Political News — June & July 2007

U.S. Attorney Griffin resigns for caging

For a collection of articles on voting fraud Tim Griffin, U.S. Attorney who committed caging, scrubbing minority voters) from the voting lists, resigns on heals of pending Congressional investigation. US Attorney Resigns Following Conyers’ Request for BBC Documents Greg Palast, June 1, 2007

Tim Griffin, U.S. Attorney who committed caging, scrubbing minority voters) from the voting lists, resigns on heals of pending Congressional investigation.

Tim Griffin, formerly right hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US Attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television ‘Newsnight’ reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network’s evidence on Griffin’s involvement in ‘caging voters.’ Greg Palast, reporting for BBC Newsnight, obtained a series of confidential emails from the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In these emails, Griffin, then the GOP Deputy Communications Director, transmitted so-called ‘caging lists’ of voters to state party leaders. Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters’ right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters including homeless individuals, students and soldiers sent overseas. Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US Attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin’s resignation, “We’re not through with him by any means.” Conyers indicated to the BBC that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive ‘caging’ operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove. Griffin has not responded to requests by BBC to explain this 'caging' operation. However, in emails subpoenaed by Conyers' committee, Griffin complains to Monica Goodling, an assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, about the BBC reporter's reproduction of caging lists in Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse." In the email dated February 5 of this year, Griffin stated that the purpose of 'caging' was to identify "fraudulent" voters. This contradicts one explanation of the Bush campaign to BBC that the lists were of potential donors and not in any way created to challenge voters. Griffin confidentially wrote: "The real story is this: There were thousands of reported illegal/fake voter registrations around the country, so some of the Republican State Parties mailed letters welcoming new voters to the newly registered voters. … The Republican State Parties ultimately wanted to show that thousands of fraudulent registrations had been completed." Last Wednesday, Goodling testified under a grant of immunity before the House Judiciary Committee that Gonzales' Deputy Paul McNulty, "failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote 'caging' during his work on the President's 2004 campaign." Goodling's testimony prompted Conyers' request to the BBC for the Griffin emails. Last night Palast showed Conyers a Griffin email from August 2004 indicating that Griffin not only knew of 'caging,' but directed the operation.

Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters’ right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters including homeless individuals, students and soldiers sent overseas.

Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US Attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin’s resignation, “We’re not through with him by any means.”

Conyers indicated to the BBC that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive ‘caging’ operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove.

Chrysler will ditch its pension plans

Your tweedier auto writers used to like to sit around bemoaning the idiocy of Wall Street and its single-minded focus on short-term results, to hell with the publicly-held car companies' long-term prospects -- as expressed, for instance, in quaint matters like a firm's commitment to engineering and manufacturing excellence or, heaven forfend, the well-being of its workforce. Now with the pending sale of Chrysler to the private-equity firm cum hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, we same industry scribes may soon find ourselves longing for the transparency, accountability and kindly benevolence of publicly held companies.

If there were ever an example of all that's wrong -- and all that's going to be wronger -- with American industry, it's to be found in the Chrysler saga.

Many will know Chrysler, then America's number three domestic auto maker, was swallowed in 1998 by Daimler-Benz at the behest of its swashbuckling former chairman, Juergen Schrempp, an erstwhile diesel mechanic (and, by all accounts, world-class megalomaniac,) for $36 billion. Fewer will recall that this so-called "merger of equals" immediately cost tens of thousands of workers their jobs and the Chrysler executives who remained most every scintilla of their authority. Soon afterwards, Chrysler's scrappy Plymouth division was given an ill-advised trapdoor, its sales volume lost forever. But such was the cost, the unsentimental Germans explained, of realizing the "synergies" of the two companies.

Ah, synergy. Nine years later, Cerberus has had to scare up just $6 billion to buy Chrysler, the market evidently concluding that Daimler's magic touch, in nine short, synergistic years, had caused Chrysler to shed an embarrassing 80% of its value. Capital is fickle, Apple iPhones are sexier, but, still, you gotta say, Nice work, herren!

Addressing his firm's $30 billion miscue, Daimler's current chairman and former Schrempp golden boy, Dieter Zetsche, shared a belated realization. "The American volume customer is not willing and is probably not able to pay premium prices for premium technologies."

On Illegal Residents

ILLEGAL RESIDENTS, WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?? (An opinion) by Barnaby Thrushwallow. Send comments to thrushwallow9@msn.com

First, the ubiquitous use of the word “immigrant” to describe persons who come to our nation in two distinctly different categories: i. e. legal and illegal, seems an obvious attempt to blur the status of each melding them into a single category. This must be stopped! It reduces the efforts made by legal immigrants from around the world to absolute zero.

People who work very hard to enter this nation by the rules---learning English, US History, the Constitution, etc.; following the legal steps in residence; filing proper paperwork; and completing other requirements deserve to become full-fledged citizens of the United States of America. They earn full Constitutional and civil rights and we welcome them heartily! Such immigrants have always been welcome---such are the immigrants who built this country. However, if individuals just walk across the national border and set up housekeeping in violation of many laws (actually deserving to be jailed) —and then have citizenship handed to them “on a silver platter” as it were, the efforts of those with integrity go unrewarded. This is blatantly unjust! Surely, the legal immigrants must ask, “Why?”

On a KPBS radio broadcast I heard a nameless illegal immigrant state at the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles that she had been living in the US for 25 years and “It’s about time I got my citizenship”—or words to that effect. To her, I reply, “When did you file your declaration—your “first papers?” (Immigration law allows an immigrant to file a declaration of Intent at any time after reaching US soil. Then a 5 year residence requirement begins at the end of which said immigrant may petition for full citizenship—providing that the same 5 years encompass a 2 year wait between the declaration and the petition. Military service is considered a substitution for the declaration and only a 1-year residency is required. If a child under age 18—enters the country, he or she must first attain his or her majority and then wait out the 5-year residency.)

A related tangent comes to mind, wherein a couple who entered the US illegally begged to be granted citizenship upon the basis that they had birthed a baby on US soil who, by virtue of that fact, had dual citizenship with their own country and the US. This is not a just or fair request since these parents were not refugees in any sense, and such a child cannot claim its rights for itself, but must rely on its parents until it attains majority. Therefore, the parents should take the child with them back to the country of their rightful citizenship. I am personally aware of a baby born in Japan shortly after World War II to US parents. These parents would never in a million years have attempted to claim for themselves a right to Japanese citizenship based upon his birth.

Much false or misguided compassion centers upon these individuals because they have thrown themselves into what was described by a radio commentator as the “shadowy world outside the law” and find themselves victimized by unscrupulous individuals. This is an unfortunate choice they make. They knowingly enter the country illegally. To do this anywhere is a risky proposition. Would they risk it trying to enter any other nation—Saudi Arabia, for example? There has been much ado made about their “immigrant rights” –meaning actually “illegal immigrants’ rights” –and “civil rights”. I call to your attention, dear reader, the fact that in the United States illegal immigrants have no rights—constitutional or civil. They enter the nation by breaking the law and in so doing make themselves criminals. For example, I am told that each individual must at some point use false identification documents (a jailable crime) and that if such an individual takes a job or rents a home, he or she must sign several employment and rent related documents including a W4 form, a job application, and a rental application, among others, stating under penalty of perjury that he or she has the legal right to work or live in this country. Of how many counts of perjury is each one of these individuals guilty? Former United States President Bill Clinton suffered the impeachment process based upon only a single count of perjury! Each count of perjury carries a penalty of at least 2 years in the Federal prison. In the US we jail criminals, we do not grant them social welfare benefits. Regarding civil rights, perhaps they do not yet know that even native-born US citizens who become criminals actually lose their civil rights while they are incarcerated. They do not have the right to freedom of assembly; they do not have protection from illegal search and seizure; they do not have the right to vote, etc. When they have served their time, paid their “debt to society”, and are released generally their civil rights can be restored—but sometimes they cannot—and have been lost forever.

The first fired U.S. Attorney tells his story

The first sign that crimes may have been committed was when the victims no longer felt nauseous and their hair stopped falling out. Also, it wasn't cold going deep into the vein the way it was before. They needed that hurt. And when it was too long in coming, they grew anxious. Their discomfort after all was their comfort. That was the only way that they knew that the chemotherapy was working.

When the FBI believed that they had enough to make a case, they brought the file to Todd Graves, the then-U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Missouri. Ultimately, Robert Courtney, a local pharmacist would be sentenced to thirty years in prison without parole for watering down chemotherapy prescriptions for thousands of cancer patients.

When the Bush administration ordered Graves to resign as U.S. attorney in Jan. 2006, the prosecutor wondered if it might have something to do with the Courtney case. Graves was the first of nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration for reasons that still are not entirely clear.

At the time of his dismissal, Graves had had relatively few conflicts with his superiors at Main Justice in Washington. But one of them involved the Courtney matter.

Diluting drugs for at-risk patients had proved to be lucrative business for pharmacist Robert Courtney. At the time of his arrest, Courtney was worth $18.7 million. He owned two manses in the small exurban enclave of Kansas City known as Tremont Manor and was considering the purchase of a condominium in St. Croix.

Main Justice wanted Courtney's seized assets to be deposited in the U.S. treasury. But Graves had his own ideas: Why not give over the money to compensate the cancer patients and their families?

Automotive Energy Bill bogged down--Huffington

Arianna Huffington at www.huffingtonpost.com, 6/21/7 Dysfunction Jucntion: How the New Energy Bill Add Fuel to a Bloomberg Candidacy

In laying the groundwork this week for a possible independent run for the White House, Michael Bloomberg has been making the case that "Washington is sinking into a swamp of dysfunction."

Exhibit A in his argument should be the debate currently underway in the Senate over raising fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry. It's a perfect example of the fetid D.C. bog at its most dysfunctional.

Raising CAFE standards should be a no-brainer. It's the fastest and most efficient way to reduce our dependence on oil -- especially foreign oil. An increase of just 3 mpg nationwide would save one million barrels of oil per day. But for close to 25 years, the U.S. auto industry and its allies in Congress have repeatedly fought back any and all efforts to raise mileage standards.

That's right, despite all that has happened in the last quarter century in terms of the environment and shifting world politics, the mileage requirement for cars, truck, and SUVs hasn't changed a lick since A Flock of Seagulls was a hot band and Rubik's Cubes were all the rage. Passenger cars are still required to get just 27.5 miles per gallon, while SUVs and light trucks only have to get 21 mpg.

But due to mounting concern over climate change, our dependence on Middle East oil, and skyrocketing gas prices, the political wind has at long last shifted, and an increase in fuel standards is an idea whose time has finally come -- embraced not just by environmentalists but by groups like SAFE, a coalition of top corporate and military leaders that see this as a foreign policy issue.

On Bloomberg by Mark Green

Whatever It Takes: The Bloomy Switch www.huffingtonpost.com by Mark Green, the man who ran for Mayor of New York against Michael Bloomberg.

www.huffingtonpost.com by Mark Green, the man who ran for Mayor of New York against Michael Bloomberg.

Michael Bloomberg's surprise renunciation of his Republican affiliation makes it now likely, based on my unique experience with him, that he will run for president as an Independent (assuming that his mayoral predecessor is not the Republican nominee) and spend $2 billion in some 30 Blue or Purple states with 350 electoral votes. Yes I'm the Mark Green who was his 2001 general election opponent. But I do think that Bloomberg has been a largely successful mayor who's a far more likeable person than 95% of the politicians I've met on both sides of the aisle. And yes it's expedient and opportunistic that he switched from being a life-long Demcorat to running as a Republican in 2001 merely to get on the ballot for mayor...and now switches again to get in position for an Independent candidacy for president. But opportunism apparently hasn't been a fatal flaw among politicians previously.What's the principle here, other than personal ambition? The real principle here is that Mike's a businessman whose bottom line is not party or ideology but doing whatever it takes to get from here to there. Which will be very appealing to folks dismayed by ideological partisanship in Washington.Every successful politician relives if not replicates his/her first campaign and victory in later campaigns. In April of 2001, Bloomberg said that he'd spend up to $30 million to win -- and anything more than that would be "obscene." But when he was behind me by 20 points at $30 million, he simply opened the spigot and spent $74 million to win by 2 points.Conclusions: the chance he runs for president, high; his chance of winning, still infinitesimal because of Electoral College math; his chance of affecting the fall campaign, significant. Which way? It depends on whether he runs on more Democratic issues (anti-Iraq, global warming, guns) or on Republican stalwarts (balanced budgets, 9/11 and terrorism) -- while obviously also doing a pox-on-both-your-houses schtick that strikes a public nerve. Since Bloomberg's no fool and utterly uninhibited by party or philosophy or donors, you've got to figure that he'll run on proven popular Democratic issues such as universal quality health care, greening America, getting out of Iraq -- and "nobody owns me."Unlike Perot, he has an estimable public record and is no loon -- so there's the real possibility that he could beat Perot's 19% in 1992 if the anti-everything, wrong-track public mood continues. While $2 billion in 2008 dollars is some 2000% more than Perot's $65 million, it's even more than that since the mayor is likely to spend it only in states that he could be competitive in -- i.e., states like Florida, New York, New Jersey, even Maine and Wisconsin. That means that his spending presidentially could possibly approach the $100 a vote he reached in 2001. (Bloomberg's not worth the $5 billion often reported but closer to $15 billion when his majority of stock in Bloomberg Inc. is taken into account.)Can't win in a two-party America, you say. The last 3rd party candidate to win was Lincoln, and obviously Bloomberg's no Lincoln. Yes. But. Remember, nearly everyone told him that he couldn't win in 2001...and then voters got a mailing a day in three colors, couldn't watch a Yankee game without seeing an ad an inning, saw billboards in different languages in different communities. All Mike, all day. So when people tell him he can't win, he says to himself -- where have I hard that before?So the bottom line for Mr. Bottom Line: if he thinks he won't embarrass himself and could break 19% nationally and more than that in swing states, he runs and takes 3 votes from the Democratic nominee for every 2 votes he takes from the Republican nominee. A guy who's only book is entitled Bloomberg by Bloomberg should not be underestimated. Mark Green, president of Air America Radio, was the Democratic nominee for mayor against Mike Bloomberg in 2001. My read on this is he is looking for a VP or President nood from the Demos. Rockerfeller was Governor of New York and then VP—not a bad pre-retirement job--jk.

Mark Green, president of Air America Radio, was the Democratic nominee for mayor against Mike Bloomberg in 2001.

My read on this is he is looking for a VP or President nood from the Demos. Rockerfeller was Governor of New York and then VP—not a bad pre-retirement job--jk.

Al Gore Interview--Huffington

Well-armed with all your great questions, I interviewed Al Gore over the weekend. After talking with him and reading his book, The Assault on Reason (which will debut at #1 in the New York Times on Sunday), it was clear that he is obsessed with two kinds of pollution -- the pollution of our planet, and the pollution of our politics and culture. In other words, the toxicity of the atmosphere and the toxicity of the public sphere.

While I completely agree with his passionate warnings about the dangers from these two pollutions, I believe there is a third: the pollution of our leaders' brains and hearts and souls that affects their spines when they know what is true, right, and in the best interests of the country but fail to stand up for it. After all, leadership has always been about seeing clearly while most around you have their vision clouded by the cultural toxicity Gore rails against.

"It's a problem that George Bush invaded Iraq," Gore told me. "It's a problem that he authorized warrantless mass eavesdropping on American citizens. It's a problem that he lifted the prohibition against torture. It's a problem that he censored hundreds of scientific reports on the climate crisis -- but it's a bigger problem that we've been so vulnerable to such crass manipulation and that there has been so little outcry or protest as American values have been discarded, one after another. And if we pretend that the magic solution for all these problems is simply to put a different person in the office of the president without attending to the cracks in the foundation of our democracy, then the same weaknesses that have been exploited by this White House will be exploited by others in the future."

Gore kept returning to this theme during our conversation: that it's not enough to just throw George Bush and the Republicans out, we need to address the root causes of the rot afflicting our politics. He highlighted some of the elements of the rot, particularly what has happened to our media culture, and the dominant influence of money:

"Money has replaced reason as the wellspring of power and influence in the American political system," Gore told me. "What was revolutionary about the United States of America was that individuals could use knowledge as the source of influence and power on a sustained basis for the first time since the agora [the center of Athenian democracy]... Now that money buys 30-second TV ads, lobbyists, computer banks, and Machiavellian political consultants, the wielding of power depends so much on money and so little on ideas that all of the organizations that Americans have formed to pursue progressive ideas to promote the public interest have been badly weakened."

That's why the Internet is so important to Gore. He sees it as a powerful countervailing force to these poisonous influences. "We need to reengage the America people in the process of democracy," he told me. "We have to convince them that their opinions do matter, that their wisdom is relevant, and that their political power can be used effectively. And the Internet is beginning to bring about some very positive changes in this area -- it's why it is so important that bloggers are now able to hold newspapers and politicians accountable in ways they couldn't even just a few years ago. The E=MC2 of American democracy is John Locke's formulation that all just power derives from the consent of the governed -- and that consent assumes an environment where there can be an open and accessible exchange of ideas."

Venezuela TV station closed for violation of laws

From www.greenleft.org.au, an Australian pro-labor website, with extensive coverage of international news. Reporting that lacks the slant of corporate media. Note the reference to CNN coverage of the closing of the station, and their failure to report the fact that the station wasn’t closed, but its license not renewed because of its numerous violations of law. There has been an attack by our corporate media on the democratic government of Venezuela. VENEZUELA Corporate media outraged: Venezuela expands free speech Stuart Munckton 31 May 2007Venezuela has been facing the most sustained campaign of destabilisation, including a barrage of media lies internationally and violent riots inside Venezuela, since the last serious attempt to overthrow the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez in 2004.

31 May 2007Venezuela has been facing the most sustained campaign of destabilisation, including a barrage of media lies internationally and violent riots inside Venezuela, since the last serious attempt to overthrow the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez in 2004.

Iraq Surge Fails

Iraq: Stop Bush's killing spree! Doug Lorimer 8 June 2007, for greenleft at www.greenleft.org/au There is little mystery behind Iraqis' tenacious resistance to US President George Bush's war of occupation: over four years of war have left the country devastated and resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, according to a study published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.

There is little mystery behind Iraqis' tenacious resistance to US President George Bush's war of occupation: over four years of war have left the country devastated and resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, according to a study published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.

The surge isn’t a failure, for its unspoken objective is not to subdue the Iraq people, but to show U.S. resolve to continue the occupation and thereby add pressure upon its parliament to sign a trade agreement which would turn over the operation of their oil field to foreign corporations. The second purpose hegemony in the Middle East has succeeded. Thirteen nations thus far have sign MEFTA, which opens them up to globalization--jk.