Just Like Nazi Germany

Posted on August 28, 2008 by RagBlog

See video below.

Longstanding Berkeley Community Center Raided by FBI
August 27, 2008

More than a dozen computers seized in questionable search

BERKELEY, CA — At 10:30 am on Wednesday, August 27th, the UC Berkeley police, plainclothes FBI agents, and an Alameda County sheriff raided at gunpoint the Long Haul, a long-standing community library and info shop. Police spent at least an hour and a half searching the premises without allowing Long Haul members entry to their building. More than a dozen computers and other equipment were seized in the morning raid. Having made no attempt to contact Long Haul members, agents forced their way into the building by entering a neighboring non-profit office with guns drawn. Police refused to provide a search warrant until after the raid was over and property was seized.

“This is an outrageous abuse of authority by the federal government,” said TKTK, a member of the Long Haul. “What cause could the police have to come into a community center like the Long Haul and seize information belonging to the people of Berkeley? They must return our property immediately.” The police went through every room, both public and locked – cutting or unscrewing the locks – and removed every computer from the building. Most of the computers taken were removed from an un-monitored public space where people come to use the computers just as they would at a public library. The remaining computers were taken from closed offices where they are needed for the day-to-day operation of the work done by members. Offices were rifled through, and a list of people who had borrowed books from the library was checked, as was the sales log. The warrant, which was produced after the raid, had little relevant information (claiming the officers were searching for 1 – Property or things used as a means of committing a felony; 2 – Property or things that are evidence that tends to show a felony has been committed, or tends to show that a particular person has committed a felony).

The Long Haul has been a community resource for 25 years, offering accessible meeting space to radical groups, access to alternative magazines and journals, a lending library and a historical archive of independent media. Long Haul also produces the well-known slingshot organizer pocket calendar. Multiple groups have met and continue to meet there as one of the few remaining inexpensive radical venues in the increasingly gentrified bay area. The same pattern of abuse was experienced recently when the convergence space for protesters against the Democratic National Convention in Denver was raided and supplies seized. Since the Long Haul raid occurred, lawyers have been working to seek the immediate return of the seized property, though the Long Haul continues to welcome legal support. The Long Haul is also in urgent need of computers to replace what was taken, while the fight continues to get the hard drives returned.

Long Haul members have vowed to protest this latest act of political repression. Check the Long Haul website (www.thelonghaul.org) for more information as it becomes available.

Pictures and video of the Long Haul and of the officers involved are online at East Bay.

Source / The Long Haul

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Del Martin, Eloquent Voice of Gay and Lesbian Movement, Dead at 87

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Del Martin, left, places a ring on her partner Phyllis Lyon during their June wedding ceremony officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP.

‘As a journalist, author and organizer, Martin helped shape the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements’
By Joe Rodriguez / August 27, 2008

Del Martin, a strident and eloquent voice in the early gay and lesbian civil rights movement in America, died Wednesday in San Francisco not long after enjoying perhaps the hardest-won prize of her lifelong cause — legal marriage to Phyllis Lyon, her longtime partner. Martin was 87.

As a journalist, author and organizer, Martin helped shape the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements by coming out early and crafting her arguments for equal rights and common decency with intelligence and a firm grounding in civil rights law. Her writings and activism inspired the generation of lesbian activists now at the forefront of the movement — women like Gloria Nieto of San Jose.

“None of this would have been possible without Del and Phyllis,” Nieto said from the Billy De Frank Center in San Jose, a gay and lesbian social center. As De Frank’s political director, Nieto is trying to head off Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that threatens to outlaw gay marriage in California. “Every time I run into a rough patch, I keep telling myself I’m doing this for Phyllis and Del.”

Nieto said she was a politically tentative, nervous young lesbian in college before reading “Lesbian/Woman,” a book written in 1972 by Martin and Lyon.

“It was a profound impact on me to be in college and that book told me I wasn’t the only one, we weren’t the only ones, that you could be lesbian and enjoy life, be yourself and have basic rights just as everyone else.”

Nieto met regularly with Martin and Lyon when she was director of a health center named after the couple. Unable to afford a honeymoon, Nieto and her fiancee recently arranged a kind of “honeymoon” consisting of bringing sandwiches to the Martin-Lyon household and simply spending time at the feet of their role models.

“They graciously agreed and invited us into their home,” Nieto said. “Now it’s not going to happen. This is hitting me really hard.”

Dorothy L. Taliaferro, or “Del,” was born in San Francisco on May 5, 1921. Showing a sharp mind and an early academic bent, she was salutatorian of the first graduating class of George Washington High School and went on to study journalism at the University of California-Berkeley and San Francisco State University. At 19 she married James Martin. The couple had a daughter, Kendra, before their divorce.

Martin met Lyon in Seattle in 1950 when they worked for the same publishing company. Three years later, on Valentine’s Day, they moved in together in San Francisco in the small house they would share for life.

In one of the formative acts in their movement, the lesbian couple and six other women in 1955 founded the Daughters of Bilitis, a social support group named after a 19th-century French book of lesbian poetry.

One of its founders was Clara Brock of Santa Clara, who at 81 fondly remembers the Bilitis meetings that Martin and Lyon hosted in their house.

“How they put all of us in that little house was a miracle,” Brock said with a laugh. “There was a lot of planning going on about strategy, but there was a lot of friendliness, too. The group started mostly as a social one, then it evolved into more of an activist group.”

Brock said Martin was the quiet one in the couple, preferring to let Lyon talk away. Martin was the one to chime in now and then with dry, witty comments or jokes in light moments or with well-developed opinions during strategy sessions.

In 1956 Brock mimeographed and helped distribute the group’s monthly newsletter, the Ladder, written and edited mostly by Martin and Lyon. According to Nieto, though the newsletter forcefully advocated an end to discrimination against homosexual men and women, it was wrapped in brown paper and omitted the return address. That changed, Nieto said, with the arrival in San Francisco of Harvey Milk.

“He was a hippie and out in the open,” Nieto said, “who believed the answer for the gay community was in visibility, not hiding in the corners anymore. He had a profound impact on Del and Daughters of Bilitis.”

The anonymous brown wrapping came off the humble newsletter and by 1970 it had become a magazine with thousands of readers worldwide. Martin’s many contributions included essays, editorials, short stories and snappy missives.

In one of her most well-read, “If That’s All There Is,” published in 1970, she tore into the sexism she believed relegated lesbians to lower standing and power in the fledgling gay rights movement.

In addition to her work with the Bilitis group, Martin lobbied San Francisco City Hall to end police harassment and to decriminalize homosexual behavior.

She was a co-founder or early member of several local and national feminist or gay rights groups, including the National Organization for Women and the Bay Area Women’s Coalition.

Wiggsy Sivertsen, a stalwart in gay activism locally and a student counselor at San Jose State University, was only a teenager when Martin co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis.

“It was very scary in 1955,” Sivertsen remembered. “The police were actively finding ways to harass the community. There was no hugging, no holding hands in public, nothing at work that said you were gay or lesbian. Martin had a profound impact for all of us.”

Martin and Lyon were the first couple in line to be “remarried” in San Francisco earlier this year when the California Supreme Court declared marriage for same-sex couples a fundamental right. The couple had become lead plaintiffs in the case after their first marriage, along with thousands of others recognized legally by Mayor Gavin Newsom, was nullified by a lower court.

Source / Mercury News

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Toll Roads : Soon to be Yesterday’s News?

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Toll road protest in California earlier this year.

‘Ordinary people will look back on this era, shake their heads in wonder and ask: how on earth did anyone ever think toll roads were sexy?’
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / August 28, 2008

The latest news regarding toll roads, their current status, their long range prospects, and more, below:

There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when ordinary people will look back on this era, shake their heads in wonder and ask: how on earth did anyone ever think toll roads were sexy.

From the tulip bubble in Holland in the 1630s through to the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, otherwise rational minds have discarded logic and joined the frenzied mob in whatever investment fad promises fabulous wealth.

Without fail, they always end in tears. And so it is with the infrastructure boom.

Yesterday, Macquarie Group found itself under concerted attack from hedge funds as its shares fell 10 per cent to $41.61.

That’s wiped out all the gains from the bull market and left senior executives floundering in a sea of confusion about how to stop the rout…

Roads to hell paved with debt by Ian Verrender / Sydney Morning Herald / August 28, 2008

But why? There is a key central, big-picture flaw in the management of not only the US economy, but also the whole global economy:

It all boils down to the fact that the capitalist system is based on paying interest on borrowed funds. However, a finite planet can only be milked so far before the rate of exploitation has to slow down. Nobody has put this better than Kenneth Boulding:

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

In our times the key growth limiting factors is oil/fossil fuel (and soon enough fresh water and greenhouse gases, assuming there were a viable substitute for cheap oil to move people and goods in the global economy).

Meanwhile the health of the global capitalist economy demands that existing debts be repaid with interest, even though the production of material goods must eventually fall short of expectations. So quite naturally, the bankers persuade the governments to print up enough currency to paper over the temporary shortfall until the economy can recover and the current crisis is replaced by the anticipated recovery.

One can see where this leads. When Mother Nature finally gets too exhausted to keep expanding her physical blessings for human benefit at a rate that matches the rate of interest demanded for the normal functioning of the banking system and the capitalist business cycle, then invested savings will necessarily shrink over time, rather than rewarding the saver.

Economists are trained to be blind to the big picture, and the ultimately devastating implications of exponential growth over the long run.

Not only that, but our infrastructure is crumbling terribly nationwide, including the electrical transmission grid. The corporate empire that rules our lives has had the social character and planning perspective of an impetuous infant.

Toll roads have the short-sighted advantages over other critically needed, wise infrastructure investments by their subsidizing an established lobby centered on the road contractors, plus the suburban sprawl interests centered on the bankers, developers and land speculators. Factor in dysfunctional, special interest-based politics and it is easy to see that building new toll roads will win out over maintaining the crumbling existing infrastructure any day of the week, to say nothing of shifting our funds toward a new and more sustainable planning perspective, which by definition lacks a special interest lobby.

See Cities Debate Privatizing Public Infrastructure by Jenny Anderson / New York Times / August 26, 2008

“…The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the United States needs to invest at least $1.6 trillion over the next five years to maintain and expand its infrastructure…”

That is on the order of $1000 per years per capita in a population already tens of thousands in personal debt due to credit cards, home mortgages etc., while living under a government busy bailing out banks on an emergency basis while simultaneously fighting apparently endless foreign wars involving oil or something.

As we used to say, it don’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Here is the most important recent news, documenting a sharp decline in toll road use due to soaring fuel price and the downgrading of toll road bonds by Fitch, etc:

…Traffic on tax roads in the US seems to have dropped on average by 4 to 5% and on toll roads by 5 to 6% over the past year. The reduced travel is attributable almost entirely to the big run-up in gasoline prices and is about was to be expected from long-established economists’ estimates of the price elasticity of demand of about -0.2. Fuel prices which dominate the marginal cost of driving are about 30% higher so you would expect traffic as measured by vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) to be 6% lower (-0.2×0.30=-0.06). Deduct one percent for the sluggish economy and you have 5%. Toll road traffic may be down marginally more than tax roads traffic because tollroads are somewhat skewed to discretionary travel…

Traffic hit hard by fuel prices / TollRoadsNews / August 24, 2008

Meanwhile, as I have recently pointed out, our three top Texas politicians (Perry, Craddick and Dewhurst) have made it clear that they would like to use state retirement funds under their control to keep building the toll roads when Wall Street is afraid to issue such debt because of the obvious risk to lenders in light of the information above. Such a policy is both a tribute to the political clout of the Texas road lobby (allied with the banks that have funded land speculation in raw land surrounding the major Texas urban areas), and also a revealing commentary on the moral character of our state political leaders. Here is the link:

Investing pension funds in toll roads is an irresponsible–and immoral–idea / Burkablog / Texas Monthly / August 23, 2008

Finally, to explain and to document the unwillingness of traditional bond lenders to fund bond projects of any sort, even of a kind much less speculative than toll roads, here are two links that explain the current situation quite adequately:

Bond fundraising costs soar / Financial Times / August 25, 2008

Bankers caught between hope and despair Financial Times / August 25, 2008

From the foregoing it is quite apparent why the road lobby is forced to turn to Texas politicians and the pension funds under their control as a last resort. Here the only risk is that Texas schoolteachers might get wind of the plan, might be smarter and more motivated than anticipated, and might be able to organize politically during the next legislative session in time to stop them. Any state bonds are nearly certain to fail because of the combined effect of the abysmal credit conditions described above and peak oil. For those who wish to document the peak oil risk in a scholarly way, here are three key links:

Crude Oil Price Retreat: Sunrise or a Lull Before the Storm? by by James Leigh / Energy Bulletin / August 12, 2008

PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:
IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT

Peak oil primer and links / Energy Bulletin

Also see Austin and US 290 E: You Can’t Get There From Here by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / August 13, 2008

And Texas : Raiding Pension Funds to Build Toll Roads by Paul Burka / The Rag Blog / August 23, 2008

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FBI Still Trying to Hide Its Fearful Incompetence

Posted on August 27, 2008 by RagBlog


Judges consider whether FBI violated free speech
August 27, 2008

NEW YORK — A panel of federal appeals court judges pushed a U.S. government lawyer on Wednesday to answer why FBI letters sent out to Internet service providers seeking information should remain secret.

A panel of three judges from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether a provision of the Patriot Act, which requires people who are formally contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for information to keep it a secret, is constitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in 2004 on behalf of an undisclosed Internet service provider against the U.S. government challenging the so-called National Security Letters (NSL) as well as gag orders placed on the recipients.

The appeals courts on Wednesday questioned a lawyer representing the U.S. government on whether the FBI violated free speech rights in placing the gag orders.

The government argues they are in place for national security concerns, such as keeping terrorists from learning what they are investigating.

“You can’t tell me that any terrorist is going to make anything out of the fact you issued NSLs to AT&T and Verizon,” said Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, using a hypothetical example.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas said the FBI “assesses the need for secrecy in each particular case.”

Between 2003 and 2006 nearly 200,000 national security letters were sent out. Of those about 97 percent received gag orders.

ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said the gag order had prevented the small Internet service provider the ACLU was representing from speaking out “against an FBI investigation that he believes is illegitimate.”

The government is appealing a lower court ruling that said the gag order violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and was unconstitutional.

The judges will rule on the issue in the coming months.

[Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Michelle Nichols]

Source / Reuters

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Police Brutality in Denver: the Face of Democracy

Posted on August 27, 2008 by RagBlog

Here are dramatic scenes of the knockdown of Alicia Forrest, a member of Code Pink. The Aspen Times says that a policeman violently shoved her. The Rocky Mountain News reports that she was thrown to the ground “with a smack.” The Denver Post quotes the cop saying “Back it up, bitch!” as he knocked her to the ground.

The cops then left her sprawled on the pavement. But when she began complaining to reporters (not about her own abuse, but about the unnecessary arrest of another protester,) they took a renewed interest and hauled her off to jail.

DNC Protests: Police slam CodePink protester to the ground

The Rag Blog / Posted August 27, 2008

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Garrison Keillor : Rolling With the Punches

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Californians remind me of Londoners. They’re less jittery than the rest of us, and disaster doesn’t terrify them’ By Garrison Keillor / Aug. 27, 2008

California is another country. You wake up in the morning and New York is already on its first coffee, and the first scandal has broken in Washington, one more Republican crony caught with his hand in the honey pot. It all feels very far away. You wake up, your laptop is full of e-mails but you’re in California so you don’t have to reply to them. Your e-mailers imagine that you are busy attending some sort of Mayan fertility ceremony on a beach, bare-chested men whanging on little drums, dinging bells, naked children strewing blossoms in the surf, a priestess in a white caftan playing a Peruvian flute. Stereotypes live forever: Minnesota is cold, California is ditzy. Whereas the California I know is a land of gorgeously normal people, serious, reverent, clean, agile men and women, athletic nerds who love to surf and hike and shoot hoops and also read Frederick Buechner, listen to Bach. I grew up thinking you had to choose between smart and sexy; in California they think you can have it all. They are less jittery than us flatlanders: Disaster does not terrify them. They roll with earthquakes, the landscape ripples, the china clinks, and so what, it’s only an earthquake. Giant mudslides and brush fires — you ride them out and you move on. They remind me of Londoners, who are famous for rolling with the punches. The night of the horrible bombing in the Underground, the streets of London were full of people who came out to show each other and themselves that they would not be intimidated by a bunch of suicidal maniacs. And even though the danger of terrorism is very real in London, much more so than in Omaha, Neb., or Kenosha, Wis., or Tuscaloosa, Ala., the English have been stubborn in defending their freedom. You cannot be required to carry a photo ID in the U.K. The police still don’t walk around with pistols on their belts. In this country, the attacks by terrorists opened the doors to the darkness of Dick Cheney and furtive vicious men just like him who unleashed an assault on constitutional law, hoping to turn a traumatic occasion — the twin towers burning, smoke billowing over Manhattan — into a permanent Republican majority. As so often happens, vicious men were in the saddle for a time while decent men blithered and dithered. But the ignominious fall of Mr. Giuliani was evidence that Americans have gotten over it. You can’t wave the bloody shirt anymore and expect people to fall into line. And that’s a problem for John McCain. A great candidate for hustling neocons and owners of five or more homes, he is dead wrong about Iraq, dead wrong about the economy, and he was born 20 years too soon. But Republicans feel sorry for how he was savaged eight years ago and so they will prop the old man up, retrain him as best they can, keep him on message, stuff a rag in him when he starts kidding around. People have lots of questions about Barack Obama and that’s as it should be. The man inspires curiosity. The problem for McCain is that Barack explains himself so well. Those people jamming basketball arenas aren’t going there to look at his shoes. If you listen to the man speak, you’re likely to vote for him. If you listen to McCain, you’re reminded of your great-uncle Elmer hashing over the injustice of MacArthur getting canned by Harry Truman. Who cares? And then there is the Current Occupant. He’s kept quiet for a while, cutting brush, playing speed golf, treadmilling, but he’s bound to emerge in the fall, make a speech, issue a statement, do something, and this will not be good for McCain. America has paid a terrible price for one family’s decision to take a boy out of the public schools of Midland, Texas, and send him off to Chutney or Amway or whatever his prep school was called, and then to Yale, where he picked up a permanent grudge against people who were smarter than he. A Yalie who learned to pass for redneck, a Methodist who learned to pass for evangelical, he was cut out for politics, but what a lousy administrator and what a dull, uninspiring leader. Fewer people want more bushiness than want to see the return of infantile paralysis. And the truth is marching on. [Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.] © 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc. Source / salon.com The Rag Blog

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The DNC Sponsors List Is Rather Enlightening

Posted on August 27, 2008 by RagBlog

The list I’ve posted here barely scratches the surface of what the Rocky Mountain News dug out of the public record. I note that this article was published on 12 May, but it is still very timely information. Such notables as Lockheed Martin, Anheuser Busch, Coca Cola, State Farm Insurance, Google, Xerox, Lilly, and a myriad of other giant corporate interests are listed. Click the link below for the complete list. It is enlightening. Remember, these are the guys who are represented at the Democratic convention. Try checking the lists for the Green Party or the Socialist Workers’ Party. I’m just sayin’ …

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


List of Democratic National Convention sponsors
Rocky Mountain News / Monday, May 12, 2008

The Democratic Convention Host Committee has released a list of sponsors that includes some of the biggest companies in the nation, and most of them have business with the federal government or long lists of issues they are trying to influence on Capitol Hill.

Below are the sponsors’ names, followed by their federal business interests or lists of issues they are trying to influence through lobbying, according to the most recent Lobbying Disclosure Act forms available from the Senate Office of Public Records.

Note that a company’s “interest” in an issue could mean advocating either support or opposition, although that is not always indicated in lobbying forms.

* Qwest

General business issues; rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Act; Universal Service reform; video franchise relief; broadband deployment; protection of customer records; Networx.

* ForestCity

Military housing; completion of Southeast Federal Center Development under S.F.C. Public-Private Development Act of 2000; navigational servitude for Southeast Federal Center, Washington, D.C.; Transportation; federal funding for project; FEMA flood mapping issue; nuclear energy development; states use of eminent domain; funding of real estate development; project infrastructure.

* Union Pacific

Rail safety issues; rail homeland security issues; rail freight rate regulation and rail capacity issues; Rail Competition and Service Improvement Act; Freight Rail Infrastructure Capacity Expansion Act; Surface Transportation and Rail Security Act; Railroad Antitrust Enforcement Act.

* Xcel Energy

Climate change, renewable energy, related issues; Clean Energy Act of 2007; Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007; New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security and Consumer Protection Act; Energy Savings Act of 2007, including a clean energy portfolio standard; rail transportation of coal; solar investment tax credit; wind production tax credit; Climate Security Act; pole attachment and related electric utility issues; appropriations for carbon capture and storage research; Clean Energy Portfolio Standard proposals; Provisions in Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 to extend renewable energy production tax credit; Tax issues regarding uranium enrichment and renewable energy; The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act; Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act of 2007; appropriations bills; Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act, including requirements for electric utility industry.

* SEIU

Contracting out of security guard functions by Federal Agencies; National Defense Authorization Act (extension of temporary authority for contract security guard functions in Department of Energy).

* Vail Resorts

No 2008 reports. (Most recent 2005, lobbying on Small Community Air Service program issues.)

* United Health Group

Medicare Modernization Act implementation; Health Savings Accounts; Medicare Part D; Healthcare IT; Mental health parity; Medicare Advantage; genetic non-discrimination; Health insurance issues; issues concerning federal payments to Medicare Advantage Plans; Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act; Legislation and regulation concerning industrial loan companies.

* Molson Coors (Filed as Coors Brewing Co.)

Tax policy; alcohol advertising and self regulation; beer industry’s advertising compliant resolution program, including scope of FTC inquiry into self regulatory compliance activities; exise tax on beer; The Clean Energy Act; Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act; Farm Bill Extension Act; Small Business Tax Reform legislation; ethanol production provisions;

* AT&T

Telecom issues, including implementation of The Telecommunications Act of 1996; congressional oversight and video franchise reform; FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Amendments Act; Improving Foreign Intelligence Surveillance to Defend the Nation and the Constitution Act; liability provisions re. federal authorization for acquisition of foreign intelligence information from or with the assistance of a communications service provider; network neutrality issues; cash balance issues in the Pension Protection Act; telecommunications competition; Defense appropriations for telecommunications; SAFE Act of 2007; Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007; retiree health benefits (concerning prohibitions on companies reducing benefits under ERISA covered group plans); various health plan issues; arbitration issues in commercial contracts; the Cell Phone Tax Moratorium Act (supporting ban on new state taxes on cell phone services); Global Online Freedom Act of 2007; various telecommunications issues; billing and contract regulations in Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007; proposed importation ban on certain handsets; legislation allowing wireless competition on WMATA; broadband deployment issues; E-911 programs; Telephone Excise Tax Repeal Act of 2007; Internet Tax Freedom Act; Bellsouth merger issues; Video franchise reform; Truth in Caller Act; Universal Service Reform issues; International trade issues; FCC wireless spectrum rules; local telephone exchange issues; aviation telecommunications issues; federal communications spending (defense, homeland security, etc.) ; Air Traffic Control Modernization; company interests in Alaska; Rural Broadband Deployment Act; Internet tax issues; etc.

Read all of it here. / Rocky Mountain News

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby : Strip-Search Nation

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


The Ballad of the Panhandler and Smokey the Bear: Remembering When the Government was at Least Approachable
By Dave Lindorff / August 27, 2008

We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards a view of the relationship between the federal government, and especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it.

Now I know it is easy to gloss over the way things were, and since I spent a few days in federal prison for protesting the Indochina War at the Pentagon in 1967, after being beaten by federal marshals for doing nothing more than exercising my constitional right to protest on public ground, I am well aware that 40 years ago we were also often treated like serfs. But that said, there was something different back then—a sense that you could deal with powerful officials as an equal.

Back in the summer of 1968, I spent one of several summers on the road (something more young people should do today). I had hitch-hiked across the country from Connecticut to Washington state with Allen Baker, a college buddy, and then, towards the end of that summer break, had bought an old pick-up truck for $100, which we were driving home via the West Coast and the central route. Not having much cash, we were stopping at cities along the way, where I would play guitar for gas money.

This was the late ‘60s, and there was a major and sometimes violent culture war underway between the long-hairs like me and the clean-cut American “Silent Majority,” and my travel companion, Allen, and I were concerned that it would be tough scaring up much cash in the vast Republican stretches of desert, mountains and prairie that lay between Nevada and Missouri. So when we passed through Yosemite National Park, we decided to spend a day in the valley’s main parking lot, raising donations from tourists.

While Allen dozed in the back of the truck, I opened my guitar case and put up the “Gas Money” sign, and then, sitting on the running board of the old Dodge, started to play.

The money poured in—over a hundred dollars in a fairly short amount of time. It was really astounding. People walking by really enjoyed the music and wanted to help us out.

Then a park ranger, an older fellow with a friendly smile, drove up. “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “but I have been told to arrest you.”

“What for?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

“There’s no panhandling allowed in the park,” he responded.

“What’s panhandling?” I asked him, genuinely unaware of the meaning of the term, which I, an Easterner, thought must have to do with cooking with a skittle on an open fire.

“It’s what you’re doing right now,” the ranger said.

By that point, Allen had woken up and sat up in the truck bed, rubbing his eyes.

“You’ll have to come in too,” the ranger told him.

We followed him back to the ranger station, where he proceeded to write up our tickets. I noticed that there were two actual jail cells in the station. Thankfully, at least we weren’t going to be locked up. Then there was a loud bang outside. Suddenly, a younger ranger, looking like a recent Marine veteran, muscled and crewcut, ran in. “Where’s the first aid kit,” he yelled. “ I was just bringing in a kid on a marijuana charge and he tried to run. I shot him in the leg.”

Whoa! I thought. This is Dodge City!

The older ranger told his partner where to get the kit, and then turned his attention back to us. “Here are your tickets,” he said. “And don’t skip out on them. This is a federal offense, and the FBI will come after you if you don’t pay it.”

We left the building, and only then did I look at my ticket closely. The fine: $500! It was a fortune back then. Even today it is a big whopper—especially as a penalty for being poor.

I was pretty upset. That was about how much I had earned towards college that whole summer.

Well, the $100 I’d earned panhandling in the park got us back across the country, at least.

When I got home to Connecticut, though, my fine was rankling. Angry at the injustice of it all, I typed up a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, who at the time was Stewart Udall. I wrote about the shooting incident, saying that I thought it was an outrage that an unarmed young man arrested on a minor charge like marijuana possession would be shot in a national park, and I also wrote that it was unfair to fine someone $500 for simply playing music in a park parking lot. “I wasn’t bothering people,” I wrote. “In fact, they were coming up to me to hear the music, and the $100 they tossed into my guitar case is testimony to the fact that they liked what I was doing. That isn’t panhandling, and in any case, it’s pretty nasty to fine someone $500 when he’s doing something because he needs money.”

About two weeks later, I got my letter back from the Department of Interior. On it, in red ink, Udall himself had written, “I agree. Forget your ticket. It’s been taken care of. Stewart Udall.”

I have tried to imagine that same situation happening today. First of all, the unfortunate hippie who got shot that time long ago would probably have been killed, because the ranger would have been carrying a more high-powered weapon, and wouldn’t have even been aiming to disable. Second, Allen and I would probably have been put on some database at the Pentagon, the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration, and would have been barred from flying or entering any national parks. More importantly, though, I tried to imagine the response I would have gotten writing to current Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to complain about an arrest for panhandling. Or to his predecessor, Gale Norton. This is, after all, a department that has instructed its rangers at the Grand Canyon and other parks not to talk about evolution, and those at the Everglades National Park not to talk about global warming and the inevitability that rising ocean levels will swallow that sea-level park in this generation. Under both secretaries, the Interior Department has played a key role in the Bush administration’s efforts to alter and to selectively censor government scientific reports on evidence of climate change.

I’m not saying it was all sweetness and light back in the ‘60s, or even that Stu Udall was representative of all government officials in the Johnson years, but there clearly was a different sense back then that ordinary citizens had a right to communicate directly with their leaders and to expect some kind of response.

Nixon began the end of all that, with his Imperial Presidency. It wasn’t just his penchant for secrecy, though that was legendary. It was his desire to make the government something more remote and feared, something imposing and awesome, rather than down-to- earth and accessible. President Carter, to his credit, went a long way towards reversing that trend, but over the years it has continued, with Bush and Cheney taking it to an extreme. Today the White House is a bunker. Federal police carry assault weapons. Snipers man the roof of the White House. People who write letters of complaint to minor federal officials can end up being strip-searched and arrested.

And from the looks of things, it may not be much better even if Obama takes over the White House. The first day of the Democratic Convention in Denver saw anti-war protesters penned into the same kinds of “free-speech zones” that the Bush/Cheney administration has made into standard features of any “public” appearance they put in, while AT&T, the company that brought us the convention, kept even credentialed reporters away from a private party the company threw for those Democrats in Congress who obligingly passed immunity legislation to protect the company from lawsuits by those whose communications were spied on by Bush’s National Security Agency. (Obama supported the immunity legislation.)

So even as we are all being reduced to a nation of panhandlers, it may be a long time before we can expect a handwritten letter from the secretary of the Interior Department for help in getting off an unfair ticket.

[DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net]

Source / counterpunch

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We’re Number One: Texas Leads Nation in Lack of Health Insurance

Posted on August 27, 2008 by RagBlog


Texas Continues To Shine At Being Uninsured
By Olivia Flores Alvarez / August 26, 2008

Texas is at the top of the heap again – this time we are the most uninsured state, health care-wise, in the country. Woo hoo! Oh, snap, wait, that’s not a good thing, is it?

The U.S. Census Bureau released a report today stating that the number of uninsured in America was down to just 15.3% in 2007. But not in Texas. In 2007, Lone Star state residents went from 23.9% uninsured to 24.8%.

John Greeley, public information officer for the Texas Department of Insurance told Hair Balls:

Some of the things that we have identified as contributing to the number of uninsured in Texas, with regards to health insurance, are the high number of small businesses that are paying a relatively low wage that we have in the state. Our number of people getting employer coverage is less than in other states. There’s an economic climate in Texas that is very much free enterprise, which affects that. Other factors are that health care cost more here. Also, we have overall lower household wages. Those are some of the factors that we looked at last year and they haven’t really changed.

Race and place of birth are definitely factors in getting – or rather not getting – health insurance. 32.1% of Hispanics in Texas are uninsured, but in all 49 other states, that rate was less than 20%. (Only Native Americans and Alaskan Natives rivaled the Hispanic rates, at 31.9%.)

For the country as a whole, 43.8% of non-citizens are uninsured, while U.S.-born citizens have only a 12.7% uninsured rate. Greeley said he didn’t have any comments on the possible correlation between race/place of birth and health insurance percentages.

But all hope is not lost.

Greeley says the state’s lack of health care coverage hasn’t gone unnoticed: “Texas has had a number of initiatives started to address the problem of the uninsured. There’s a lot of activity, a lot of legislative activity that is happening. We’re finishing up two interim studies.”

(Be still, our hearts!!)

He continues:

One of them is more affordable options for small businesses to offer health insurance, ways to make it easier for them including premium subsidies, help to cover the cost to the business. We’re also looking at that for individuals, other sources of funds that might be used to cover their health insurance premiums. We’ve also been involved, the Governor’s Office and other state agencies, in seeking a waiver from Medicare that would allow qualified individuals to use funds from Medicare to buy private health insurance.

Those programs should be in place in the next five to ten years.

Hope we can stay healthy that long. (Quick, nobody sneeze!)

Source / Houston Press

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Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Denver cops use pepper gas on demonstrators
By Davin Hutchins / August 25, 2008

A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious Denver police surrounded protesters peacefully marching toward the Democratic National Convention Center. After trapping the crowd between two buildings, hundreds of officers used pepper spray, batons and unwarranted aggression. After being surrounded for 20 minutes, two ANP producers managed to escape after recording the whole affair.

Source / American News Project

Thanks to Common Dreams / The Rag Blog

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The Rio Grande : ‘That Damned Border Fence’

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Each mile of fence cost Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument $430,000, said superintendent Kathy Billings. Photo by Rich-Joseph Facun / Arizona Daily Star

Faulty design turned border fence into dam, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

‘The project almost ensures problems with erosion, runoff and flooding, not to mention disrupting the environment’
By Grits for Breakfast / August 26, 2008

From the moment Congress first proposed putting a wall along the Rio Grande on Texas’ southern border to reduce illegal immigration, I thought it was not just a bad idea but an insane one. As far as I can tell, when it’s finished the United States will be the first nation state in the history of the planet to wall off a major river and leave the river on the other side!

Anyone who’s spent time along the border knows that limiting river access – whether for crops, livestock or recreation – will cause the locals big problems. Plus, by building the fence in a river basin, the project almost ensures problems with erosion, runoff and flooding, not to mention disrupting the environment.

Local officials and landowners in the Rio Grande Valley fought construction of the wall, but have not succeeded in stopping it. Elsewhere, we can already see what’s in store along the Rio Grande. Via one of my favorite bloggers, Bryan Finoki at Subtopia: A Field Guide to Military Urbanism, I saw this report that:

A 5.2-mile border fence recently constructed along Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument’s southern border in southwestern Arizona became a dam in a recent flash flood, monument officials say.

Writes Bryan:

Apparently, the new $21.3 million, 5.2-mile fence along the monument’s southern border, basically turned into a dam during the storms on July 12th. The wire-mesh construction, meant to prevent crossers and vehicles but allow water to pass through, halted the natural flow of floodwater along the border when, according to a National Park Services report (pdf), “Debris piled up against the fence, including in drainage gates designed to prevent flooding, and the 6-foot deep fence foundation stopped subsurface water flow.” So, instead of flowing north to south, as I understand it naturally should, the floodwater carried laterally through the port of entry pooling 2 to 7 feet high and causing tons of damage to the ecology and nearby businesses.

What’s a crime is that none of this came as a surprise to anyone. The DHS had been warned of this sort of potential before they chose to ignore the severity of that discussion, and decided to build a fence regardless, even though they claimed the design would not hamper this flow in any significant way. You can read the full report here (pdf) outlaying the ecological and infrastructural damage that was caused by the border fence, and what can be expected in the future.

That was as predictable as the sunrise. And what will be any different, exactly, about Texas’ fence? If the feds can’t contain runoff on a flat plain, how in the world do they expect the fence to interact with the environment along an actual, large river in the event of a flash flood? Where will this fence divert runoff otherwise headed for the river? There’s no telling, but it’s a safe bet we won’t find out until the fence is built, the first gullywasher hits, and 2-7 feet of floodwaters back up into some Texas border town as happened in Arizona.

See the full post including an excellent batch of links at the end from Subtopia.

Grits for Breakfast is the private weblog and nom de plume of Scott Henson, a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger.

Source / Grits for Breakfast

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Dennis Kucinich : Wake up America

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, preaches “Wake up, America!” to the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Tuesday, Aug. 26. Photo by Charlie Neibergall /AP

See “Kucinich wakes up Democratic Convention” by Rochelle Riley and video of Kucinich’s speech, below.

‘We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call’
By Dennis Kucinich / August 26, 2008

[Dennis Kucinich gave the following speech during the Democratic Convention today.]

It’s Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.

Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, while the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.

We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.

Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost.

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

This administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. They can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

Wake up, America. This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is a call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.

Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America.

Source / truthout

Kucinich wakes up Democratic Convention
By Rochelle Riley / August 26

DENVER — Who lit a fire under U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich?

The Ohio Democrat went to church at the Democratic National Convention today, lighting up the 4 o’clock hour as time marched toward Sen. Hillary Clinton’s much anticipated appearance.

Kucinich preached.

I mean he preached like he’d had some lessons from the Rev. Jesse Jackson. And he woke up an audience that until that moment appeared to be mostly waiting to hear anybody else.

“We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call,” he preached. “Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil, and twice what we paid for health care.”

Sleepy delegates in a half-empty arena began to take notice. A couple of them pointed.

“If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold,” Kucinich said. “World records for violations of national and international laws … we can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America.

“The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America.

He had them. Where was this speech when the tiny Ohio congressman was running for president? Or did we really just not pay attention?

“This administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit,” he said. “They can open our mail. They can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

“Wake up, America! This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages.”

And Dennis Kucinich began to bounce, the way the ministers of my girlhood churches did.

“Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems,” he said, his voice rising, people rising and grinning at the Dennis Kucinich who was surprising them.

“Up with health care for all,” he said. “Up with education for all. Up with homeownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden!”

Hmmmmm. Did the Democrats miss something along the way from the only man with the courage to introduce a resolution in June to impeach President George W. Bush and whose speech reminded those gathered who their fight actually was with?

Source / Freep.com

Dennis Kucinich addresses the Democratic Convention, August 26, 2008

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