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Kenneth Tomlinson Under Investigation
Yet another Bush appointee is under investigation, Kenneth Tomlinson, recently departed Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. From the NY Times:
Last July, the inspector general at the State Department opened an inquiry into Mr. Tomlinson's work at the board of governors after Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, forwarded accusations of misuse of money.
The lawmakers requested the inquiry after Mr. Berman received complaints about Mr. Tomlinson from at least one employee at the board, officials said. People involved in the inquiry said it involved accusations that Mr. Tomlinson was spending federal money for personal purposes, using board money for corporation activities, using board employees to do corporation work and hiring ghost employees or improperly qualified employees.
Here's the interesting part:
In recent weeks, State Department investigators have seized records and e-mail from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, officials said. They have shared some material with the inspector general at the corporation, including e-mail traffic between Mr. Tomlinson and White House officials including Karl Rove, a senior adviser to President Bush and a close friend of Mr. Tomlinson.
Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson became friends in the 1990's when they served on the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor agency to the board of governors. Mr. Rove played an important role in Mr. Tomlinson's appointment as chairman of the broadcasting board.
The content of the e-mail between the two officials has not been made public but could become available when the corporation's inspector general sends his report to members of Congress this month.
All roads lead to Rove, don't they?
Assignment for the Day -- to list ongoing investigations involving key Republication lawmakers. My first contribution:
Lawmaker From Ohio Subpoenaed in Abramoff Case
"Rep. Robert W. Ney notified Congress yesterday that he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury examining the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff, making the Ohio Republican the first lawmaker to receive such a demand in the expanding influence-peddling investigation."--Washington Post, Saturday, November 5, 2005; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/04/AR2005110401197.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
from Kossack Bert:
In a story on the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program written by Congressional Quarterly today (subscription only, no link), this anecdote is worthy of further circulation:
Several Border Patrol officers said they are worried the exemptions may leave airports and land borders open to terrorist infiltration. One Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent at Dulles International Airport said he was recently told to waive the US-VISIT requirement for about 70 people arriving from Saudi Arabia who were affiliated with the Saudi royal family.
"People coming from known terrorist countries [are] to be fingerprinted and photographed for a reason," said the CBP officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "When you start making exceptions, you start losing the credibility of the program."
The French riots & the Argentinian protests turning violent - these stories are being covered better by the foreign press & most liberal US outlets - just as when we protest here.
The rightwing nationalist press always seeks to hide dissent (eg. staged Bush audiences during campaign & with military) and put out propaganda (domestically & overseas) - & they certainly didn't like images of neglected hurricane victims in New Orleans getting out to the world.
The fact is, all of these unfortunate links have a sole underlying cause - exploitation of cheap labor so the rich get richer.
New Orleans - minority service industry
Paris - outsourcing, cheap Chinese imports,
failure to integrate immigrants
South America - attempt to introduce "free trade"
which is a pyramid scheme with a higher top
(the rich) and wider bottom (the poor)
It's all very similar to 1999 WTO "Battle of Seattle" - the issue was the same - exploitation of the poor by the rich for profit.
FOX news just explains by saying "Chavez hates America." Well the rich in America hate the poor in America and many in America don't realize that as the rich get richer, not only will the poor get poorer but the middle class will get smaller and that could include many Bush supporters.
There was discussion about what was going to happen next week in Congress - a cryptic email from John Kerry?
Predictions (gleaned from careful news reading):
1. House will go with Senate on opposing torture and Bush will veto
2. Murta will make an Iraq-related speech - he is a conservative Democrat who seldom speaks out on such issues, a Vietnam Marine vet, and this will pull weight
3. Kerry & Daeschle have called for troop pullbacks along lines of a schedule and may say more or there will be others
Why is it just too much to ask for a man to be a president AND a hero...?
I have been wondering all morning just WHY exactly do we accept that ALL power is a little corrupt? Somewhat corrupt.. A little MORE corrupt than others. It is all bu**sh*t but yet ALL of us, including me, have grown complacent, even accepting of it.
Why is complete honesty a JOKE in the halls of power?
All men in power lie. That is just a fact. It is just the way it is.
From now on I refuse to accept it, fact or not.
My mother told me once "You believe you can change things. Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. But BELIEVING it is enough to make it happen eventually."
All we have left is that.
And these little nazi-wannabes are going to RUE the day they faced our faith in miracles. Because we ALL believe this will not stand. We are ALL willing to fight for nothing more or less than that faith.
"There is nothing left. Tis' a welcome hour."
Blockade the Washington Post. And soon. Bring Orange.
If we believe we can change it.
Then it CAN be done.
There is one very important thing to remember about orange.
The rest of the world will see it and understand perfectly.
It will signal the entire world we HEAR them and we are trying to stop ourselves. It will also show them we understand what is happening in our own country despite being LIED TOO DAILY by a compliant and subjigated press.
It is time to try to recapture the heart and minds of the world, and show them we are trying.
Argentina is just a small version of our future.
Our VERY NEAR future at that.
Somali pirates take on rich British cruise ship - it's desperate poverty that's fueling crime, violence and terrorism. It's not people who are just "haters" or "evildoers."
Most people just want to be left alone to live their lives with their friends and families & are basically good.
The corruption at the top feeds the rich (I notice that the amount in budget cuts to programs like Medicare, Medicaid and school lunches is equaled by new tax cuts for the rich) and inflames the poor.
I agree that Argentina is a picture of our near future (at the rate we're going) but in a way, we already are Argentina. If we are one hemisphere under free trade, and the playing field is equaled for the corporations, we are Argentina.
It doesn't matter where I've travelled now - I see the same thing - the dollar store, the Euro store, the pound store, the looney store - all full of Chinese goods. & only the rich in China are benefiting, not the millions at subsistence level! That creates another time bomb.
France had a time bomb (as does Europe) and it took a small fuse.
We had the same thing in the 1960s and Katrina may have almost been a catalyst for more trouble. It won't take much more.
Venezuela has agreements with Iran, with India. Condi Rice can't twist Putin's arm easily anymore. W isn't having much success in the southern part of our hemisphere. & I'm talking about the dignitaries, not the peaceful protesters or the guerilla warfare in the streets. Everything is held together by a chaotic, fluctuating system of treaties, agreements, or (more corruptly) bribes, contracts (sometimes exclusive - think Halliburton) and it's fragile.
Our country now lives on borrowed money and if we aren't considered a good investment anymore, it's not just our government that can be flushed down a drain a la Grover Norquist, but everyone's.
Connect the dots - money is missing from Iraq, has been wasted. There is no money left. Take it from the elderly, the sick and children.
---------
EXAMPLE ONE OF GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION & WASTE
An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.
The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work. Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by K.B.R. that previous audits had criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq. The group, known as the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, compiled reports from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors to carry out its analysis.
This is the type of story that is unlikely to create trust for the United States in Iraq.
THE RESULT:
The Senate approved sweeping deficit-reduction legislation last night that would save about $35 billion over the next five years by cutting federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture supports and student loans, while clamping down on fraud in the Medicaid program.
The focus now shifts to the House, where the Budget Committee voted 21 to 16 yesterday to approve a more extensive bill saving nearly $54 billion through 2010 with cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, agriculture subsidies and child support enforcement. The House measure would allow states to impose premiums and co-payments on poor Medicaid recipients for the first time.
WhAT THEY DON'T SAY IS THE NEXT LEGISLATION TO BE PROPOSED WILL CUT THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY "SAVED" FROM "REDUCING" THE DEFICIT AND GIVE IT TO THE RICH IN THE FORM OF MORE TAX CUTS
(inwardly yelling, which is not healthy)
"I see the same thing - the dollar store, the Euro store, the pound store, the looney store - all full of Chinese goods"
HAHAHAHAHA Amen Sister
You knopw what? I guess I am a true believer in two ways...
I totallly believe absolute blunt honesty, told in a brutal unblinking humble tone can save us all.
And 2...
I BELIEVE that time will come. I feel it in my bones that good will triumph over evil. And what we face is no less than evil.
Torture, the rape of the earth, bombs, soldiers, death. Death. More death.
The starvation of our own.
We are NOT Argentina, and I will tell you why.
We have the winter soldier, whom shall never bow to tyranny.
Paul Revere raced the devil himself one night. His name was also George. And throught the night there were those lighting lanterns to guide him through that terrible night. A whole ARMY of them.
It is time to bang on the barns, and RUDELY awake the sunshine patriots.
If we AREthen there is NOTHING between what is happening there and US.
It is what georgie wanted all along.
The Ultimate War Prize. The King Of The Americas.
If we do not stop it now, soon, this week... Then we had ALL better stock up on lanterns.
Its going to be a long hard winter.
There are two important reasons we MUST send a signal to the outside world...
One.. They WANT us to stop this, They WANT to BELIEVE IN US again. They will see and they will will throw their support behind it and they will make sure we know they are there for us, UNITED
And 2
If the eyes of the world can not be captured then bush will BURY us in history. When we are sent to prison, re-education camps, to death... No one will know. No one will come for us. No one will ask WHY it is happening to us.
Blockade The WaPo. Then Foe News. Then the NY Times. Let them KNOW we are not going to go quietly into THEIR version of history.
History belongs to those who WRITE it. It is time to pay the authors themselves a visit. They have MUCH to answer for.
And until we get those answers, we will wait till hell freezes over. On their front steps.
New poll shows majority of Americans support impeachment of President Bush.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
Christy
By "We are all Argentina" I meant that if Bush gets his way about "free trade," then any corporation can search the whole space of North and South America for the cheapest labor - we will all end up exploited, whether in the workplace or purchasing at the counter. Only the rich will benefit, not average people of North and South America. I know you support John Edwards - what he has to say fits all of this.
THE TRADE AGREEMENT IS STALLED!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/international/americas/06prexy.html?hp&ex=1131253200&en=489650fc6af9db18&ei=5094&partner=homepage
W thought he could just slide it through and that his Supreme Court appointment would be passed through by Christmas. "It would be easier if I were just dictator."
We need to keep privatization of Social Security stalled & buried til he's out & gone. We need to keep tax cuts for those over $200,000 year from happening & being made permanent. We need not to have our safety net programs cut for poor, elderly and sick. We need to have no part of torture (Cheney is "working over" Senators as W is out of town). By the way, someone asked if Condi is keeping a low profile. A French paper reported her to be in SE asia (up to no good!)
Victoria Ellen
I notice Zogby did that poll.
The breakdown doesn't reveal party affiliation but the percentages look like one would expect along party lines - looks like more and more Democrats feel strongly, & picking up alot of Independents & some polls show 10-15 percentage points for groups like young white males. I find that very revealing.
Some people believed in W's simplistic platitudes - people expecting a fast food fix. It's a little less comfortable when everywhere he goes and everything he touches floods, leaks or catches fire.
Christy
History also belongs to those who REwrite it (think Bush - as soon as he gets into office, he seals the records not only for himself but for his predecessors in the White House).
I'm reminded of SILENCE = DEATH
Watergate-era atty. John Dean:
Fitzgerald wants to flip Libby for Cheney
A Cheney-Libby Conspiracy, Or Worse? Reading Between the Lines of the Libby Indictment
by John Dean
Having read the indictment against Libby, I am inclined to believe more will be issued. In fact, I will be stunned if no one else is indicted.
Indeed, when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1104-32.htm
We can PROVe the press is embedded with a corrupt White House.
Its way past time to go ask them about it face to face.
RE Christy's Post: My mother told me once "You believe you can change things. Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. But BELIEVING it is enough to make it happen eventually."
---
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
even Yahoo news titles are getting snarky :)
Bush tries to sell Americans on Alito
http://tinyurl.com/dg8u6
civics lesson for today:
Twenty questions about
impeaching a vice president
By Mary Maxwell, Ph.D.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_112.shtml
On Cheney (He's Teflon!)
http://www.troubletown.com/cartoons/index.html
RE: Restore Integrity's Post: civics lesson for today
Question 19. How can a citizen start impeachment activity?
A: By 'talking it up,' by seeking publicity for the idea, and by persuading a Congressperson to propose it. Since 2001 when President George W. Bush took office, there have been numerous public calls for his impeachment and some of these extend their proposal to include the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. One proposal that names all of those persons is sponsored by Ramsey Clark, who was Attorney General in the 1960s. So far, 607,000 citizens have signed his petition. Number 16 in Clark’s list of complaints sounds particularly relevant to the vice president, namely "refusal to provide information and records [needed for] legislative oversight of executive functions."
I have two questions of my own:
(1) Could we get additional people to sign this petition (say another 600,000), and ...
(2) Is there a Congressperson who has enough guts to propose articles of impeachment, based on this petition
Nothing DeLay says or does is beyond belief anymore but that one just struck me as the ultimate hutzpah:
"Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who was instrumental in shaping the highway bill in the House, apologized for its excesses during an appearance on Thursday before the Heritage Foundation.
In a speech to a group of conservative academics and policy experts, DeLay blamed the runaway spending of recent years on minority Democrats. When he took questions, the first came from a senior official at the American Conservative Union, who asked DeLay, "How large does the Republican majority in the House and Senate need to be before Republicans act like the fiscal conservative I thought we were?"
He pushes pork than blames black Dems. What a racist pig.
I just talked to a young friend in Paris and we discovered alot of parallels. She felt that her foreign minister catalyzed potential for violence by using inflammatory and derogatory language toward minority immigrant youth that was beneath the dignity of a public official. That's much the same as W has done in lumping together disparate elements as haters, evildoers, terrorists, insurgents - without knowing their geopolitical connections, if any. It's the same thing his condescending mother did with her unthinking characterization of Katrina survivors.
What ever happened to respect for human dignity?
We agreed that unscrupulous and power-hungry politicians, such as Bush or Sarkozy, can easily use fear - whether of terror or immigrants - to fuel their own careers and to propel unthinking, uncritical masses in their own direction. It seems to be a universal thing.
I keep seeing references to conservative politicians - their recent talking point is that the liberal politicians don't have a plan. Yet world domination is not a real plan. Going into a war blind (except for profit) is not a plan. Cutting funds without thinking about consequences (more meth labs, more prisoners, more child abuse) is not a plan. W did not have a plan for anything going into his election except turning out public programs over to the stock market, making his friends rich, and amassing more oil.
fairly interesting account re French violence - concurs about inflammatory coverage abroad (sensationalizing things) & Sarkozy's role in making inappropriate remarks
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DC3DBDDB-4AB8-4608-ABA5-825044B50150.htm
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1635053,00.html
Another example of doing stupid things and increasing potential for terrorism - this time starting a needless war.
Britain's ex-ambassador to Washington makes a good case.
see also
FOCUS | Ex-British Ambassador: Iraq War 'Fueled Terrorism'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110505X.shtml
Britain's involvement in the Iraq war has "partly radicalized and fueled" the rise of home-grown terrorism, London's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, says.
Bush Feels Hand of God as Ratings Slump
(An African version of yesterday's Guardian story - this is what people in Zambia are reading)
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articleid=255770
We will not win hearts and minds until our government stops doing stupid things. Karen Hughes can't save us or Condi either.