Bush Attacks Social Services

Promise them Anything:  Recently, President Bush and members of Congress authorized and recommended the spending of $15 billion over 5 years to fight the global AIDS pandemic . . .While the bill authorized the spending of $3 billion this year, we see now that members of congressional appropriation committees -such as Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) - plan to allot as little as $1.52 billion

Sucherman, Colorado News June 25, 2003

Bush Attacks Well-Being of Working Americans

Bush Undermines Democracy

the examples Treasury provided to Mr. Russert [for an interview with Howard Dean] and others in the media were wildly unrepresentative. . . . the Treasury's example of a "lower income" elderly household was one receiving $2,000 a year in dividend income. In fact, only about one elderly household in four receives any dividend income, and only one in eight receives as much as $2,000. Not surprisingly, the "Russert families" gained far more from the Bush tax cuts than a representative sample. As Mr. Sullivan put it, "If this continues, the Treasury's Office of Tax Policy may have to change its name to the Office of Tax Propaganda." . . . it undermines democracy: how can Congress or the public make informed votes if both are fed distorted information? Krukman, NY Times 8/5/03

Bush to Eliminate Overtime! The Bush administration, which has the very bad habit of smiling at working people while siphoning money from their pockets, is trying to change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in a way that could cause millions of workers to lose their right to overtime pay. . .  the Economic Policy Institute, which found that the proposed changes could ultimately eliminate the right to overtime for eight million people.  Herbert, NY Times 7/3/03

Economic Justice? "'Ain't going to happen,' said Majority Leader Tom DeLay. He says the working poor will get their tax cut only if the rich get another round, as well. That's sick."  Molly Irvins, Creators Syndicate on WorkingForChange

"About half of all African-American and Latino children get no benefit [from the tax cut] — or only a partial benefit — from the child tax credit, according to the Children's Defense Fund and an advocacy group called the Children's Research and Education Institute."  Herbert, NY Times 6/2/03

Attacks on Civil Liberty & Human Rights

Bush Could Steal Election *

The Maryland study shows . . . convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails. . . It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location. . . Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. . . . one team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds.. . ."Diebold [Note: a very large Bush contributor], the machines' manufacturer, [issued a] press release with the headline "Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems. ." NY Times Editorial, 1/31/04

Bush Attacks Free Press*

Meanwhile, the White House is on the verge of signing into law a deal which Senator John McCain (R-AZ) says is custom-tailored for CBS and Fox,allowing the two networks to grow much bigger. CBS lobbied hard for this rule change; MoveOn.org members across the country lobbied against it; and now our ad has been rejected while the White House ad will be played. It looks an awful lot like CBS is playing politics with the right to free speech. Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org 1/22/04

Plame Blame

The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq. . . ."For this administration to run on a security platform and allow people in the administration to compromise the security of intelligence assets, I think is unconscionable," Mr. Johnson [a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency] said.  DOUGLAS JEHL, NY Times 1/23/03

Can Bush Jail Anyone He Wants?*

A coalition of news and legal organizations is seeking public access to information about a post-Sept. 11 detention case now before the Supreme Court that has been handled with unusual secrecy both there and in the lower federal courts. . . .Mr. Bellahouel worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Delray Beach, Fla., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation says was patronized by at least two Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.
During his five-month imprisonment at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Mr. Bellahouel was taken to Alexandria, Va., to testify before the grand jury that was investigating Zacarias Moussaoui.
The government has not charged Mr. Bellahouel with any terrorism-related crimes and apparently does not regard him as a threat. LINDA GREENHOUSE, NY Times 1/5/04

Push Back Bush *

The broad presidential powers invoked by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to detain suspected terrorists outside the civilian court system is now being challenged by the federal courts. . . .In New York on Thursday, a federal appeals court opinion in the case of Mr. Padilla struck at the heart of that aggressive strategy. The panel's 2-to-1 opinion said that the president lacked the authority to exercise such broad coercive powers against American citizens without the consent of Congress. . . .In the case in San Francisco, a 2-to-1 panel said on Thursday that the detention of 660 noncitizens at Guantánamo Bay without the protection of the American legal system was unconstitutional and a violation of international law. DAVID JOHNSTON, NY Times 12/19/03

Bush Secrecy or Concealment

A resident of Floyd County, Va., in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, McCormick discovered that two big energy companies planned to run a high-volume natural gas pipeline through the center of his community. He wanted to help organize citizens by identifying residents through whose property the 30-inch pipeline would run. McCormick turned to Washington, seeking a project map from federal regulators. The answer? A pointed "no." Although such information was "previously public," officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told McCormick, disclosing the route of the new pipeline could provide a road map for terrorists. McCormick was nonplused. Once construction began, he says, the pipeline's location would be obvious to anyone.  Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound, Newsweek, 12/22/03

E-Voting Details

Diebold, which has deployed 33,000 touch-screen voting machines in the United States, first gained notoriety after its chief executive wrote in an August fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year."
Asked about the August fund-raising letter, Bear referred a reporter to a news report posted to the company's Web site, in which Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell pledged to curtail his political activities as a result of the controversy.
"I'm not doing anything wrong or complicated, but it obviously did leave me open to the criticism I've received," O'Dell told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Details HERE  Paul Festa Staff Writer, CNET News.com, 12/8/03

How to Vote for Bush and Not Know It *

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. . . The [Diebold] software was in a folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.") . . .there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. . . .But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.  Krugman, NY Times, 12/2/03

Diebold CEO Wants Bush Elected;

Read Diebold Memos

"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here 'looking dumb'." [source]

"For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo." [source]

MORE memos at http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/

Bush & Human Rights*

When I recently asked an Egyptian human rights leader whether she had taken heart from President Bush's new commitment to democracy in her region, she looked at me as though I must be either slightly mad or utterly naive. Choosing her words with as much polite restraint as she could muster, Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla replied: "What Egyptians have experienced from U.S. policy is not in harmony with any human rights values." . . .Many Arab advocates of human rights and political freedom say that, from among these [Bush administration] contradictory signals, their rulers so far have chosen to receive only the green light for repression.
"This anti-terror discourse has given our government something to lean on for any human rights violation," Dr. Seif El Dawla said. Fred Hiatt, Washington Post, 12/1/03

Bush's Enemy Combatant Embarrassment*

Both Viet Dinh, former assistant attorney general for policy development, and Michael Chertoff, who headed the Justice Department's criminal division until becoming a federal judge, have suggested that the current system of indefinitely detaining "enemy combatants" without charge, counsel or oversight needs to be rethought. . . .

[Dinh] calls "unsustainable" the government's current insistence on detentions without meaningful oversight or any sort of due process. . . The administration ought to be embarrassed . . .Washington Post Editorial, 11/30/03

Bush Chills Demonstrators*

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum. . .Critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, for instance, have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes. Civil rights advocates have accused federal and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., of spying on antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating planning meetings.  ERIC LICHTBLAU, NY Times, 11/23/03

Bush and Justice

The Bush administration insists that it can hold American citizens in secret as long as it wants, without access to lawyers, simply by calling them "enemy combatants." A New York federal appeals court heard a challenge to that policy this week by the so-called dirty bomber, Jose Padilla. The administration's position makes a mockery of the Constitution and puts every American's liberty at risk. It is important that the court strike it down, and give Mr. Padilla the rights he has been denied.

Mr. Padilla is an American citizen who was taken into custody in Chicago in May 2002. The government suspects him of being part of a "dirty bomb" plot by Al Qaeda, but it has not charged him. Instead, it has labeled him an enemy combatant and locked him up in a naval brig in South Carolina.  NY Times Editorial, 11/19/03

Bush Judicial Nominations*

Brown’s disdain for the “lollipops” some call civil and constitutional rights has resulted in opinions that leave even her conservative colleagues baffled. So extreme are her views and so unconvincing were her answers at last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing, Stephen Barnett – a former Brown supporter and law professor emeritus – reversed his position on her nomination. In his words, “to hear the views in these speeches expressed by a potential member of either the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court is just too scary.” . . .Brown, Allen and Pickering will take their brand of outcome-driven justice to the D.C., Fourth, and Fifth Circuits if they are confirmed. Along with other Bush nominees, they have the capacity to reshape the law and the lives of millions of Americans. Melody Barnes, Center for American Progress

Bush Gored

"They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, 'big brother'-style government -- toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America," Gore charged. . . ."In my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin Laden," Gore said.

In both cases, Gore said, the administration has "recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger."  JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press, in SF Chronicle 11/9/03

Full Text of Gore Speech

Home of the Free*

Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Wednesday protested the U.S. treatment of a Canadian citizen who was detained in New York and deported to Syria last year on suspicion of having links to terrorists. . .Arar, 33, said at a news conference on Tuesday that he spent 10 months in a Syrian jail, where he was beaten, held in a small cell and forced to sign false confessions that he had been to Afghanistan. . ."They told us he was an al Qaeda activist, so we took him and put him in custody," said Imad Moustafa, chargé d'affaires at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. "The U.S. was pressing us not to send him to Canada, the Canadians were pressing us to not send him to Syria." DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Priest
Washington Post, 11/6/03

Mr. Carl Folta

Sr. Vice President, Viacom, Inc

I am greatly dismayed at Viacom’s decision to cancel the Reagan miniseries on CBS.

As you are aware, this is a time of tremendous manipulation of the media and reduced civil liberties in the U.S.  Judges are being intimidated (see Story), government Inspectors General are being intimidated (see story ) and an American pre-emptive war has been waged based on massive deception (see documentary).

I do not know much about the Reagan miniseries, but the impression that everyone will have is that Viacom and CBS have caved in to threats from the extreme right and have censored a work the script for which Viacom had previously approved.  

Whether not this is true is immaterial in these troubled times.  The apparent capitulation to threats by one of our largest media sources is chilling on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.  

I respectfully request that Viacom reverse its decision and air the Reagan miniseries as previously scheduled.  Costanzo, 11/4/03

Government by Fear & Intimidation

The distinguishing feature of modern Washington dishonesty is that it is almost transparent, barely intended to deceive. It uses true-ish factoids to construct an implied assertion about reality that is not just false but preposterous. . . .Lefkowitz, for example, denies that Bush's stem cell policy, announced in 2001, was "unexpectedly restrictive." It was "actually a liberalization" of previous rules. It included "the first-ever offer of federal aid" for embryonic stem cell research. . . .[Bush] was expected to ban research involving future embryos. The surprise was that he also banned research using embryos already sitting on fertility clinic shelves and headed for destruction in any event. That's what made his policy "unexpectedly restrictive."  Michael Kinsley, Washington Post 10/31/03

"This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information." -- Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch

Bush Voting Machines*

The best minds in the computer-security world contend that the voting terminals can’t be trusted. Listen, for example, to Avi Rubin, a computer-security expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University who was slipped a copy of Diebold’s source code earlier this year. After he and his students examined it, he concluded that the protections against fraud and tampering were strictly amateur hour.  . . .While there’s no evidence that the political establishment actually wants vulnerable machines, the Internet is buzz-ing with conspiracy theories centering on these “black box” voting devices. (The biggest buzz focuses on the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial election, won by a Republican underdog whose win confounded pollsters.) Suspicions run even higher when people learn that some of those in charge of voting technology are themselves partisan. Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fund-raiser for the Bush re-election campaign.  Steven Levy, Newsweek, Nov. 3/ 03 issue

Unworthy Bush *

If the many unworthy judicial nominees President Bush has put forward, Janice Rogers Brown is among the very worst. As an archconservative justice on the California Supreme Court, she has declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear. And she has let ideology be her guide in deciding cases. At her confirmation hearing this week, Justice Brown only ratified her critics' worst fears. Both Republican and Democratic senators should oppose her confirmation. . . Justice Brown's record as a judge is also cause for alarm. She regularly stakes out extreme positions, often dissenting alone. In one case, her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company's free speech rights. NY Times Editorial, 10/25/03

Bush Human Rights

Charges against the Bush administration for human rights violations keep rolling in. Last week the International Red Cross – which rarely comments – added its voice to the list. . .

Bush has admitted that Iraq was not connected to Sept. 11. Now let him allow our courts and tribunals to determine if the thousands arrested after Sept. 11 had anything to do with those events, in accordance with our laws. James O. Goldsborough
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 10/20/03

Bush's Undersecretary of Intolerance *

[Lt. Gen. William “Jerry”] Boykin was promoted to deputy undersecretary of defense, with a new mission for which many say he is uniquely qualified: to aggressively combine intelligence with special operations and hunt down so-called high-value terrorist targets including bin Laden and Saddam. . . . Boykin recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.” . . .Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”  Lisa Myers and the NBC Investigative Unit, NBC NEWS 10/15/03

Bush Wisdom

George W. Bush expressed doubt yesterday that the leaker who exposed a covert spy's identity would ever be found, saying the capital "is a town full of people who like to leak information" and few are ever caught. . . White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not rule out the possibility that the White House might decline to turn over material for other reasons, such as executive privilege. . . McClellan said the Counsel's office would review submissions to determine if they were relevant, saying that was necessary because some staffers might be "erring on the side of providing more than they should."  Ken Fireman, Newsday, 10/8/03

Patriot Act: Not Just for Terrorism Any More