I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.x⁴⁴

DeChristopher went inside, and when someone asked him if he was there to bid, he said “yes”. He showed his driver’s license, signed a form and got an bidder’s paddle for the auction:

[O]nce I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could.

Eventually, the authorities caught on to DeChristopher’s game, and ushered him out:

The federal officials who took me into custody said that I cost the oil companies in the room hundreds of thousands of dollars and prevented 22,500 acres of land from being sold for fossil fuel development. I had a very open conversation with the federal agents about my motivations and values. They were friendly, respectful, and somewhat sympathetic.x⁴⁵

The form DeChristopher had signed held a notice of the penalty for fraudulent bidding — up to five years prison.

I knew that as bad as this could possibly turn out, if I ended up going to prison, then I could live with that. But if I saw an opportunity to protect the land of southern Utah and I saw an opportunity to keep some oil in the ground and give us a better chance for a livable future and I passed up that opportunity, then I wouldn’t be able to live with that.

News of DeChristopher’s action brought him much support from across the country. Patrick Shea, the BLM chief under President Clinton, became DeChristopher’s lawyer pro-bono, and via Bidder70.org, people sent in $45,000 for a down payment on the $1.7 million that DeChristopher owes.

I see that, you know, for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and, you know, the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.

Three days ago, the Bush wilderness sale hit another stumbling block in a federal court case brought by several environmental groups.x⁴⁶ The judge ordered the administration not to cash any of the auction checks on the grounds that “development of domestic energy resources … is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment”. Shea commented on that news:

The Temporary Restraining Order will be good evidence for Tim’s case, but he still has a separate criminal process to go through. … We are getting good cooperation from the Federal government in trying to resolve Tim’s case, we expect after Tuesday [inauguration day] the cooperation will increase.x⁴⁶

Sources

⁴⁰ ‘America Puts Brakes on Drive for More War, note 103’ – The Paragraph, 2006-11-30

⁴¹ ‘Papers Detail Industry’s Role in Cheney’s Energy Report’ By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post, Page A01, July 18, 2007

⁴² ‘What Am I Bid for the American Wild?’ By Michael Winship, ConsortiumNews.com, January 10, 2009

⁴³ ‘Bogus BLM oil bidder: I’ve got the lease money’ by Patty Henetz, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2009-01-10

⁴⁴ ‘Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling’ – Democracy Now, 2008-12-22

⁴⁵ ‘Why I Disrupted A Fraudulent Auction’ by Tim DeChristopher, Bidder70.org, 2008-12-21

⁴⁶ ‘Court Orders Government to Stop Land Leasing in Utah’ – The National Resources Defense Council, 2009-01-18

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Obama victory party at White House — Jotman

Sources

¹⁰ ‘At the White House, an Obama Party’ By Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, November 5, 2008

Amid a cacophony of car horns honking and chants of “Yes We Can” and “O-ba-ma,” there were taunts directed at the current occupant of the White House, chants of “No More Bush” and “Nah-nah, Good-bye.”

…

George W. Bush will not get the impeachment that he has so thoroughly earned, but at least there will be the scene of ecstatic young Americans wishing him to be gone from the White House that he illegitimately claimed in the stolen election of 2000.

As I walked among the young crowd that packed into Pennsylvania Avenue and reveled in the area around Lafayette Park, I was reminded of a very different moment nearly eight years earlier when I went with two of my sons, Sam and Nat, to a spot a few blocks away.

We stood in the chilly rain on Jan. 20, 2001, as protesters chanted angrily against Bush’s ascension to the presidency, a position he claimed with the unprecedented help of five Republican allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.

That day was a dark and ominous beginning to what has proven to be a catastrophic eight years.

¹¹ ‘Bush Adds Another Gem to Lie Log’ The Paragraph, December 15th, 2007

¹² ‘Bush administration cronyism and incompetence’ SourceWatch

¹³ ‘Bush Impeachment Crimes Will Not Be Buried’ The Paragraph, June 23rd, 2008

¹⁴ ‘Bunny Greenhouse Faced Halliburton War Profits Express’ The Paragraph, October 22nd, 2006

¹⁵ ‘Daily Weather Maps, 2008-11-05’ – U.S. Hydrometeorological Prediction Center

¹⁶ Transcript of Barack Obama’s victory speech, 2008-11-04

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

¹⁷ ‘McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer’ The Paragraph, August 23rd, 2008

¹⁸ ‘Election Day’ – Blue at bluelightful, bluelicious, bluelovely

… then we were off, in the rain, me wrapped in my friend’s coat, giving hugs and high fives to strangers, all the cars stopping to let us pass through, to the White House where there were drums and cheering and singing and a giant cardboard Obama cutout being passed from hand to hand as if he were there crowdsurfing with us (‘cause you know he would) — and then we saw, unbelievably, in the crowd of 4,000, more people we knew, and we all hugged and took photos and jumped up and down and cried and then the lights in the White House went out and we said that the next day for sure Jon Stewart would talk about how President Bush tried to get all those damn kids off his lawn.

The most amazing thing was how peaceful it was. No one got hurt. No one got in any fights. (I checked the crime reports the next day.) We were all excited and many of us were drunk, but it was so joyous. Even when the crowd started singing together that “na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” song, even that was good-spirited. It was the very definition of peaceable assembly.

¹⁹ ‘Lights Out, George’ Cape Cod Today

The president who has been MIA for all these last weeks, lest he be blamed for John McCain’s fortunes, did what only he would do in this instance. He turned out the lights at the White House.

Shortly after midnight, the celebration that had been taking place in the ambient light of the White House faded to dark, while figures continued dancing in the shadows.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Now in my job I travel around the world and I occasionally play to big stadiums or crowds like this, just like Senator Obama does. And I continue to find out that wherever I go, America remains a repository for people’s hopes, their desires. It remains a house of dreams. And a thousand George Bush’s and a thousand Dick Cheney’s will never be able to tear that house down. That’s something that only we can do, and we’re not going to let that happen.

…

[O]ur house of dreams has been abused, it’s been looted, and it’s been left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, and for influence, for a quick buck. It needs strong arms, strong hearts, strong minds. We need someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, his temperateness, his deliberativeness, his maturity, his pragmatism, his toughness, and his faith. But most of all it needs us — it needs you and it needs me. And he’s gonna need us. Cause all that a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between us, between its citizens. And whatever grace God has decided to impart to us, it resides in our connection with one another, and in our life and the hopes and the dreams of the man or the woman up the street or across town — that’s where we make our small claim upon heaven.

Now in recent years that social contract has been shredded. We look around today and we can see it shredding before our eyes. But tonight and today we are at the crossroads. We are at the crossroads, and it’s been a long, long, long time coming.

…

So I don’t know about you, but I know I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back! Now is the time to stand with Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

Bruce Springsteen’s monologue — CNN

This Land is Your Land:

Sources

Bruce Springsteen’s monologue, Cleveland, 2008-11-02 [VIDEO] [TRANSCRIPT]

Set List – Point Blank

• The Promised Land
• Youngstown
• Thunder Road
• Working on a Dream (with Patti Scialfa)
• This Land is Your Land
• The Rising

‘Obama rally draws crowds to downtown Cleveland’ – The Plain Dealer Politics Blog

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

… Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.11.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. [The statute] provides … that … any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of [a public] trust.

The second finding addressed the firing:

… Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire Trooper Wooten … was likely a contributing factor to his termination …

The next day, Palin gave six minutes of her time to three Alaskan reporters in a phone conference:

Palin: Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.x³

Anchorage Daily News (ADN): Governor, finding No.1 on the report was that you abused your power by violating state law. Do you think you did anything wrong at all in this Troopergate case?

Palin: Not at all and I’ll tell you, it, I think that you’re always going to ruffle feathers as you do what you believe is in the best interest of the people whom you are serving. … So no, not having done anything wrong, and again very much appreciating being cleared of any legal wrongdoing or unethical activity at all.

ADN: Have you read the whole report?

But Palin did not seem to hear that question, and the handler of the conference moved on to the other reporters, who did not pursue the line of questioning.

So, how do we explain Palin saying she was cleared of unethical activity when the report says the opposite? Could she really be so incurious as to not have read the report’s first finding? Or has she wrapped herself in a fantasy world where such an unpleasant finding cannot enter? Or is she brazenly lying? The Washington Post‘s fact check column answers yes to that last question. It gives Palin four Pinocchios, the highest rating on its deceit scale.x⁴

Sources

¹ ‘Stephen Branchflower Report to the Legislative Council’ October 10, 2008; public report

² ‘Palin’s New ‘Troopergate’ Troubles’ By Jason Leopold, ConsortiumNews.com, October 14, 2008 ‘

³ ‘Palin: ‘Very much appreciating being cleared of any legal wrongdoing or unethical activity at all’‘ by Lisa Demer, The Anchorage Daily News, October 10, 2008

⁴ ‘Four Pinocchios for Palin’ by Michael Dobbs, The Fact Checker, The Washington Post, October 13, 2008

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Ohio Voter Information

• Register by Monday, October 6th: If registering by mail, the envelope must be postmarked on or before October 6th. You can also register in person at a public library, motor vehicle bureau or county board of elections. For info and an online form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE.

• Check your registration: The State of Ohio now provides a search form to check that you are registered and give your polling location — CLICK HERE. If the online search does not find your registration, you can call your county elections board to check — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Absentee ballot: You can vote an absentee ballot by mail or in person at the elections board, without giving a reason, from Tuesday, September 30th, till the day before the election — INFO HERE. For an online absentee ballot request form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE

• Register and Vote same day: You can register and vote an absentee ballot the same day, from Tuesday, September 30th, through Monday, October 6th, at your county elections board office — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Vote (and bring ID): Election day is Tuesday, November 4th, voting hours are from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Bring your driver’s license, state photo ID or an ID showing your voter registration address, such as a utility bill — INFO HERE. For an Ohio sample ballot CLICK HERE.

• No vote challenges allowed at polling places: In 2004, long lines at some polling places were further slowed by Republican vote challengers. State law now requires challenges to be issued before election day.x⁹¹x⁸⁷

• Contribute: You can contribute to state candidates and get your money back as a credit on your Ohio income tax — up to $50 filing singly, or $100 filing jointly. The credit applies to these offices: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, attorney general, member of the state board of education, chief justice of the supreme court, justice of the supreme court, or member of the general assembly.x⁸⁹

Sources

Ohio Secretary of State’s Office

⁸⁰ ‘Analysis: Ohio 5-Day Window Suit’ by Sarah Cherry, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, September 25, 2008

Every newly registered early and absentee voter in Ohio — not just those who apply to vote an in-person absentee ballot— could be affected if the court decides that the Republicans’ interpretation of the law is correct and that a voter must be registered for 30 days prior to applying for an absentee ballot. Local officials probably do not currently check all absentee voters’ records to make sure the voter has been registered for 30 days before issuing an early or absentee ballot. However, with this lawsuit, the Republicans are now seeking to make that the practice. Changing the process by which local officials process ballot applications and distribute absentee ballots this late in the election season could cause substantial confusion and disorder.

⁸¹ ‘Ohio election officials brace for early voting’ By STEPHEN MAJORS, AP, 2008-09-30

For weeks, the Ohio GOP accused the state’s Democratic elections chief of interpreting early voting law to benefit her own party in a crucial swing state.

But the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court decided on Monday that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was following the law when she ruled there is a six-day window in which voters can register and vote at the same time.

The decision — also backed by two separate federal judges — means election officials are preparing for the rush of early voting Tuesday, the first day absentee ballots are accepted in advance of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

⁸² ‘Vote Caging and the Attorney General’ by J. Gerald Hebert and Brian Dupre, The Campaign Legal Center, July 23, 2007

The Republican National Committee has been under a federal consent decree not to engage in the practice since getting caught in the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. Despite the injunction, which remains in effect, vote caging schemes continue to be used as an integral part of an ongoing campaign to suppress minority voting rights.

To bring these schemes to an end will require vigorous prosecution by the United States Department of Justice. But the Department’s priorities have shifted over the years, with the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department not only ignoring vote caging schemes, but actively working to give them a boost in the courts.

⁸³ ‘Inside the Vote Cage: Griffin, Goodling and McNulty (No, Not Another Lawfirm)’ by J. Gerald Hebert, The Campaign Legal Center, June 20, 2007

“Sometimes vote suppression is as important in this business as vote-getting.” – Carl Golden, Republican Campaign Spokesperson

…

Vote caging is an illegal voter suppression technique used to keep minorities (mostly blacks) from voting. It’s a relatively-unknown cousin in the nefarious family of vote suppression techniques. The practice has been adopted and perverted from a practice utilized by direct-mailers to clean up their mailing lists by sending out mail to specific individuals and seeing what comes back. The real problems start when political operatives start cherry picking areas likely to vote against their candidates. And it’s inextricably connected to concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department being raised on Capitol Hill.

⁸⁴ ‘Ohio secretary of state prevents vote caging’ By BEN ADLER, Politico, 9/13/08

Kevin DeWine, a Republican in the Ohio State House of Representatives who authored the 2006 law, says it is not an undue burden on people whose mail is returned to show an identification card at the voting booth or to vote provisionally. “People think provisional ballots are a bad thing,” he said. “I think they are a safeguard on the integrity of the ballots.”

⁸⁵ ‘GOP Plans and Denials to Challenge Foreclosed Voters Examined’ By J. Gerald Hebert , Campaign Legal Center Blog, September 29, 2008.

As for Ohio, the initial story there suggested that an Ohio GOP official would not rule out the possibility that the party would challenge voters at the polls stating. Quoting the Franklin County GOP chairman, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Priesse “didn’t rule out challenges before Nov. 4.”

The latest story this week on possible efforts to challenge foreclosed voters came from the NY Times, and contained this passage: “Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.” While this is not an admission that a plan exists to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, it sure isn’t a denial either.

⁸⁶ ‘Secretary Brunner Clarifies Challenge Laws to Protect Voters’ – Ohio Secretary of State’s office, 9/5/2008

Providing guidance to local election officials, Secretary Brunner directed that 60-day notices sent by boards of election to voters that are returned as undeliverable cannot be used as the sole reason for cancelling an Ohioan’s voter registration. These notices are required by law to be sent to voters by boards of elections.

Secretary Brunner also called on the General Assembly to amend this voter registration challenge law passed in 2006, urging that the law conflicts with federal law and violates the U.S. Constitution.

…

In Friday’s directive, Secretary Brunner also advised boards of elections that providing due process on challenges to voter registrations will diminish the likelihood of election lawsuits that can disrupt election planning and administration. The directive requires: providing every challenged voter with notice and an opportunity to be heard; holding a public hearing on all challenges; and holding all hearings prior to Election Day.

⁸⁷ ‘Foreclosed-on voters using old addresses could snag election’ By Robert Vitale, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, July 6, 2008

Although pre-election challenges still are possible, state law now bars party challengers at polling places.

⁸⁸ ‘Ohio elections chief challenges registration law’ The Associated Press, September 07, 2008

A review conducted by her lawyers found that the state law violates federal voting rights laws and the U.S. Constitution, making Ohio counties vulnerable to lawsuits should they use the returned mail as the sole reason for canceling a registration, Brunner said.

Undelivered election notices become public records when they are returned to county boards of elections. A political party could then file a public records request and challenge those voters’ eligibility, especially in precincts where the opposite party has a majority. The process is known as “vote caging.”

The 2006 law enables local election officials to side with the challengers before giving the voters a chance to respond, Brunner said.

⁸⁹ League of Women Voters of Ohio

Any Ohioan who pays state income tax is entitled to claim a 100 % tax credit for contributions to Ohio candidates, up to a limit of $50 per individual or $100 for two persons filing jointly. The tax credit applies only to statewide (including the Ohio Supreme Court but not including U.S. Senate) and to state legislative candidates.

⁹⁰ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ‘‘caging.’‘ During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett — who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County — sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn’t sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell’s direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) — a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ‘‘inquisition.’‘(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff’s detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP’s claims of fraud.(74) — LaRaye Brown, ‘‘Elections Board Plans Hearing For Challenges,’‘ The News Messenger, October 26, 2004.

⁹¹ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas.(157) Although it was billed as a means to ‘‘ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud,’‘(158) Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP’s attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would ‘‘create chaos, longer lines and frustration.’‘(159)

…

In fact, Blackwell gave Republican challengers unprecedented access to polling stations, where they intimidated voters, worsening delays in Democratic precincts. By the end of the day, thanks to a whirlwind of legal wrangling, the GOP had even gotten permission to use the discredited list of 35,000 names from its illegal caging effort to challenge would-be voters.(162) According to the survey by the DNC, nearly 5,000 voters across the state were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges — even though federal law required that they be provided with provisional ballots.(163)

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

McCain delivers a howler
with a straight face.

Sources

⁷⁰ John McCain’s Acceptance Speech, 2008-09-04

⁷¹ ‘FactChecking McCain’ – FactCheck.org, September 5, 2008

⁷² ‘John McCain Revealed’ – AFL-CIO

⁷³ ‘Big Oil vs. Little Wind’ – The Carpetbagger Report, August 12th, 2008

⁷⁴ ‘McCain Offers Few Details on Economic Plan’ By Robert Barnes, The Washington Post, 2008-09-19

⁷⁵ ‘McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer’ – The Paragraph, 2008-08-23

⁷⁶ ‘McCain Enabled Our Economic Meltdown’ By Robert Scheer, Truthdig. September 18, 2008

… [McCain] voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.

⁷⁷ ‘McCain Remarks on the Financial Markets’ – CQ Transcripts Wire, September 16, 2008

⁷⁸ ‘McCain Embraces Regulation After Many Years of Opposition’ By Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, September 17, 2008, Page A01

⁷⁹ ‘Obama’s Fannie Mae ‘Connection’‘ by Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post Fact Checker, 2008-09-19

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

…

Wake up America. This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left.

This is call for you to go from down to up.

Up with the rights of workers.

Up with wages.

Up with fair trade.

Up with creating millions of good paying jobs rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems.

Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon
emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all.

Up with education for all.

Up with home ownership.

Up with guaranteed retirement benefits.

Up with Peace.

Up with Prosperity.

Up with the Democratic Party

Up with Obama – Biden

…

Kucinich speech at 2008 Democratic National Convention

Dems enjoy Kucinich’s speech:

Action

Petition Congress to to impeach Bush: Rep. Kucinich is trying to get one million signatures by September 10th to move his impeachment bill. He will deliver your petition and message to your Congressman.

Sources

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, 2008-08-26 – VIDEO | TEXT

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s web site

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

[T]hey’re honorable people, and I’m proud to have them as part of my team.

…

The right to represent interests of groups of Americans is a constitutional right. There are people that represent firemen, civil servants, retirees, and those people are legitimate representatives of a variety of interests in America.x⁵⁰

But the lobbyists holding top spots in McCain’s campaign do not represent firemen, civil servants and retirees. Rather, they represent big corporations and foreign governments. Of McCain’s many lobbyists, here are three prime examples:

• McCain’s top national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has lobbied for such corporations as Lockheed Martin and BP, and has pulled in $2 million from corporations that have given significant money to McCain. Scheunemann was a board member of PNAC, the neocon think tank that came up with the policy of knocking off disfavored regimes by military invasion.x⁵¹x⁵² In 1998 he helped write the law that declared regime change in Iraq as U.S. policy and sent $98 million from the U.S. treasury to con man Ahmed Chalabi’s group, which posed as the Iraqi government in exile.x⁵³ And in 2002 he helped with the marketing campaign for President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Another policy Scheunemann pushed is expanding NATO into former Soviet states, such as the country of Georgia, which has paid $800,000 to Scheunemann’s two-man lobbying company.x⁵⁴ For over a year, Scheunemann was getting paid for advice by McCain’s campaign, while his firm was getting paid by Georgia. McCain has championed Georgia’s issues, sponsoring a resolution to get Georgia into NATO, and totally taking Georgia’s side against Russia in the warfare between the two that started two weeks ago in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.x⁵⁵ After Russia invaded Georgia, McCain said he spoke with Georgia’s president Saakashvili and told him “the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation” and “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ‘Today we are all Georgians.’“x⁵⁶ But McCain left out the fact that Georgia started the warfare by attacking South Ossetia, where most persons have Russian citizenship, and killing many hundreds, including some Russian peacekeeping soldiers.x⁵⁷

• McCain’s top campaign strategist, Charlie Black, is also a top Republican lobbyist, who has worked for such corporate clients as Lockheed Martin, GE, AT&T, Blackwater and Rupert Murdoch, and such foreign dictators as Marcos of the Phillipines, Siad Barre of Somalia and Mobutu of Zaire.x⁵⁸x⁵³ He has pulled in $30 million from corporations that have given significant money to McCain.x⁵¹ Black was Ahmed Chalabi’s main escort through the corridors of Washington, as the con man dished out lies to support the coming Iraq invasion. Black was also a big mover in getting AT&T and Verizon off the hook for helping Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

• “I respect no one more in America on issue[s] of economics than I do Phil Gramm,” said McCain.x⁵⁹ Gramm is McCain’s top economic adviser, but he had to lie low for a while after blaming U.S. economic woes on a “mental recession” and calling America “a nation of whiners”.x⁶⁰ As a Senator, Gramm pushed through the “Enron loophole” exempting computer energy market trading from oversight, and enabling Enron’s market manipulation and accounting crimes.x⁶¹ As Congress was wrapping up business in December 2000, Gramm slipped into the budget another act removing oversight, effectively creating the “shadow banking system” that has led to the current mortgage crisis.x⁶² “Foreclosure Phil” now lobbies the U.S. Government for UBS, a big Swiss bank for the wealthy, where he pulls down a seven-figure salary.x⁵³

The sorry record of his top advisers shows that a McCain presidency would strive to continue the Bush years of disastrous foreign and economic policy — and government that serves those big corporations and foreign politicos that shell out to the sleaziest cronies on K Street.

Sources

⁵⁰ ‘McCain says his lobbyists are ‘honorable,’ but they don’t work for ‘legitimate’ causes he picks’ by Michael Roston, The Raw Story, February 22, 2008

⁵¹ McCain’s Lobbyists

• Randy Scheunemann got paid $2,150,000 from corporate clients that gave $135,000 to McCain.

• Charlie Black got paid $30,811,500 from corporate clients that gave $1,519,043 to McCain.

⁵² McCain’s Lobbyists – Randy Scheunemann

⁵³ ‘Heartless Phil and ‘honorable lobbyists’ would run McCain’s White House’ – The Hightower Lowdown, August 2008

⁵⁴ ‘While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia’ By Matthew Mosk and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, The Washington Post, August 13, 2008, Page A03

For months while McCain’s presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia’s lobbyist. Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.

Since 2004, Orion has collected $800,000 from the government of Georgia.

⁵⁵ ‘Was the War in Georgia a Neocon Election Ploy?’ By Robert Scheer, Truthdig, August 13, 2008

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

⁵⁶ ‘McCain: ‘We are all Georgians’‘ by Adam Aigner-Treworgy, NBC, August 12, 2008

⁵⁷ ‘South Ossettia leader says 1,400 killed in conflict’ – Reuters, 8 August 2008

⁵⁸ ‘McCain’s Lobbyists In Trouble For Foreign Lobbying’ – Progressive Media USA, May 11, 2008

⁵⁹ ‘Phil Gramm on Campaign Trail in SC for McCain’ by Bennett Roth, Texas on the Potomac, January 18, 2008

⁶⁰ ‘A Nation of Whiners’ The Washington Post, July 11, 2008, Page A03

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

⁶¹ ‘McCain Defends ‘Enron Loophole’ By Jason Leopold, May 19, 2008’

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

⁶² ‘Could McCain Have Come Up with a More Ill-Suited Economic Advisor Than Phil Gramm?’ By Patricia Kilday Hart, Texas Observer, June 18, 2008.’

While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the “shadow banking system,” an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Barack Obama – (KMGH)

… I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate – I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program – this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges.

I think Obama’s plan for active democratic citizenship is thoughtful and practical. But I would like to offer a half-baked and revolutionary plan: Make every citizen a councilman. Here are the plan’s rough-hewn planks:

• Each adult citizen shall join a grassroots council. Like a jury, a council shall have twelve members and each decision must be unanimous.

• Each council shall elect one of its number to a higher-level council, and each higher-level council shall do the same, and so on, up to the three National Councils. A person shall serve on only one council, vacating the lower when elected to a higher. An election shall occur within 28 days of a vacancy. A council should meet at least twice a year on the first day of Spring and Fall.

• Other duties of a council are — only if needed — to make laws, levy taxes, and elect a president and a judge from its number.

• When in conflict, laws of higher-level councils override those of lower levels. But higher-level councils shall not make laws on strictly lower-level matters. The highest law is a Constitution and Bill of Rights, which no council may override. The Bill of Rights shall include those in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the “freedom of commerce against monopolies,” which Thomas Jefferson tried to get into the original U.S. Bill of Rights.x⁴¹x⁴²

• Each council shall join a group of three councils for making laws. The process is like that used in the Iroquois Confederacy: two of the councils serve as law-makers, while the third serves as judges.x⁴³ One law-making council discusses a matter, while one or more persons from the judging council watch. A judge does not speak, except to warn a law-maker when one has made an error in procedure or proposed something illegal. The council passes a bill and sends it to the other law-making council, which follows the same procedure. The second council passes the bill and sends it to the judicial council, which confirms that the new law is proper. Every year the duties of councils rotate.

• All offices are for life, except in case of impeachment or recall. Also, a person may resign an office or move to another grassroots council.

• A councilman can be impeached for malfeasance by unanimous decision of the other eleven councilmen, or by one of the next lower-level groups of three councils. A councilman can be recalled by the next lower-level council that one came from. If impeached, a person may never again hold higher office, but would still belong to a grassroots council.

• To cover the roughly 225 million adult citizens in the country, we would need eight levels of councils.x⁴⁴ The population could support six seventh-level (Regional) councils. Since there are three National Councils, each Regional council would send six of its number to populate them.

This plan has several advantages. For one, it gives all citizens real, tangible power. And with so many involved, the government would be hard to corrupt. With only twelve votes in any election, it would eliminate campaigning by TV commercial — and each citizen would know the person one was voting for. Citizens would gain leadership experience, so that even the nation’s bowling leagues and art clubs would be better run. Further, the plan could be used by any country, and at the worldwide level, where three councils of twelve stand to work more effectively than the present U.N. in stopping war and climate change.

I think the plan would be best implemented from the ground up, so that the citizenry is quickly engaged. Within two or three years, old city councils would be replaced with new, and the process would be rolling along.

Levels of Councils

The 18 million grassroots councils would involve 214,990,848 persons, which would be about the adult population of the U.S.A. not holding higher office.

Sources

⁴⁰ ‘Text of Obama’s speech’ – The Rocky, Wednesday, July 2, 2008

⁴¹ ‘Happy Human Rights Day!’ The Paragraph 2005-09-05

⁴² ‘Jefferson’s Dream: The Bill of Rights’ by Thom Hartmann

⁴³ ‘Great Law of Peace Brought Iroquois a More Perfect Union’ The Paragraph 2008-01-24

⁴⁴ U.S. Census Bureau

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

So if you reflect back on those five years, I think it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavour and that we’ve come a long way in five years and it’s been well worth the effort.x⁶⁰

But Cheney’s happy talk fades fast into the sad reality of Iraq. There violence has killed 100,000’s of citizens and thousands of U.S. and allied soldiers, and kills more day-by-day.x⁶¹ There violence has driven millions of citizens from their homes. There the five years of violence and neglect have destroyed the infrastructure, and millions of citizens lack safe drinking water and electricity. There half the citizens who need a paying job can’t find one. There, where the country’s major income is oil, it has not flowed for a single day as it had before the invasion. There the U.S. government has spent a half trillion dollars, and spends three billion a week more to maintain the occupation, its massive embassy in the “green zone”, its new military bases, and the lush profits of its corporate contractors.x⁶²

Sen. John McCain, to whom President Bush wants to pass the war baton, also visited Baghdad this week, and also spoke happily: “We find a continued success of the strategy …”, and “The surge is working.” But the time for the “surge” is up, and it has failed. Its benchmarks have not been met and there is no exit in sight for U.S. troops.x⁶³ That does not seem to faze McCain. Instead of an exit plan, he has a staying dream, where the Iraqi government and people welcome U.S. troops for “maybe a hundred years”.x⁶⁴ But since Bush war policy has played out in the torture at Abu Ghraib, the siege of Fallujah, and loose rules of engagement, such welcome seems unlikely.x⁶⁵x⁶⁶x⁶⁷ So what way forward do we have? Southern Iraq gives a clue: since the British occupation troops left Basra, violence has dropped 90%.x⁶⁸

Bush & McCain make up – August 2004. Now Bush wants to pass the war baton to McCain.

Sources

⁶⁰ ‘Headlines for March 18, 2008 — Suicide Bomber Kills 42; Cheney & McCain Cite Success in Iraq’ Democracy Now!

⁶¹ ‘IRAQ: Five Years, And Counting’ – Inter Press Service, Analysis by Dahr Jamail, 2008-03-18

⁶² ‘War Profiteers Profits Over Patriotism in Iraq’ by Robert L. Borosage, Eric Lotke and Robert Gerson; Campaign fo America’s Future; September 2006 – pdf file

⁶³ Despite Failure To Meet Bush’s Original Goals, McCain And Lieberman Declare ‘The Surge Worked’ – Matt, ThinkProgress.org, Jan 10th, 2008

Despite the failure of the surge to meet its political goals, war hawks are rushing to declare victory. Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) declare that “the surge worked.”

Here are a few examples of how their claims of “victory” do not correspond with the reality in Iraq:

CLAIM: “The surge worked.”

FACT: In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by President Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only “met one legislative benchmark and partially met another.” Since then, progress has stalled on key areas laid out by Bush: an oil law, de-Baathification reform, a process for amending the Constitution and provincial elections.

CLAIM: “Conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge.”

FACT: Though the “surge” has helped Sunni Arabs in Anbar province push al Qaeda in Iraq to the sidelines, the decision to turn on al Qaeda was not caused by the “surge.” U.S. commanders wisely “took advantage of these changing dynamics,” but they did not cause them. Additionally, as al Qaeda’s presence has decreased, sectarian strife has increased.

CLAIM: “We have at last begun to see the contours of what must remain our objective in this long, hard and absolutely necessary war — victory.”

FACT: Only politicians and pundits are speaking of victory. At the end of last year, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, cautioned that “recent security gains are fragile and still reversible.” “We are trying to be cautious as we describe the progress that is taking place in Iraq,” Petraeus told Foreign Affairs. “There are a number of concerns that we do have.”

⁶⁴ ‘McCain in NH: Would Be ‘Fine’ To Keep Troops in Iraq for ‘A Hundred Years’‘ by David Corn, 2008-01-03

After the event ended, I asked McCain about his “hundred years” comment, and he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for “a thousand years” or “a million years,” as far as he was concerned. The key matter, he explained, was whether they were being killed or not: “It’s not American presence; it’s American casualties.” U.S. troops, he continued, are stationed in South Korea, Japan, Europe, Bosnia, and elsewhere as part of a “generally accepted policy of America’s multilateralism.” There’s nothing wrong with Iraq being part of that policy, providing the government in Baghdad does not object.

In other words, McCain does not equate victory in Iraq — which he passionately urges at campaign events — with the removal of U.S. troops from that nation.

⁶⁵ ‘America Puts Brakes on Drive for More War’ The Paragraph, 2006-11-30; footnotes 120-122

⁶⁶ ‘The Real ‘Surge’ of 2007: Non-Combatant Death in Iraq and Afghanistan’ By Neta C. Crawford, Catherine Lutz, Robert Jay Lifton, Judith L. Herman, Howard Zinn – Carnegie Council, January 22, 2008

The U.S. says it takes particular care in both Afghanistan and Iraq to avoid killing or injuring non-combatants. And it is true that the rules of engagement have become more restrictive and that the U.S. has used more precision guided munitions in both conflicts than in any previous wars. So, what explains this surge in non-combatant deaths? There are three main factors.

First, the United States has significantly increased “close air support” operations in both countries. In other words, when U.S. and NATO ground forces come into contact with insurgents, the U.S. has increasingly tended to call on helicopters and fixed wing aircraft to fire on targets. While pre-planned attacks can take risks to civilians into account through “collateral damage estimates,” close air support operations are done on the fly and often with poor intelligence. The majority of the deaths recorded in the last year were caused in these operations.

Second, while the Pentagon has increasingly restricted the rules for when its soldiers can use deadly force, the rules of engagement are too permissive, permitting the use of force if the soldier feels threatened with “hostile intent.”

Third, U.S. forces are understandably stressed and therefore sometimes too quick to fire in ambiguous situations. Troops rotations are long, combat stress is high, and returning soldiers report attitudes of contempt for Iraqi and Afghan civilians. This combination of contempt, fear, and fatigue is a toxic brew.

⁶⁷ ‘US/IRAQ: Rules of Engagement ‘Thrown Out the Window’‘ By Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, March 15, 2008

⁶⁸ ‘In Basra, violence is a tenth of what it was before British pullback, general says’ The Associated Press, November 15, 2007