The WAWG Blog

Texas Board of Education Under Control of a Rogue Faction With a Specific Agenda – Recent actions have landed Texas State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy and an eight-member faction under legislative scrutiny.

At first glance, their misdeeds seem innocuous. But, it turns out, they might be costly and illegal.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills are the standards of school content, defining what students need to learn as they progress from grade to grade and what they are tested on at the end of the year.

On July 16, the House Public Education Committee requested that McLeroy answer questions about the TEKS adoption process. Some observers say he hanged himself. But in the words of a Monty Python character, he’s “not dead yet.”

In fact, he’s thumbing his nose at legislators. His testimony was circular and evasive and, according to knowledgeable educators, at times deceptive. Video of the committee meeting can be seen on the committee Web site at tinyurl.com/Public-Education.

McLeroy’s testimony and answers to questions from state Reps. Diane Patrick, R-Arlington; Dora Olivo, D-Richmond; and Donna Howard, D-Austin; revealed McLeroy’s rejection of sound educational practices.

When Howard attributed the SBOE’s adoption of damaging TEKS to “ideology” and “politicizing our children’s education,” observers overwhelmingly demonstrated their agreement with an eruption of applause.

Legislators heard testimony from SBOE members and more than two dozen of Texas’s top educators. Among them were Linda Ferreira-Buckley, chair of UT’s Rhetoric and Writing Department; Alana Morris, teacher and president of the Coalition of Reading and English Teachers; and Cindy Tyroff, curriculum developer for San Antonio’s Northside school district.

Educators who testified about the quality of the adopted TEKS described them in the worst of terms. Flawed. Full of gaps. Costly to local school districts. Damaging to children.

Legislators also learned from testimony that the new ELAR (English Language Arts) TEKS don’t completely align to college readiness standards. The last Legislature passed a law mandating that TEKS align with those standards. The State Board of Education broke the law.

Legislators also learned that the board’s rogue faction rejected a math textbook without reason. They broke the law.

Conclusion: The law applies only at these politicians’ pleasure.

What happened with the ELAR TEKS, and what happened at the next SBOE meeting, is of concern to all Texans because we will pay heavily for this faction’s ideology.

Good TEKS are aligned, meaning that students master content at each level that prepares them for the next grade level, but the adopted TEKS are not aligned. A result will be gaps in students’ learning because a child going through the system is almost guaranteed not to learn material at one level necessary for success on the next level. Most children will not recover the needed material, and many will be damaged as a result.

Texans will also pay with their pocketbooks. Local school districts will spend lots of unbudgeted money interpreting the messy TEKS so that they can match it to what they are teaching in the classrooms.

McLeroy’s testimony was an unintentional admission of guilt and a humiliating display of ignorance of the ELAR standards he voted on.

But he recovered. The next day, defying the advice of Public Education Committee member Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, and with arrogance that contrasts sharply with the humility legislators saw the day before, McLeroy led his SBOE faction to adopt Bible-course standards so vague that they leave the door gaping for classroom proselytizing.

SMU Religion Studies Chair Mark Chancey termed them “a constitutional train wreck” that will cost taxpayers in legal defense fees.

Continuing a radical rampage, McLeroy’s group outlined a process for the Science TEKS adoption that flies in the face of legislators’ intent. Their new process disempowers teachers and experts and enhances the group’s ability to adopt their ideology. If they succeed, taxpayers may foot that bill in court, as well.

And because most members of this faction had campaigns financed by James Leininger from San Antonio, we can anticipate another costly issue. Leininger is known for financing candidates who support his causes, which include school vouchers. Vouchers are one way to get taxpayers to pay for education in religious schools, exactly what America’s Founding Fathers didn’t want.

So what can be done? … One good remedy is in board District 7, where Laura Ewing is running against incumbent David Bradley. Bradley is infamous among educators for his statement, “Thinking is gobbledygook.” He votes with the ideologues. Ewing would balance the board with integrity.

Meantime, Gov. Rick Perry should revisit his appointment of McLeroy as board chair. …

I’ve said that there isn’t anything we can do to bring gasoline prices down in the near future.  I was wrong.
 
According to the Washington Post a few oil traders controlled 81% of the oil futures market driving prices up artificially to profit from exchanges that had nothing to do with the delivery of oil or fuel.  “It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency’s laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices,” said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). He added that it was “difficult to comprehend how the CFTC would allow a trader” to acquire such a large oil inventory “and not scrutinize this position any sooner.”
 
How did this happen?  A little thing called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, a little amendment slipped into a 2000 spending bill by Phil Gramm.  It became known as the “Enron Loophole” because it was written by the good folks at Enron to allow them to speculate on electricity supplies without federal oversight.  That was when Phil’s wife, Wendy, was on the board of directors at Enron. 
 
Ah, Phil Gramm!  You remember him, the one who said we weren’t in a recession, that it was only a “mental recession” brought on by a “nation of whiners”.  You know, the one who John McCain tried to distance himself from only to have him back on board a month later as his number one economic advisor.
 
According to Wikipedia, Democrats tried from 2000 to 2006 to close the loophole but were blocked by the Republican majority.  This year the Democratically controlled congress again tried to close the loophole but Bush vetoed the bill.  
 
The Washington Post article says that pure speculation is responsible for $20-25 a barrel in oil costs.  Hmmm, without speculation the current price of oil would be under $100 a barrel and gasoline would be under $3 a gallon. 
 
You really need to read the Washington Post article start to finish.  See, things aren’t going to get any better and in fact may get a lot worse as the same players who have made $billions running up the cost of your gas and electric bill will soon begin trading US oil contracts in Dubai and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the “watchdog” over futures speculation, has said it does not plan to stand in the way of this new wave of speculation.
 
If you liked the last 8 years, you’re gonna’ love life under McCain.
  

Warning: The following is a fantasy about what could still be ….

Executive privilege is a key tool of the unitary president. If we would just formally legalize “executive privilege” and unitary leadership for all levels of government, life would be so much simpler. For example, none of government leaders would need to raise money for election campaigns and we the people would be rid of studying the issues and the ‘trouble of voting’ because campaigning and elections would no longer be needed. Of course, a few other changes would be required to keep this privileged unitary system (PUS) running.

Full blown PUS means we get rid of two thirds of all government and replace it with a unitary presidency. Who needs a rubber stamp legislature or judges who only support executive policy anyway? Extend PUS from the national level to the local level. All political decisions would be made by our unitary leaders at all levels of government. We could have a unitary national president, unitary state governors, unitary county commissioners, unitary city mayors, and home owners associations with unitary presidents to run all government and community activities as they see fit. And they all would be granted rights of executive privilege.

Imagine Washington, D.C., reduced to the unitary White House and K Street lobbyists occupying the historic offices of our Capitol Building. Add to this the Straussian neocons and support of The Federalist Society who would not only counsel the unitary executive but could curate our national and state museums to help us understand the nobility of the unitary executive and its rightful privileges. Access to our Constitution and Declaration of Independence would be limited to a select few of these consultants. This would help assure a unitary interpretation of these documents in support of the national unitary policy.

Similar changes across our state capitals and all local levels of government and community organizations would be made to carry the unitary policy to all.

Voting would become a relic of history just like the legislature and court system. Why bother voting if there is only one choice? We could just let the corporations pick our leaders. No voting also means no more worrying about election fraud.

Just think of the corporate profits saved by eliminating the need for corporate political contributions. These profits could instead be used to increase corporate executive benefits packages and pay for the lobbyists. After all, don’t they deserve the extra pay in this new system? They are not only paid for directing managers of large corporations, they should also be paid for their sage advice during all those secret meetings with the unitary executive branch of all levels of government. And they are all protected by executive privilege.

To implement these efficiencies and make our daily lives less complicated, a few other changes would be necessary.

In addition to legalizing the unitary executive and executive privilege, all the open meeting laws would have to be nullified. They would no longer be necessary. A unitary executive, by definition is trusted – or else ….

Open meetings were meant to keep the citizens informed so they could vote intelligently, but with voting and election fraud eliminated, who needs to know what the unitary executive and the corporate executive are saying behind closed doors. We all trust they will be fair and we’ve been told by the neocon curators that they were selected by those who know a truth too complicated for others to comprehend.

PUS would need a unitary source of information. The current situation has far too many variables for keeping the unitary governments stable. Also, citizens need to be entertained while the unitary government works aggressively to spread PUS to the rest of the world. This will also help secure our ‘homeland.’ All sources of information and entertainment would be merged into Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch media enterprises.

PUS would need a unitary evangelical religion to support the policies of the unitary governments – no more separation of church and state. Keeping them separate is just too confusing for maintaining a unitary executive.

All local and national law enforcement would be merged with the Justice Department. This would put national policy enforcement under the Attorney General. Combine that with the international policy enforcement through the Joint Chiefs of Staff and we have a unitary approach for battling all enemies – both internal and external. This, of course, works best when combined with executive privilege, secret meetings and no checks and balances by less knowledgeable third parties.

To control the ‘few’ internal enemies, the unitary governments would need to set aside remote sections of the country. They could use portions of the public properties leased out to the oil and gas corporations to ‘house’ these delusional dissidents and enemy combatants. They would be very useful in recovering the oil, natural gas, coal and other resources needed for both reducing the nations dependence on external energy sources and to support its ever expanding ‘international unitary expansion efforts.’

Higher education would be reserved for neocons, corporate leaders, lobbyists, media moguls, enforcement leaders and leaders of the national mega church. This would assure they are making the right decisions for the rest of the nation. It would also comfort the ruled to know they are in such noble educated hands.

Isn’t this just what we need? No more partisan bickering. No more filibustering. No more pork. Just one happy unitary country. In fact, why don’t we just get right to it? Why put it off any longer?

We’ve come a long way since 1994 and the Contract with America. GWB has brought us right up to the edge of this neocon future. Why try and stop it with an election in November. GWB can just declare a national emergency and ‘suspend’ the elections.

Just let it happen. Tell GWB you’re willing to give up your right to vote so he can stay on and finish what he started. But maybe he’s ready to retire and move to a unitary corporate position as a consultant for John McCain.

“Some say” that McCain is willing to provide a brand new Harley motorcycle to the first 1,000 signers of the unitary pledge of allegiance he plans to have developed.

Sucker Fish Go to Aquarium to See Bottom-Feeder – Last night at the Aquarium Restaurant, Karl Rove was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for State Rep. John Davis (R-Clear Lake). (Who would pay to see Karl Rove unless he was behind bars? – JLV) Davis has appropriately been called “used furniture” by Texas Monthly Magazine. Davis is one of the state’s more ethically-challenged State Reps. Davis spent campaign cash on a pair of $1,500 boots and he failed to itemize over $48,000 in American Express card purchases (and got hammered by the Texas Ethics Commission for failing to do so).

John Davis has cast a lot of votes against schools, children, and education. For starters, he voted for tuition deregulation and then had the audacity to say that 44% increases in college tuition costs are “not unreasonable”. As a result of Davis’ vote (combined with the votes of many other Republicans), it has become very difficult for middle class families to afford to send their kids to college because tuition costs are skyrocketing. Davis voted to slash funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and help create the “permanent wall” that kept kids off CHIP. Of course, after Sherrie Matula held Davis accountable for this vote in 2006, he quickly changed his tune and became “for” CHIP after he was “against” CHIP. Of course, by then it was too late and thousands of Texas children had suffered as a result of his vote. Davis has also voted time and time again against everything for teachers, teacher retirement, childhood immunization programs, and anti-discrimination measures to help school children. John Davis even put the interests of one of his big financial supporters, Houston Home builder Bob Perry, above middle class students who want a college education when it came time to cast votes on the Appropriations Bill on the House floor! And for a State Representative that actually has to breathe the air in Houston, Davis is solidly against clean air. He’s time and again voted against improving the air quality in his own district.

Sherrie Matula (D-Houston) is the candidate running against Davis. Sherrie is a longtime public school educator and science education consultant who served two terms on the Board of Trustees of Clear Creek Independent School District. She’s served on the board of the Texas State Teachers Association, and has a very impressive resume. She will bring to the Texas House of Representatives a wide array of knowledge and experience, especially on education issues. She will work hard on lowering college tuition, electricity rates and homeowners insurance.

Let’s show John Davis and Karl Rove we are tired of their brand of politics. Donate to Sherrie Matula’s campaign .

McCain Supports Tax Breaks For Big Oil — But Not For Wind Power – The recent farm bill also contained a measure extending a tax break for developing wind power, which McCain specifically opposed.

McCain’s Touts Renewable Energy, But His Energy Plan Offers Little to Support It – A McCain ad shows pictures of wind-driven turbines while the narrator says: “Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain.” But, in fact, his energy plan doesn’t specify any new federal spending for renewable energy and says only that he’d “rationalize” existing tax credits to provide incentives. In the past, however, he’s opposed extending such tax credits when paid for by tax increases elsewhere.

McCain Lies About Obama’s Tax Proposals Again, and Again, and Again – McCain has released new ads with multiple false and misleading claims about Obama’s tax proposals:

• A TV spot claims Obama once voted for a tax increase “on people making just $42,000 a year.” That’s true for a single taxpayer, who would have seen a tax increase of $15 for the year – if the measure had been enacted. But the ad shows a woman with two children, and as a single mother, she would not have been affected unless she made more than $62,150. The increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan anyway.
• A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on “families” making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected.
• The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would “raise taxes on middle class.” In fact, Obama’s plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.
• The radio ad claims Obama would increase taxes “on the sale of your home.” In fact, home-sale profits of up to $500,000 per couple would continue to be exempt from capital gains taxes. Very few sales would see an increase under Obama’s proposal to raise the capital gains rate.
• A second radio ad, in English, says, “Obama has a history of raising taxes” on middle-class Americans. But that’s false. It refers to a vote that did not actually result in a tax increase and could not have done so.

These ads continue what’s become a pattern of misrepresentation by the McCain campaign about his opponent’s tax proposals.

Update, Aug. 12: The tax falsehoods continued with the release of a McCain Web ad Aug. 11 claiming that the “perks” of joining the Obama “fan club” include “a tax increase for everyone earning more than $42,000 a year.”

(Do we want another president that will lie to us over and over? Does McCain want to win an election more than he values his integrity? When it comes to leadership, aren’t these things most important? – JLV)

Most U.S. Corporations Don’t Pay Income Tax – The Government Accountability Office is set to release a report that says most U.S. corporations pay no federal income taxes. And most foreign companies that do business in the United States aren’t paying corporate taxes. The study says about two-thirds of American corporations paid zero income taxes to Uncle Sam between 1998 and 2005. An even higher percentage of foreign corporations avoided federal corporate taxes. At the same time, said the GAO, the firms had trillions of dollars in sales.

Republican Rep. To Environmentalists: Jesus Already Saved The Planet – Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the Christian Right champion from Minnesota says we don’t need pesky environmentalists like Nancy Pelosi around, because Jesus already saved the planet!

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Other recent Bachmannisms include the claim that there isn’t actually any wildlife in the areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where she wants more drilling, and the allegation that Democrats want high gas prices so as to force people to move into “inner cities” and “the urban core.”

Contractors Reap 85 Billion Dollars From Iraq War – The US government paid out 85 billion dollars in four years to contractors providing services to various government agencies in support of the Iraq war and reconstruction, a survey showed Tuesday. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report said the administration of US President George W. Bush awarded 85-billion-dollars in contracts between 2003 and 2007, or over 21 billion dollars annually. Large contracts awarded to the Halliburton energy services firm, which was once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, and KBR – a Halliburton subsidiary and the biggest US military contractor in Iraq – have been criticized and come under scrutiny from Democrats.

Congress has also been investigating the role of private security contractors who have been involved in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians, including employees of the private US security firm Blackwater USA. A hefty chunk of US government spending was allotted to private security contractors who received between six and 10 billion dollars of the contracting pie between 2003 and 2007 for their services.

Mukasey: No Prosecutions in Justice Hiring Scandal – Former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday. He told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, “not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.” (Huh? I thought that the definition of a crime is violating the law. – JLV)

Bush Administration Puts Endangered Species In More Danger – The White House on Aug. 11 proposed a sweeping regulatory overhaul of the ESA, virtually eliminating the independent scientific evaluation of the environmental impact of federal actions. The current law mandates any project that may impact an endangered species and requires approval by a federal agency — for example, a new highway planned by the Department of Transportation that could damage the habitat of a listed red wolf — to undergo an independent review by scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. The proposed new rules would allow the agency in charge of the project — in this example, the Department of Transportation — to decide whether a review would be necessary.

Green groups point out that there is little reason to think that federal agencies whose brief doesn’t include the environment would go through the bureaucratic trouble of requesting such reviews for their projects. The result would be a drastic cut-back of the independent, scientific assessments — thousands of which are done each year — that are the backbone of the ESA. “It gives those agencies carte blanche to do what they want,” says Karla Raettig, the legislative representative for wildlife conservation at the National Wildlife Federation.

Bad Deeds Family Tree – If you’ve ever thought “Hey, I could really use a chart to keep track of who in the Bush Administration could face criminal charges, and for what”, you’re in luck.

Regards,

Jim

US Customs Can Seize Your iPod – US customs have the power to seize your laptop or iPod when entering the country – even with no reason to do so. Although this power has been in place for a while, the truth only recently came to light thanks to a group lobbying for the disclosure of the Department of Homeland Security policies. Apparently agents can seize the items for ‘unspecified amounts of time’ and can share the information with the relevant authorities and private entities for data decryption and the rather ominous sounding ‘other reasons’.

Wal-Mart Tries to Scare Its Managers and Supervisors About Democrats – Wal-Mart is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies — including Wal-Mart. In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

Republican Senators Filibuster Defense Bill for Their Oil Company Benefactors – The Senate Republicans voted against the troops. Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans have basically been filibustering every bill till the oil companies get what they want. But, surely, they wouldn’t put the oil companies over America’s defense needs when we’re in the middle of two wars??? Wrong. They did. Seriously, they filibustered a bill, S. 3001, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, which, among other things, provided pay raises for troops, health care and protection from IEDs. The bill needed 60 votes. Thirty-eight Republicans voted NO against moving forward.

Sheikh Flies Lamborghini 6,500 Miles to Britain for Oil Change – The £190,000 supercar was put on a scheduled flight from Qatar to Heathrow – then flown BACK after the oil check. An airport worker said: “This car doesn’t have a carbon footprint – more of a crater.” The overall cost of sending the Lamborghini to London for the oil change would have cost more than £23,000. The Murciélago LP640 – driven by Batman in movie The Dark Knight – arrived from the Middle Eastern country on Friday. It cleared customs and was trucked to specialist mechanics in London for the service. On Monday it was flown back 3,250 miles to the oil-rich state where it was collected by the owner.

British Territory Used for US Terror Interrogation – According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom. The official, a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government, says a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island.

Homeland Insecurity: FBI Loses 2.6 Laptops a Month – A 2007 Justice Department audit found that the FBI was somehow losing 2.6 laptops per month, many with sensitive or classified information. More than 1,400 Energy Department laptops went missing in a six-year period, according to another audit. So much for homeland security.

McCain TV Ad Falsely Insinuates that Barack Obama Canceled His Visit to Wounded Troops Because “the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” – A new McCain ad says Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.”

McCain’s facts are literally true, but his insinuation – that the visit was canceled because of the press ban or the desire for gym time – is false. In fact, Obama visited wounded troops earlier – without cameras or press – both in the U.S. and Iraq. And his gym workouts are a daily routine.

The Obama campaign canceled the visit with wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, Obama says, when he learned that the Pentagon would not allow him to bring along a retired Air Force major general who is serving as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign. Obama says that “triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political.”

McCain’s Web Cite Claims That McCain is a “Political Celebrity” While He Criticizes Barack for Being Like a Celebrity – Until recently, this statement was on the McCain website: “A political celebrity, McCain is considered a top contender for the nomination.”

Regards,

Jim

To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them – Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. There were a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Exxon Mobil Makes Profit of $1,485.55 Per Second – Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter (just three months!). That figure is after subtracting money spent finding and producing more new oil and all other expenses. Aren’t you glad that you’re paying nearly $4 a gallon for gasoline so that you can say you had a part in this history-making event? They also recently gave chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson an 18% raise to $21.7 million per year, and I’m sure you’re glad you helped keep Mr. Tillerson out of the poorhouse.

Several bills have been introduced in Congress to enact a ‘windfall’ profits tax on these earnings, or at the very least eliminate manufacturing tax exemption oil companies now enjoy. Barack Obama wants to tax oil companies at a special rate every time crude goes over $80 a barrel. Most plans would either use this newfound tax money to fund investments in renewable energy, or give it to low income Americans struggling with high energy prices. But so far those efforts have been blocked – mainly by Republicans – who say raising taxes on oil companies will only discourage investments in finding new oil and raise the price of crude. (But if that’s true, then why doesn’t Exxon Mobil use more of their $11.68 billion quarterly profit that they already have to find more oil? – JLV)

McCain’s Campaign Now Getting That Karl Rove Touch – On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.

Toles Cartoons at Washington Post

Mr. McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush’s television advertisements.

The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on.

There’s obviously nothing surprising about the McCain campaign’s reliance on the standard, personality-based attacks that the GOP uses every election year. It’s long been obvious to everyone outside of The TNR Circle that McCain’s only prospect for winning would be to move the election away from debates over issues (where his positions are widely rejected by the public) and instead demonize Barack Obama as an effete, elitist, effeminate, far Leftist, terrorist-loving radical, and it was equally obvious that McCain would eagerly employ those Rovian tactics.

Bush Threatens to Veto Equal Pay for Women – This week, the House is expected to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor for a vote, legislation that would help close the wage gap between working men and women and “close loopholes that have allowed employers to avoid responsibility” for discriminatory pay. In an official statement, the White House said it would veto the bill.

Newly Uncovered Documents Show Problems Known With Voting Machine Patch – Just before the November 2002 election in Georgia, Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich personally flew in from Texas and applied a software patch to voting machines in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. A flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock — which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken only a week before the voting, lost 53 percent to 46 percent. Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic Governor, who had been leading challenger Sonny Perdue by a fairly wide margin of eleven points, lost 51 percent to 46 percent. The last-minute patch installation and the lack of official recertification may have rendered the 2002 Georgia results invalid.

“People working for Diebold were told to keep this quiet so [Georgia Secretary of State Cathy] Cox would not find out,” a whistleblower said. “They knew she was in over her head and had come to completely rely on Diebold. They controlled the warehouse, the machines, and the certification. There were no state employees.”

Diebold renamed itself Premier Election Solutions in 2007. The company has come under fire on numerous occasions for failing to protect its software from hackers, and its systems have been decertified in California. Maryland’s House of Delegates voted to ban the company from its electronic voting in 2006, though the law didn’t pass the Senate and state is now considering Premier for their optical scan systems.

In August 2003, Walden O’Dell, then the chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends in the Republican Party.

While McCain Wears $520 Italian Ferragamo Leather Loafers, He Tries to Make us Think Barack Obama is Elitist – McCain can wear any kind of shoes he wants, but isn’t it hypocritical to try to equate a black man to two blonde girls to try to show Obama is an out-of-touch elitist while McCain is wearing $520 Italian Salvatore Ferragamo ‘Pregiato’ Moccasins as he travels between his eleven houses? And what better way to show his American pride than to tour the country in Italian leather while charging Obama as un-American? Remember TV footage of Michelle Obama telling Access Hollywood during a family interview that Obama was wearing ten year old pants and a worn-out belt and hurriedly adding, “Don’t pan down to the shoes — because we’ve talked about getting new shoes for him.”

Strained by War, U.S. Army Promotes Unqualified Soldiers – An Army policy implemented in 2005 and expanded this year lowered the bar for enlisted soldiers with the rank of E-4 to gain the rank of sergeant, or E-5, by diminishing the vetting process. According to more than a half dozen current and former Army sergeants interviewed by Salon, the policy has produced sergeants who are not ready to lead. In some cases, soldiers were promoted even after being denied advancement by their own unit commanders. While awarding a promotion once required effort on the part of a commander, those interviewed say, the Army’s current policy actually requires effort to prevent a promotion, and has had negative consequences on the battlefield.

Regards,

Jim

In a recent email announcing the introduction of The Domestic Drilling Act (H.R.6593) and The Consumer Energy Supply Act (H.R. 6578), Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX) stated, “As we find ourselves competing with rapidly growing nations such as China and India for energy, it is clear that we must increase supplies to reign in skyrocketing prices.”

I must disagree with Congressman Lampson. It is not only NOT clear, it is IMAGINARY.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the US produced 5,064,000 barrels of oil per day in 2007 and world production was 82,532,000 barrels/day in 2005. This means the world controls the supply of the world’s oil. It also means increasing drilling locally will not “reign in the skyrocketing prices” of gasoline.

Here’s a quote on the matter and some simple math to show why Lampson’s proposal won’t work.

In an article about T. Boone Pickens’ wind and natural gas plan and Pickens’ support of more drilling, there is this statement at the end of the article:

“When we drill more, OPEC drills less,” Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

To consider what Mr. Luft says, lets take Lampson’s numbers for what the US might recover by expanding US drilling, about 96.4 billion barrels including ANWR, and see how that might affect world supplies and fuel costs.

These US reserves represent a little over 1,150 days worth of oil for the world, if they could be extracted at the EIA 2005 daily rate for the world. But this is very unlikely since the US would have to increase the number of producing wells by over 16 (82/5) times based on our 2007 EIA rate of production.

In other words, the number of US rigs would have to grow from July 25, 2008’s level of 1,957 to over 31,000 to equal the worlds 2005 output. Not very likely.

Even if we could double the number of rigs, this would only increase the US contribution to the world’s oil supplies by 6 percent (5/82). So, the impact on world supplies of this proposed expanded drilling will, assuming the rest of the world cooperates by maintaining there production, be hardly noticeable.

However, one thing will happen if Lampson’s bills become law. Corporate oil revenues will shift from the rest of the world to US oil producers. Only the US oil companies will gain from this increased drilling – NOT consumers.

As for his “twist” of using royalties to fund alternative sources of energy. That won’t make it into the final law.

Mr. Lampson’s proposals will not make a difference to any consumer as long as the rest of the world controls ninety-four (94) percent of the world’s oil supplies.

Wake up America and smell the ‘crude’ realities of world oil supplies. We may be the policeman of the world, but we’re just the junk yard dog of oil production.

Senate Republicans Block Effort to Aid Paralyzed Veterans – The Christopher and Dana Reeve Act, named for the actor who was made famous by his portrayal of superman and later became a champion of the disabled, along with his late wife, is part of a broad package created by Democrats which lumps together 36 bills. It would have allocated $25 million for research on spinal cord injuries, rehabilitation and measures to improve the quality of life for paralyzed Americans. The effort is backed by the Paralyzed Veterans of America, which claims 19,000 members. Some 200,000 Americans suffer spinal cord-related injuries. The overall bill, dubbed the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, was blocked by a 50-42 vote, short of the 60 votes need to overcome a filibuster. The House passed the Reeve bill in 2007, but the Senate has never followed suit. Republicans blasted the bill as an attempt to bait them and distract from measures to deal with high gas prices (Republican code-talk for opening environmentally sensitive areas to oil drilling – JLV).

Texas Family-Values Republican Holds Burlesque Fundraiser in Las Vegas – Card-carrying conservative Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), who scolded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for forcing “their liberal values upon the rest of the country” after their infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime flash, held a racey fundraiser for his leadership political action committee last year at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce nightclub in Sin City. A description of the club is on its web site, which features a scantily clad dancer.

Despite Pledge to Run Positive Campaign, McCain Releases Series of Attack Ads Including One Comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears – The McCain campaign is out with the latest in a string of sharply negative advertisements, this time mocking Barack Obama as a self-important celebrity along the likes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. In a 30-second spot that focuses absolutely zero attention on McCain himself, the ad makes patently false assertions such as, “Higher taxes, more foreign oil, that’s the real Obama.” The spot reflects what observers and reporters have described as a growing superficial negativity emerging from the McCain camp.

Government Questionnaires Asking About Matters Not Related to Job Suitability – Employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory got an ultimatum last year: Submit to new, more thorough background investigations or leave the agency. Twenty-eight JPL scientists, engineers and administrative support employees instead took their employers to court. The plaintiffs and some observers say the ensuing legal battle has raised questions about the federal government’s background investigation methods and the constitutionality of the trigger event: Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. Problems include:

• NASA exceeded its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act in investigating contract employees.
• The investigations constitute unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment.
• They also violate employees’ constitutional right to informational privacy.
• The broad, open-ended questions used in NASA’s investigations “appear to range far beyond the scope of the legitimate state interests that the government has proposed.”

“These new investigations are draconian,” said Matthew Biggs, legislative director of Washington-based International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. Under SF42, he said, “they can ask: ‘Why did you get a divorce? If I ask your friends and family, will I get the same answer?’ ”
“It has nothing to do with suitability for a job as a scientist or engineer,” he added.

Regards,

Jim

McCain (Who Thinks He is Best Qualified to be Commander-in-Chief) Doesn’t Know Who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U. S. Military – McCain said this to George Stephanopoulos in his interview on Sunday :

I believe that, when he said that we had to leave Iraq, and we had to be out by last March, and we had to have a date certain, that was in contravention to — and still is — the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Petraeus.

Of course, Gen. Petraeus is not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Mike Mullen is.

Dick Cheney Thinks Disabled Veterans Should Wait on Him for Two Hours Without Restrooms (and Then Wait Through His Speech) – Vice President Cheney’s invitation to address wounded combat veterans next month has been yanked because the group felt his security demands were Draconian and unreasonable. The veep had planned to speak to the Disabled American Veterans at 8:30 a.m. at its August convention in Las Vegas. His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney’s arrival and couldn’t leave until he’d finished talking, officials confirmed. “Word got back to us … that this would be a prerequisite,” said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn’t have any rest rooms. “We told them it just wasn’t acceptable.”

Houston Resists Recycling – While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not. It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities. Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city.

EPA Tells Its Staff: Don’t Answer Watchdogs’ Queries – The Environmental Protection Agency has told its staff not to answer questions from the agency’s internal watchdog, news reporters or the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, according an internal memo that an environmental group released Monday. The June 16 memo to the staff of the EPA’s enforcement division told them that if they’re contacted by the EPA inspector general’s office, an independent internal watchdog that monitors the agency, or by the Government Accountability Office, the investigators who work for Congress, they’re to forward the call or e-mail to a designated person. John Walke, a former EPA air pollution attorney, said the inspector general’s office ordinarily has unfettered access to agency employees so they can speak candidly and anonymously.

Bush Leaving Next President Record Federal Budget Deficit – The government’s budget deficit will surge past a half-trillion dollars next year, according to gloomy new estimates, a record flood of red ink that promises to force the winner of the presidential race to dramatically alter his economic agenda. The deficit will hit $482 billion in the 2009 budget year that will be inherited by Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, the White House estimated Monday. That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn’t include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy fails to recover as the administration predicts.

Attorney General’s Aides Hired Less-Qualified Applicants Based on Political Ideology – Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broke Civil Service laws by using politics to guide their hiring decisions, picking less-qualified applicants for important nonpolitical positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility, an internal report concluded on Monday. A longtime prosecutor who drew rave reviews from his supervisors was passed over for an important counterterrorism slot because his wife was active in Democratic politics, and a much-less-experienced lawyer with Republican leanings got the job, the report said. Another prosecutor was rejected for a job in part because she was thought to be a lesbian. And a Republican lawyer received high marks at his job interview because he was found to be sufficiently conservative on the core issues of “god, guns + gays.”

The pattern appeared most damaging in the hiring of immigration judges, as vacancies were allowed to go unfilled — and a backlog of deportation cases grew — while Mr. Gonzales’s aides looked for conservative lawyers to fill what were supposed to be apolitical jobs. (And tell me again why immigration cases aren’t being handled? – JLV)

Man Kills Two at Church Because of its Liberal Teachings – Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals “who are ruining the country,” court records show. Jim David Adkisson allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children’s musical. Adkisson was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Adkisson targeted the church, Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.” Adkisson told Still that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.”

Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.

The church’s Web site states that it has worked for “desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women’s rights and gay rights” since the 1950s. Current ministries involve emergency aid for the needy, school tutoring and support for the homeless, as well as a cafe that provides a gathering place for gay and lesbian high-schoolers.

Is there really a call to violence against liberals? Here are some samples:

Rush Limbaugh: “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

Stop the ACLU: Rope + Tree + ACLU Lawyer = Pinata

Ann Coulter: “Some liberals have become even too crazy for Texas to execute, which is a damn shame. They’re always saying — we’re oppressed, we’re oppressed so let’s do it. Let’s oppress them.”

Melanie Morgan: “A great deal of good could be done by arresting Bill Keller having him lined up against the wall and shot.”

Lee Rogers: “[T]he day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals and it’s going to be very amusing to watch.”

RedState contributor “Thomas Crown”: “I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.”

Bill O’Reilly: “And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you [San Francisco] up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”

Rep. Peter King: “And Joe Wilson has no right to complain. And I think people like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy such a free ride and all the media, they’re the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove.”

Michael Reagan: “Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!”

So how should we respond to such ugliness? As an example, let’s look at an excerpt from a blog post by one of the members of the Unitarian Church to the violence committed ageist his church members:

“… I feel sorry for Adkisson, even as his actions are clearly unforgivable. He was, like all of us, a soul cast upon this world, looking for direction and purpose. Had he found himself a more stable, more honorable set of influences, he may have found himself happier and saner, at least enough so that he did not feel the need to murder others in order to find meaning in his existence. He went looking for answers, and the right gave him instead a scapegoat, an over-arching group to place all his self-hatred onto, all his anger, all his rage, all his uncomprehending fury. And then he acted.

He is as lost and broken as anybody involved in this, and my heart goes out to him. Hatred does not just push people to destroy others; it destroys those that hate, as well.

None of us know what lies beyond the end of our time on this Earth. All we know for certain is that we have this time to live, and this short time to find our own meaning to our existence. Adkisson thought he had found his meaning, that he was a means to the destruction of the enemy — the enemy being his fellow humans. But his fellow humans refused to turn on him, refused to harm him, refused to kill him, refused to view him as he viewed them. In all the righteous anger and fury and pain of the moment, the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church did not seek revenge. Two lives ended the day of Adkisson’s attack, but they did not die without meaning. In that moment, the UUs of that congregation did what all of us in the church hope we can do — they fought back with tolerance, compassion, and self-sacrifice, not with anger, bitterness, and vengeance. …”

Regards,

Jim

Fear-Mongering Conservatives Make Up Stories About American Boys Held Captive in a Pakistani Madrassa – Since early July, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas has been misleading Americans about two young Pakistani-American boys who McCaul claimed were being “held in there against their will” at a international madrassa school, which McCaul says has Taliban ties in this FOX interview.

After hearing about the two Atlanta children in a 2008 documentary called Karachi Kids, McCaul, who sees everything through red-threat-level colored glasses, immediately began exploiting homeland security fears in the name of the two children, as evidenced in this article from the Houston Chronicle on McCaul’s website. He refers to schools like the one the boys were at as “jihadist seminaries” and claims that they are “creating a new breed of terrorist.” However, in his haste to turn this into an election-year fist-bump, McCaul failed to check with his own State Department, the parents of the children or to do any sort of his own research to find out what the situation at the international school was.

If you do a check on any Internet search engine, you will find plenty of conservative blogs spreading this story. However, as CNN reported Sunday night, the media-hype surrounding McCaul’s messianic quest to bring these children home is essentially just that: overblown hype about two children who were in fact not being held against their will and not being trained at a radical Islamic school at all.

CNN video report

McCain Says Do Away With Affirmative Action – John McCain said Sunday that he supports a proposed ballot initiative in his home state that would prohibit affirmative action policies from state and local governments. A decade ago, he called a similar effort “divisive.”

McCain Confused Again: Says ‘I didn’t use the word timetable,’ But It’s On Video – After Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan, McCain changed his position, telling Wolf Blitzer that “it was a pretty good timetable” in the video at the link below. But now the Senator is denying he ever used the word timetable at all and reasserting “conditions on the ground” as the overriding factor for when US troops can leave Iraq. “I didn’t use the word timetable,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview airing Sunday.

When asked if Obama was right that the US invasion of Iraq “inflamed the Muslim world,” McCain said that his own prediction of Americans being greeted as liberators was correct. “We were greeted as liberators,” McCain said.

Contractor Made Little Progress on Iraq Projects, But Got Paid Anyhow – The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general’s office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons’s work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million.

“Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned,” the inspector general wrote. “Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract.”

What Liberal Bias? Network News Comments Are More Negative Toward Obama Than McCain – ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign, according to a study conducted by The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades. During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative. Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative.

Although McCain Says He Knows How to Catch bin Laden, He’s Apparently Keeping it Secret So We Can Stay in Danger Until After He’s Elected – On Saturday’s Situation Room, when Wolf Blitzer asked McCain about his vow to catch Osama bin Laden, John McCain said, “Well, I’m not gonna telegraph a lot of the things that I’m gonna do, because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But look, I know the area. I’ve been there. I know war. I know how to win wars. And I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden…I know how to do it.”

Which begs four obvious questions:
1) Is John McCain privy to some intelligence or strategy that would better our chances of capturing bin Laden?
2) If so, why hasn’t he shared this information with the current administration?
3) Would he rather win the election than see bin Laden captured?
4) Also, exactly which war(s) has he won?
Would somebody in the MSM please…PLEASE ask him any/all of these?! Please? Seriously — how many stupid things does this guy get to say before somebody with a microphone calls him on it?

House GOP Leader Says “[Alaskan Wildlife] Couldn’t Care Less Whether…The Pipeline Was There” – Last night, on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News program, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed that wildlife in Alaska are not affected by oil operations in Alaska. Animals “couldn’t care less whether…the pipeline was there, or the oil company was there,” he said. Glenn Beck similarly argued that wildlife can’t tell if the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline is a “tree or a pipeline,” and said that the northern reaches of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — where Boehner hopes to drill — are a “barren wasteland.” Beck and Boehner are wrong. Far from “not caring” about the presence of oil operations at the 800-square mile Prudhoe Bay facility, native species are dramatically affected. Scientific surveys have shown that the Central Arctic caribou herd has been “crowded out” due to drilling: [The survey] showed that the caribou reduced their use of the more heavily developed Prudhoe Bay oil fields by 78 percent, and their east-west movements declined by 90 percent — a sign oil activity can impact a herd’s movements. More details at the link.

EPA Chief Won’t Explain Climate Choices – Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson has declined to explain before Congress how a conclusion he made last year that global warming put the public in danger could lead to a decision not to regulate greenhouse gases. In a 28-page document the White House and EPA have refused to release, the agency last December said global warming could endanger public welfare, according to excerpts released Thursday by a Senate committee. The hearing, which was going to examine the role of the White House in EPA decisions, particularly on global warming, was canceled.

Coal Mining Operations Ignore Worker Safety Concerns – The operators of a Utah mine at the center of a collapse that led to nine fatalities last August have been fined 1.6 million dollars, health and safety officials announced Thursday. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) said the operators of the Crandall Canyon Mine had failed to report repeated collapses at the facility which meant inspectors were unable to assess practices there.

Two federal reports released on Thursday reveal previously unknown details about the August 6th disaster. Now we know, for example, that the sheer force of the collapse probably killed the six workers who were trapped in the mine pretty quickly. So, they were probably dead long before three rescue workers died 10 days later trying to save them.

In a statement, Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of labor for the MSHA, said the tragedy had stemmed from mine operator Genwal Resources’ “reckless failure” to report three previous coal “outbursts,” including one just three days before the initial incident on August 6. …”MSHA also found that the operator was taking more coal than allowed from the barrier pillars and the floor. This dangerously weakened the strength of the roof support.”

OK, coal mining destroys the land, kills those who mine it, destroys their health, and is bad for us when we burn it as fuel. What else do you need to know?

McCain Playing With Lobbyists Again – As Senator John McCain waited to speak at the annual awards dinner of the International Republican Institute, a democracy-building group he has led for 15 years, lobbyists and business executives dominated the stage at a Washington hotel ballroom.
The parade of lobbyists and fund-raisers at the dinner is emblematic of Mr. McCain’s tenure at the institute, one of a pair of nonprofit groups – taxpayer-financed and each allied with one of the two major political parties – that were created during the Reagan era to promote democracy in closed societies.

Operating without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate committees Mr. McCain was on.

McCain Campaign Contributions Up Big … From Big Oil – Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Regards,

Jim