Caught on Tape: Bribes, Public Corruption – In one brazen crime in Tennessee, cameras caught then-Hamilton County Sheriff William Horace “Billy” Long taking thousands in bribes and embracing corruption to the core. Upon taking a wad of cash from an FBI informant, Long gave his blessing to the man’s money-laundering operation.

“They can get all the drugs they want…. they need me to get the money out” of the country, the informant, funeral home operator Rev. Clarence Eugene Overstreet, told the sheriff. The men also share a laugh about rolling in the cash. The Lord is my shepherd; he make me to lay down in green pastures,” the informant says, rubbing his fingers together and emphasizing the word “green” to indicate he’s talking about cash. In another video clip, Overstreet cautions Long about cash, saying, “Now, it’s dope money, so you know, it might be all over the place.”

And the sheriff was even willing to give a gun to a man he knew was a convicted felon, ineligible to own one. “I got you a present, here, a Christmas present,” Long said, unzipping his bag to get out the gun. “I’ll put it in my Bible,” Overstreet said. “Now it’s loaded, ready to go, ok?” Long said, handing over the firearm. “You didn’t get that from me, Rev. I don’t know nothin’ about it,” he added, as Overstreet admired the weapon.

Dallas Police Detained NFL Player Who Was On His Way to See a Dying Relative – Dallas police officer is under investigation after he detained a NFL player who had been on his way to see a dying relative. Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats was rushing to the hospital to see his dying wife’s mother. Dallas Officer Robert Powell refused to let Moats go into the hospital after running a red light. The relative died while Moats was held in the Hospital parking lot.

Shoddy Wiring ‘Everywhere’ on Iraq Bases, Army Inspector Says – Thousands of buildings at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have such poorly installed wiring that American troops face life-threatening risks, a top inspector for the Army says. “It was horrible — some of the worst electrical work I’ve ever seen,” said Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey. Of the nearly 30,000 buildings the Army’s “Task Force Safe” has examined so far, Childs said more than half “failed miserably.” And 8,527 had such serious problems that inspectors gave them a “flash” warning, meaning repairs had to be completed in four hours or the facility evacuated. He said the majority of those buildings were wired by contractor KBR, based in Houston, Texas (with former CEO Dick Cheney).

Medical Care in Foreign Countries Can Cost as Little as 10 Percent of Comparable Care in the United States – Next year alone, an estimated 6 million Americans will travel abroad for surgery, according to a 2008 Deloitte study. “Medical care in countries such as India, Thailand and Singapore can cost as little as 10 percent of the cost of comparable care in the United States,” the report found. Companies such as Los Angeles-based Planet Hospital are creating a niche in the service industry as medical travel planners. One guidebook says that more than 200 have sprung up in the last few years. “We find the best possible surgeons and deliver their service to patients safely, affordably and immediately,” said Rudy Rupak, president of Planet Hospital. “No one should have to choose between an operation to save their life or going bankrupt.”

IBM Wants Stimulus Money While Outsourcing Jobs Out of the U. S. – IBM’s reported plans to lay off thousands of U.S. workers and outsource many of those jobs to India, even as the company angles for billions in stimulus money, doesn’t sit well with employee rights advocates. IBM wants a share of the money in President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for projects updating power grids, creating electronic health care records and furthering the use of broadband. According to Business Week, IBM has indeed been shifting jobs. The magazine reported that the company’s workforce went up from 386,558 at the end of 2007 to 398,000 at the end of 2008. But U.S. employment fell from 121,000 to 115,000 during the same time.

Conservatives [Without Conscience] Attack President Obama With What Conservatives Have Been Doing – The far-right’s staggering disregard for the significant flaws of the former Republican president confounds logic when measured against their ridiculous attacks on the current president. It’s the same thing that Bill O’Reilly does every night: Accuse others of doing what you yourself are guilty of.

ATTACK: President Obama took a vacation to Hawaii.
REALITY: President Bush set a record for presidential vacations during two wars and a major hurricane.

ATTACK: President Obama’s budget could double the national debt.
REALITY: President Bush’s spending actually did.

ATTACK: President Obama is “shredding the Constitution.”
REALITY: You mean there’s any Constitution left to be shredded?

ATTACK: President Obama chuckled while talking about bailing out the auto industry.
REALITY: President Bush routinely smirked and grinned while talking about the significantly more serious issues of war and military casualties.

ATTACK: President Obama is incompetent.
REALITY: Do I even need to do the list?

ATTACK: President Obama is presiding over a one-party fascist government.
REALITY: Didn’t the Republicans say they were going to have a permanent one-party majority? Now go look up fascism and compare that to the actions of the Republicans.

ATTACK: President Obama uses a teleprompter.
REALITY: President Bush couldn’t speak English when he used a teleprompter.

Alternative Budget From Republicans: Not Really! Boehner Lies About Having Budget Ready - “Two nights ago, the president said, ‘We haven’t seen a budget yet out of Republicans.’ Well, it’s just not true, because here it is, Mr. President,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), waving a blue document in the air… Other than the tax proposal [to cut the top marginal rate for the super rich from 35% to 25%], however, the plan was absent any details. Instead, it hammered the Democratic budget as too expensive.

Reporters — mainstream, liberal and conservative — greeted the Republican document with a collective scoff.

“Are you going to have any further details on this today?” the first asked.
“On what?” asked Boehner.

“There’s no detail in here,” noted the reporter.

Answered Boehner: “This is a blueprint for where we’re going. Are you asking about some other document?”

How About Some Charts and Graphs in That Republican Budget? Not Really! – An anonymous official quoted in Politico’s story on the House GOP budget plans said, “We need to hold something up and say, ‘Here are our charts. Here are our graphs. It’s real.” Here’s one of the Republican charts:

(What a joke!) There are a few charts but only three graphs in the plan, all of them CBO estimates about Democratic budget proposals — none of them scoring Republican proposals.

Limbaugh Attacks “Barack Ogabe” And His “Angry” Wife – Rush Limbaugh was at it again on Tuesday, “confusing” Barack Obama with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and referring to the president as “one angry guy — his wife is angry as well.” Limbaugh went on to “accidentally” refer to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, as “Barack Ogabe.”

Norm Coleman Donor Ordered Payments To Wife’s Company According to Testimony – The former finance chief of a Texas company controlled by Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of former Sen. Norm Coleman, said in a deposition last week that Kazeminy ordered $100,000 in fees be paid to a Minneapolis insurance agency where Coleman’s wife was employed.

B.J. Thomas, who was chief financial officer of Deep Marine Technology Inc., said that $75,000 of that sum was paid to Hays Companies even though he saw no evidence of Deep Marine receiving any consulting services from Hays.
Thomas’ deposition, taken under oath on March 19 and obtained by the Star Tribune, is the first corroboration from an official at Deep Marine of allegations made by company founder Paul McKim in a lawsuit filed last year against the company.

Senator Gets Nasty: Responds to “You Are Good” With “Your Wife Said The Same Thing” – Buried within the hours of debate in the Senate on Thursday is an exchange you’d be more likely to hear in a locker room than a congressional hearing.

Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) was on the receiving end of this one, after telling Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), “Oh, you are good.”
“Well, your wife said the same thing,” Grassley responded.

Corporate Billions Kept Offshore – According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America’s top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. Goldman Sachs Group set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America’s 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley’s 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don’t expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)

FDA is Considering Allowing Unregulated Ingredient in Yogurt – Never heard of Milk Protein Concentrates? You’re not alone. But ask any U.S. dairy farmer about this processed food ingredient and you’ll get an earful. Unregulated imports of cheap milk protein concentrates are driving down the price of domestically produced milk and putting American dairy farmers out of business. No one in the government is checking to make sure that they’re safe to eat, and now FDA is thinking about letting them be used to make yogurt. MPCs have never been tested enough to make the list of food ingredients FDA considers to be safe – and they are not allowed in some dairy products that have regulations on how they are made. Tell FDA you don’t want MPCs in your yogurt at the link.

Regards,

Jim

Rep. Michele Bachmann Said She Wants Residents of Her State “Armed and Dangerous” over President Barack Obama’s Plan to Reduce Global Warming - Controversial Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said this weekend that she wants residents of her state “armed and dangerous” over President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce global warming “because we need to fight back.”

Conservative Radio Host Tammy Bruce Calls The Obamas “Trash In The White House” – Tammy Bruce, guest host for Laura Ingram’s radio show, had some harsh words for First Lady Michelle Obama. Discussing the first lady’s visit to a Washington D.C. classroom last week, Bruce incredulously recalled Obama’s story about wanting to get A’s in school and called out her use of a “weird, fake accent.”

“That’s what he’s married to,” Bruce said. “…You know what we’ve got? We’ve got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is colorblind, it can cross all eco-socionomic…categories. You can work on Wall Street, or you can work at the Wal-Mart. Trash, are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy…”

Volcano Erupts In Alaska Weeks After Jindal Mocked Funding For Volcano Monitoring – With Monday’s massive volcano eruption in Alaska likely to leave Anchorage and Gov. Sarah Palin’s hometown covered in ash, a Democratic strategist sends over the reminder that just a month and a half ago, another up-and-coming Republican star, Gov. Bobby Jindal, mocked the very notion of volcano monitoring.

Speaking in the non-State of the Union rebuttal, the Louisiana Republican said that instead of spending $140 million “for something called ‘volcano monitoring,’” Congress “should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”

(Why do volcanoes hate America? – JLV)

Regards,

Jim

Institutions, which humans create, tend to reflect the values of the humans that created/control them. These institutions can be corrupt and harmful or they can do good. The difference is whether the individuals in charge of the institution feel empathy and responsibility for themselves and others whom they impact.

The institution may be a government, a corporation, a military, a religion, a small business, a charitable organization, an economic system, a homeowners association or a family. When those controlling the institution lack empathy and responsibility, the institution will concentrate power and wealth and then use it to control and abuse individual citizens, workers, soldiers, worshipers, homeowners, spouses or children. However, when empathetic and responsible individuals control the institution, the rights of the individuals will be respected.

To guard against a lack of empathy and responsibility (and therefore abusive institutions) checks and balances are necessary, especially at the top of the institutional food chain – the federal government. That’s why our founding fathers established three branches of government and why we need various institutions to impartially watch over others.

For example, we need two or more political parties to keep each other in check. We need police, courts and lawyers to check and balance criminals anywhere in the institutional world. We also need voters to keep an eye on the government and renew it as necessary when checks and balances are eroded and citizens are abused by one branch of the government or another.

How does empathy, responsibility and checks and balances play a role in the progressive and “conservatives without conscience” philosophies.

Progressives nurture, protect and empower their children and believe that our democratic government must empower and protect its citizens. The government must protect by guaranteeing freedom from harm, want and fear, and empower by maximizing our chances of achieving our goals. Providing and supporting necessary checks and balances, such as our military, police, fireman, EMTs, the FDA, the NLRB, OSHA, the EPA, and maybe someday Medicare for all, is the primary means of protection.

Progressives know there is a necessary cost for the government to empower and protect – all citizens must pay taxes to maintain the foundations of protection and empowerment. They believe that the more you gain from empowerment and protection, the more you should pay to maintain them.

On the other hand, Neocons, the leaders of conservatives without conscience, want to eliminate checks and balances across the board – it interferes with their accumulation of power and wealth and the creation of their oligarchy. Neocons maximize the power of their oligarchy by consolidating it under a unitary executive. They are financially supported by huge corporations, which in turn are rewarded with no-bid war contracts and the elimination of regulations.

This transfer of power from the citizens to the conservative-without-conscience oligarchy is accomplished through “noble lies,” wars without end, and fear mongering about all ‘the enemies’ out there. Their immense lack of empathy and responsibility toward others leads to abuse of those citizens not like them. Their elimination of checks and balances on institutions like multinational banks, drub manufactures, food producers and no-bid defense contractors creates even more citizen abuse.

So, where do libertarians fit into the progressive versus conservative worldviews?

Libertarians are not power crazed and strongly oppose the neocon oligarchy. They prefer the government leave other institutions, from corporations to citizens, alone. This is similar to conservatives without conscience, but to the extreme. Libertarians prefer institutions and citizens have free reign – no checks and balances except for self-regulation.

Libertarians consider the progressive’s broader view of government protection and empowerment of freedom for all citizens as interference with their personal liberties. They, like conservatives without conscience, lack empathy and a sense of responsibility for those not like them. The result is that not everyone has the same personal liberties. Those with more liberty (power and wealth), like management and unregulated speculators, will abuse those with less power and wealth, like employees and citizens.

Libertarians and neocons have one principle in common: cutting taxes. The difference is that neocons need their rich friends and help them get richer. Libertarians, however, leave getting rich to the rich or those that can’t self-regulate.

However, cutting taxes, especially for the mega rich, reduces the government’s ability to protect citizens against abuse, life’s unfairness and the corruption encouraged by excessive wealth and power. Reducing taxes reduces the required funding for institutional checks and balances which the government needs to protect and empower all citizens. Reducing taxes on the mega rich is moving our democracy closer and closer to an aristocracy.

And isn’t rule by an aristocracy what our progressive founding fathers declared independence from? Isn’t that why our founding fathers were in favor of progressive taxation as a check and balance against the abuse of concentrated wealth and power?

Progressives promote checks and balances and progressive taxation to control the various abuses of conservatives without conscience: neocon’s abusive unitary executive with its reduction of constitutional and other human rights; libertarian’s extreme belief in minimalist government with its resulting abuse of citizens by the unrestrained wealthy and powerful.

WHAT OUR CHILDREN ARE LEARNING

Click to enlarge.

Election Officials Committed Voter Fraud According to Indictment
Five Clay County, Kentucky officials, including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers were arrested Thursday after they were indicted on federal charges accusing them of using corrupt tactics to obtain political power and personal gain.

The 10-count indictment, unsealed Thursday, accused the defendants of a conspiracy from March 2002 until November 2006 that violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO is a federal statute that prosecutors use to combat organized crime. The defendants were also indicted for extortion, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to injure voters’ rights and conspiracy to commit voter fraud.

According to the indictment, these alleged criminal actions affected the outcome of federal, local, and state primary and general elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Among them [emphasis added]:

• Clay County Clerk, Freddy Thompson, 45, allegedly provided money to election officers to be distributed by the officers to buy votes and he also instructed officers how to change votes at the voting machine.
• Election officer William E. Stivers, 56, allegedly marked votes or issued tickets to voters who had sold their votes and changed votes at the voting machine.
• Paul E. Bishop, 60, allegedly marked voters or issued tickets to voters who sold their votes and he also hosted alleged meetings at his home where money was pooled together by candidates and distributed to election officers, including himself. He was also accused of instructing the officers how to change votes at the voting machine.

Many of the voters, it seems, had no idea that their votes were manipulated after they’d left the touch-screen voting machine. While the Early Voting scheme involved finding voters who might wish to be paid to have their vote cast a certain way, the Election Day scheme, carried out in primary and general elections in at least 2004 and 2006, was accomplished by taking advantage of a “feature” on all DRE (usually touch-screen) voting systems and “voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines.”

Essentially, they tricked voters into leaving the ‘booth’ after pressing the “Vote” button on the ES&S iVotronic. That button, does not actually cast the vote, as one might think (and as these voters were told), but instead, it brings up a review screen of the voter’s “ballot.”

Instructing the voters that they were done, the conspirators then, after the voter had left, would change the voters’ votes as they saw fit, before finally pressing the “Cast Ballot” button.

(So here, finally, is a real possible case of voter fraud. Tell me how voter ID cards would prevent this. – JLV)

Diebold Admits ALL Versions of Their Software Delete Ballots Without Notice – Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That’s the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier’s Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier’s tabulator system.

90% of the Weapons Recovered in Mexico Originate From the U. S. – Guns recovered in some of the largest recent weapons seizures in Mexico are being traced deep into the United States — miles from the volatile border — revealing an expanding trafficking network that feeds Mexico’s violent drug cartels, according to government documents and U.S. investigators.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records show 90% of the weapons recovered and traced originate from a growing number of sources spanning from the Northwest to New England. The trafficking routes have created what Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., described earlier this week as an “iron river of guns” flowing to the warring cartels, contributing to about 7,000 deaths in the past 14 months.

Some of the strongest recent evidence of the cartels’ expanding gun pipeline:

• Four months after the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history, U.S. investigators have traced 383 of the more than 400 weapons seized from a stash house in Reynosa, Mexico, to 11 states including Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Michigan and Connecticut, according to ATF records.
• Nearly a year after a gunbattle left 13 dead in Tijuana, the seizure of 60 guns has prompted probes in Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Denver.
• The guns, many of them high-powered assault rifles, are streaming across the border at such a pace that some are being recovered in Mexico within days after their purchase in the U.S, according to ATF records.

Concentration Camps in the USA: Our immigrant-Detention System is Out of Control – The U.S. detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the past decade. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25. Of those, 18,690 immigrants did not have a criminal conviction, including for illegal entry or low-level crimes such as trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.

Intelligence Made it Clear That Saddam Was Not a Threat, According to Diplomat – Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, said that the intelligence made it “very clear” that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.

He said he tried to inform ministers about his misgivings over the developing momentum towards war, taking them aside during their visits to New York or having brief conversations in their car to the airport.

But he said he was aware that speaking out too often or too openly – even in internal debates – about his concerns about the government’s policy direction would damage his career by winning him a reputation as a “naive troublemaker”.

Ross’s evidence, by video link from New York, came days after Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, used the first ministerial veto under the freedom of information act to ban the release of cabinet minutes on the decision to go to war.

One-Third of the United States’ 800 Bird Species are Endangered, Threatened or in Significant Decline – A review of bird populations in the United States was released March 19 by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Nearly a third of the United States’ 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, the new report shows. Bird populations are critical indicators of the health of our environment — “like the canary in the coal mine,” Salazar said at a press conference.

Former Bush Administration Aide Stole Nearly $600,000 From a Nonprofit Group that Promotes Democracy in Cuba – A former Bush administration aide was sentenced March 18 to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for stealing nearly $600,000 from a nonprofit group that promotes democracy in Cuba. Felipe E. Sixto of Miami pleaded guilty last year in U.S. District Court in the District to stealing from a federally funded program. Today, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton called the crime an “elaborate scheme” that badly damaged the nonprofit group, the Center for a Free Cuba, where Sixto worked from 2003 through July 2007. He continued stealing from the center after he switched jobs to become an associate director for intergovernmental affairs at the White House, prosecutors said.

Fox News Edited Clip To Make It Look Like Biden Recently Declared ‘Fundamentals Of The Economy Are Strong’ – After weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune,” Fox News’s Martha MacCallum said. She then played clips of Romer and other administration officials making seemingly positive comments about the current state of the economy. One of the clips was of Vice President Biden saying, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong!” After the segment, MacCallum said, “All right, well the mantra for the weekend is clear, looking at what was said over the course of the shows on Sunday.”

But the clip of Biden seemingly making a recent remark about the strength of the economy is grossly inaccurate. The Biden statement was actually from last September — during the presidential campaign — when he was quoting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Here’s what Biden really said:

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that’s why John McCain could say with a straight face as recently as this morning and this is a quote, “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.” That’s what John said. He says that “We’ve made great progress economically in the Bush years.”

Dick Cheney’s Fearmongering is Assisting al Qaeda According to Colin Powell’s Former Chief of Staff – Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff who left the Bush administration in protest, has written an essay on slamming Cheney’s fearmongering. Wilkerson calls Cheney “evil” and says his detainee policies were only “assisting” terrorists.

Bush Said He Will Write Book With Authoritarian Voice – George W. Bush said that he doesn’t know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president. He said it will be fun to write and that “it’s going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make. I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened,” Bush said.

If you are in doubt, here is the definition: authoritarian – a person who insists on strict obedience to authority.

And here are some synonyms: Big Brother – an authoritarian leader and invader of privacy, oppressor – a person of authority who subjects others to undue pressures, undemocratic – not in agreement with or according to democratic doctrine or practice or ideals.

Regards,

Jim

CNBC Has Been Doing Public Relations for Wall Street. Time to Fix CNBC! – Financial news networks like CNBC that promoted Wall Street propaganda and then blamed the financial crisis on “losers” who couldn’t make their mortgage payments. Now we’re demanding action. A financial news channel should investigate and report the truth, not merely air infomercials for Wall Street. We need CNBC to practice responsible journalism. Will you please take a few moments to sign this open letter to CNBC?

Citigroup Chief Told Congress His Compensation Was $1 Million; It Was Actually $10.8 Million – Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit received nearly $11 million of compensation in 2008. A month earlier, he testified to Congress that his compensation for 2008 was just $1 million. “My compensation for the year 2008 was my salary, which was $1 million,” he told the House Committee on Financial Services on February 11, failing to mention his sign-on and retention awards, as well as stock and option awards.

Growing Use of Nuke Power Could Lead to ‘Nuclear Anarchy’ – The growing use of nuclear power will produce enough plutonium to make 1 million nuclear weapons by 2075, argues Frank Barnaby from the Oxford Research Group thinktank in a paper for the Institute for Public Policy Research. “We are at a crossroads. Unless governments work together to safeguard nuclear energy supplies, the rise in unsecured nuclear technology will put us all in danger,” said Barnaby. “Without this, we are hurtling towards a state of nuclear anarchy where terrorists or rogue states have the ways and means of making nuclear weapons or ‘dirty bombs’, the consequences of which are unimaginable.” Barnaby is a nuclear physicist who’s published numerous books on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation.

Florida Legislator Wants Random Drug Tests for the Unemployed – Florida State Senator Michael S. Bennett told Fox News host Steve Doocy on Monday that random drug-testing should be applied to those receiving unemployment insurance. “It’s a pretty degrading process,” Piper went on. “You have to urinate in front of another person. … You have to tell complete strangers if you’re on birth control or Viagra or if you’re suffering from depression.”

The War on Drugs Has Become the War on the Rainforest – Military planes, funded by the US, targeting coca farms in the Amazonian state of Caquetá, Colombia, have been spraying mists of pesticides over food crops, grazing animals and even areas where children were playing. Locals were complaining of breathing problems and rashes; “strips of skin” have been peeling off cows, and chickens have died; and maize, yucca, plantain and cacao crops have wilted and shriveled. There is fear there will soon be a very serious food shortage in the region.

The US focuses on one element of the trafficking chain, the poverty-stricken peasant. But the policy is not even effective. When their land is poisoned, peasants migrate and start growing coca again. They have no alternative. Spraying simply displaces the problem. Despite decades of spraying, coca cultivation in Colombia has grown by 500% since the 1980s, according to US state department figures. US politicians heralded a drop in cultivation after the launch of Plan Colombia, but the area of land covered by coca crops is now larger than when the plan was launched.

Texas Bill Designed to Scare Off Ethics Complaints – State Representative Christian has filed a bill that would probably stop any citizen in Texas from filing an ethics complaint against a Texas lawmaker. HB4066 would require all complaints to originate from a citizen of Texas. This isn’t a bad idea and is reasonable, but the rest of the bill is terrible.

Would impose a $10,000 fine on “bad faith” complaints.

Would ban complaints filed 60 days before an election by a member of a candidates campaign, or by someone who was asked to file the complaint by a member of a candidate.

Adds files up to $100,000 for those who ask another person to file a “bad faith” complaint.

Instead of filing a bill to stop ethics violations, Christian files a bill to pretty much stop anyone from filing a complaint.

Regards,

Jim

Bush-Era Food and Drug Administration Only Inspected 5% of Nation’s Food-Processing Facilities – Thirty-five years ago, the F.D.A. did annual inspections of about half of the nation’s food-processing facilities. Last year, the agency inspected just 7,000 of the nearly 150,000 domestic food facilities, and its oversight of foreign plants, which provide a growing share of the nation’s food supply, was even spottier. Each year, about 76 million people in the United States are sickened by contaminated food, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and about 5,000 die, public health experts estimate.

President Obama announced the creation of a Food Safety Working Group, which will include the secretaries of health and agriculture, to advise him on which laws and regulations need to be changed, to foster coordination across federal agencies, and to ensure that laws are enforced. “In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

So Eager to Call CNN ‘Communist News Network,’ Fox Misses Name of Latin American Leader – On Fox & Friends Monday, host Steve Doocy took time to note that a former CNN employee, Mauricio Funes, has been elected President of El Salvador. “He is from a party down in El Salvador that is essentially the communist party,” Doocy explained. “I wonder if he is just on a leave of absence from CNN, which, given his political inklings CNN could stand for the Communist News Network,” he said.

But Fox was so eager to tie CNN to communism that they couldn’t get the name of Venezeula’s leader right when making an unsourced allegation. A second Fox pundit pointed out that Funes’ party, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, is liberal and said it was essentially communist. He then declared that FMLN “allegedly” has ties to Caesar Chavez. Except that Caesar Chavez doesn’t lead a party in Latin America. He was a Mexican-American farm worker and labor activist who died in 1993.

It’s Official: Red Cross Report Says Bush Administration Tortured Prisoners – US interrogators attached detainees to collars like dogs and used their leashes to slam them against walls, forced them to stand for days wearing only diapers, and tied detainees necks with towels and threw them against plywood walls, according to accounts in a secret 2007 report issued by the Red Cross to be printed in a New York magazine and leaked on Monday. But the report goes further: Prisoners were routinely beaten, stripped, doused with freezing water and loud music, and kept awake for days with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.

Medicare Advantage Sellers Trick Elderly Into Giving Up Benefits – Medicare Advantage plans are privately run and can be more expansive – with vision and dental coverage – but have a smaller network of providers that participate. In practice, the extra vision and dental coverage is often of negligible benefit and doesn’t outweigh what’s lost by leaving traditional Medicare – but it looks good at first.

A sales rep told Curtis Smith that her plan would be cheaper and would provide vision coverage, something Smith, whose eyes are deteriorating, had wanted. “She told me to sign it. It was a piece of paper just like one of these right here,” says Smith, who can’t read well. “A big piece of paper. And she had read me something about the benefits being better and cheaper and I signed it.” The next time Smith went to his pharmacy, he was told he was no longer covered. When he went to Howard University Hospital for a colon cancer procedure, he was told the same thing.

Peter Orszag, who’s leading Obama’s healthcare reform effort, said. “Evidence suggests that each dollar provided under Medicare Advantage costs the government a dollar thirty in costs. I believe in competition. I don’t believe in paying a dollar thirty to get a dollar.”

Politico, AP Forward GOP Small Business Falsehood – The Politico and the AP forwarded the false Republican talking point that President Obama’s proposals to let the Bush tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers expire and reduce the tax rate at which wealthy taxpayers could take itemized deductions would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses. In fact, according to the Tax Policy Center, just 2 percent of tax returns that reported small business income in 2007 are in the top two income tax brackets, which include all filers with taxable incomes that would be affected.

Boehner Says Republicans No Longer Plan To Legislate – John Boehner (R-Ohio) defended his Party’s refusal to offer an alternative to any of the Obama Administration’s plans, including the President’s budget, by saying his party’s lawmakers don’t have to offer any plans and, in fact, “ought to get the idea out of their minds that they are legislators.” It was the second time in a month Boehner has been quoted telling his caucus to stop offering policy alternatives and just say “no” to everything the President proposes.

Mitch McConnell: Party of No Won’t Offer an Alternative Budget Proposal – Mitch McConnell on This Week was asked if the GOP had a comprehensive alternative budget proposal to what the Democrats have offered. McConnell’s replies that the GOP is going to be offering amendments rather than a comprehensive proposal.

McConnell: We are going to offer a number of amendments to the Democratic proposal.

Stephanopoulos: But no comprehensive budget?

McConnell: Well it will reframe what the Democrats recommend for America for the next five and ten years and I assure you that the amendments that we offer will not lay out a blueprint for doubling the national debt in five years and tripling it in ten years. That is not what we think.

Stephanopoulos: But shouldn’t you have to have a comprehensive approach that lays out the trade offs? If you just have rifle shot amendments then you don’t have to make all the trade off that you have to make in an overall budget.

McConnell: Well we’re just sort of getting down in the weeds here on procedure.

Dana Perino Says Bush Deserves Credit For the Recent Stock Market Uptick – Republicans and Fox News have been charging that the downturn in the stock market is due to President Obama. But former White House spokesperson Dana Perino said on Sunday that the Bush administration, while presiding over the start of the current recession, nevertheless deserved some credit for the modest uptick that Wall Street experienced this past week. The effort to credit the market boost to Bush administration fiscal policy comes at a time of renewed debate over what role the former president played in the recession. On Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t think it was fair to blame Bush for creating the current economic woes. Do they really expect us to take them seriously?

Regards,

Jim

Republicans are distorting the facts, and we need to set the record straight: Obama’s budget asks far less of the rich than President Reagan or Nixon did. Just look at the graph below.

This is ridiculous. The media has been obsessing about President Obama’s plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans—from 35% to 39.6%—even asking if that makes him a socialist.

But do you see what tax rate the wealthiest Americans paid on the top portion of their earnings at the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term? 50%.

Under Richard Nixon? 70%. Under Dwight Eisenhower? 91%!

Shocking, right?

And for all the whining about rolling back Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts, the truth is that Obama’s plan cuts taxes for 95% of working Americans. Further, it closes huge tax loopholes for oil companies, hedge funds and corporations that ship jobs overseas so that we can invest in the priorities that will get our economy back on track.

And how do those tax cuts for the wealthy work for America? Look at the graph again and see the low taxes for the wealthy for around the nine years prior to 1929, which is when what famous economic event started? I think that was something called the Great Depression. So, in more recent history, George W. Bush cut taxes on the wealthy and we got this stinkin’ recession. When will we learn? [The Party of No can't learn.]

Conservatives love the good ol’ days, and this is one place where I say let’s go back to Reagan or Nixon. Think what could be done. Budget balanced! Social Security secured! Medicare for every American that needs it! Infrastructure fixed! Good educations providing smarter citizens so this stupid stuff doesn’t happen again!

Regards,

Jim

Hannity Spreads Falsehood About Obama Earmarks Promise – Throughout his Fox News show on 3/11/2009, Sean Hannity repeated the falsehood that Barack Obama had promised to eliminate earmarks. In fact, as I previously posted when FOX News’ Ainsley Earhardt put forth that falsehood on Hannity the night before, Obama did not make that promise. He promised to reform the earmark process and cut wasteful spending. Even Politifact, which Earhardt and FOX News relied on so heavily to “prove” that Obama has broken campaign promises, noted, “Obama did not promise to end earmarking, only to ‘reform’ it, and eliminate ‘screwy’ or wasteful earmarks.”

Rep. Bachmann Claims To Have Taken No-Pork Pledge, But Actually Requested $3 Million In Earmarks In 2008 – On Fox Business yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined the long parade of members of Congress who rail against earmarks while requesting their own. But Bachmann took her hypocrisy a step further, claiming that she has signed an anti-pork pledge:

CLAMAN: How about a no-pork bill? Will that ever be a reality?
BACHMANN: I think it is possible. I took a pledge in my own district. I have not taken earmarks in the last three years that I have been in Congress because the system is so corrupt. It’s possible to make that pledge.

In fact, according to Legistorm, Bachmann has requested 7 earmarks in Fiscal Year 2008 costing tax payers a total of $3,767,600. Some examples:

- $94,000 for Sheriffs Youth Program of MN
- $335,000 for Equipment Acquisition for Northland Medical Center
- $803,000 for Replacement Small Buses, St. Cloud Metro Bus

Bachmann’s name is also curiously absent from the list of lawmakers making the same pledge for 2009.

Fox News Distorts Facts Of Employee Free Choice Act – No matter how many times it’s been debunked, the Fox [News] hosts keep repeating the falsehood that workers will no longer have access to a secret ballot under the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The legislation does not eliminate the secret ballot. The bill would simply allow workers to choose whether to have a majority sign-up or a normal election process. And as American Rights At Work points out, a secret ballot is no guarantee to a fair election. Under current rules, union organizers do not have equal access to voters, the right to free speech, funding and resources equal to employers, or the ability to bring about elections in a timely manner. See this.

More than concern for the secret ballot, the Fox hosts make it clear they are simply against unions. When they insist that union bosses — not employers — are intimidating workers, or when they declare that unions that drive up wages and benefits are harmful for Big Business, it’s clear whose side they’re on — and it’s not the American worker’s.

O’Reilly’s Latest “No Spin Poll” is All Spin – The latest “No Spin Poll” on the Bill O’Reilly page of FOXNews.com asks whether President Barack Obama will transform the country into a socialist nation. The three choices are, “The folks won’t let him,” “There’s no stopping him,” and “He already has.” All the given choices say, essentially, the same erroneous thing: that Obama is a socialist trying to foist his will on the country. So much for “No Spin” and “Fair and Balanced.”

Bank Giants Steered Blacks to Bad Loans According to NAACP – Black homebuyers have been 3 1/2 times more likely to receive a subprime loan than white borrowers, and six times more likely to get a subprime rate when refinancing, Tighe said. Blacks still were disproportionately steered into subprime loans when their credit scores, income and down payment were equal to those of white homebuyers, said Austin Tighe, co-lead counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP is accusing Wells Fargo and HSBC of forcing blacks into subprime mortgages while whites with identical qualifications got lower rates.

Limbaugh Calls NBC’s Andrea Mitchell a “Butt Boy” – On MSNBC Wednesday, Andrea Mitchell agreed with Barney Frank that the press contributed to President Obama’s staffing difficulties with “gotcha” journalism. Today, in response, Rush Limbaugh has labeled her a “butt boy” on his radio show. (This is what Conservatives do when they cannot counter the facts.)

Conservative Radio Host Laura Ingraham Mocks Meghan McCain as Being ‘Plus-Sized’ – On Wednesday night, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) daughter, Meghan McCain, appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, where she continued to criticize Ann Coulter. On her radio show Thursday, Laura Ingraham responded to McCain’s critique of far right conservatives, saying that she is “just another Valley Girl gone awry.” In a mocking faux-Valley Girl voice, Ingraham made fun of McCain’s body, joking that she didn’t get a “role in the Real World” because “they don’t like plus-sized models.” (This is what Conservatives do when they cannot counter the facts.)

Bill O’Reilly’s Guests Agree: It’s Liberals’ Fault That Gingrich and Limbaugh are Feuding – On Tuesday’s O’Reilly Factor, Mike Gallagher and Lars Larson were on to talk about why right-wingers like Newt Gingrich just can’t help talking about Rush Limbaugh and drawing his ire and thus feeding into the evil liberals’ devious plan to draw attention away from the serious issue of the economy. It was a hoot.

The wankafoolery started really rolling when Gallagher came up with this gem:

Well, I think Newt doesn’t like being part of a phony debate that’s been set up by the left as to whether or not Rush Limbaugh is the face of the Republican Party. … It’s just something that’s been ginned up by the Left to try to fracture the Republican Party even further, and that’s just not what Newt is about.

Regards,

Jim

“You Don’t Know Dick” – Given Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s new revelation that the military ran an “Executive Assassination Ring” throughout the Bush years which reported directly to Cheney, here, for the sake of context, are more of Dick Cheney’s bad deeds – from George Washington’s 2006 essay, called “All Roads Lead to Dick Cheney“.

Most people know that Vice President Dick Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, which makes billions of dollars a year from oil and primarily defense-related construction contracts (and that war and chaos increase Halliburton’s profits, which in turn increase the value of Cheney’s stock options). Most people also know that Cheney was secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush.

Many people know that Cheney was one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century.

Well-read people know that the Project for a New American Century, in turn, called for a new American empire well before 9/11, and lamented that, without a “catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”, transformation of America into an empire would be very slow.

But even well-informed people probably don’t know that — in the 70′s — Cheney was instrumental in generating fake intelligence exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to undermine coexistence between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which conveniently justified huge amounts of cold war spending. See also this article. This scheme foreshadowed Mr. Cheney’s role in generating fake intelligence in Iraq by 30 years.

And did you know that Cheney has been perhaps the leading advocate for strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy for at least 20 years?

Have you heard that Cheney has been instrumental in creating and practicing Continuity of Gvernment measures for the last 20 years or so. These “COG” measures — which were implemented on 9/11 — could lead to the destruction of the Constitution, the virtual disbanding of Congress, and the loss of the American form of government.

Or that newly-released documents show that Cheney was involved in debates concerning illegal wiretaps 30 years ago?

Did you catch that the former director of the CIA accused Cheney of overseeing American torture policies ? Or that Colin Powell’s former chief of staff stated that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes for his role in facilitating torture?

And, according to the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the massacre against Vietnamese civilians, Cheney is the main guy helping to fund groups which the U.S. claims are terrorists (see confirming articles here and here)

And guess who is the prime architect of efforts to bomb Iran? Yup, Mr. Cheney (see also this article).

You may have heard that the Energy Task Force chaired by Cheney prior to 9/11 collected maps of Iraqi oil fields and potential suitors for that oil. But did you know that a secret document written by the National Security Council on February 3, 2001 directed the N.S.C. staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields”? In other words, it is difficult to brush off Cheney’s Energy Task Force’s examination of Iraqi oil maps as a harmless comparison of American energy policy with known oil reserves because the N.S.C. explicitly linked the Task Force, oil, and regime change. Indeed, a former senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. said “if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans” (see also this essay).

And Cheney was largely responsible for generating fake intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the war.

And Cheney was probably responsible for outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

And, according to former British Defense Secretary, Cheney has called the shots in the failed Iraq war.

Of course, Cheney has not acted alone in his actions. But he’s been an important player in many different arenas and is, perhaps, the most widely-known figure who has had a hand in all of the above-described events. Cheney might not be the ultimate Mr. Big in these crimes, but he appears to have gotten his hands dirtier — and to be closer to the true seat of power — even than Mr. Bush.

In addition, while Cheney was not solely responsible for the above-listed actions, he hired many of the people who caused the mischief, such as the chief architect of the Iraq war – Paul Wolfowitz.

Regards,

Jim

To Conservatives, Bipartisanship is Forcing Others to Agree With Them – From the Conservative Political Action Conference, “To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us, after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them.” Yes, that proclamation was greeted with wild applause from the same Conservative crowd that complains that Democrats are not being bipartisan enough. Well, now that they have defined bipartisanship for us, maybe we can accommodate them. (Not really. We don’t want to become like them.) See the video at the link.

How Republicans Burned Down Our National Home and Are Preventing It From Being Rebuilt – The following is from an Open letter from former Republican, Frank Schaeffer, who is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back :

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. … You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.
I used to be one of you. … In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America’s “moral decline.” …

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks… to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters — “the rube base” who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh — had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

Conservative Talk Show Host Blames Problems on Lack of Individual Responsibility, Except for His Problems – Conservative radio talk show host Mike Gallagher, a fierce proponent of ‘individual responsibility,’ [Conservative worldview] recently lambasted home buyers facing foreclosure who had purchased homes they could not afford and were seeking bailout money or to have the federal government intervene and stop foreclosures. Last week, Gallagher highlighted the story of a bus driver who had purchased an $800K home, which is now only worth $600K:

I dare you to feel sorry for her…how about this, honey? Pay your mortgage!

In short, Gallagher believes in individual responsibility and the importance of micro-economic behavior when it comes to people who can’t afford their mortgages, but attributes (Democratic) macroeconomic governmental policies for his inability to sell his own house. Gallagher lamented that his failure to sell his own house, that he recently placed on the market, was due to the psychological effects burdening the wealthy resulting from the class warfare propagated by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats:

I decided to put my house on the market. Three weeks. And it’s a house – and I’m not bragging – it’s a house with a ‘wow factor.’ You walk into the house and you go, ‘Wow.’ It’s got all the nice little bells and whistles, it’s got the electric shades that go up and down, and the sound system, and the beautiful pool. I’m a lucky guy. Three weeks – not a single phone call.

Hey, Gallagher, take your own advise and assume some individual responsibility before you blame others for the situations they find themselves in.

Existing U.S. Health Care is a Bad Deal, According to Study – A report from the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, says America’s health care system has become a liability in a global economy. Concern about high U.S. costs has existed for years, and business executives – whose companies provide health coverage for workers – have long called for getting costs under control. Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.

When benefits are factored into the equation, the United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain and France. These five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S. The cost-benefit disparity is even wider – 46 points – when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.

Cancer Patients Die While “New Democrats” Help Bankers Get Billions – Yesterday, Rep. Alan Grayson, member of the House Financial Services Committee, said that “AIG blew up because it was a casino that dabbled in insurance on the side.” To date, AIG has received $173 billion — billion — and we’ve got no idea what they did with it. And what are Americans–who are losing their jobs and their homes because AIG acted like a casino and taxpayers paid off all their gambling debts–getting? They get to die:

21% of Americans scramble to pay medical, drug bills
Denise Prosser, 39, has battled cancer since she was a toddler. Yet Prosser can’t afford her next cancer treatment — a radioactive therapy that she’s supposed to receive once a year — because she and her husband lost their jobs in December. Without insurance, she has postponed the radiation indefinitely and is taking only half of her asthma medications — sacrifices that often leave her gasping for air and could allow her cancer to come surging back.

Meanwhile Ellen Tauscher is bragging that she and her New Democrat Coalition come from Wall Street, and work as henchmen for bank lobbyists. Of course they are — the New Democrat’s Executive Director, Adam Pase, was a lobbyist for predatory lenders. And bank lobbyists love them back, cooing about how the New Dems will keep Congress from “punishing” banks with new regulation of the financial system. Ellen Tauscher even voted for the bankruptcy bill that made it more difficult for people with bills from catastrophic illness to file for bankruptcy, saying it “encouraged personal responsibility.” I’m sure Denise is touched by Tauscher’s concern for her moral fiber.

Sean Hannity Thinks There’s No Health Care Problem Because He Gets Health Coverage from Fox and His Union – Sean Hannity doesn’t understand much about health care, and why should he? Disease has always existed, yet AMERICA has endured! Doesn’t that mean that universal health care is just unnecessary? Hannity calls to mind a simpler time, where men were men, and women were respectful, and people with scarlet fever and tuberculosis had the decency to say, “No, no! Let me just quietly die in this alley! I don’t want to be a part of some depressing set of statistics!”

Fox News Senior Political Analyst Bob Beckel, on the other hand, thinks that health care is “a right,” and so he gamely argued for it on Sean Hannity’s radio show:

HANNITY: I’m on the Fox Plan and the AFTRA Plan. I have no clue what insurance I have. I don’t have a special health care plan! I have the same plan that you do.
BECKEL: No you don’t. I don’t have a health insurance plan.
HANNITY: You work for FOX, you’re on the FOX plan.
BECKEL: I don’t qualify for the Fox plan, because I have a pre-existing condition.

And then, Hannity made light of people with pre-existing conditions, curing them all with ridicule, the best medicine.

By the way, the AFTRA Plan? That refers to the health benefits extended by being a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a union.

Please listen to the recording.

Employee Free Choice Act Opponents Received Millions Upon Millions From Business PACs – Republicans are charging that the lead sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), received $1.64 million from the labor sector. However, they are not telling us that Republicans have received millions upon millions of dollars from business interests over the course of their careers. This includes the top ranks of the Republican Party. Here are a few examples:

House Minority Leader John Boehner – since 1989
$7.48 million from business PACS

Minority Whip Eric Cantor – since 2000
$5.34 million from business PACS

Sen. John Ensign – since 1994
$5.4 million from business PACS

Somebody’s Bad Deed; Somebody is Not Telling the Truth – Police say former Cook County Republican Chairman Gary Skoien admitted having two prostitutes in his children’s playroom when his wife walked in on him early Sunday morning. The allegation is in a domestic battery report from Skoien, 55, against his 36-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch, 110-pound wife. He said she beat him with her fists and an electric guitar. But Skoien said the police report inaccurately stated that he had prostitutes in his home. Skoien said he and a friend were talking in the playroom when his wife came down and began beating him.

Regards,

Jim