Monthly Archives: December 2005

Time to Speak OUT!! Impeach Bush!!!!

Posted on December 29th, 2005 | Comments Off on Time to Speak OUT!! Impeach Bush!!!!

When a President lies and breaks the law isn’t that an impeachable offense?

The American Civil Liberties Union ran a full page ad in the NY Times today asking for an official inquiry to start. They are asking that a special counsel be appointed to determine whether oaths of office were broken and Federal laws were violated through the Bush NSA program.The public may not be there in the polls yet, but isn’t that the way it always is.

Did the US Constitution set up an Imperial Presidency that is above the law? No! Presidents need to comply with the law just like everyone else. Nixon found that out. Why are we then not demanding that President Bush comply with US law and the Constitution?

George W Bush on April 20, 2004 stated the following (while secret wietaps were being made that were not authorized by the Courts or Congress):

“Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

We know Bush has authorized wiretaps of US citizens without getting a court order as required by law. After the manipulation of data and facts to justify going to war with Iraq, why should we be surprised? But isn’t it time for America to start worrying? What else does Bush feel he can do outside the law?

What else has he done that we don’t know about? As President he sets the moral tone for his administration. If it’s O.K for the President to ignore the law, how soon before others in his cabinet and administration, likewise start making decisions that iignore the law and the Constitution.

Bush may feel that he can ignore the law in the name of fighting terrorism. But where in the Patriot Act or elsewhere does it give him that power? And is that the power you would want to give the President, that he and he alone, can decide which laws he needs to obey?

Why have laws and courts and a Constitution if the President can choose to ignore them when he wants to? Can he and his appointees do the same with the economy, health care, education and the environment? Should he and his cronies decide what is best for us and choose to ignore the rule of law because they feel they are doing good and serving some higher purpose. Isn’t that what others have said before? The late Senator Fullbright called it “the arrogance of power.”

If we do not raise our voices in protest now then we tacitly join in complicity. By our knowing it is wrong but not speaking out and remaining silent we are acknowledging acceptance of what he has done and is doing. We can not be good citizens by being silent. Democracy requires that we be involved and participate.

Just like not voting, not speaking out, lets others make the decisions. I, for one, agree with the ACLU, that it is time to for us to act and demand a special counsel be appointed. I beleive President Bush has broken his oath of office where he pledged to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” He has broken Federal law by not getting court approval for wiretaps.

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Update – Phantom voters in Washington State

Posted on December 27th, 2005 | Comments Off on Update – Phantom voters in Washington State

US Census data of prison populations in Washington State distorts drawing of Legislative District and Congressional boundaries, just like in New York State. A review of data from the Washington State Dept. of Corrections website shows a wide variation from the county in which prisoners were convicted and which county they ultimately were incarcerated in. See Report at Dept of Corrections Budget Research Table 2F facility Report Offender Characteristics, Population Movement and Custody FY 2006 as of 9/30/2005.

Assuming most prisoners resided in the county in which they were convicted, the distortion of census data is significant.

For example Walla Walla County convicted 186 people currently in prison , but Walla Walla has the Washington State Penitentiary housing 1986 prisoners.

King County has 3,824 convicted prisoners but only 114 are listed by the Dept of Corrections as residing in the King County Jail on a permanent basis.

Clallam County convicted 146 people in the state prison system yet it houses 887 prisoners at Clallam Bay and another 357 at the Olympic Correctional Facility.

Why do variations like these matter? It turns out that prisoners can vote in only 2 of the 50 states. Prisoners are counted in the US Census for determining population which is used for determining legislative and Congressional boundaries. Our last blog mentioned the advantage that gave Republicans in NY. The issue has been raised elsewhere as well. Ohio is one place Another place is Texas. Why am I not surprised?

Asher Price writes in the Austin American Statesman how some people argue that where prisoners are counted as living robs urban cities of clout, money and services . See http://www.prisonpolicy.org/news/statesman11082004.shtml for the article by Price.

Congressional boundaries are drawn to create districts of approximately equal size and also to represent various communities without diluting their power. Prisoners taken from urban areas and shipped to more rural areas do not give their home communities and values the representation they should get. Basic constitutional issues are raised. A dilution of the concept of one person one vote occurs. How can one argue that a black person taken from the Seattle area and sent to Clallam County or Walla Walla are best represented by elected officials from these areas instead of where they resided before they were sent to prison?

Go to http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports.shtml to get access to a variety of critical reports on the issues of where prisoners should be counted as living. This issue is one that Washington State needs to look at seriously. Washington State Dept of Corrections has over 17,000 prisoners residing in state facilities.

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Phantom Voters Aid New York Republicans

Posted on December 27th, 2005 | Comments Off on Phantom Voters Aid New York Republicans

How many phantom voters are there in Washington State and who are they helping? Note I did not say voting for, but helping. Seems that in New York State, non-voting prisoners have helped to give Republicans an advantage in increasing their clout. The reason has to do with the fact that the US Census, used for determine population for drawing boundaries of national and state races, lists prisoners under where they are incarcerated, not where they lived before.

In an editorial in today’s NY Times entitled “Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census“they note:

A startling analysis by Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Institute found that seven upstate New York Senate Districts meeting the population requirements only because inmates were included in the count. The Republican Party in New York relies on its large upstate delegation for its majority in the State Senate – and for its political power statewide. New York is not alone. The Prison Policy Initiative’s researchers found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of so-called residents lived behind bars.

A national map located at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/ website has colored areas in Washington state affected by this misuse of phantom voters. These include the prisons located in Walla Walla, Mason, and Chelan counties. In addition to distorting one person, one vote, the prison population figures in the census severely distort racial makeup in census data.http://prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-3-5-2004.shtml. As a result of using inaccurate census data that assigns prisoners as residents of the county they are in while they are in prison, Clallam county has 57% of its black population in prison, Mason County has 65% ,and Walla Walla has 58%.

 

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American Math

Posted on December 26th, 2005 | Comments Off on American Math

“The estimates of those killed run into the tens of thousands. The number of wounded two or three times the number who lost their lives. Even President Bush, estimating recently that 30,000 civilians may have been killed, acknowledged that was no more than an abstraction from unofficial calculations, not a Pentagon count.”

John F Burns writing in the NEW York Times 12/26/2005

Now I guess we can see why President W is pushing his No Child Left Behind education agenda.
Even the estimates of those killed in Iraq are getting too high for the Pentagon to officially calculate. How can they do accurate kill ratios for dollars expended if they can’t handle the counting.

Here are some other sources of deaths calculated by people outside W’s inner circle.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ lists REPORTED Iraqi deaths at 27,592 to 31,115

The British Journal Lancet last year estimated the actual count closer to 100,000.
See http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Coalition death count is listed below:

“There have been 2,363 coalition deaths, 2,164 Americans, one Australian, 98 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, two Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 26 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of December 26, 2005, according to a CNN count.“
from CNN War in Iraq

see also http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/


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Cantwell Filibuster Successful

Posted on December 21st, 2005 | Comments Off on Cantwell Filibuster Successful

The Senate failed to end Senator Cantwell’s filibuster to stop drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That is good news for stopping the Republican Corporate Steamroller that under Bush has been trying to roll back decades of environmental gains.

While a win is great, America really needs to kick its addiction to oil and its dependence on getting energy from other countries.

The real issue not being addressed is America’s security and economy that is being put at serious risk because the Republicans who are fronts for Corporate America are only looking to milk the present economy for all the gains it can get. It’s doesn’t want to shift to other sources of energy and reduce unnecessary energy consumption because it really has no vision of the future.

The same lack of planning that made Iraq the disaster it is today is prevalent in the Republican Corporate bureaucracy that Bush has put in charge of our Federal bureaucracy. What’s needed is a giant push for Energy Independence as well as efforts to reduce our overall consumption of oil and coal and other energy resources that contribute to global warming. Its time to push Congress to get serious on reducing greenhouse gas production by pushing for increased fuel efficiency for all cars and trucks. Just shifting to hybrid cars would be a great step.

Let’s put Republican Corporate America on the defensive. Would we really be in Iraq if it didn’t have any oil? How many Americans and Iraq citizens must die to feed America’s lust for oil?

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Addicted to Oil

Posted on December 21st, 2005 | Comments Off on Addicted to Oil

Seems America has fallen into an oil pit and can’t imagine a way out. Right now the big fight is over whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Range to more drilling. Republicans seem to only see the black gold. Democrats seem to only see the white snow and unpolluted American habitat. An article by Peter Maas entitled “The Price of Oil” in the Dec. 16, 2005 edition of the New York Times Magazine suggests to me it’s a classic NIMBY problem – not in my back yard.

I’m not suggesting that the Democrats and environmentalists are wrong, I support them, its just that Peter Maas correctly points out that there is no real effort to reduce our dependence and consumption of oil. Until we do, we just pass the resource extraction problems on to other nations. Maas points out that most U.S. environmental organizations focus their resources on domestic issues, yet oil is really a global issue. Our dependence on oil contributes to our foreign debt. Our international relations with other nations revolve around our need for oil.

Maas states the main obstacle is the “apparent bipartisan consensus in Washington to make whatever compromises are necessary to ensure that America receives the ever-increasing quantities of petroleum that it requires…”.

What can you do – well when’s the last time you told Senator Maria Cantwell or Senator Patty Murray or your U.S. Representative that you oppose continuing the hazardous policy of our increasing dependence on domestic and FOREIGN oil. We need to pursue conservation and alternative energy development. We need a sane energy policy that minimizes wasteful consumption of resources. Our real goal needs to be to make America Energy Independent, while protecting our environment and that of other nations around the world.

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