In this eighth survey of the web, the WAWG index group average was down by 26 percent from April 2006. Of the fourteen items tracked, all 14 were down. The cumulative change for the index is still up 26 percent.

The downtrend for “scapegoats as a unifying cause” and “media control” dropped another 8 percent.

The biggest drop was 74 percent for “disdain and suppression of intellectuals”. This was followed by a 73 drop in “avid militarism,” and a 63 percent drop for “powerful patriotic nationalism.”

Islamists and “Christianists” are a minority in their respective religions and use their religion to promote a political ideology.  (Revised 2/19/2023 to add new links while keeping the original broken links and title references.)

In an Andrew Sullivan article, Mr Sullivan suggests, “we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist.” Mr. Sullivan goes on to say:

Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

That’s what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn’t. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It’s time the quiet majority of believers took it back.

New reference to support above quote.

In Mr. Sullivan’s blog, he adds the following clarification (bold added for emphasis):

Some readers have objected to my attempt to coin a new word to describe those who would deploy the teachings of Jesus as a political ideology as “Christianists.” They don’t like the analogy to Islamists, and think it imputes to politicized Christians an endorsement of terror or violence. The latter is not in any way my intent. In the war on terror, many have distinguished between Muslims and Islamists. The distinction made is between those who sincerely hold to an ancient faith, and those who are deploying that faith as a political weapon, who see no distinction between state and mosque, and who aggressively foist their religious doctrines onto civil law. And this is a critical distinction. It helps us to criticize regimes like the Taliban or Iran’s, while not tarring all Muslims with that label.

New reference to support above quote.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus Christ

The following is from the New York Times

Christ Among the Partisans

By GARRY WILLS
Published: April 9, 2006

THERE is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: “My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here” (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: “When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6). He shocked people by his repeated violation of the external holiness code of his time, emphasizing that his religion was an internal matter of the heart.

But doesn’t Jesus say to care for the poor? Repeatedly and insistently, but what he says goes far beyond politics and is of a different order. He declares that only one test will determine who will come into his reign: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would Jesus himself. “Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me” (Matthew 25:40). No government can propose that as its program. Theocracy itself never went so far, nor could it.

The state cannot indulge in self-sacrifice. If it is to treat the poor well, it must do so on grounds of justice, appealing to arguments that will convince people who are not followers of Jesus or of any other religion. The norms of justice will fall short of the demands of love that Jesus imposes. A Christian may adopt just political measures from his or her own motive of love, but that is not the argument that will define justice for state purposes.

To claim that the state’s burden of justice, which falls short of the supreme test Jesus imposes, is actually what he wills — that would be to substitute some lesser and false religion for what Jesus brought from the Father. Of course, Christians who do not meet the lower standard of state justice to the poor will, a fortiori, fail to pass the higher test.

The Romans did not believe Jesus when he said he had no political ambitions. That is why the soldiers mocked him as a failed king, giving him a robe and scepter and bowing in fake obedience (John 19:1-3). Those who today say that they are creating or following a “Christian politics” continue the work of those soldiers, disregarding the words of Jesus that his reign is not of this order.

Some people want to display and honor the Ten Commandments as a political commitment enjoined by the religion of Jesus. That very act is a violation of the First and Second Commandments. By erecting a false religion — imposing a reign of Jesus in this order — they are worshiping a false god. They commit idolatry. They also take the Lord’s name in vain.

Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan “What would Jesus do?”

That is not a question his disciples ask in the Gospels. They never knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and call him “Satan.” He could refuse to receive his mother when she asked to see him. He might tell his followers that they are unworthy of him if they do not hate their mother and their father. He might kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church precincts.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the Father’s judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, promising heavenly rewards, making last things first.

He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher Socrates. No politician is going to tell the lustful that they must pluck out their right eye. We cannot do what Jesus would do because we are not divine.

It was blasphemous to say, as the deputy under secretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, repeatedly did, that God made George Bush president in 2000, when a majority of Americans did not vote for him. It would not remove the blasphemy for Democrats to imply that God wants Bush not to be president. Jesus should not be recruited as a campaign aide. To trivialize the mystery of Jesus is not to serve the Gospels.

The Gospels are scary, dark and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair. If that is all they are, then we may as well make Socrates our redeemer.

It is true that the tamed Gospels can be put to humanitarian purposes, and religious institutions have long done this, in defiance of what Jesus said in the Gospels.

Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death. He said: “Do not be called Rabbi, since you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, the one in heaven. And do not be called leaders, since you have only one leader, the Messiah” (Matthew 23:8-10).

If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of an institutional Jesus, they will have to give up the person who said those words. They will have to turn away from what Flannery O’Connor described as “the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus” and “a wild ragged figure” who flits “from tree to tree in the back” of the mind.

He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil’s agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.

The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats.

Garry Wills is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of “What Jesus Meant.”

According to THE BRAD BLOG “Republican extremist/hate-monger, Ann Coulter may be on the verge of being tossed from the Voter Rolls in Palm Beach County, Florida.”

The Brad Blog also reported:

Coulter, who appears to have committed a third-degree felony by knowingly giving an incorrect address on her voter registration form in Palm Beach, Florida, and then knowingly voting at the incorrect polling place last March, could face up to $5,000 in fines and five years in prison if convicted.

In light of Coulter’s apparent voter fraud felony, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Dr. Arthur Anderson, had sent her a letter last March (posted in full [on THE BRAD BLOG]), giving her 30 days to explain her actions, before possibly referring the matter to the state attorney for prosecution. So far, Coulter has failed to reply at all. Officials now say she may be removed from the voter rolls.

The incident was first reported to county officials by Precinct Advisor James Whited (incident report posted in full [on THE BRAD BLOG]) who had informed Coulter that her true home address, at 242 Seabreeze Ave., did not match the one on her voter registration. Coulter, had inexplicably used her Real Estate agent’s address on the voter registration form which includes a signature next to an oath which says, in part, “All information on this form is true” and acknowledges the third-degree felony penalties for lying.

For more on Ann Coulter,

• “The mind of Rush Limbaugh in the body of Lisa Kudrow” (James Meek, The Guardian),
• “unacceptable a hank of flesh draped on a hanger ever to be foisted upon an ignorant populace hungry for more ignorance.” (James Wolcott)

Ann is another shouting head who is out to label the enemies of the ‘righteous’.

Probably very little.

In searching the internet I have only found details on blogs. I couldn’t even find Ray McGovern in the recent NPR archives! Why is the media, like the AP, only covering the surface of this story? Why aren’t we presented with the entire exchange by multiple sources instead of just one source?

Maybe the “truthiness” of what Stephen Colbert said to reporters at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29, 2006, will provide some insight:

As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president’s side, and the vice president’s side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished.

Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

In other words, the Administration has a well developed system to control the media and Fox News leads the way, especially when the Administration is on the defensive. Just look and listen to the response of the correspondents at the dinner. They were dumbfounded and, I think, embarrassed.

As I mentioned above, I found only one source with the complete exchange. If you are interested and want to be your own judge and jury instead of just believing what Fox News believes, here is the transcript from “Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann.” He not only played the entire exchange, but also interjected evidence to back up McGovern’s statements.

OLBERMANN:  Good evening.

There have been many explanations offered for why, in one of the times of the greatest political turbulence in American history, there has been comparative apathy in places that have been past venues for public protest.  One answer, that the administration has been outstanding in cherry-picking not just intelligence but also the makeup of the crowds that greet or interact with its key players.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, that latter component, the governmental equivalent of the Cone of Silence from the old TV series “Get Smart,” this afternoon broke down again, for the second time in six days.

First, the president’s lambasting by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and now, today’s vivisection of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, with only Rumsfeld’s own words as weapons, at a speech in Atlanta, one of several interchanges with critics, in this case a former CIA analyst, lasting four minutes.

Here it is in its entirety, with fact-checks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  I’m Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

I would like to compliment you on your observation that lies are fundamentally destructive of the trust that government needs to govern.  A colleague of mine, Paul Pillar, who is the top agency analyst on the Middle East and on counterterrorism, accused you and your colleagues of an organized campaign of manipulation, quote.  I suppose by some definitions—

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Could you get to your question please?

MCGOVERN:  –that could be called a lie.
Atlanta, September 27, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld said, and I quote—

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (INAUDIBLE)–

MCGOVERN:  –“There is bulletproof evidence of links between al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein.”  Was that a lie, Mr.  Rumsfeld?  Or was that manufactured somewhere else?  Because all of my CIA colleagues disputed that, and so did the 9/11 commission.

And so I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people.  Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary, and that has caused these kinds of casualties?  Why?

RUMSFELD:  Well, first of all, I haven’t lied.  I did not lie then.

Colin Powell didn’t lie.  He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate.  And he presented that to the United Nations.

The president spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence people, and he went to the American people and made a presentation.

I’m not in the intelligence business.  They gave the world their honest opinion.  It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

MCGOVERN:  You said you knew where they were.

RUMSFELD:  I did not.  I said I knew where suspect sites were, and we were—

MCGOVERN:  You said—

RUMSFELD:  –just a minute—

MCGOVERN:  –you said you knew where there were, near Tikrit, near Baghdad, and northeast, south, and west of there.  Those are your words.

RUMSFELD:  My words, my words were that–  No, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.  Let him stay one second.  Just a second.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  Just a second indeed.  Rumsfeld’s words about WMD, March 30, 2003, on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” were, quote, “We know where they are.  They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  This is America, huh?

RUMSFELD:  You’re getting plenty of play, sir.

MCGOVERN:  I’d just like an honest answer.

RUMSFELD:  I’m giving it to you.

MCGOVERN:  We’re talking about lies, and your allegation that there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  Did Rumsfeld make that allegation?  Indeed, he did.  September 27, 2002, to the Chamber of Commerce right there in Atlanta, quoting, “We ended up with five or six sentences that were bulletproof.  We could say them.  They’re factual.  They’re exactly accurate.  They demonstrate that there are, in fact, al Qaeda in Iraq.  But they’re not photographs, they’re not beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Still, Mr. Rumsfeld again had to face his own words quoted back to him.  How to do that?  Change the subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  Was that a lie?  Or were you misled?

RUMSFELD:  Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period.  That is a fact.

MCGOVERN:  Zarqawi?  He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule.  That’s where he was.

RUMSFELD:  He was also in Baghdad.

MCGOVERN:  Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots.  They know the story.

RUMSFELD:  You are–  Let me give you an example.  It’s easy for you to make a charge.  But why do you think that the men and women in uniform every day, when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits?  Because they liked the style?  They honestly believed that there were chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons on his own people previously.  He’d used them on his neighbor, the Iranians.  And they believed he had those weapons.  We believed he had those weapons.

MCGOVERN:  That’s what we call a non sequitur.  It doesn’t matter what the troops believed.  It matters what you believed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I think, Mr. Secretary, the debate is over.  We have other questions, in courtesy to your audience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

After reviewing the above details and coming to your own conclusion about whether the United States Secretary of Defense is lying, here are some selected quotes from the widely distributed AP article by Shannon McCaffrey on the same exchange. You would probably come to a different conclusion or no conclusion if this was what you read. There are few details about the exchange and it concludes with a happy homey perspective.

In recent weeks, at least a half dozen retired generals have called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, saying he has ignored advice offered by military officers and made strategic errors in the Iraq war, including committing too few troops. However, he has received strong backing by Bush, who repeatedly has indicated that he will keep Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

When security guards tried removing McGovern, the analyst, during his persistent questions of Rumsfeld, the defense secretary told them to let him stay. The two continued to spar. [Note the lack of detail and the following:]

“You’re getting plenty of play,” Rumsfeld told McGovern, who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

Responding to another protester who also accused Rumsfeld of lying, the secretary said such accusations are “so wrong, so unfair and so destructive.” At one point, Rumsfeld was praised by an audience member who said he had followed Rumsfeld’s career and wondered what in his upbringing had shaped his positive outlook on life.

“I guess one thing I’d say is that my mom was a schoolteacher and my dad read history voraciously. And I guess I adopted some of those patterns of reading history,” he replied.

So, just how much control of the media is there? Too much. Besides the media, those in power have even got the opposing party shut down, or at least isolated from the media.

One more thing, if you took the time to go through all the above, congratulations, your part of the growing solution.

Every time the issue of oil profits makes the news or is part of a nearby conversation, I wonder why we only get upset with big oil? Why don’t we rant and rave about others who make fast growing profits like the high tech companies that survived the bursting of the tech bubble? Well, I may have stumbled across a possible answer.

Thousands of companies do what they are supposed to do – make money. Most never make the news and are certainly not heard about around the water cooler or over lunch. Some, like the oil and high tech companies, have a string of years where profits grow rapidly. Most of these make the news, but only the oil company profits result in Congressional pandering to the electorate and bad pictures of oil executives.

New companies can go years without making money and never be noticed except by their investors. Some never make money and go away without being noticed except by a few former customers. Some (think Enron) aren’t making real money but cook the books to indicate they are and then the result is real heartbreaking news. But we only get angry at oil profits. Are they really excessive or is there something else more basic that causes raised voices and pontificating politicians? Maybe taking a broader look at the situation might provide another perspective.

The chart below shows a relative ranking of 38 companies including seven oil companies. This ranking is based on the growth in annual earnings per share (EPS) of stock. The time frame for the growth is from fiscal year 2001 to 2005. The scale is logarithmic to graphically normalize the differences. A chart with a linear scale is also viewable.

Click on image to view full size version.

The top eight companies include five high tech, one coal (Peabody), one mining (Phelps Dodge) and one reinsurer (Berkshire Hathaway). The next eight companies include the top six oil companies with one engineering services company (Haliburton) and an agricultural products company (ADM).

The average five year EPS growth for the top eight is 2,567 percent. The average five year growth for just the top 4 oil companies is 258 percent, or about one tenth that of the top eight.

Now let’s take a closer look at number 1, Google. Not only does Google have the greatest five year growth in EPS of 7,486 percent, it also has the highest gross profit per employee for 2005 of $627,020. Compare that to the 2005 average gross profit per employee for ConocoPhillips, Chevron and ExxonMobile – $296,268. That’s less than half. So, if we are that angry with the oil companies, why aren’t we in an outright revolt over the even higher profit growth of the top 8?

Maybe it’s because someone else is paying, willingly, for those profits. Again, if you look at Google, the cost for our use is zero. Advertisers are the ones paying for Google’s profits while we are the ones paying for the relatively smaller, but still high, oil profits.

If we could only get the oil companies to think like Google and figure out how to get others to pay for their profits and take at least some of the burden off us. However, where’s the insentive for the oil companies to change? What would make them spend some of their profits on developing a high tech idea that isn’t oil related? Only one thing.

Oil has to become unprofitable and something else has to replace it. In the mean time, we either pay the piper or change how we live.

The following came to me via email from the People For the American Way Foundation:

I just got back from observing the polls for the mayoral election in New Orleans, and I’m fighting mad. Too many voters – mostly poor and African American, many of them still devastated by Katrina – were denied the access to the ballot box that our Constitution guarantees. 

It was infuriating. Polling places had been moved at the last minute. Some were poorly marked. Poll commissioners demanded to see identification when the law does not require it.  And there was an intimidating police presence around polling places in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Too many absentee ballots for displaced voters were not counted. Our poll watchers and legal teams are going back to New Orleans for the May 20th runoff. For those of us who lived through the 2000 and 2004 elections, the scene was all too familiar. 

It was a life-changing experience for me and our partners, the Louisiana Voting Rights Network, the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The various layers of government could have – should have – made voting easy for these citizens. But they didn’t. 

I’m worried – terrified is a better word – that this injustice is going to repeat itself around the country as Americans go to the polls to elect new Congress Members and Senators this November. 

Someone has to put a stop to the shameless abuse of our fundamental right.

Yours in the struggle, 

Sharon J. Lettman
Director, National Programs and Outreach
People For the American Way Foundation

The following includes some suppositions.

As you have read, heard or seen elsewhere and may have read in this blog, torture is now standard operating procedure (SOP) for our war on terror (WOT). The Geneva Convention has been trashed. We have secret prisons. We use wire taps without oversight to find more guilty prisoners with no hope of being proven innocent, and our standards are now as low as the worst of our enemies.

You have also probably read that this change in our WOT SOP increases the likelihood of our own troops being tortured. Yes, it has already happened, but now more of our enemies feel ‘at ease’ with using torture – much like we are more at ease with torture. If it’s OK for the world’s leading ‘good guy,’ it’s now a free for all for the rest of the world.

Now take this to the next step. If we have opened the flood gates and all but guaranteed torture of our captured troops, and we know that some number of these troops are in critical positions and those critical troops hold information that could be used against other American troops or civilians at home, what kind of survival training will these critical troops now need? Will those who let Abu Ghraib happen to be the ones heading up the new torture survival training for our troops? Will Americans have to torture other Americans? How would a President explain this when someone leaks it to the ‘evil’ ‘liberal’ media that one American accidentally tortures another American to death?

(Links to references for each entry are included at the end of the article.)

Tom Delay was asked to leave Baylor University for drinking and vandalism. (1)

As a state legislator, he gained a reputation as a playboy, earning the nickname “Hot Tub Tom”. He called his condo “Macho Manor”. (1)

DeLay faced tax liens three times by the IRS for not paying payroll and income taxes, and paid settlements to two different associates who claimed they were cheated by him. (1)

DeLay was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1978. He struggled with alcoholism during his service there. By his own admission, he was drinking “eight, ten, twelve martinis a night at receptions and fundraisers.” (1)

When asked about a New Yorker Magazine profile which said he is estranged from much of his family, including his widowed mother and a brother, he said, “I’d rather not talk about that.” (1), (2)

According to The Washington Post, DeLay was close to his brother, Randy, a Houston lobbyist, until 1996, when a complaint to the House Ethics Committee prompted Tom DeLay to cut his brother off in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. (1)

DeLay criticizes the National Endowment for the Arts and the Environmental Protection Agency. DeLay said, “It’s the arrogance of man to think that man can change the climate of the world. Only nature can change the climate.” (1), (3)

DeLay said that he had tried to enlist during the Vietnam War, but was told that “so many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself.” (4)

A group of Russian oil executives gave money to a non-profit advocacy group linked to DeLay and to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in an attempt to influence his vote on a 1998 International Monetary Fund bailout of the Russian economy. (5)

Associates of DeLay advisor Ed Buckham, the founder of the U.S. Family Network, said that executives from the oil firm Naftasib offered a donation of $1,000,000 cash to be delivered to a Washington, D.C.-area airport in order to secure DeLay’s support. On June 25, 1998, the U.S. Family Network received a $1 million check via money transferred through the London law firm James & Sarch Co. This payment was the largest single entry on U.S. Family Network’s donor list. (6)

In 1994, Robert Blankenship, charged that DeLay and a third partner in Albo Pest Control had breached the partnership agreement by trying to force him out of the business, charging Delay and the other partner with breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, wrongful termination, loss of corporate expectancy, and injunctive relief. While being deposed in that suit, DeLay claimed that he was not an officer or director of Albo and believed he had resigned two or three years ago. Yet his own congressional disclosure forms, including one filed after the deposition, state that he was either president or chairman of the company between 1985 and 1994. The plaintiff also alleged that Albo money had been spent on DeLay’s congressional campaigns, in violation of federal and state law. DeLay and Blankenship settled for an undisclosed sum, and Blankenship’s attorney told Bardach that if he known about the congressional disclosure forms, he would have referred the case to the Harris County district attorney’s office for a perjury prosecution. (7)

DeLay’s latest voting record ratings: The Humane Society of the United States 0%; Public Citizen’s Congress Watch 0%; Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 0%; Human Rights Campaign 0%; National Parent Teacher Association 0%; National Education Association 25%; American Wilderness Coalition 0%; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund 0%; Sierra Club 0%; League of Conservation Voters 0%: Children’s Defense Fund 0%; Citizens for Global Solutions, D+; Center for International Policy 0%; American Association of University Women 0%; Federally Employed Women 0%; U.S. Public Interest Research Group (government reform) 0%; American Public Health Association 12%; National Breast Cancer Coalition 0%; Alliance for Retired Americans 0%; National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association 25%; Disabled American Veterans 0%; The Retired Enlisted Association 33%; Vietnam Veterans of America 25%; (8)

Publicly, DeLay stated he was neutral on Houston’s 2003 METRORail light rail initiative. However, public filings later showed that DeLay had his Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (ARMPAC) and his congressional campaign committee send money to Texans for True Mobility, a group that spent $1.5 Million on advertisements advocating the rejection of the proposal. (9) After the initiative passed, Delay flip-flopped and supported funding. (10)

DeLay initiated a provision would have retroactively protected the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE, which poses a health risk related to groundwater contamination, in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. (11)

DeLay, Senator Rick Santorum, and Grover Norquist launched a campaign in 1995 encouraging lobbying firms to retain only Republican officials in top positions. Firms that had Democrats in positions of authority would not be granted the ear of Majority Party members. Shortly after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, DeLay called prominent Washington lobbyists into his office. He had pulled the public records of political contributions that they made to Democrats and Republicans. According to Texans for Public Justice, “he reminded them that Republicans were in charge and their political giving had better reflect that—or else. The “or else” was a threat to cut off access to the Republican House leadership.” (12)

DeLay accepted a $25,000 TRMPAC contribution from a Reliant Energy Corp. lobbyist, Drew Maloney, who had previously served on DeLay’s House staff. (12)

Williams Cos., one of the eight corporations under indictment in Texas, had addressed to “Congressman Tom DeLay” a letter conveying “$25,000 for the TRMPAC that we pledged at the June 2, 2002 fundraiser.” (12)

DeLay interfered in the Terri Schiavo case by pushing a special bill to circumvent existing law. Delay criticized removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube; however, DeLay consented to not connecting his own father to a dialysis machine when his kidneys failed in 1988. (13)

DeLay was criticized for rationalizing violence against judges when their decisions are unpopular. He said, ” The time will come for the men responsible for this (Terri Schiavo’s death) to answer for their behavior.” Federal judges are seeking $12 million in new security measures after Delay’s remarks. (14)

Although DeLay has long been a supporter of the trade embargo against Cuba, he has been seen smoking a Cuban cigar. (15) When he was asked to obey the law and not smoke in a federal government building, DeLay retorted, “I am the federal government!” (16)

DeLay has received gifts from convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including paid golfing holidays to Scotland, concert tickets, and the use of Abramoff’s private skyboxes for fundraisers. (17)

The Associated Press reported on April 7, 2005 that DeLay’s political action committee did not reimburse lobbyist Jack Abramoff for the May 2000 use of the skybox, instead treating it as a type of donation that didn’t have to be disclosed to election regulators at the time. The skybox donation, valued at thousands of dollars, came just three weeks before DeLay accepted a trip to Europe, including golf with Abramoff at the world-famous St Andrews course for himself, his wife and aides that was underwritten by some of the lobbyist’s clients. Two months after the concert and trip, DeLay voted against gambling legislation opposed by some of Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients. (17)

Abramoff referred clients to the Alexander Strategy Group, the lobbying firm for which DeLay’s wife, Christine, worked from 1998 to 2002, allegedly in exchange for political favors from her husband. (18)

In 2001, DeLay cosigned a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft calling for the closure of a casino owned by the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas. Two weeks earlier, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one of Abramoff’s clients, had donated $1,000 to DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC). (19)

Abramoff lobbied DeLay to stop legislation banning sex shops and sweatshops that force employees to have abortions in the Northern Mariana Islands when Abramoff accompanied DeLay on a 1997 trip to the commonwealth. While on the trip, DeLay promised not to put the bill on the legislative calendar. In 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas. DeLay stopped the House from even considering Murkowski’s bill. DeLay later blocked a fact-finding mission planned by Representative Peter Hoekstra by threatening Hoekstra with the loss of his subcommittee chairmanship. (20), (21)

On September 30, 2004, the House Ethics Committee unanimously admonished DeLay because he “offered to endorse Representative (Nick) Smith’s son in exchange for Representative Smith’s vote in favor of the Medicare bill.” (22)

On October 6, 2004, the House Ethics Committee unanimously admonished DeLay on two counts. The first count stated that DeLay “created the appearance that donors were being provided with special access to Representative DeLay regarding the then-pending energy legislation.” The second count said that DeLay “used federal resources in a political issue” by asking the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Justice to track Texas legislators and interfere in the business in the State of Texas. (23)

In 2005, the Federal Elections Commission audited ARMPAC, DeLay’s political action committee. The FEC found that ARMPAC had failed to report $322,306 in debts owed to vendors, and that it had incorrectly paid for some committee expenses using funds from an account designated for non-federal elections. The FEC also found that ARMPAC had misstated the balances of its receipts and ending cash-on-hand for 2001, and of its receipts, disbursements, and beginning and ending cash-on-hand for 2002. (25)

On September 8, 2005, a federal grand jury indicted Texans for a Republican Majority, which allegedly accepted an illegal political contribution of $100,000 from the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, and the Texas Association of Business on four indictments, including charges of unlawful political advertising, unlawful contributions to a political committee and unlawful expenditures such as those to a graphics company and political candidates. (25)

On September 13, 2005, a federal grand jury indicted Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC, created by DeLay) executive director Jim Ellis and Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC, also created by DeLay), former executive director John Colyandro, who already faced charges of money laundering in the case, as well as 13 counts of unlawful acceptance of a corporate political contribution. (26)

On September 28, 2005, DeLay was indicted for conspiring to violate Texas state election law stemming from issues dealing with his involvement in Texans for a Republican Majority. (27), (28)

On November 21, 2005, in proceedings before Federal District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, Michael Scanlon, former communications director for Delay, pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a member of Congress and other public officials. (29)

In 1998, Peter Cloeren pleaded guilty to violation of federal campaign law, admitting that he got employees to donate $37,000 in their names to a Republican candidate, Dr. Brian Babin. Cloeren said, “He (Delay) said there’s ways to get money into the Babin campaign. He said his staff would take care of it.” (30)

On March 31, 2006, Tony Rudy, a former deputy chief of staff to DeLay, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. (31)

(1) Washingtonpost.com
(2) About.com
(3) The Washington Note
(4) houstonpress.com
(5) Washingtonpost.com
(6) The Daily Telegraph
(7) The Texas Observer
(8) Project Vote Smart
(9) Chron.com | Ideas for mobility fix take different roads
(10) Chron.com – How did rail plan get back on track?
(11) MSNBC.com
(12) Salon.com
(13) CBS News
(14) USATODAY.com
(15) TIME.com
(16) Washingtonpost.com
(17) MSNBC.com
(18) Washingtonpost.com
(19) CBS News
(20) CNN.com
(21) ABC News
(22) Washingtonpost.com
(23) DeLay Memo
(24) MSNBC.com
(25) Washingtonpost.com
(26) Statesman.com
(27) New York Times
(28) The Seattle Times
(29) CNN.com
(30) TPJ.org
(31) Truthdig.com

A full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $5.15 an hour. (no raise since 1997)

Last year, the CEO of Wal-Mart earned $3,500 an hour. (679 times what the minimum-wage earner makes)

The CEO of Halliburton earned about $8,300 an hour. (1,611 times what the minimum-wage earner makes)

The CEO of ExxonMobil earned about $13,700 an hour. (2,660 times what the minimum-wage earner makes)

The salaries of senators and representatives have gone up by $31,600 since 1997, nearly three times the total yearly income of a minimum wage worker (only $10,700 a year).  Yes, they voted themselves pay raises which are three times what some people earn in a whole year, but refuse to give any increase to those people.

According to the AFL/CIO, “At the current minimum wage level, a full-time, year-round minimum wage worker in 2006 will earn $5,378 less than the $16,090 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty.”

According to The Nation, “With 86 percent of Americans in favor of an increase in the wage, this much is clear: no one wants leaders who turn a blind eye to people now forced to live out of their cars; working two and three jobs and still not making ends meet; and an increasingly squeezed middle class that is a stone’s throw away from financial ruin.”

Another entry for The Nation stated, “In the current climate–with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; a minimum wage frozen for eight years and a GOP-dominated Congress; deterioration of labor’s power in the workplace; and corporate-authored free-trade agreements that exacerbate these trends–it is heartening to hear Sherrod Brown make the case that ‘a hard day’s work should mean a fair day’s pay.’ But where are the other Democratic leaders who should be standing by his side?”

Regards,
Jim