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The actual state of the union: The rich get richer 

By Molly Ivins

CREATORS SYNDICATE

The state of the union is that money talks and public policy is sold to the highest bidder. Those who give money in political contributions - less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. population gave 83 percent of all campaign contributions in the 2002 elections - get back billions in tax breaks, subsidies and the right to exploit public land at ridiculously low prices.

This system in turn costs ordinary Americans billions of dollars, not to mention the costs to health, safety and the environment, and the cost of not having enough money for good schools.

Public Campaign, the group working for public financing of political campaigns, has put together some of the salient information in the form of a poster, available at www.publiccampaign.org - and perhaps the most depressing thing about it is the size of the payoffs for relatively small investments in political campaigns.

For example, the top corporations that paid zero taxes from 1996 to 1998 - including AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan, Enron, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft, Pfizer and Philip Morris - gave $150.1 million to campaigns from 1991 to 2001. Public Campaign reports they got $55 billion in tax breaks from '96 to '98 alone, perennial legislation to gut the alternative minimum tax and billions in rebates to select corporations. Public Campaign also notes that we paid with a huge shift in who pays more into the federal treasuries: Three times as much money now comes from working people's payroll taxes as from corporate tax payments.

The entire system of taxation is regressive. The only way the spinners of damn lies and statistics can get away with claiming that the rich pay more in taxes is because they count only the income tax, which is progressive. (That's why it's called the progressive income tax.) But sales taxes, excise taxes, import tariffs, payroll taxes and the whole burden of state taxes, which are notoriously regressive in states like Texas, give an entirely different picture.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which I found in the Jan. 21 New York Times, shows that the burden from nearly all forms of taxation - income, excise, sales, property and payroll - is spread fairly evenly up and down the scale. The poorest fifth, with an average income of $7,946, has a cumulative tax rate of 18 percent (those are the folks so memorably referred to by The Wall Street Journal as "lucky duckies"). The richest fifth, with an average income of $116,666, now pays 19 percent in cumulative taxes - and that of course goes down under the Bush plan. The percentages for the three middle quintiles are 14, 16 and 17.

There is double taxation throughout the system, yet President Bush is concerned only about the "double taxation" of dividends. The poorest fifth of Americans have an average of $25 in dividend income; the richest fifth has $1,188. Yet $364 billion out of a $674 billion "economic stimulus" plan is for ending taxes on dividends.

The big winners in our cash-and-carry system of government are corporate special interests. Public Campaign finds that for a mere $48.9 million in campaign contributions, from 1989 to the present, the managed health care and health insurance companies got protection from lawsuits by patients who have been denied medical care, and defeat of proposed laws that would make it easier for patients to choose their own doctor and would get their emergency room visits reimbursed. We pay with over 41 million Americans lacking health insurance, billions in wasted premiums spent on advertising, duplicative paperwork and insurance company bureaucracies - and with unnecessary death and suffering when HMOs overrule doctors.

For a lousy $318.7 million in contributions, the resource-extracting industries (oil and gas, mining, electric utilities, chemical manufacturers and timber) got $33 billion in tax breaks in pending energy legislation; a weakened Superfund toxic clean up law; freedom to remove the tops off mountains, and dump the waste in valleys and streams; lax regulation of energy markets; and other regulatory relief, such as not having to close high-pollution smokestacks. Public Campaign points out we pay with dirtier air and water; despoiled national parks, forests and wilderness; high rates of childhood asthma; millions in price-gouging; and heavily polluted toxic waste sites, whose clean-up has been put in jeopardy.

As Kevin Phillips reports in "Wealth and Democracy," the entire top 1 percent, over 1 million families, increased their average net worth by 75 percent during the 1990s. The net worth of the middle quintile, adjusted for inflation, declined 10 percent between 1983 and 1995, and rose briefly in 1998 and 1999, only to slide back after 2000.

"Wage earners in the United States collectively ended the decade with less pension and health coverage, as well as with the Industrial West's least amount of vacation time, shortest maternity leaves and shortest average notice of termination," says Phillips.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the typical American worked 350 more hours per year than the typical European, the equivalent of nine work weeks.

That's the state of the union.
from the Tallahassee Democrat, http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/5051027.htm 
.... posted by AbigaileR, 1/29/03

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Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29. Since then he has written 13 others, including Slaughterhouse Five, which stands as one of the pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century.
As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader and supporter of this magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut is an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs, a fellow Hoosier whom he likes to quote: “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

—Joel Bleifuss

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.

What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

That they are nonsense.

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, “ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” as the saying goes.

As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?

Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can’t help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.

But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of such a universal confection for the eye, by means of printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or memoirs and so on, isn’t possible. Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper author can only hope at best to seem responsible to small groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she might as well have given an interview to the editor of a small-circulation publication.

Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their societies of architects and sculptors and painters another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although not yet classified as fine art, has on occasion performed marvelous services for Americans who want us to be less paranoid, to be fairer and more merciful. M.A.S.H. and Law and Order, to name only two shows, have been stunning masterpieces in that regard.

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

“C students from Yale.” It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?

Assholes.

From In These Times, http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C 
....posted by Jack, 1/29/03

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Preemptive rituals enshrining an organized perversion of war

by Pierre Tristam

Win or lose, war's aftermath is filled with nauseating rituals, as if the stench of the dead must be out-stenched by the triumphalism of the living. Think of the parades, the monuments, the medals of honor, the ostentation of "EX-POW" or "purple heart" license plates, the "Patton"-like movies of carnage-ennobled patriotism. Think of the "unknown soldier" ceremony, that worldwide fetish of wreaths and grief dangled around an empty tomb by the very men who would not hesitate to shovel anonymous soldiers by the battalion into death's maws at the next opportunity.

Reverence for soldiers returning in one or many pieces shouldn't be trivialized, much less reverence for the memory of fallen soldiers. But even the focus on soldiers conveniently denies the overriding fact of modern warfare -- that civilians suffer, sacrifice and die in incalculably greater numbers than soldiers, who are at least equipped for atrocity. There are no tombs for the "unknown civilian" because they're everywhere underfoot, no more remarkable than history's landfill.

War may be necessary those rare times when willful aggression can't be defeated any other way, just as the rituals may be expressions of gratefulness and sorrow as genuine as the sound of a lone bugle playing taps. Less explicitly, the rituals enshrine the organized perversion of war into something honorable, therefore doable again. They burn, not like the eternal flame at the unknown soldier's tomb, but like the pilot light for the next war even as the last one is preached as the war to end them all.

This is true most of all in the United States, a peace-loving country in lore and lies only. Aside from its vibrant domestic market for violence -- Indian genocides, slavery's peculiarities, the Civil War, a penchant for riots and homicide -- the country hasn't known a single decade without war. It intervened militarily 20 times just in the first 20 years of the 20th century in Latin America and the Caribbean alone. Paradoxically, it is a country that knows war only tangentially, because in warfare (as in so little else anymore) it has always maintained a healthy trade surplus: It exports war overwhelmingly more than it imports it.

So most Americans know war as an entertainment on par with the thrills of a Jerry Burkheimer flick or the artificial mush of "Saving Private Ryan." Whether or not GIs are involved in a war somewhere around the globe, cities may be razed, whole populations decimated, American bodies may be dragged down a bedraggled street. But as long as the mall keeps its regular hours and cheap gas is keeping the SUV happy, the off-shore mayhem is all part of the day's mass of information, a hierarchy of trivia to be sorted between the "amazing," the "terrible," the "sad," the "I-gotta-tell Mom about this," and so on until the next cycle of news refills the stimulus tank. None of it is real. Not in the way that a rocket shattering the neighbors' living room and stunning you awake in the middle of the night is real, not in the way that the daily dance with snipers, car bombs and sudden air raids is real, not in the way that a world of orphans more numerous than Barbie dolls in American closets is real.

A big-screen rendition of war on CNN is no more real than those third-degree emotions rustled up for a photo-op ceremony. In a nation that has rarely known the true cost of war beyond the luxuries of protest and the byte-size reckonings with repatriated body bags, that kind of simulated renditions are worse than unreal. They're the formal preparations for war by other means. They keep the warmongering mindset oiled and ready like those strategic bombers that were kept on alert during the Cold War, engines humming and warheads polished for their destinations. Those displays of war's after-burn are what make America so quick on the trigger of war and what allow the imminent war with Iraq to be framed as rational policy.

For all their numbers, the peace marchers have been a featherweight in the balance of war's choreographers. Congress, the White House and the media are spoiling for war in rituals of their own, because a preemptive war requires its preemptive rituals. The tear-stained parades of departing soldiers kissing wife and kids, the soldiers themselves barely past childhood, are in full swing. TV news is drooling war programming like pre-game shows ("Countdown Iraq," one cable network calls it). Newsweeklies pander to the Pentagon's unvarnished propaganda. And of course schools are getting in on the act by making kids write letters to soldiers, so "support our troops."

Writing letters to peace marchers (for lack of worthy Congressmen), to support them at least until all else has failed, seems to be a reflex strangely alien for an avowedly peace-loving, Christian nation. In any case kids are always war's first draftees. Might as well warm them up to the fact in grade school, get them used to the stench and inoculate them against the more dangerous subversions of peace.

They're not lacking for role models. German officers in World War II used to call the stench of the dead "the perfume of battle." To hear President Bush and his junta's officers talking, they can't wait to inhale and douse the rest of us with it.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. He can be reached at ptristam@att.net . 
.... from the Daytona Beach News Journal http://www.n-jcenter.com/ColEssays.htm , 1/28/03

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When the Tax Man Comes 

by Rita Weinstein

Lying awake, sick to the depths of heart and soul over what the criminal gang in the White House is about to unleash on the world, my mind lurches to the question of what to do on April 15—tax day.  The question has popped up before, and I’ve shoved it aside because it wasn’t time yet.  But now that the W-2s are arriving in the mail, it is now a nagging moral issue that demands I make a decision. “Where your heart is, there shall your treasure be.”

I am someone who believes that government, the orderly addressing of the needs of the populace by common agreement on the allocation of resources, is a good thing.  I’m certainly not capable of paving the streets of my city, maintaining a system of interstate highways, funding a school, keeping clean water flowing, etc., etc. by myself. Good government addresses the common good, and I wholeheartedly support it.

On the other hand, bad government steals from the people, renders their sweat and hours into gold for those whose survival is assured many times over by corporate welfare and by tax cuts for the wealthiest.  It rewrites the rules in favor of those whose color and privilege opens doors automatically. Bad government cuts heating and housing subsidies for the poor, underfunds public schools, rewrites policy to help its corporate masters at the expense of ordinary people, undercuts funds for homeland security at the state and city levels, sucks up the public treasury in order to wage endless wars of domination on the world, etc., etc.

I am someone who has led a law-abiding life.  I don’t steal, I don’t cheat, I obey the traffic laws, I respect all forms of democratically placed authority.  But the thought that, by some awful reverse alchemy, my hard-earned dollars will be turned into terror, trauma, chaos, and death for tens of thousands of men, women, and children who have never lifted a finger against me is completely unacceptable.  My values and morality cannot allow that to happen.  As an American, as a human being, I cannot give the fruits of my labor to support the commission of unspeakable crimes against humanity.

I’ve read about the military’s  “shock and awe” theory of terror--the proposed 48 hours of missile strikes at 4-minute intervals--against a city of millions of ordinary people, the use of nuclear materials in the weapons we’ll use against them, and the willingness to use preemptive nuclear strikes on the ground in Iraq.  I’ve imagined myself and my own precious children and friends in their position--as targets of the U.S. war machine.

On April 15, the government will have its hand out, demanding my check so it can continue to fund this horror.  My only answer will be: no way. No freaking way.

I care about my country. I am devoted to the principles framed in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Reflection on the sacrifices of unnumbered and unnamed millions of all walks of life who went before us to secure our principles moves me to tears.

I care about my fellow citizens and the next generation.  I care that we are, indeed, leaving them behind as we feed the war machine. I care that environmental destruction is being hastened by the withdrawal of regulations we once all agreed upon.  I care that roads and bridges and sewer lines are crumbling, because we’ll be in huge trouble when they become unusable.  I care that our veterans are now being betrayed in the areas of promised pensions and healthcare.  I care that our seniors and our working families are being painfully squeezed economically, when not too long ago there was enough to take care of the needs of all. 

There are a lot of things we once agreed our government—OUR government—should be doing with OUR  pooled money for OUR common good.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do on April 15.  I’m going to fill out my tax forms, and I’m going to write a check for the full amount Uncle Sam says I owe. And I’m going to enclose a letter with my payment. In that letter I will tell the IRS that I’m more than happy for my money to be used by my government for the common good. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share the results of my labor with my fellow citizens so life can be better for us all. But they will note that I have made my check out to the U.S. Department of Education, to help buy some books or help fix a leaking roof in an inner city school. And I will tell the IRS they can have my money, but I will not give one penny to help my government commit crimes that have me lying awake, weeping tears of shame and horror for what it is already doing to us and to the world.   I haven't consulted a tax lawyer on this, so I don't know what to expect, but I have consulted my heart, soul, and conscience, and I can do nothing else.

... Rita Weinstein is a Seattle-based freelance writer and playwright. You may contact her at rwineskin@juno.com.  

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The system can't be fixed. Our future is a dark age of vicious guards and powerless prisoners, unless ... 

By John Kaminski

Our president is a criminal, if not surely guilty, at least chargeable for the following offenses:

Military desertion, cocaine smuggling, conspiracy to destroy Aerican landmarks, conspiracy to commit mass murder in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania and Afghanistan. And treason, for sure. Willful and deliberate destruction of the U.S. Constitution. Accessory to the theft of billions of dollars in the savings and loan debacle engineered and/or condoned by his father. Corruption for making repeated and continuing governmental decisions to enrich his relatives and friends. 

Obstruction of justice, innumerable counts, for blocking investigations into crimes that cost the lives of thousands of American citizens. Kidnapping and torture, for putting thousands of innocent people in jail without trial and denying them their Constitutional rights, as well as killing some. Illegal persecution of racial and ethnic minorities.

Accessory to obstruction of justice for allowing the U.S. vote system to be commandeered by criminals who can rig the vote without being detected. 

Complicity in the assassination of a political rival.

If we had a real attorney general who represented all Americans rather than only the rights of the wealthy, he would investigate these charges, and convene a legitimate invesitigation into the suspicious atrocities of 9/11/2001. But as he was appointed by the same man who is charged with committing all these crimes, no investigation is likely. In fact, the attorney general himself is probably guilty of many of the same charges as the president, as he is conspicuously involved in so many of the instances of obstruction of justice.

So there is no chance that the sitting government is going to act on these obvious crimes, since the entire government is polluted by conspirators of the same political party who are beholden to the criminals who gave them their jobs. 

This deadlock also applies to virtually all of the judges in America, since most of them have been appointed by the same manipulators and their like-minded predecessors, who must promise to condone this corruption before they are ever appointed to the bench in the first place.

And even the legislative branch is subject to the same polluting influences, since it costs millions to achieve these posts and once elected, collusion in the secret and criminal activities of the power elite is essential to advancing one's career.

As preposterous as it sounds, the entire Congress (excepting a dozen or so idealists) needs to be dismissed and indicted for its corrupt actions. That says something about the direction our future must take if we are to actually be free.

We are supposed to have a two-party system in America, but it has been apparent for some time that the differences between the two parties are wholly cosmetic. An analysis of the recent vote on making war against Iraq is instructive, as only eight senators opposed it, despite the complete absence of hard evidence that Iraq should be invaded at all (something the rest of the world knows well, but that the American people choose not to know). 

The opposition included seven Democrats and one Independent, but the vast majority of Democrats supported the Republican president's position, even though it was clearly a lie. The situation is identical when it comes to the Israelis' continuing theft of the Palestinians' homeland.

Similar outcomes were recorded in the votes for the Patriot Act and Homeland Security bill, two legislative monstrosities which effectively curtailed most of the privileges recorded in our Constitutional Bill of Rights, which had remained essentially unmolested for two centuries.

These votes clearly indicate there is no genuine opposition party in the United States, only a false opposition whose differences with the party in permanent power are pretty much meaningless.

This is evident in the opposition party candidates who speak not of changing the current criminal system but only of modifying procedures in trivial ways that would give no relief to the beleaguered citizenry but only enrich their corrupt friends instead of the other guy's. 

Look hard at the principal candidates for the 2004 opposition presidential nomination: a member of the same college fraternity as the current president, and two partisan advocates of immoral support for a foreign power that is a principal abettor of tyranny in the world. This is no opposition, only another flavor of the same oppression. Thus, there is no reason to expect any kind of change after the next election. To put it more clearly, there is no reason to vote at all.

In short, there is no place for the average American citizen to turn for relief. This terminal disease of political corruption extends downward through the states, counties and muncipalities, where all elective offices are occupied by people able to pay their way into the ruling system, through alliances with corrupt judges and party bosses, with all machinations based on bribery and deception. Perhaps this is what America has always been--that's a long argument--but there is no argument that this is what America is now: a perverted cesspool of political payola.

Members of both parties were involved in the pivotal decisions of the past half-century that allowed the destruction of America's manufacturing base and the widespread practice of financial deception to cheat legitimate investors out of their hard-earned money. The coming impoverishment of the United States is a bipartisan achievement, but only insofar as the policies of both parties have been consistently to take the short-term profit and feed it quickly to elite investors and their political minions rather than to invest it prudently in the continuing well-being of the American economy. 

The flight of industry beyond our borders is chief testament to this policy, and the reason why, when this country goes broke beyond any solution the fast-talkers can fabricate, there will be no fixing the problem, and no ready solution to a chaotic poverty that will sweep the land.

This is the real reason why Ashcroft is talking internment camps, why people are fearful of boxcars with seats in them, and new, barbed-wire enclosures that are supposedly springing up all across the land. The current president is trying to blackmail us into war by insisting the economy needs the boost of a military extravaganza to replenish its treasury with the varied industrial activity that wars always bring. 

Since World War I, this is a tried-and-true method of reinvigorating the economy. But once we realize the principle means trading millions of foreign lives simply to resuscitate our bank accounts, the true cost of this political principle will surely be our souls.

And, judging by America's stances in the world today, this is a price that we--willingly or unconsciously--have already paid. America has lost its soul. Once a beacon of freedom, justice and equality, it is now a blinking neon sign on Skid Row advertising high-interest loans to Third World countries that can never finish repaying them.

We traded our soul when we bribed all those other countries to let us obliterate Afghanistan. There was no real reason to do it, other than to add another layer of deception to the 9/11 caper, to improve political conditions for an oil pipeline, and to put us in better position for when we decide to invade Iran, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or all of the above. 

There was no real reason to kill all those people except to facilitate additional revenues for military support companies owned by Bush's friends. That's how he's improving our economy, by improving HIS economy and letting a few pennies trickle down here and there.

By allowing this criminal president to get away with his antisocial behavior, the American people don't realize that they are only bringing on for themselves what they are now approving for inhabitants of less fortunate countries like Iraq. Sooner or later, the petronazis are going to run out of foreign patsies to bomb, and are going to turn their guns inward. It's inevitable, and to some extent, it has already happened, in terms of the abolition of the most of the civil rights we have been accustomed to all our lives.

By acquiescing in the criminal bullying of the rest of the world by the mega-might of the American military machine, we are sending a clear signal to the tyrants in Washington and Tel Aviv that we will tolerate any atrocity as long as our gas prices stay low and our TV schedules are not interrupted. 

Any day now, you'll begin to notice that the criminal atrocities of the power elite are creeping closer and closer to home. But don't worry. There'll be TV in the camps, I'm told. But only one channel. And guess who'll be on. 

The current system absolutely cannot be fixed. No amount of petitioning, protesting, having meaningful conversations with the few remaining compassionate members of Congress (an endangered species if there ever was one), or writing letters to newspapers that don't care will have any effect. 

They have no effect now, other than to massage the egos of the deluded activists making the effort. No amount of maverick candidacies, third party movements or political-issue crusades is going going to stop this military juggernaut from turning the world into an armed camp (it is already, in case you haven't noticed) where citizens will be herded into "debtors" camps.

Many will be eliminated by vaccination programs, although as the insurance industry collapses, medical care will no longer be available to anyone but the super rich. Already, our schools are assuming the appearance of military indoctrination centers that preach that the poor are evil. 

Drugs and electronic conditioning will make it easier to turn these elite students against their fellow human beings. The world is devolving into a universal system of guards and prisoners, and you get to choose which one you will be on the basis of how steadfastly you adhere to the party line. 

Already, there is nowhere to escape as satellites can access every square inch of the planet, and gun-toting politicians in every single country are ready and willing to turn you in to the thought police because the bounties for such apprehensions are already very lucrative.

This is what will happen if the current system is allowed to remain in place. The alternatives are almost as scary. Whatever happens is going to involve massive dislocation and death, because people in all the industrialized countries are simply not equipped to survive when their support systems break down. 

People who live in underdeveloped countries are actually better equipped to survive, because they live closer to nature and are less likely to lose their livelihoods in the event of worldwide economic collapse, which, by the way, is imminent.

Yet, breaking down the support systems is exactly what must happen if legitimate freedom is ever to be regained. It is the support systems that enslave us and keep us dependent on our corporate keepers. We need to eat food we grow in our backyards, not buy from supermarket chains.

We need to be able to complain to our government face-to-face, not have to write a letter to Washington, or some other capital that doesn't care. We need to be able to teach our children what we think is important, not what some overpaid consultant in a big city deems is necessary to turn our kids into the next generation of corporate slaves.

We have, over the last century, traded our freedom for that illusory curtain of security that we thought would allow us to live our lives in peace and freedom. Little did we know that this curtain was wholly predicated on the ability and willingness to make war. And now we are beginning to learn that our freedom, all this time, was really a kind of slavery.

Now we find ourselves in a situation that is little better politically than landless serfs were in the Middle Ages at the mercy of their whimsical lords. We have our own lords, and they don't mind killing us and anybody else if we interfere with their moneymaking operations.

If we keep the system, we keep our chains, we keep our right, if we're lucky, to have lucrative job as long as we say the right thing, and ignore it when our government decides it must slaughter a large bloc of hapless peasants because they are interfering with access to a valuable natural resource. 

We can't keep the system and remain free. The price of either path will be painful. Assuming you ever get the chance, which will you choose?

In regard to the charges against George W. Bush listed at the top of this article:

Military desertion? See http://www.awolbush.com/  or http://www.wearepower.org/pipermail/natlpower/2002-October/000556.html 

Cocaine smuggling? See http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/offline9.htm 

Conspiracy to destroy landmarks and commit mass murder? How about http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm  to pick the best of many stories like this.

Treason: http://bush-treason.blogspot.com/ 

Accessory to the theft of billions of dollars in the savings and loan debacle: See http://www.thetip.org/art_146_icle.html  and http://www.campaignwatch.org/more1.htm 

Enriching his friends: http://www.bushnews.com/bushmoney.htm  , http://www.bushwatch.net/bushmillions.html   and http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/other_more.asp 

Obstruction of justice: http://members.tripod.com/~RedRobin2/index-93.html 

Illegal jailings: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/pows-m31.shtml  and http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bin2/thoughts/comment020128.asp 

 Computerized election vote fraud: http://www.talion.com/vote-rigging.html 

Assassinating a political rival: http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID43/5351.html  and  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/well-o29.shtml 

John Kaminski skylax@comcast.net is a writer who lives in the coast of Florida and is waiting for the water to start rising.  

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Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President 

By Neil Mackay 

A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.

The PNAC report also:

l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';

l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';

l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;

l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';

l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';

l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;

l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';

l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.

'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'

.... ....  Top article from Sunday Herald http://www.sundayherald.com/27735 ; Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century (link to the original document referred to in this article)  
see also www.Cooperativeresearch.org for more information 
....referred by Andy, 1/26/03  

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Quit whining, Jeb, use cash to limit class sizes

Jeb Bush has begun his campaign to kill the class-size amendment.

I've heard more whining out of him in two days than I've heard from my 4-year-old in six months.

We will pillage social services and colleges, he says. Our budget will wind up in California-style chaos. We could get in so much debt it will wreck our credit rating.

And it's only going to get worse!!!!

Jeb is trying to turn class size into Florida's Frankenstein. Then when he has everybody sufficiently terrified that the monster will get them next, he will lead the charge to the castle. He will get the Legislature to put the amendment back on the ballot.

But let's take a closer look at the alleged damage that class size will have on Jeb's budget this year. The increase he has proposed for education -- $899 million -- is not out of line with his past increases in education spending.

If this budget passes, the average increase in K-12 spending for the past five years under Jeb would be $760 million. It would be more, but schools took a hit after 9-11.

This budget exceeds that average by only $139 million. In a $54 billion budget, that is chump change.

It is less than what Jeb plans for tax cuts this year, so explain how this has "a solar eclipse-like impact on the state budget and state policy."

If anything is blocking out the sun in Jeb's universe, it is the $1.5 billion he has been giving away every year in tax cuts to those who least need it. This year's cut in the intangibles tax will extend to those with $500,000 portfolios.

This is why Florida's tax rate has grown more regressive under Jeb. We now rank second in the nation in passing taxes off to the lower and middle class. The poor in Florida pay five times more out of their income to state and local taxes than do the rich.

Jeb claims the result has been a boon for our economy. Spare us the rhetoric and produce the independent analysis that backs this up.

What our economy needs most is good schools, but since entering office, by Jeb's own numbers, he has spent more than twice as much on tax cuts as education increases. This is why the class-size amendment passed. Voters like Jeb but disagree with his tight-fisted approach to education. He simply won't accept their decision.

In a cynical move, Jeb is pitting colleges against K-12, saying class size is forcing budget cuts and tuition increases in higher education.

The tuition increases are a result of Florida running its colleges like communists run an economy. There has been centralized control of pricing, which ignores market conditions. Tuition is the same at University of Florida as at University of West Florida, despite the difference in quality and in applications for admission.

Florida tuition ranks 48th in the nation, about where our academics rank. Even at that, the state gives away an absurd number of scholarships.

Tuition increases are a painful dose of reality. They are not the fault of the class-size amendment. They are a market correction to undo decades of meddling by state lawmakers.

Jeb Bush campaigned against smaller classes. He made the same threats then that he is making now, and the voters said do it anyway.

So, please, Jeb, spare us the histrionics, devious plots and political shenanigans and do your job.

... Mike Thomas, Orlando Sentinel 1/23/03 

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WE, THE PEOPLE: the Martin Luther King weekend rally against the war in Iraq

by Ellen Cantarow 


I almost didn't go to the Martin Luther King week-end rally against the Iraq war planned by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism.) Then, Friday morning, listening to a National Public Radio reporter tactfully interview some military officials about the Administration's "reasons" for invading Iraq, I phoned home: "Let's go down there today!" Jack and I left Boston at 4:30 Friday afternoon and arrived in DC at 2 Saturday morning. 

Saturday A.M. In the 70s my parents used to live at Van Ness and Connecticut Avenue in Northwest DC, and now the metro has a stop there. There's an upscale coffee shop smack at the metro entrance where we grab espressos and passion fruit smoothies and make our way towards several other other graying white people who say they've come for the rally from Wisconsin -- three vans of parents, grand-parents and kids. The train turns out to be crowded with more of us: fanny and back-packs, worn hiking boots, anti-war buttons, more gray hair. The crowd gets younger at subsequent stops, people in their 30s with kids in tow; people in their 20s. We get off at Judiciary and walk towards the Mall. It's freezing: I have two pairs of gloves on, but my hands are stuffed into the sleeves of my down coat, hood up, scarf over my mouth. On the way, I meet several women from Boston, colleagues in Israel-Palestine organizations: "I was hoping I wouldn't see you guys!" I joke, "if we keep running into each other it'll mean it's the same-old same-olds!"

A cheerfully festive crowd - not the same-old-same-olds - is scattered in the plaza fronting the National Gallery. The first placards to catch my eye: "MY MOM SAYS FUCK BUSH!" "FIGHTING FOR PEACE IS LIKE FUCKING FOR VIRGINITY." This month's gallery exhibit is ironically apt: "Deceptions & Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting." Inside, guards check the bags of a swarm of people who leave the rally for a little warmth, the restrooms, and the espresso-gelato café. Vast stretches of lovely marble floors; luxurious gift stores. The women's rooms are jammed. A female group of 25 liberates one of the men's rooms beside the museum's ornamental waterfall. A lady who looks as if she just left Bergdorff-Goodman stiffens with pursed mouth and uncertain frown: "O! I don't know . . . " as red-faced men file by and press in at the urinals. From the men at the urinals: "C'mon ladies, this isn't fair." "They're not impressed!" (laughter) Bergdorff then offers her opinion of the rally: "It doesn't look like a big march to me. It isn't congested towards the middle. I mean, having seen many others . . . " 

I go to one of the gift shops and buy a notebook. Outside, a group of kids are standing around a half-inflated bomb-shaped balloon that reads BOMB: FALSE SECURITY. A young woman stands at one end heaving over a bicycle pump. 20-year-old Kristin, fair-skinned with pale brown hair fanning her face under her ski cap, tells me that 26 University of Michigan students traveled ten hours in vans to get here. At U Michigan last spring, she says, "Two totally different groups of people" - Muslim students and students like Kristin - "came together and created this really great conference on the war in Iraq. There were 800 people." 

Beyond the U Michigan students, there's a group of people in their 40s and 50s with the sort of white baggy clothes and Birkenstocks I associate with yoga and meditation types. Their sign says Global Coalition for Peace: indeed, they meditate and send people around to teach other people how to meditate for peace ("Check out our website," says a man with a scraggy beard who looks in his 50s, "www dot global coalition for peace dot net." ) "Eight-thousand people meditated for six years, then the Cold War ended and the Berlin wall fell," he says and then, catching the irony in my gaze: "We may call it a coincidence . . . . " I can't fault their banner, though: "WOMEN PEACEMAKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! I will not raise my child to kill your child." Nearby I find four teenagers from New York's East Side Community High School with their teacher, Jeremy. Two of the kids are African-American, one looks Latina. Jeremy, who looks quite Caucasian, says his grandfather was national president of the NAACP in 1968. Beside him, 18-year-old Seekgu Marie, small, round-faced and dark-skinned, is carrying a hand-lettered placard that reads, "The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today - My Own Government - Martin Luther King." A young Latina-looking woman student beside Jeremy has an American flag draped around her shoulders: instead of stars, there are corporation logos - ABC, Warner Brothers, etc. I walk past other placards - "GEORGE BUSH IS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION" "WE HAVE GUIDED MISSILES AND MISGUIDED MEN - M.L.K." to a school bus that's been painted mainly black, with the warning, MR BUSH, AMERICA, FEAR GOD & REPENT. Inside are Paul Combs, 23, and Andrew Wilson, 33, very white and looking like the anti-abortion crusaders they are. They're both from Lindale Texas and they represent the Church of God "with headquarters in heaven," Paul says with ad-man panache. How many people in Church of God? "We have a regular attendance of about ten." Why are they here? Missionary ad-speak starts again, hammering zealously away at me: "It's inappropriate to say you're going to rid the world of terror if you have 25,000 terroristic acts daily. Bush is fighting against God, and God's getting ready to do a number on this nation."

Goodbye, Paul and Andrew. I pass my favorite placard so far -- HOW DID OUR OIL GET UNDER THEIR SAND? Not far from it, I notice a cross pierced by a bomb, carried by a man who turns out to be one of a group of Pennsylvania Mennonites. Their posters: "WHO WOULD JESUS DEFEND?" "WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THE LEAST OF THESE YOU HAVE DONE TO ME - Jesus." Over the loudspeakers Mahdi Bray, one of ANSWER'S main organizers, is saying, "Jesus Christ didn't say, 'Blessed are the warmongers . . . the oil . . . Enron . . . he said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers." Just beyond the Mennonites is the demo's most dramatic figure, 28-year-old Jeffry Bueschler from Blacksburg Virginia, a live poster, naked except for a bikini brief and swim shoes, and he's handing out magic markers so people can write the peace sign on his skin. His head is shaved with a small tuft of hair on the top like a bird crest. He denies he's cold even though his arms, hands and legs are shimmying: "I gotta do some exposure for this cause!" 

My eye is caught by a placard with a photo of Hitler underscored with the legend, EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FUHRER! But the face isn't Hitler's: it's George Bush's. DON'T LET HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF, reads the lettering beside the photo. The hand holding the poster is 24-year-old Rosen Trinidad's. Born in the Philippines, he was brought to the US by his parents who emigrated here in 1984. His friend, Noreen Tiangco, 25, small, with beautiful, delicate features, and a kuffiyeh wrapped around her neck, is also Philippina (her parents are still there.) She says she wants to go to Palestine, maybe with the International Solidarity Movement, even though both she and Rosen are trying to get into med school (they're about to leave DC for Boston to look into Boston University.) In fact it seems that a lot of people in the crowd identify with Palestine: take, for instance, Conor O'Grady, an Irish artist in his 20s, with a thick brogue, who lives in New York City. He wears a kuffiyeh, carries a Palestinian flag, and he's with two men who look Arab. He also wants to go to Palestine to help: "Basically it's very similar to Ireland, Palestine, though the worst days of our colonization were 400 years ago." 

The loudspeakers are carrying Jesse Jackson's speech, he's saying, "Don't let them work your spirit . . . here we stand, red, brown, black and white, we're all precious in God's sight. Can I get a witness?" The crowd roars: "YAAAAAYYYYY!!!" "Can I get a witness?" "YAYYYYYYY!!" "It's healing time!" says Jesse. "It's hope time! It's peace time! Keep hope alive!" "KEEP HOPE ALIVE! KEEP HOPE ALIVE! KEEP HOPE ALIVE!"

Terry, 64, looks as if he's just about to visit his local VFW. He's wearing a baseball cap with stars and stripes (bill forward, not backwards), and he carries a hand-scrawled sign: PATRIOT FOR PEACE. Has he been to many demos in his life? A granite-jawed denial: "Never." This is his first demonstration? He nods. "Why did you come?" "Because I love my country. That's all, I'm talking too much." Over the P.A. system the next speaker says, "You people - you are the real patriots," and I'm startled to see Terry's eyes fill with tears and overflow. He turns away from me, embarrassed, but I pat his shoulder: "You just keep this up, what you're doing is important, it's great!" and now Terry smiles and pats my shoulder in return. 

Bergdorff's analysis is way off the mark. Whatever "congested towards the middle" means, I guess I'm in it, but actually the whole rally seems to be the "congested middle," I can scarcely move, the crush of people is like a subway rush-hour extending as far as I can see down the mall towards the Capitol. I notice two more delegations that aren't the same-old-same-olds, "YELLOW SPRINGS HIGH SCHOOL, OHIO - STOP THE WAR" and "COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: CHRISTIANS FOR PEACE." Beside me Cecilia, from Chile, small, bent, walks with a cane, carrying a placard that says, "Children play with each other. Why don't grownups learn to do the same?" She seems older than her 62 years; she's from Chile but not, she says, one of the grandmothers who fought Pinochet "even though," she smiles, "I'm a grandmother." This is far from her first demonstration, she says. She's here today because "you have to act on your beliefs. What good is it to believe and not to act?" Just a little forward in the crush there's a young woman in a sweatshirt that says "National Youth Summit" and a "HELLO MY NAME IS" badge. In the name-space she's written, CIVILIAN CASUALTY. Beyond her there's a joyous din of improvised percussion instruments, a sort of Latin rhythm is issuing from waste-baskets, spoons, spring water containers and a cow-bell, and at the end of each rhythmic chorus everyone yells, "DROP BUSH, NOT BOMBS!" I start jumping up and down and yelling till I decide to move forward, and now I'm behind someone with a hooded black sweatshirt decorated with safety pins and the logo FUCKEN URBAN PIRATES. She's 21, from North Carolina; a knit cap under the hood is pulled down to her eyebrows, a bandana hides her mouth and nose, so all I see are two hazel eyes, one of them oddly two-toned. She won't give her name, which seems to be the point of being with fucken urban pirates. Who are fucken urban pirates? "Everyone." "So I could be a fucken urban pirate, too?" "Yeah." 

Hazel, 78, and Bill, 73, are part of the group of 100 people who came here from Yellow Springs, Ohio. She's four months out of surgery, she says cheerfully, as she shuffles along behind her walker. She has four children, eight grandchildren, one of whom runs up to her and takes her arm while she smiles radiantly at him, "Hello, Sweetie!" They're Quakers, veterans of nonviolent civil disobedience. She's been in jail at least three times for civil disobedience. She tells me the name of her first penitentiary: Alderston. She was there a month. Bill was in jail in Kentucky for six months. A nonviolent civil disobedience at the School of the Americas was just one of their actions. She's so cheerful I ask, "So did you enjoy prison?" "Well, you learn a lot. I was with women of three different races. The worst thing was meeting the minimally guilty - women who were taking a drug rap for things other people did." Just beyond Hazel and Bill, who are white, I find Charles, 47, and Jeanie, 46, who are black, from Ashville, North Carolina. He's a doctor, she's a teacher. His parents were factory workers, hers, farmers. Both originally came from Mississippi. It's their first demonstration: "We don't believe in the war. We have a son to go and relatives." Their son is 18: "He represents all the eighteen-year-olds. You should know what you're fighting for. It should be something real," says Charles, "not something contrived." 

Now the crowd is chanting, "Osama, Saddam, Pinochet, all created by the CIA!" We're moving past the Botanical Gardens; the demo planners intended that the march proceed to the Navy Yard to carry out a symbolic search for weapons of mass destruction, but the sound system wasn't approved; still, the crowd is wending its slow way there. Cops stand on the Botanical Garden wall, blue-helmeted, faces hidden by skimobile masks. The cops watch the crowd impassively, some people around me train videos on the cops. In front of me there's a 13-year-old named Lynn Fonda ("Yeah, like Jane," she says unsmilingly) who carries a sign, "There's a Terrorist Behind Every Bush." She came from upstate New York with her mother, father, brother, and a few friends. It's her second demo. She was here last October. The Fondas, I, Jack, and the mass of people around us are now moving past a bank of upscale restaurants. On the roof of Hunan Dynasty ten people are waving excitedly and giving us the peace sign; the crowd starts screaming WHAT DO WE WANT, PEACE, WHEN DO WE WANT IT, NOW, PEACENOWPEACENOWPEACENOWPEACENOW! As we pass Starbucks the crowd yells, "OUT OF THE STARBUCKS, INTO THE STREETS!" An Asian woman leans out of the third-storey window of Tammy's Nails, waving at the crowd, and it roars back at her: "TaMMY! TaMMY! TaMMY!" In front of me there's a scrawled sign that reads, "There Is No Flag Big Enough to Cover the Shame of Killing Innocent People." 

Now I'm walking beside Paul, 65, and Mary, 62, both African-American, both retired school-teachers. No, they don't generally do this sort of thing. Paul came "because I dislike the whole notion of war." "This war in particular?" "This war in particular," says Paul, "It makes no sense." The street we're on goes uphill. I look back: there's a carpet of people stretching back for blocks as far as my eye can see. This thing is enormous: people around me make guesstimates - 200,000 for sure. Jack, who used to be a cop and has a good eye for numbers, supposes that there are as many as 500,000. "You're only seeing to the point where they're making the turn. When we were back at the turn I looked up to here where we are and the road was completely full of people. Now we're looking back and they're still coming around the corner." 

Finally my part of the march reaches the Navy Yard. Standing all by herself on one corner there's a woman who turns out to be 64, Ann Dykstra. She's small, grim-faced, and totally straight-looking, the government and United Nations worker she has been all her life. The placard she's holding is a personal outcry: 

NO WAR! 6 GRANDSONS. I worked: 5 YEARS: Asian refugees. 18 YEARS UN - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. COLD WAR: WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE." 

Everyone's eyes drift towards Ann with a mixture of curiosity and the nervousness some people feel when they see a lone older woman who could maybe be a little dotty. Ann isn't dotty in the least, on the contrary. She says she grew up in Linda Vista, California; her parents, aircraft workers, "made bombers." White Sands Missile Range was her first job at 19: secretary. She worked for the State Department, then for the UN Border Relief Organization, then, for nine years, for UNICEF. All-told, she worked fourteen years in Southeast Asia refugee programs. This is only her second demonstration. Bush, she says, "has eroded our civil rights, he's brought us to the brink of war." It's the worst time she can recall in her life: "How can you sit at home and watch this just happen? You have to do something. It's time for the people to take back their government and not let this happen!" 

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Bizarre is as bizarre does!

Katy Bar The Door

Like Charles Barkley, “I may be wrong, but . . .”  

Is something wrong with me?  Granted, there’s plenty wrong with me, but let me try this on you.  Mr. Kim Jung-Il, or whoever his trainers are, has been making a lot more sense lately than George W. Bush.  Yeah, and, only the pandering Limbaugh drones on FOX “news’ seem more ridiculous to me than their leader, Rupert Mudduck Bush.  

Bush and his handlers, (Oops!  Guess if I refer to Il as having “trainers, I’ve got to give GW some trainers too.  So, . . .)  

Take 2  

Bush and his trainers do seem confused.  I’ve given up trying to make sense of the “War on Terrorism,” the “War? On Iraq ,” the presumption of a “preemptive strike” mandate for “War on something or somebody somewhere.” Meanwhile, on a daily basis, Bush operatives (and the FOX/Mudduck/Limbaugh echo team) remind us to listen to what he says and believe him.  (The Yellow Terror Code was posted in my supermarket yesterday.)  

Who can blame Mr. Il’s for his interpretation of what it means to be publicly excoriated worldwide as a member of Mr. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” already cited as the prime (first) reason given for the presumption of the preemptive strike mandate against Iraq.  Well, what else was Mr. Il supposed to make of that?  

Bizarro # 3  

Other war-causing evil Iraqi sins followed.  “Well, he did try to kill my dad.”  More recently we’ve heard we need war for reasons of national security, the stock market, Iraq’s bad influence on her neighbors, or something or other else.   

Some, though not the Bushites, have whispered, “oil” as the possible spark.  But, Ole Rummy and the Chiefs kept whipping out all them WMDs cached beyond the sand dunes. Now, “that’s the really, really scary thing that can be sustained, absolutely, for a credible ‘War on Iraq .’”  

Lookout Mr. Il !  

But wait: the topper  

I nominate for the Top Bizarro Award JEB’s Second Inaugural “God and Family” speech promises to his Mommy and Poppy, revealing the “sweet boy” who still was hanging around the house when GW was off to Yale.  

(“Dubya always got firsts, Mommy.  Can’t y’all see what a screw up he still is.  I’ve got it tough down here, you know.  Some of these rubes don’t like me at all.  My kid’s in jail.  We won’t have enough money for governing, so, might as well empty all the buildings.  Yeah, let’s see Dub top that!  Heh, heh.)”  

Next day: “Whoop!  Haw-Haw!  Media fools got a craw full, and boy I loved it when I set them straight about not being a segregationist, anti-abortion, pro-me, God/Me-centered anarchist Inauguration speech; and my ‘desire for a future with empty state buildings” only a broad metaphor they badly misinterpreted.”  

But, wait, now, after all the caterwauling about the state’s abysmal financial situation, Mr. Chameleon has once again shown his ability to dissemble.  And, now he assures some fat cat economically concerned group: “No prob, guys.  Compared to most other states and Venezuela , Florida is read to ramp up its contracting to the consulting firms.  So, let’s roll out the pork barrels!”  

Lookout Florida !  The barbarians are in charge of the mosque church and temple, the state treasury and future welfare.  Surely, it is time!  

... Katy Bar The Door, 1/21/03

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Text of Gov. George Ryan's speech announcing his commutation of all of Illinois' death sentences

(AP) -- The text prepared for delivery Saturday by Illinois Gov. George Ryan at Northwestern University's law school:
Four years ago I was sworn in as the 39th governor of Illinois. That was just four short years ago -- that's when I was a firm believer in the American system of justice and the death penalty. I believed that the ultimate penalty for the taking of a life was administrated in a just and fair manner.

Today -- three days before I end my term as governor, I stand before you to explain my frustrations and deep concerns about both the administration and the penalty of death.

It is fitting that we are gathered here today at Northwestern University with the students, teachers, lawyers and investigators who first shed light on the sorrowful condition of Illinois' death penalty system. Professors Larry Marshall, Dave Protess and their students along with investigators Paul Ciolino have gone above the call. They freed the falsely accused Ford Heights Four, they saved Anthony Porter's life, they fought for Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez. They devoted time and effort on behalf of Aaron Patterson, a young man who lost 15 years of his youth sitting among the condemned, and Leroy Orange, who lost 17 of the best years of his life on death row.

It is also proper that we are together with dedicated people like Andrea Lyon who has labored on the front lines trying capital cases for many years and who is now devoting her passion to creating an innocence center at DePaul University. You saved Madison Hobley's life.

Together they spared the lives and secured the freedom of 17 men -- men who were wrongfully convicted and rotting in the condemned units of our state prisons. What you have achieved is of the highest calling -- thank you!

Yes, it is right that I am here with you, where, in a manner of speaking, my journey from staunch supporter of capital punishment to reformer all began. But I must tell you -- since the beginning of our journey -- my thoughts and feelings about the death penalty have changed many, many times. I realize that over the course of my reviews I had said that I would not do blanket commutation. I have also said it was an option that was there and I would consider all options.

During my time in public office I have always reserved my right to change my mind if I believed it to be in the best public interest, whether it be about taxes, abortions or the death penalty. But I must confess that the debate with myself has been the toughest concerning the death penalty. I suppose the reason the death penalty has been the toughest is because it is so final -- the only public policy that determines who lives and who dies. In addition it is the only issue that attracts most of the legal minds across the country. I have received more advice on this issue than any other policy issue I have dealt with in my 35 years of public service. I have kept an open mind on both sides of the issues of commutation for life or death.

I have read, listened to and discussed the issue with the families of the victims as well as the families of the condemned. I know that any decision I make will not be accepted by one side or the other. I know that my decision will be just that -- my decision -- based on all the facts I could gather over the past three years. I may never be comfortable with my final decision, but I will know in my heart, that I did my very best to do the right thing.

Having said that I want to share a story with you:

I grew up in Kankakee which even today is still a small midwestern town, a place where people tend to know each other. Steve Small was a neighbor. I watched him grow up. He would baby-sit my young children -- which was not for the faint of heart since Lura Lynn and I had six children, five of them under the age of 3. He was a bright young man who helped run the family business. He got married and he and his wife had three children of their own. Lura Lynn was especially close to him and his family. We took comfort in knowing he was there for us and we for him.

One September midnight he received a call at his home. There had been a break-in at the nearby house he was renovating. But as he left his house, he was seized at gunpoint by kidnappers. His captors buried him alive in a shallow hole. He suffocated to death before police could find him.

His killer led investigators to where Steve's body was buried. The killer, Danny Edward, was also from my hometown. He now sits on death row. I also know his family. I share this story with you so that you know I do not come to this as a neophyte without having experienced a small bit of the bitter pill the survivors of murder must swallow.

My responsibilities and obligations are more than my neighbors and my family. I represent all the people of Illinois -- like it or not. The decision I make about our criminal justice system is felt not only here, but the world over.

The other day, I received a call from former South African President Nelson Mandela who reminded me that the United States sets the example for justice and fairness for the rest of the world. Today the United States is not in league with most of our major allies: Europe, Canada, Mexico, most of South and Central America. These countries rejected the death penalty. We are partners in death with several third world countries. Even Russia has called a moratorium.

The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states. In none of these states has the homicide rate increased. In Illinois last year we had about 1,000 murders; only 2 percent of that 1,000 were sentenced to death. Where is the fairness and equality in that? The death penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly because of the absence of standards for the 102 Illinois state's attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sentence. Should geography be a factor in determining who gets the death sentence? I don't think so but in Illinois it makes a difference. You are five times more likely to get a death sentence for first degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook County. Where is the justice and fairness in that -- where is the proportionality?

The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu wrote to me this week stating that "to take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice." He says justice allows for mercy, clemency and compassion. These virtues are not weakness.

"In fact the most glaring weakness is that no matter how efficient and fair the death penalty may seem in theory, in actual practice it is primarily inflicted upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant and against racial minorities." That was a quote from former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote that in his book -- "Public Justice, Private Mercy." He wrote that nearly 50 years ago -- nothing has changed in nearly 50 years.

I never intended to be an activist on this issue. I watched in surprise as freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into the arms of Northwestern University Professor Dave Protess, who poured his heart and soul into proving Porter's innocence with his journalism students.

He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the execution chamber where the state would kill him.

It would all be so antiseptic and most of us would not have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was innocent of the double murder for which he had been condemned to die.

After Mr. Porter's case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our capital punishment system. Half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or resentencing.

Nearly Half!

Thirty-three of the death row inmates were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law.

Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 were African American defendants who had been convicted or condemned to die by all-white juries.

More than two-thirds of the inmates on death row were African American.

Forty-six inmates were convicted on the basis of testimony from jailhouse informants.

I can recall looking at these cases and the information from the Mills/Armstrong series and asking my staff: How does that happen? How in God's name does that happen? I'm not a lawyer, so somebody explain it to me.

But no one could. Not to this day.

Then over the next few months, there were three more exonerated men, freed because their sentence hinged on a jailhouse informant or new DNA technology proved beyond a shadow of doubt their innocence.

We then had the dubious distinction of exonerating more men than we had executed. Thirteen men found innocent, 12 executed.

As I reported yesterday, there is not a doubt in my mind that the number of innocent men freed from our Death Row stands at 17, with the pardons of Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange.

That is an absolute embarrassment. Seventeen exonerated death row inmates is nothing short of a catastrophic failure. But the 13, now 17 men, is just the beginning of our sad arithmetic in prosecuting murder cases. During the time we have had capital punishment in Illinois, there were at least 33 other people wrongly convicted on murder charges and exonerated. Since we reinstated the death penalty there are also 93 people -- 93 -- where our criminal justice system imposed the most severe sanction and later rescinded the sentence or even released them from custody because they were innocent.

How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that the system is broken?

Throughout this process, I have heard many different points of view expressed. I have had the opportunity to review all of the cases involving the inmates on death row. I have conducted private group meetings, one in Springfield and one in Chicago, with the surviving family members of homicide victims. Everyone in the room who wanted to speak had the opportunity to do so. Some wanted to express their grief, others wanted to express their anger. I took it all in.

My commission and my staff had been reviewing each and every case for three years. But I redoubled my effort to review each case personally in order to respond to the concerns of prosecutors and victims' families. This individual review also naturally resulted in a collective examination of our entire death penalty system.

I also had a meeting with a group of people who are less often heard from, and who are not as popular with the media. The family members of death row inmates have a special challenge to face. I spent an afternoon with those family members at a Catholic church here in Chicago. At that meeting, I heard a different kind of pain expressed. Many of these families live with the twin pain of knowing not only that, in some cases, their family member may have been responsible for inflicting a terrible trauma on another family, but also the pain of knowing that society has called for another killing. These parents, siblings and children are not to blame for the crime committed, yet these innocents stand to have their loved ones killed by the state. As Mr. Mandela told me, they are also branded and scarred for life because of the awful crime committed by their family member.

Others were even more tormented by the fact that their loved one was another victim, that they were truly innocent of the crime for which they were sentenced to die.

It was at this meeting that I looked into the face of Claude Lee, the father of Eric Lee, who was convicted of killing Kankakee police officer Anthony Samfay a few years ago. It was a traumatic moment, once again, for my hometown. A brave officer, part of that thin blue line that protects each of us, was struck down by wanton violence. If you will kill a police officer, you have absolutely no respect for the laws of man or God.

I've known the Lee family for a number of years. There does not appear to be much question that Eric was guilty of killing the officer. However, I can say now after our review, there is also not much question that Eric is seriously ill, with a history of treatment for mental illness going back a number of years.

The crime he committed was a terrible one -- killing a police officer. Society demands that the highest penalty be paid.

But I had to ask myself -- could I send another man's son to death under the deeply flawed system of capital punishment we have in Illinois? A troubled young man, with a history of mental illness? Could I rely on the system of justice we have in Illinois not to make another horrible mistake? Could I rely on a fair sentencing?

In the United States the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment.

Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.

To quote Gov. Brown again -- he said "society has both the right and the moral duty to protect itself against its enemies. This natural and prehistoric axiom has never successfully been refuted. If by ordered death, society is really protected and our homes and institutions guarded, then even the most extreme of all penalties can be justified.

"Beyond its honor and incredibility, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the killers. Publicly sanctioned killing has cheapened human life and dignity without the redeeming grace which comes from justice metered out swiftly, evenly, humanely."

At stake throughout the clemency process, was whether some, all or none of these inmates on death row would have their sentences commuted from death to life without the possibility parole.

One of the things discussed with family members was life without parole was seen as a life filled with perks and benefits.

Some inmates on death row don't want a sentence of life without parole. Danny Edwards wrote me and told me not to do him any favors because he didn't want to face a prospect of a life in prison without parole. They will be confined in a cell that is about 5-feet-by-12 feet, usually double-bunked. Our prisons have no air conditioning, except at our supermax facility where inmates are kept in their cell 23 hours a day. In summer months, temperatures in these prisons exceed one hundred degrees. It is a stark and dreary existence. They can think about their crimes. Life without parole has even, at times, been described by prosecutors as a fate worse than death.

Yesterday, I mentioned a lawsuit in Livingston County where a judge ruled the state corrections department cannot force feed two corrections inmates who are on a hunger strike. The judge ruled that suicide by hunger strike was not an irrational action by the inmates, given what their future holds.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional and cruel and unusual punishment to execute the mentally retarded. It is now the law of the land. How many people have we already executed who were mentally retarded and are now dead and buried? Although we now know that they have been killed by the state unconstitutionally and illegally. Is that fair? Is that right?

This court decision was last spring. The General Assembly failed to pass any measure defining what constitutes mental retardation. We are a rudderless ship because they failed to act.

This is even after the Illinois Supreme Court also told lawmakers that it is their job and it must be done.

I started with this issue concerned about innocence. But once I studied, once I pondered what had become of our justice system, I came to care above all about fairness. Fairness is fundamental to the American system of justice and our way of life.

The facts I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole.

If the system was making so many errors in determining whether someone was guilty in the first place, how fairly and accurately was it determining which guilty defendants deserved to live and which deserved to die? What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

And in almost every one of the exonerated 17, we not only have breakdowns in the system with police, prosecutors and judges, we have terrible cases of shabby defense lawyers. There is just no way to sugarcoat it. There are defense attorneys that did not consult with their clients, did not investigate the case and were completely unqualified to handle complex death penalty cases. They often didn't put much effort into fighting a death sentence. If your life is on the line, your lawyer ought to be fighting for you. As I have said before, there is more than enough blame to go around.

I had more questions.

In Illinois, I have learned, we have 102 decision makers. Each of them are politically elected, each beholden to the demands of their community and, in some cases, to the media or especially vocal victims' families. In cases that have the attention of the media and the public, are decisions to seek the death penalty more likely to occur? What standards are these prosecutors using?

Some people have assailed my power to commute sentences, a power that literally hundreds of legal scholars from across the country have defended. But prosecutors in Illinois have the ultimate commutation power, a power that is exercised every day. They decide who will be subject to the death penalty, who will get a plea deal or even who may get a complete pass on prosecution. By what objective standards do they make these decisions? We do not know, they are not public. There were more than 1,000 murders last year in Illinois. There is no doubt that all murders are horrific and cruel. Yet, less than 2 percent of those murder defendants will receive the death penalty. That means more than 98 percent of victims' families do not get, and will not receive, whatever satisfaction can be derived from the execution of the murderer. Moreover, if you look at the cases, as I have done -- both individually and collectively -- a killing with the same circumstances might get 40 years in one county and death in another county. I have also seen co-defendants who are equally or even more culpable get sentenced to a term of years, while another less culpable defendant ends up on death row.

In my case-by-case review, I found three people that fell into this category, Mario Flores, Montell Johnson and William Franklin. Today I have commuted their sentences to a term of 40 years to bring their sentences into line with their co-defendants and to reflect the other extraordinary circumstances of these cases.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart has said that the imposition of the death penalty on defendants in this country is as freakish and arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning.

For years the criminal justice system defended and upheld the imposition of the death penalty for the 17 exonerated inmates from Illinois' death row. Yet when the real killers are charged, prosecutors have often sought sentences of less than death. In the Ford Heights Four case, Verneal Jimerson and Dennis Williams fought the death sentences imposed upon them for 18 years before they were exonerated. Later, Cook County prosecutors sought life in prison for two of the real killers and a sentence of 80 years for a third.

What made the murder for which the Ford Heights Four were sentenced to die less heinous and worthy of the death penalty 20 years later with a new set of defendants?

We have come very close to having our state Supreme Court rule our death penalty statute -- the one that I helped enact in 1977 -- unconstitutional. Former state Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon wrote to me that it was only happenstance that our statute was not struck down by the state's high court. When he joined the bench in 1980, three other justices had already said Illinois' death penalty was unconstitutional. But they got cold feet when a case came along to revisit the question. One judge wrote that he wanted to wait and see if the Supreme Court of the United States would rule on the constitutionality of the new Illinois law. Another said precedent required him to follow the old state Supreme Court ruling with which he disagreed.

Even a pharmacist knows that doesn't make sense. We wouldn't have a death penalty today, and we all wouldn't be struggling with this issue, if those votes had been different. How arbitrary.

Several years after we enacted our death penalty statute, Girvies Davis was executed. Justice Simon writes that he was executed because of this unconstitutional aspect of the Illinois law -- the wide latitude that each Illinois state's attorney has to determine what cases qualify for the death penalty. One state's attorney waived his request for the death sentence when Davis' first sentencing was sent back to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing. The prosecutor was going to seek a life sentence. But in the interim, a new state's attorney took office and changed directions. He once again sought and secured a death sentence. Davis was executed.

How fair is that?

After the flaws in our system were exposed, the Supreme Court of Illinois began to reform its rules and improve the trial of capital cases. It changed the rule to require that state's attorneys give advance notice to defendants that they plan to seek the death penalty to require notice before trial instead of after conviction. The Supreme Court also enacted new discovery rules designed to prevent trials by ambush and to allow for better investigation of cases from the beginning.

But shouldn't that mean if you were tried or sentenced before the rules changed, you ought to get a new trial or sentencing with the new safeguards of the rules? This issue has divided our Supreme Court, some saying yes, a majority saying no. These justices have a lifetime of experience with the criminal justice system and it concerns me that these great minds so strenuously differ on an issue of such importance, especially where life or death hangs in the balance.

What are we to make of the studies that showed that more than 50 percent of Illinois jurors could not understand the confusing and obscure sentencing instructions that were being used? What effect did that problem have on the trustworthiness of death sentences? A review of the cases shows that often even the lawyers and judges are confused about the instructions -- let alone the jurors sitting in judgment. Cases still come before the Supreme Court with arguments about whether the jury instructions were proper.

I spent a good deal of time reviewing these death row cases. My staff, many of whom are lawyers, spent busy days and many sleepless nights answering my questions, providing me with information, giving me advice. It became clear to me that whatever decision I made, I would be criticized. It also became clear to me that it was impossible to make reliable choices about whether our capital punishment system had really done its job.

As I came closer to my decision, I knew that I was going to have to face the question of whether I believed so completely in the choice I wanted to make that I could face the prospect of even commuting the death sentence of Daniel Edwards -- the man who had killed a close family friend of mine. I discussed it with my wife, Lura Lynn, who has stood by me all these years. She was angry and disappointed at my decision, like many of the families of other victims will be.

I was struck by the anger of the families of murder victims. To