billions of dollars more just to continue the fighting.
Only when devastation and catastrophe struck the nation did the federal government cough up the funds, but by then there wasn’t much of choice and as such a $1 billion restoration project before a devastating hurricane touched down in the Gulf Coast has turned into a $200 billion reconstruction effort and has now saddled taxpayers with economic woes that no tax cut can relieve.
You don’t have to look too far than New Orleans, a city wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, as evidence of the Bush administration’s and Congress’ fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a direct result of Washington’s financial incompetence that the cost for rebuilding The Big Easy is estimated to top $200 billion.
Flooding is the most destructive and costly natural disaster in the United States, accounting for approximately 75 percent of all disasters declared by the President annually. Approximately 160 million acres, or 7 percent of the United States are estimated to be floodplains and urban expansion into floodplains continues at an increasing rate, according to the Public Entity Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank that that aims to educate the public and government on disaster management.
Sadly, no one was becoming any smarter. Instead of funding flood control projects, the Bush administration cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget, forcing the city of New Orleans to loan the agency $1 million back in December of 2003 to keep one crucial flood control project from shutting down entirely.
“It's not every day that New Orleans has to bail out the federal government,” said the Times-Picayune in a January 2, 2004 story. “But that's exactly what happened last month, when the Orleans Levee Board voted to advance the Army Corps of Engineers $1 million to prevent a vital flood control project from shutting down.”
Al Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps told the Picayune that federal funding has all but dried up threatening to put hurricane protection plans that were already underway on hold indefinitely.
Naomi said the corps has been strained for money, as the federal government's priorities have shifted to other concerns, such as homeland security, which prior to Hurricane Katrina meant protection from terrorist threats, and the war in Iraq.
Before Bush delivered his better-late-than-never speech to the nation earlier this month in front of Andrew Jackson’s statue in New Orleans, he personally shot down repeated requests for federal assistance made by Louisiana officials over the past four years to help repair New Orleans’ eroding coastline, the most recent of which was turned down by the president in June. Even prior hurricanes, such as Ivan, which just missed New Orleans last September still wreaked havoc on the city similar to that of Katrina, forcing local officials to evacuate the city and calling on the federal government for help, was not enough to sway President Bush to focus on domestic threats instead of pouring all of his energy into terrorism and the war in Iraq.
So, to hear the president in a televised speech promise to spend whatever it takes to rebuild one of the nation’s great cities is not a sign of progress, rather it’s a symbol of the total breakdown of his administration and an attempt to conceal what could arguably have been a man-made disaster because of Bush’s policies.
The final blow, however, came in June. Louisiana state officials had been hoping that a provision included in the Senate energy bill that called for $500 million in offshore energy revenue from the federal government would finally provide Louisiana and four other coastal states with the funds it desperately needed to repair its damaged wetlands to protect itself, among other things, against possible future weather-related disasters.
But the White House adamantly refused to part ways with the $5 billion it gets from drilling in the Gulf Coast, its second biggest source of revenue (after income the Internal Revenue Service brings in) choosing to use most of those funds to finance the Iraq war.
To ensure that the message came across crystal clear, Bush personally ordered White House aides to take the unusual step of sending a letter to House and Senate negotiators advising them to kill the revenue-sharing plan in the final version of the energy bill.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget released a policy statement paper in June that said the Bush administration opposes “the significant new funding authorizations and diversion” of Outer Continental Shelf revenue included in a national energy bill being discussed in Congress.
"Currently the federal government does share royalties with coastal states -- more than $3 trillion to date, in fact. Changing this amount only increases the budget deficit and diminishes the benefit the rest of the nation receives from these national resources," Scott Milburn, press secretary for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told The Associated Press in June.
“Disheartening,” “frustrating,” “upsetting” and “just another nail in my coffin” is how Louisiana senators, community leaders and coastal advocates responded to the news in June that the White House intervened and advised the Senate to defeat the revenue provision, according to June 16 report in the Houma, La., Courier.
Ironically the erosion to the state’s coastline—which became considerably worse over the past five years—is due, in part, to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, much of which takes place right in New Orleans. Although the state is responsible for repairing its coastline to support its oil and gas infrastructure it barely benefits financially from the drilling that takes place right in its own backyard.
“While inland states enjoy 50 percent of the tax revenue from drilling on their federal lands, Louisiana gets back a mere $35 million of the $5 billion it contributes to the federal treasury each year from offshore drilling, or less than one percent,” the Courier said.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., condemned the White House position. Landrieu said the Bush administration simply can’t comprehend why the state of Louisiana needs compensation for producing a bulk of the nation’s energy supply. It’s a fact that coastal oil-and-gas-producing states account for 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas and 30 percent of oil.
“The president’s statement indicates a failure to appreciate the burdens borne by the people of Louisiana and other coastal oil-and-gas-producing states,” Landrieu said.
It wasn’t long after the White House issued its statement on the revenue sharing concept that Louisiana lawmakers predicted an apocalyptic end to the city of New Orleans.
Clifford Smith, a Houma, La., civil engineer and coastal advocate who is also a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi River Commission, told The Courier in June that without federal assistance New Orleans could very well drown if it took a direct hit from a hurricane.
"We’re not going to get the kind of recognition and concern we deserve until we have a disaster," he said.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
THE FOX AT THE HENHOUSE
By William Fisher
Either President Bush just doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care, or he thinks the people he serves are all gullible morons.
He’s appointed his own Homeland Security Advisor, Ms. Frances Townsend, to lead the White House investigation into how the government screwed up with Hurricane Katrina – and what to do about it.
Does the president really believe the American people will find such an investigation credible?
I’m sure Ms. Townsend is a very smart lady. She has a reputation for being tough-minded and independent. Maybe she’ll really try to do a thorough investigation.
But the appearance of independence is as important as the fact of independence. And it simply stretches credulity to think Ms. Townsend is likely to get away with being independent of her boss, the President, even if she wants to. Can anyone imagine Karl Rove approving any report that might embarrass the president or actually hold anyone accountable, bar Brownie?
Second, Ms. Townsend is a career prosecutor with no experience in natural disaster preparedness or response. Her homeland security experience has been limited to terrorism-related intelligence.
Ms. Townsend chairs the Homeland Security Council and reports to the President on Homeland Security policy and Combating Terrorism matters. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. She came to the White House from the U.S. Coast Guard, where she served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence. Prior to that, she spent 13 years at the Department of Justice in a variety of senior positions, her last assignment as Counsel to the Attorney General for Intelligence Policy. She began her prosecutorial career in 1985, serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988, she joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York where she focused on international organized crime and white-collar crime cases.
A pretty distinguished record, but where is the natural disaster piece? Investigative skills are simply not enough. You need to know the subject matter.
Third, her track record leading investigations does not exactly inspire confidence. When former Senator Chuck Robb and Judge Laurence Silberman completed their highly limited White House-commissioned report on pre-Iraq intelligence failures last April, the president ordered her to cull through the recommendations, most of which could be enacted by executive action. The investigation was limited because the commission was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the flawed information.
Ms. Townsend directed Cabinet secretaries to report back to her quickly. "You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," Townsend said from the White House podium. Maybe I missed something, but I think we’re still waiting.
Finally, if Ms. Townsend were really on top of her current job, wouldn’t the president have known that his Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucratic nightmare, a pastiche of more than 70 unmanaged – and perhaps unmanageable – agencies stitched together with a focus so obsessed with terrorism that natural disasters are all but forgotten?
Wouldn’t he have known that Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast and could have unimaginably devastating consequences?
Evidently, no one – not Mr. Chertoff, not the hapless, unqualified and now-departed Mr. Brown, and not Frances Townsend – wanted to be the bearer of such dire tidings. In Washington, it’s the messenger who too often takes the hit.
So Ms. Townsend may indeed be a very smart fox, but she’s a fox nevertheless. The hens should run for cover right away!
People with serious government experience know that the minute you hear that the boss is organizing an inter-agency task force, the spin machine is about to kick into high gear. Why else would the president give Karl Rove, the “architect”, such a prominent role in the rebuilding effort? He would seem to be a tad light on emergency preparedness experience.
The bottom line is that the White House can investigate itself about as thoroughly as the Defense Department investigated its lapses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
That’s why we have Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office. And that’s why, in the end, despite the president’s resistance, we ended up with a 9/11 Commission and some conclusions we could believe.
We need nothing less if we really want to know what went wrong during Katrina and what we have to do to fix it.
Either President Bush just doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care, or he thinks the people he serves are all gullible morons.
He’s appointed his own Homeland Security Advisor, Ms. Frances Townsend, to lead the White House investigation into how the government screwed up with Hurricane Katrina – and what to do about it.
Does the president really believe the American people will find such an investigation credible?
I’m sure Ms. Townsend is a very smart lady. She has a reputation for being tough-minded and independent. Maybe she’ll really try to do a thorough investigation.
But the appearance of independence is as important as the fact of independence. And it simply stretches credulity to think Ms. Townsend is likely to get away with being independent of her boss, the President, even if she wants to. Can anyone imagine Karl Rove approving any report that might embarrass the president or actually hold anyone accountable, bar Brownie?
Second, Ms. Townsend is a career prosecutor with no experience in natural disaster preparedness or response. Her homeland security experience has been limited to terrorism-related intelligence.
Ms. Townsend chairs the Homeland Security Council and reports to the President on Homeland Security policy and Combating Terrorism matters. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. She came to the White House from the U.S. Coast Guard, where she served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence. Prior to that, she spent 13 years at the Department of Justice in a variety of senior positions, her last assignment as Counsel to the Attorney General for Intelligence Policy. She began her prosecutorial career in 1985, serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988, she joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York where she focused on international organized crime and white-collar crime cases.
A pretty distinguished record, but where is the natural disaster piece? Investigative skills are simply not enough. You need to know the subject matter.
Third, her track record leading investigations does not exactly inspire confidence. When former Senator Chuck Robb and Judge Laurence Silberman completed their highly limited White House-commissioned report on pre-Iraq intelligence failures last April, the president ordered her to cull through the recommendations, most of which could be enacted by executive action. The investigation was limited because the commission was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the flawed information.
Ms. Townsend directed Cabinet secretaries to report back to her quickly. "You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," Townsend said from the White House podium. Maybe I missed something, but I think we’re still waiting.
Finally, if Ms. Townsend were really on top of her current job, wouldn’t the president have known that his Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucratic nightmare, a pastiche of more than 70 unmanaged – and perhaps unmanageable – agencies stitched together with a focus so obsessed with terrorism that natural disasters are all but forgotten?
Wouldn’t he have known that Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast and could have unimaginably devastating consequences?
Evidently, no one – not Mr. Chertoff, not the hapless, unqualified and now-departed Mr. Brown, and not Frances Townsend – wanted to be the bearer of such dire tidings. In Washington, it’s the messenger who too often takes the hit.
So Ms. Townsend may indeed be a very smart fox, but she’s a fox nevertheless. The hens should run for cover right away!
People with serious government experience know that the minute you hear that the boss is organizing an inter-agency task force, the spin machine is about to kick into high gear. Why else would the president give Karl Rove, the “architect”, such a prominent role in the rebuilding effort? He would seem to be a tad light on emergency preparedness experience.
The bottom line is that the White House can investigate itself about as thoroughly as the Defense Department investigated its lapses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
That’s why we have Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office. And that’s why, in the end, despite the president’s resistance, we ended up with a 9/11 Commission and some conclusions we could believe.
We need nothing less if we really want to know what went wrong during Katrina and what we have to do to fix it.
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