It was a tough week for the pro-rape forces. Child-raping former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was dragged off in shackles Saturday, and his enablers were fired Wednesday. Voters in Mississippi Tuesday turned back a law banning abortions for rape victims. Even environmental rape was dealt a blow when the media reported the U.S. government had known all along that thrusting long, hard probes into mother earth and spewing disgusting fluids into her caused earthquakes, like the ones that rattled Oklahoma last weekend.
Even jovial GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was coming under fire just for inappropriately groping some women and making a few disgusting personal suggestions.
In Pennsylvania's formerly Happy Valley college football enclave, a grand jury found in excruciating detail that Sandusky was a serial rapist who'd violated numerous young boys over decades. Aside from his eight Pennsylvania victims, Texas authorities revealed they were investigating allegations Sandusky sexually assaulted another victim while he and the Penn State Nittany Lions football team were at the 1999 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.
In Mississippi, voters rejected Amendment 26, which would have effectively banned all abortions in the state, including for cases of rape or incest. Right-wing activists had sought to define a fertilized egg as a person, forcing women to bear the children of rapists.
As earthquakes rumbled across Oklahoma, media reports revealed the U.S. Army and the U.S. Geological Survey had long ago concluded that injecting water into deep underground rock formations caused earthquakes.
The U.S. Army's Rocky Mountain Arsenal tried in the 1960s to get rid of liquid waste by injecting it deep into the ground. From 1962 to 1966, the RMA injected salty waste water containing metals, chlorides and organic waste into a 12,000-foot-deep well, but discontinued the practice because they discovered it was causing earthquakes.
"Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established," stated the 1990 Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection - A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The magnitudes 5.6 and 4.7 earthquakes in Oklahoma last weekend set off a new flurry of speculation that hydrofracking for gas and oil was causing earthquakes in that state. Oklahoma averaged about 50 earthquakes a year until a couple years ago. Gas and oil moguls began widespread hydrofracking in the state, and, in 2010, Oklahoma experienced 1,047 earthquakes.
By Wednesday night, the pro-rape forces had had enough of the persecution onslaught. It was getting so a multi-millionaire pizza mogul couldn't grope women and say filthy things to them without some sort of backlash.
Thus, on Wednesday night, as multi-millionaire pizza mogul and GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain was harassed with yet another question about his harassing women, the pro-rape empire struck back.
In a scene reminiscent of GOP audience members jeering health care access at the September CNN/Tea Party debate, the pro-rape, pro-harassment audience, apparently fed up with the relentless assaults on their God-given right to defile and subjugate all around them, broke into a cascade of boos and catcalls when CNBC debate moderator Maria Bartiromo broached the subject of Cain's grabby-handed, potty-mouthed conduct.
"Why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?" Bartiromo asked, and the audience howled and screamed in protest. The audience let it be known that if anyone on the right wanted to grab someone's genitals and make lewd suggestions, his or her victim had better like it.
Cain, who'd been accused of sexually harassing at least four women, and had paid undisclosed settlements to several of them, brashly retorted, "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion." Or, tried at all.
Rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney had Cain's back, as the jeering audience tried to shout down moderator John Harwood's question to him about whether he would have fired Cain for his conduct.
"Would you keep Herman Cain as a CEO knowing what you know?" Harwood asked Romney.
"Herman Cain is the person to respond to these questions," Romney replied, in the Mormon mogul-turned-politico's best impression of a Roman Catholic archbishop.
With "Tora! Tora! Tora!" apparently flashing across the pro-rape com net, hordes of rabid pro-rape partisans roared onto the streets of College Station, PA, battling police, tearing down light poles, and overturning vehicles.
They were enraged that Penn State's Board of Trustees had fired university president Graham Spanier and, especially, football head coach Joe Paterno for covering up and enabling Sandusky's serial child rapes. Paterno, a football coaching legend, had in 2002 brushed off then 28-year-old graduate assistant Mike McQueary when he said he'd seen Sandusky in the school football facility raping a child. Instead of reporting the alleged crime to police as required by law, Paterno pawned McQueary off on the school's athletic director.
The grand jury indicted Athletic Director Tim Curley and school business and finance VP Gary Schultz on obstruction and perjury charges.
The imperious 'JoePa' had turned back school officials' 2004 plea that he retire, and had declared he would finish out the current football season, warning the Board of Trustees not to "spend a single minute" considering his removal.
A crowd of apparently pro-rape partisans rallied outside Paterno's home. Videos showed Paterno leading them in a call-and-response, "We are: Penn State!" chant, as most viewers mentally filled the blank following "we are" with terms other than the name of a school.
Displaying utter contempt for the children who'd been Sandusky's and Paterno's victims, the mob then tore through town, throwing rocks at police, overturning a TV van, and tearing down light poles.
"I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for JoePa going down," said Penn State student Mike Clark, making the point that raping children and covering up the rape so you could rape more children was a-okay with Mike.
"We got rowdy. We got maced," Jeff Heim told the New York Times. "But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend," he said. Apparently to Jeff, raping children and sitting idly by while your friends raped children weren't reputation-tarnishing acts.
Zealots eager to force women to bear rapists' children regrouped as well. Opponents of Mississippi's Amendment 26 "lied to voters and they said lies often enough that they persuaded voters," complained Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, an organization apparently dedicated to forcing women to bear the children of persons who were hoodlums. "The people here in Mississippi are mad, and they are ready to come back and do it again," he said, threatening serial action.
Zealots in Florida gussied up their proposed state constitutional amendment to ban abortions for rape victims with the title 'Florida ProLife Personhood.'
"We're continuing on," Personhood Florida ringleader Rev. Bryan Longworth said. "Obviously, the defeat in Mississippi means we have to work all the more harder." As did the Mississippi measure, the Florida measure would define a fertilized egg as a person, clearing the way for rapists to procreate. Supporters aimed for a 2014 vote.
By week's end, pro-rape forces had regained the initiative worldwide. Financial markets in Europe, Asia and the United States rallied Friday on news that Italy and Greece had dumped their political leaders and had voted to mollify bankers and financiers by adopting the most draconian austerity measures yet.
Nothing buoyed the pro-rape crowd more than seeing the rich rape whole countries.
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Friday, November 11, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wall St. Protesters Re-Occupy Oakland, But Empire Strikes Back Daily Nearby
Tents and protesters had reclaimed Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, the site of Tuesday's police tear-gas attack that left Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen bloodied and focused international attention on Occupy Wall Street's Northern California franchise.
Nearby, at the Port of Oakland's massive container facility, giant container ships disgorged the outflow of globalization. The ships that sailed into San Francisco Bay and awaited their turn at Oakland's container port daily added to the economic imbalances the Occupy movement decried.
Manufactured goods from Asia. Produce from South America. Tax-free profits for multinationals.
The American economy's dire straits put thousands of fed-up protesters on the streets. In cities and towns across America, Occupiers protesting economic injustice camped out in mini-Hoovervilles. In Oakland, phalanxes of armored riot police from several agencies Tuesday zealously tore into a peaceful demonstration as the whole world watched on social media.
Under calmer conditions, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan attempted Thursday night to address the crowd that had reclaimed Frank Ogawa Plaza, and was booed off the stage as she queued for the microphone.
In a video Quan posted on her Facebook page, she said Tuesday's crackdown "was not what anyone hoped for, ultimately it was my responsibility, and I apologize for what happened." Quan had been on a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. when police barricaded the streets, cleared the Oakland encampment, and launched a barrage of tear gas into a crowd of a thousand demonstrators who had marched from the downtown library.
Ex-Marine and Iraq War veteran Olsen was struck in the head. As a group of protesters gathered around him to render aid, an additional device lobbed from the assembled law enforcement ranks landed among the clustered protesters, and burst next to Olsen, a KTVU news video revealed. Olsen suffered a fractured skull.
"I shared my outrage and grave concern about the police brutality in Oakland directly with the Mayor," Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said in a statement issued Thursday. "My thoughts go out to the injured and especially Scott Olsen." Lee's office stated the Congressmember had offered assistance to Olsen's family.
The 24-year old veteran, who'd served two tours in Iraq and was a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Friday remained in Oakland Highland Hospital's intensive care ward. His condition was upgraded to fair, although he might require surgery to relieve swelling to his brain.
Across the bay in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, eager to avoid the public relations black eye Quan suffered, postponed plans to clear Occupy SF's Justin Herman Plaza camp.
Rumors of San Francisco's impending police crackdown Wednesday night only bolstered the Occupiers' ranks with several hundred reinforcements, including city Supervisors David Chiu and John Avalos, and State Senator Leland Yee. All three were Lee's rivals in the upcoming Nov. 8 mayoral election.
By Thursday morning, the ragtag assemblage of core Occupy SF stalwarts and indigenous homeless camped at Justin Herman Plaza had swelled to 50 tents and 300 protesters, as office workers and tourists joined partisan activists.
With Lee promising "dialoguing" with Occupy SF representatives, the sort of heavy-handed police crackdown seen in Oakland appeared unlikely at least until after Nov. 8.
Like a parade of gigantic hobby horses, enormous cranes lined San Francisco Bay at Oakland. Huge container ships piled with cargo containers sailed through the Golden Gate bearing the outflow of Asia's manufacturing juggernaut, as well as components from Europe and produce from South America. Globalization that was sold as a boon for American exports proved only to be a boon for the transnational plutocrats who'd lobbied for globalization.
In the end, the only thing America exported was jobs. And waste paper, which was America's biggest export product to China.
Instead of creating jobs in America, tax and economic policies coddling the wealthy and their multinational corporations only encouraged offshoring and outsourcing. Low taxes incentivized gratuitous profiteering, so instead of selling American products overseas, companies shuttered American factories and opted for cheap foreign labor. Cheap foreign labor and lax foreign regulation fattened bottom lines with profits that could be skimmed off without a progressive tax penalty.
Companies could slash manufacturing costs while charging the same prices for their products, and the tax structure enabled the rich to pocket the difference.
American labor suffered. Foreign labor, automation, mergers, and layoffs idled millions. Money flowed from labor to capital. The American economy collapsed.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce loved it, and their recent open letter outlining their jobs plan asked Congress and the President to get them more of the same.
The ultimatum big corporations' and their Congressional Republicans now delivered to America was: If America wanted more jobs, America had to suspend all business and industry regulations, lavish the rich with more tax breaks and subsidies, and hand over all the money set aside for pensions, Social Security and Medicare.
Baring that, the multinationals and their Republican allies would keep strangling America, and anyone who stood in the way would get his skull cracked like Scott Olsen.
Oakland police continued to insist they didn't use flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, or bean bags Tuesday night but hedged that officers from several other agencies had been present. A spent bean bag projectile was reportedly recovered near the spot Olsen had been injured. Oakland police claimed demonstrators "began throwing paint or other hazardous material at the officers who deployed tear gas as a defense tactic."
Rep. Lee countered, "The reaction was not appropriate. These are peaceful protesters who have a right to petition their government."
Scott Olsen's petition was rejected with a blast to the head.
Nearby, at the Port of Oakland's massive container facility, giant container ships disgorged the outflow of globalization. The ships that sailed into San Francisco Bay and awaited their turn at Oakland's container port daily added to the economic imbalances the Occupy movement decried.
Manufactured goods from Asia. Produce from South America. Tax-free profits for multinationals.
The American economy's dire straits put thousands of fed-up protesters on the streets. In cities and towns across America, Occupiers protesting economic injustice camped out in mini-Hoovervilles. In Oakland, phalanxes of armored riot police from several agencies Tuesday zealously tore into a peaceful demonstration as the whole world watched on social media.
Under calmer conditions, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan attempted Thursday night to address the crowd that had reclaimed Frank Ogawa Plaza, and was booed off the stage as she queued for the microphone.
In a video Quan posted on her Facebook page, she said Tuesday's crackdown "was not what anyone hoped for, ultimately it was my responsibility, and I apologize for what happened." Quan had been on a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. when police barricaded the streets, cleared the Oakland encampment, and launched a barrage of tear gas into a crowd of a thousand demonstrators who had marched from the downtown library.
Ex-Marine and Iraq War veteran Olsen was struck in the head. As a group of protesters gathered around him to render aid, an additional device lobbed from the assembled law enforcement ranks landed among the clustered protesters, and burst next to Olsen, a KTVU news video revealed. Olsen suffered a fractured skull.
"I shared my outrage and grave concern about the police brutality in Oakland directly with the Mayor," Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said in a statement issued Thursday. "My thoughts go out to the injured and especially Scott Olsen." Lee's office stated the Congressmember had offered assistance to Olsen's family.
The 24-year old veteran, who'd served two tours in Iraq and was a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Friday remained in Oakland Highland Hospital's intensive care ward. His condition was upgraded to fair, although he might require surgery to relieve swelling to his brain.
Across the bay in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, eager to avoid the public relations black eye Quan suffered, postponed plans to clear Occupy SF's Justin Herman Plaza camp.
Rumors of San Francisco's impending police crackdown Wednesday night only bolstered the Occupiers' ranks with several hundred reinforcements, including city Supervisors David Chiu and John Avalos, and State Senator Leland Yee. All three were Lee's rivals in the upcoming Nov. 8 mayoral election.
By Thursday morning, the ragtag assemblage of core Occupy SF stalwarts and indigenous homeless camped at Justin Herman Plaza had swelled to 50 tents and 300 protesters, as office workers and tourists joined partisan activists.
With Lee promising "dialoguing" with Occupy SF representatives, the sort of heavy-handed police crackdown seen in Oakland appeared unlikely at least until after Nov. 8.
Like a parade of gigantic hobby horses, enormous cranes lined San Francisco Bay at Oakland. Huge container ships piled with cargo containers sailed through the Golden Gate bearing the outflow of Asia's manufacturing juggernaut, as well as components from Europe and produce from South America. Globalization that was sold as a boon for American exports proved only to be a boon for the transnational plutocrats who'd lobbied for globalization.
In the end, the only thing America exported was jobs. And waste paper, which was America's biggest export product to China.
Instead of creating jobs in America, tax and economic policies coddling the wealthy and their multinational corporations only encouraged offshoring and outsourcing. Low taxes incentivized gratuitous profiteering, so instead of selling American products overseas, companies shuttered American factories and opted for cheap foreign labor. Cheap foreign labor and lax foreign regulation fattened bottom lines with profits that could be skimmed off without a progressive tax penalty.
Companies could slash manufacturing costs while charging the same prices for their products, and the tax structure enabled the rich to pocket the difference.
American labor suffered. Foreign labor, automation, mergers, and layoffs idled millions. Money flowed from labor to capital. The American economy collapsed.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce loved it, and their recent open letter outlining their jobs plan asked Congress and the President to get them more of the same.
The ultimatum big corporations' and their Congressional Republicans now delivered to America was: If America wanted more jobs, America had to suspend all business and industry regulations, lavish the rich with more tax breaks and subsidies, and hand over all the money set aside for pensions, Social Security and Medicare.
Baring that, the multinationals and their Republican allies would keep strangling America, and anyone who stood in the way would get his skull cracked like Scott Olsen.
Oakland police continued to insist they didn't use flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, or bean bags Tuesday night but hedged that officers from several other agencies had been present. A spent bean bag projectile was reportedly recovered near the spot Olsen had been injured. Oakland police claimed demonstrators "began throwing paint or other hazardous material at the officers who deployed tear gas as a defense tactic."
Rep. Lee countered, "The reaction was not appropriate. These are peaceful protesters who have a right to petition their government."
Scott Olsen's petition was rejected with a blast to the head.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Khadafy Killing a 'Good Thing' in an Age of 'Good Things'
They killed Khadafy.
By now, everyone knew what there was to know. Deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy was killed Thursday in his hometown of Sirte after a NATO airstrike busted up a convoy of vehicles, and rebel fighters found the bedraggled tyrant hiding in a drainage pipe. The wounded Khadafy was dragged from the pipe, and, apparently, an 18-year-old rebel fighter saved Libyan taxpayers the cost of a showy show trial.
Khadafy was the poster child among blood-thirsty dictators, and no one beyond the blood-thirsty dictator fan club shed any tears.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj of the Libyan military counsel proclaimed, "we have done a great job to liberate all the country."
The world's leaders chimed in.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "The disappearance of Moammar Khadafy is a major step in the struggle led for the last eight months by the Libyan people..."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "This day draws a line beneath the Khadafy regime: it is an important day for the Libyans."
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "The death of Moammar Khadafy is an historic moment for the people of Libya."
In the U.S., bickering legislators found themselves grudgingly in agreement.
"The passing of Moammar Khadafy from this earth is definitely not a bad thing," said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons (DE).
"Khadafy being gone is a good thing," said Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (MO).
Even Martha Stewart would likely arrange a couple of doilies around the tyrant's bloodied corpse and pronounce it "a Good Thing."
There was no doubting Khadafy'd been a baaad man, and that he'd been, in the parlance of the Wild Old West, someone who'd "needed killin.'"
And yet, and yet...
They killed Saddam Hussein, and everyone agreed it was a good thing.
They killed Osama bin Laden, and everyone cheered.
They killed Anwar Al-Awlaki, and everyone more of less nodded in assent.
Certainly, some very bad people had gotten their comeuppance of late. Their just desserts. Paid the piper. Had their dogma run over by their karma.
Certainly President Barack Obama had gotten to step repeatedly up to a podium to tell the White House press corp that yet another enemy of freedom, democracy and goodness had bitten the dust.
And yet, and yet...
Of course, this was the way it was supposed to be. Harry killed Lord You-Know-Who. 007 killed Goldfinger. Darth Vader redeemed himself by killing the Emperor. The 47 Ronin acquitted themselves by killing the evil Lord. Countless square-jawed Sheriffs gunned down countless black-hatted villains at innumerable high noons on innumerable dusty Main Streets.
And yet, and yet...
When did civilization devolve to the point where its only victories consisted of killing someone? When had the payoff for all the hope and struggle and toil and sacrifice become reduced to a bullet through someone's brain? When was it that the only tickmarks goodness and decency and democracy dropped into the "Win" column began coming from gunning someone down or blowing someone up?
It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't the best thing since killing bin Laden, but that it was the only good thing since killing bin Laden. It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't a good thing, but that killing some bad guy had become the only good thing anybody managed to accomplish in a very, very long while.
Couldn't anybody other than the Avenging Angel please make a play?
Couldn't the Angel of Mercy break a tackle and dance into the end zone for six? Couldn't Charity step to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and crank a three-run jack to send the fans home happy? Couldn't Kindness sink a three-pointer at the buzzer and draw the foul to put the home team over the top?
Couldn't faith, or hope, or temperance, or diligence, or patience, or humility bend that last-second kick into the back of the net as the play-by-play announcer ecstatically screamed, "Goooooooooooooal?"
While the world celebrated this good thing, it seemed incapable of creating jobs for people who needed them, or nursing the sick and injured, or caring for aging parents and grandparents. While the world did its touchdown dance and spiked the football over yet another bloody corpse, it seemed incapable of cleaning up its rivers and lakes and oceans, or clearing its air, or reversing global climate change, or even agreeing such problems existed.
When the good folks of eighteenth century France set up Dr. Guillotines' amazing slicing, dicing, person-o-matic in the Place de la Revolution and began dragging powdered aristocrats to the National Razor to take a foot off the top, the crowd agreed it was a very good thing. They whacked Louis XVI, and Collenot d'Angremont. They whacked Marie Antoinette. Maximilien Robespierre and the Revolutionary Tribunal figured it was all good and whacked aristos and collaborators and crooks left and right. There seemed to be no end to good things.
And yet, and yet...
Somewhere between the time they whacked Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre himself; sometime between the rise of an obscure army officer named Napoleon and a genocidal war in Spain; at some point between Austerlitz and a miserable, freezing retreat from Russia and the maelstrom of Waterloo, it ceased being a good thing.
Killing Khadafy was a good thing, everyone agreed. Killing Hussein was a good thing, most everyone agreed. Killing bin Laden was a good thing, most everyone west of Islamabad agreed. Killing Al-Awlaki was a good thing, many people more or less agreed.
Thanks to modern technology, there was no need to trek to a guillotine for a good thing, as good things could be administered remotely. Unmanned drones fired over-the-horizon smart missiles. Snipers blew people up from a mile away. Rockets and RPGs and IEDs all administered someone's idea of a good thing.
There was no end to the number of good things that could be done, and no end to the number of folks who figured they knew a good thing when they saw one.
Someone posted a $75,000 inducement on the internet figuring that murdering Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) was a good thing. Last month, someone, the same or otherwise, offered $100,000 for killing President George W. Bush. Or Donald Rumsfeld. Or Dick Cheney. Or any U.S. Senator, Congressmember, or their family members.
The FBI was investigating similar threats against Obama and other lawmakers. A lot of people seemed to have their own ideas about which things might be good.
It was a time when anger and disenfranchisement had spilled onto the streets of cities and towns around the world. It was a Time for Outrage!, declared revered diplomat and World War II French Resistance fighter Stephane Hessel.
It was a time that threatened to be full of good things.
And everyone knew how regrettable too much of a good thing could be.
By now, everyone knew what there was to know. Deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy was killed Thursday in his hometown of Sirte after a NATO airstrike busted up a convoy of vehicles, and rebel fighters found the bedraggled tyrant hiding in a drainage pipe. The wounded Khadafy was dragged from the pipe, and, apparently, an 18-year-old rebel fighter saved Libyan taxpayers the cost of a showy show trial.
Khadafy was the poster child among blood-thirsty dictators, and no one beyond the blood-thirsty dictator fan club shed any tears.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj of the Libyan military counsel proclaimed, "we have done a great job to liberate all the country."
The world's leaders chimed in.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "The disappearance of Moammar Khadafy is a major step in the struggle led for the last eight months by the Libyan people..."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "This day draws a line beneath the Khadafy regime: it is an important day for the Libyans."
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "The death of Moammar Khadafy is an historic moment for the people of Libya."
In the U.S., bickering legislators found themselves grudgingly in agreement.
"The passing of Moammar Khadafy from this earth is definitely not a bad thing," said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons (DE).
"Khadafy being gone is a good thing," said Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (MO).
Even Martha Stewart would likely arrange a couple of doilies around the tyrant's bloodied corpse and pronounce it "a Good Thing."
There was no doubting Khadafy'd been a baaad man, and that he'd been, in the parlance of the Wild Old West, someone who'd "needed killin.'"
And yet, and yet...
They killed Saddam Hussein, and everyone agreed it was a good thing.
They killed Osama bin Laden, and everyone cheered.
They killed Anwar Al-Awlaki, and everyone more of less nodded in assent.
Certainly, some very bad people had gotten their comeuppance of late. Their just desserts. Paid the piper. Had their dogma run over by their karma.
Certainly President Barack Obama had gotten to step repeatedly up to a podium to tell the White House press corp that yet another enemy of freedom, democracy and goodness had bitten the dust.
And yet, and yet...
Of course, this was the way it was supposed to be. Harry killed Lord You-Know-Who. 007 killed Goldfinger. Darth Vader redeemed himself by killing the Emperor. The 47 Ronin acquitted themselves by killing the evil Lord. Countless square-jawed Sheriffs gunned down countless black-hatted villains at innumerable high noons on innumerable dusty Main Streets.
And yet, and yet...
When did civilization devolve to the point where its only victories consisted of killing someone? When had the payoff for all the hope and struggle and toil and sacrifice become reduced to a bullet through someone's brain? When was it that the only tickmarks goodness and decency and democracy dropped into the "Win" column began coming from gunning someone down or blowing someone up?
It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't the best thing since killing bin Laden, but that it was the only good thing since killing bin Laden. It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't a good thing, but that killing some bad guy had become the only good thing anybody managed to accomplish in a very, very long while.
Couldn't anybody other than the Avenging Angel please make a play?
Couldn't the Angel of Mercy break a tackle and dance into the end zone for six? Couldn't Charity step to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and crank a three-run jack to send the fans home happy? Couldn't Kindness sink a three-pointer at the buzzer and draw the foul to put the home team over the top?
Couldn't faith, or hope, or temperance, or diligence, or patience, or humility bend that last-second kick into the back of the net as the play-by-play announcer ecstatically screamed, "Goooooooooooooal?"
While the world celebrated this good thing, it seemed incapable of creating jobs for people who needed them, or nursing the sick and injured, or caring for aging parents and grandparents. While the world did its touchdown dance and spiked the football over yet another bloody corpse, it seemed incapable of cleaning up its rivers and lakes and oceans, or clearing its air, or reversing global climate change, or even agreeing such problems existed.
When the good folks of eighteenth century France set up Dr. Guillotines' amazing slicing, dicing, person-o-matic in the Place de la Revolution and began dragging powdered aristocrats to the National Razor to take a foot off the top, the crowd agreed it was a very good thing. They whacked Louis XVI, and Collenot d'Angremont. They whacked Marie Antoinette. Maximilien Robespierre and the Revolutionary Tribunal figured it was all good and whacked aristos and collaborators and crooks left and right. There seemed to be no end to good things.
And yet, and yet...
Somewhere between the time they whacked Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre himself; sometime between the rise of an obscure army officer named Napoleon and a genocidal war in Spain; at some point between Austerlitz and a miserable, freezing retreat from Russia and the maelstrom of Waterloo, it ceased being a good thing.
Killing Khadafy was a good thing, everyone agreed. Killing Hussein was a good thing, most everyone agreed. Killing bin Laden was a good thing, most everyone west of Islamabad agreed. Killing Al-Awlaki was a good thing, many people more or less agreed.
Thanks to modern technology, there was no need to trek to a guillotine for a good thing, as good things could be administered remotely. Unmanned drones fired over-the-horizon smart missiles. Snipers blew people up from a mile away. Rockets and RPGs and IEDs all administered someone's idea of a good thing.
There was no end to the number of good things that could be done, and no end to the number of folks who figured they knew a good thing when they saw one.
Someone posted a $75,000 inducement on the internet figuring that murdering Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) was a good thing. Last month, someone, the same or otherwise, offered $100,000 for killing President George W. Bush. Or Donald Rumsfeld. Or Dick Cheney. Or any U.S. Senator, Congressmember, or their family members.
The FBI was investigating similar threats against Obama and other lawmakers. A lot of people seemed to have their own ideas about which things might be good.
It was a time when anger and disenfranchisement had spilled onto the streets of cities and towns around the world. It was a Time for Outrage!, declared revered diplomat and World War II French Resistance fighter Stephane Hessel.
It was a time that threatened to be full of good things.
And everyone knew how regrettable too much of a good thing could be.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
GOP Pushes RyanCare For All
With the United States Supreme Court, led by five Republican-appointed conservative activists, posed to dismantle President Barack Obama's landmark health care reform law, the GOP has tapped Tea Party stalwart Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to move forward with a new plan to expand his disgraced Medicare couponization scheme to include all Americans.
"While Republicans have advanced many good ideas on health care," Ryan told the conservative Hoover Institute think tank at Stanford University Tuesday, "it is my candid opinion that the party as a whole has yet to coalesce around a complete reform agenda aimed at dealing with the underlying problem - which is runaway inflation in the cost of health care."
Of course, the "many good ideas" all boiled down to more tax breaks for the wealthy, while cutting everyone else off at the knees.
The Politico reported Ryan and the GOP now want to expand their couponization scam to all Americans:
If he's not rich enough to afford a private, individual insurance plan, well, Ryan was a full-fledged Ayn Randian Tea Party zealot, and the Tea Party zealots in the audience at the recent CNN/Tea Party presidential shindig were the ones cheering and hooting for society to "just let him die."
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found the Obama health reform law's mandate to purchase insurance unconstitutional, and the Administration Monday chose not to ask the 11th Circuit to re-hear the case, indicating they were going to take their chances with the Supreme Court.
With a five-justice right-wing majority, the odds that the Supreme Court wouldn't crush Obama's law were somewhere between "none" and the proverbial snowball's chance.
"We know that the first step toward real, bipartisan advances in health policy must start with a full repeal of the president's partisan law," Ryan pontificated. "But the case for repeal must be matched with an even greater intensity by a case for replace..."
In the GOP's 2012 budget proposal, Ryan and Republicans schemed to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance industry cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office revealed wouldn't cover a third of seniors' health care costs.
Enraged constituents descended on GOP town hall meetings en masse last spring, demanding Republicans withdraw their Medicare couponization scheme. Ryan himself was besieged and required a police escort to escape a town hall with his skin, but smugly asserted voters had been "overwhelmingly supportive."
Far from contrition, Ryan now aimed to force everyone to buy private health insurance with limited "premium support."
While Medicare was the most efficient deliverer of health care, with administrative costs of just 3%, private, individual health plans were the least efficient, with administrative costs gobbling up 40% of premiums. While Medicare's overhead was limited to the cost of the government employees running it, private insurance overhead was an unlimited frontier of multi-million dollar executive compensation packages.
Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly pulled down $13 million in 2009 all by her lonesome. And, that didn't include any fully-loaded corporate jets Wellpoint might have kept warmed up on the tarmac for her. Talk about "administrative costs."
As with any other GOP plan, Ryan's health care plan was just another tax break for the rich, who get a discount off the private plan they were going to buy anyway. In a GOP version of a win-win, Ryan's health care plan was also a giveaway to the insurance industry, which gets all the money that would have gone to Medicare, Medicaid, and employee compensation without having to actually cover anyone for that amount.
As with any GOP version of a win-win, ordinary Americans lost-lost. Most ordinary Americans wouldn't be able to afford the lion's share of monthly premium costs their Ryancare coupons didn't cover. And Americans who didn't have enough income to get tax credits credited, or didn't have jobs at all, a not unlikely circumstance in the current environment, were, well...
Cue the cheering crowd at any GOP presidential debate.
"While Republicans have advanced many good ideas on health care," Ryan told the conservative Hoover Institute think tank at Stanford University Tuesday, "it is my candid opinion that the party as a whole has yet to coalesce around a complete reform agenda aimed at dealing with the underlying problem - which is runaway inflation in the cost of health care."
Of course, the "many good ideas" all boiled down to more tax breaks for the wealthy, while cutting everyone else off at the knees.
The Politico reported Ryan and the GOP now want to expand their couponization scam to all Americans:
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says it's time for Republicans to rally around a comprehensive "replacement" to President Barack Obama's signature health care reform legislation - with the government giving a limited contribution to help Americans get health coverage.In other words, the GOP aimed not only to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, but also to alleviate employers of the bothersome bottom line-squeezing practice of offering health care benefits. Then, they'd give everyone a tax credit toward buying private health insurance. In other words, if someone's rich enough to afford a private, individual insurance plan, he'd be rewarded with a nice tax subsidy.
That's the model Ryan wants to apply through Medicare, Medicaid and employer-sponsored health insurance. It's the approach he used earlier this year for Medicare and Medicaid in the House-passed budget, but he now wants to expand it to workplace health insurance by giving people a refundable tax credit to help them buy coverage.
If he's not rich enough to afford a private, individual insurance plan, well, Ryan was a full-fledged Ayn Randian Tea Party zealot, and the Tea Party zealots in the audience at the recent CNN/Tea Party presidential shindig were the ones cheering and hooting for society to "just let him die."
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found the Obama health reform law's mandate to purchase insurance unconstitutional, and the Administration Monday chose not to ask the 11th Circuit to re-hear the case, indicating they were going to take their chances with the Supreme Court.
With a five-justice right-wing majority, the odds that the Supreme Court wouldn't crush Obama's law were somewhere between "none" and the proverbial snowball's chance.
"We know that the first step toward real, bipartisan advances in health policy must start with a full repeal of the president's partisan law," Ryan pontificated. "But the case for repeal must be matched with an even greater intensity by a case for replace..."
In the GOP's 2012 budget proposal, Ryan and Republicans schemed to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance industry cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office revealed wouldn't cover a third of seniors' health care costs.
Enraged constituents descended on GOP town hall meetings en masse last spring, demanding Republicans withdraw their Medicare couponization scheme. Ryan himself was besieged and required a police escort to escape a town hall with his skin, but smugly asserted voters had been "overwhelmingly supportive."
Far from contrition, Ryan now aimed to force everyone to buy private health insurance with limited "premium support."
While Medicare was the most efficient deliverer of health care, with administrative costs of just 3%, private, individual health plans were the least efficient, with administrative costs gobbling up 40% of premiums. While Medicare's overhead was limited to the cost of the government employees running it, private insurance overhead was an unlimited frontier of multi-million dollar executive compensation packages.
Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly pulled down $13 million in 2009 all by her lonesome. And, that didn't include any fully-loaded corporate jets Wellpoint might have kept warmed up on the tarmac for her. Talk about "administrative costs."
As with any other GOP plan, Ryan's health care plan was just another tax break for the rich, who get a discount off the private plan they were going to buy anyway. In a GOP version of a win-win, Ryan's health care plan was also a giveaway to the insurance industry, which gets all the money that would have gone to Medicare, Medicaid, and employee compensation without having to actually cover anyone for that amount.
As with any GOP version of a win-win, ordinary Americans lost-lost. Most ordinary Americans wouldn't be able to afford the lion's share of monthly premium costs their Ryancare coupons didn't cover. And Americans who didn't have enough income to get tax credits credited, or didn't have jobs at all, a not unlikely circumstance in the current environment, were, well...
Cue the cheering crowd at any GOP presidential debate.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Truman, The 14th Amendment, And Progressive Income Taxes
Ever since Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) suggested President Barack Obama invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the federal debt ceiling, there's been a minor brouhaha over Clyburn's assertion that President Harry Truman did so during his presidency.
Admittedly, "Give 'em hell, Barry!" loses something without the alliteration.
In fact, Truman never did raise the federal debt ceiling. In fact, since the nation started using the debt ceiling in 1939, Truman was the only President who didn't raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling was incrementally raised to the princely sum of $300 billion - hardly enough to keep Wendi Murdoch in shoes - during World War II, was reduced to $275 billion in 1945, and remained $275 billion until 1954, when Dwight David Eisenhower, or "Ike," who everyone apparently liked, was President.
Whether Truman was inspired by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to issue Executive Order 9981 integrating the United States Armed Services, as some have suggested, is another issue entirely. However, there is no mention of the 14th Amendment in the Executive Order, or reference to the amendment in the Truman Library's discussion of the Executive Order.
Whatever Truman did, Obama should certainly use 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of submitting to Republican blackmail demands gutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Certainly, Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of allowing Republicans to blackmail the nation again a few months from now. Certainly, Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of rewarding Republicans with legislative changes they could never pass through the normal legislative process.
Obama should certainly use the 14th Amendment to raise the federal debt ceiling simply because Republicans are intransigent on the very reason Truman never had to raise the debt ceiling at all.
In Truman's day, the federal government managed to fund the GI Bill, rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan, poke the Soviet Union in the eye with the Berlin Airlift, and help develop all the technologies that gave us computers, the internet, cell phones and rockets to the moon without raising the debt ceiling.
In Truman's day, the federal government, wrestling with a troubled economy converting from war production to civvies, managed to send countless veterans to college or vocational training, and provided low-interest loans for housing and living expenses without raising the debt ceiling. In Truman's day, the federal government built war-devastated Western Europe, with its millions of displaced refugees, millions of demolished homes, countless destroyed roads, and bridges, and dams, and factories into the economic power it is today without raising the debt ceiling. In Truman's day, the federal government fought the Korean War without raising the debt ceiling.
In Truman's day, all that and much, much more was possible because, instead of borrowing, the federal government did this little thing called collecting taxes.
In his day, President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes, but had to raise the debt ceiling 18 times.
Today, instead of being able to rebuild 5,000,000 homes and care for 12,000,000 refugees in bomb-devastated West Germany as Truman did, a handful of the ultra-wealthy sit in luxury boxes at Yankee Stadium.
Today, instead of educating an entire generation of Americans and innovating the new technologies of the 21st Century as Truman did, a handful of rich codgers fuss over their art collections and trophy wives.
Today, instead of building the infrastructure for the next generation, we nip and tuck and botox and tan the spotted countenances of a privileged past generation.
Without addressing revenue, whether Barack Obama uses the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling doesn't make a hill of beans worth of difference in the world. The ruinous tax policies of the last thirty years have paupered a nation that could, and did, once rebuild one entire world and create a whole new one for the future. The ruinous tax policies of the last thirty years have managed only to concentrate 84% of the nation's wealth in the hands of 20% of its people, with no payoff except that a handful of people can plaster themselves with enough designer labels to look like prissy Nascar drivers and turn everyone around them into peasants subjugated by armies of lawyers, lobbyists and politicians.
84% of the nation's wealth is being spent on the creation of a world miserable even for the wealthy few, instead of the building of a better world for everyone. 84% of the nation's wealth, an entire future for a whole generation, is being horded away in arcane financial instruments and funnelled into the intellectually bankrupt social engineering of an ignorant and greedy few. 84% of the nation's wealth is being squandered on so many legal briefs and politicians' perks to bludgeon away oversight of business and industry, respectable wages for workers and educators and first responders, and environmental protections.
84% of the nation's wealth is being squandered on the exhausting one of world, instead of the building of many.
Whether Barack Obama uses the 14th Amendment to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling only matters in that it will allow the government to function a bit longer, send out Social Security and Medicare and veteran's checks for a few more months, and prevent the catastrophic cascade failure of the world's financial markets for another day.
Until Americans give themselves the revenue tools Americans had in Truman's day, whoever the future belongs to, they won't be Americans.
Admittedly, "Give 'em hell, Barry!" loses something without the alliteration.
In fact, Truman never did raise the federal debt ceiling. In fact, since the nation started using the debt ceiling in 1939, Truman was the only President who didn't raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling was incrementally raised to the princely sum of $300 billion - hardly enough to keep Wendi Murdoch in shoes - during World War II, was reduced to $275 billion in 1945, and remained $275 billion until 1954, when Dwight David Eisenhower, or "Ike," who everyone apparently liked, was President.
Whether Truman was inspired by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to issue Executive Order 9981 integrating the United States Armed Services, as some have suggested, is another issue entirely. However, there is no mention of the 14th Amendment in the Executive Order, or reference to the amendment in the Truman Library's discussion of the Executive Order.
Whatever Truman did, Obama should certainly use 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of submitting to Republican blackmail demands gutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Certainly, Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of allowing Republicans to blackmail the nation again a few months from now. Certainly, Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling instead of rewarding Republicans with legislative changes they could never pass through the normal legislative process.
Obama should certainly use the 14th Amendment to raise the federal debt ceiling simply because Republicans are intransigent on the very reason Truman never had to raise the debt ceiling at all.
In Truman's day, the federal government managed to fund the GI Bill, rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan, poke the Soviet Union in the eye with the Berlin Airlift, and help develop all the technologies that gave us computers, the internet, cell phones and rockets to the moon without raising the debt ceiling.
In Truman's day, the federal government, wrestling with a troubled economy converting from war production to civvies, managed to send countless veterans to college or vocational training, and provided low-interest loans for housing and living expenses without raising the debt ceiling. In Truman's day, the federal government built war-devastated Western Europe, with its millions of displaced refugees, millions of demolished homes, countless destroyed roads, and bridges, and dams, and factories into the economic power it is today without raising the debt ceiling. In Truman's day, the federal government fought the Korean War without raising the debt ceiling.
In Truman's day, all that and much, much more was possible because, instead of borrowing, the federal government did this little thing called collecting taxes.
In his day, President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes, but had to raise the debt ceiling 18 times.
Today, instead of being able to rebuild 5,000,000 homes and care for 12,000,000 refugees in bomb-devastated West Germany as Truman did, a handful of the ultra-wealthy sit in luxury boxes at Yankee Stadium.
Today, instead of educating an entire generation of Americans and innovating the new technologies of the 21st Century as Truman did, a handful of rich codgers fuss over their art collections and trophy wives.
Today, instead of building the infrastructure for the next generation, we nip and tuck and botox and tan the spotted countenances of a privileged past generation.
Without addressing revenue, whether Barack Obama uses the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling doesn't make a hill of beans worth of difference in the world. The ruinous tax policies of the last thirty years have paupered a nation that could, and did, once rebuild one entire world and create a whole new one for the future. The ruinous tax policies of the last thirty years have managed only to concentrate 84% of the nation's wealth in the hands of 20% of its people, with no payoff except that a handful of people can plaster themselves with enough designer labels to look like prissy Nascar drivers and turn everyone around them into peasants subjugated by armies of lawyers, lobbyists and politicians.
84% of the nation's wealth is being spent on the creation of a world miserable even for the wealthy few, instead of the building of a better world for everyone. 84% of the nation's wealth, an entire future for a whole generation, is being horded away in arcane financial instruments and funnelled into the intellectually bankrupt social engineering of an ignorant and greedy few. 84% of the nation's wealth is being squandered on so many legal briefs and politicians' perks to bludgeon away oversight of business and industry, respectable wages for workers and educators and first responders, and environmental protections.
84% of the nation's wealth is being squandered on the exhausting one of world, instead of the building of many.
Whether Barack Obama uses the 14th Amendment to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling only matters in that it will allow the government to function a bit longer, send out Social Security and Medicare and veteran's checks for a few more months, and prevent the catastrophic cascade failure of the world's financial markets for another day.
Until Americans give themselves the revenue tools Americans had in Truman's day, whoever the future belongs to, they won't be Americans.
Friday, July 22, 2011
FBI On Jude Law Phone Hacking; Execs Say James Murdoch Knew Hacking Was Widespread
Sherlock Holmes might not be on the News Corporation phone hacking case yet, but his assistant Dr. Watson is.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations will be contacting British actor Jude Law, star of Sherlock Holmes and Alfie, in response to his lawsuit that reporters for now-defunct News of the World hacked his cellular telephone and intercepted voicemail messages he had been exchanging with his assistant Ben Jackson while they both were at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2003, officials told the BBC Friday.
Law claims News of the World's September 7, 2003 story about his brief stay in New York was based on information gleaned from his voicemails. If true, even if the hackers had been sitting in London and the phone's voicemail box had been in England, the messages would first have gone to a U.S. cell site, over U.S. phone lines, through a U.S. Mobile Telephone Switching Office, and into a U.S. long distance trunk line before getting anywhere.
All of which makes messages allegedly exchanged between a couple of Brits, hacked by other Brits, and written up in a British tabloid a very, very U.S. problem. Aliens attack U.S. communications system. Dr. Watson, meet Mulder and Scully.
Law's allegations are the first claims of News Corp phone hacking on U.S. soil. If the FBI finds evidence supporting Law's allegations, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, a U.S. corporation, could face charges for violating American wiretapping and privacy laws right here in the good 'ol US of A. Book him, Danno.
The Federal Communications Commission frowns upon cons holding FCC broadcast licenses. News Corp, aside from owning shuttered News of the World, owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a whole panoply of other media and communications enterprises.
Law and Jackson stayed briefly in New York while the actor was en route to Canada to film I Heart Huckabees. News of the World published a detailed account of Law's arrival at JFK and his stay at the Carlyle Hotel, including his room number and room service tab. Law claims News of the World could only have learned some of the things written in the article from his voicemails.
The FBI and US Justice Department are also looking into alleged News Corp hacking of 9/11 terrorist attack victims, and possible violations of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery law.
Meanwhile, in London, Murdoch's son, News Corp deputy chief operating officer James Murdoch, was coming under further scrutiny as two former News Corp executives contradicted the younger Murdoch's Monday testimony before a Parliamentary committee that he'd had no knowledge that phone hacking had extended beyond rogue reporter Clive Goodman.
Watson, Mulder, meet the "For Neville" Email.
Seems an English ex-footballer (that's soccer player, for all us Yanks), Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was getting a six-figure phone-hacking settlement from the News of the World. In May, 2008, News of the World parent News International's then-legal manager Tom Crone got a stack of papers from Taylor's lawyers marked "Amended Particulars for Claim," which included the description of a document seized by police during a raid on News of the World gumshoe Glenn Mulclaire, who'd been arrested with then-presumed "rogue" reporter Clive Goodman for phone hacking. With what must surely have been a sinking feeling in his gut, Crone read:
And, the original "For Neville" email had been sitting quietly in Scotland Yard's basement among the 11,000 documents Met boss Sir Paul Stephenson, busily enjoying $20,000 worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's courtesy of News Corp, and his Number Two, John Yates, had disdained rummaging through when they'd dropped the case back in the day. Gordon Taylor's lawyers hadn't dropped the case, and had gotten their hands on the "For Neville" email from the cops under a court order.
Sir Paul resigned as Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Sunday. Yates resigned Monday.
Now comes the good part. Crone, heart no doubt in his throat, walked down the hall to see his new boss and tell him the other side had the high-and-deep, cha-ching, cookie jar-smoking gun, that's-gotta-hurt email and its list of painstakingly transcribed voicemail messages. The new chief executive of News International, who'd been on the job for five months, and hadn't been around when the original proverbial had hit the fan the previous year, was none other than James Murdoch.
Who'd sat in front of lawmakers Monday and had told everyone he'd never, ever, pever, jever heard of anyone other than Goodman and Mulclaire hacking messages before.
Crone and former News of the World editor Colin Myler told a Parliamentary committee Friday they had told James Murdoch about the high-and-deep, cha-ching, et cetera email before Murdoch fils approved a big-money settlement for Taylor that was twice as much as what outside council for News International had advised. And no one ever heard of the "For Neville" email again. Until now. That's gotta hurt.
Oh, and, in the good ol' US of A, Senator Frank Lautenberger (D-NJ) Wednesday asked the FBI to take another gander at a complaint he'd made to then-US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005 that News America Marketing, a subsidiary of News Corp, had hacked into the computers of FLOORgraphics, Inc., of Princeton, New Jersey, one of Sen. Lautenberger's constituents.
Lautenberger hadn't heard back on that case, and he was wondering what was going on with it. Them. News Corp. Murdoch. Gonzales. The Bush Administration.
Book him, Danno.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations will be contacting British actor Jude Law, star of Sherlock Holmes and Alfie, in response to his lawsuit that reporters for now-defunct News of the World hacked his cellular telephone and intercepted voicemail messages he had been exchanging with his assistant Ben Jackson while they both were at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2003, officials told the BBC Friday.
Law claims News of the World's September 7, 2003 story about his brief stay in New York was based on information gleaned from his voicemails. If true, even if the hackers had been sitting in London and the phone's voicemail box had been in England, the messages would first have gone to a U.S. cell site, over U.S. phone lines, through a U.S. Mobile Telephone Switching Office, and into a U.S. long distance trunk line before getting anywhere.
All of which makes messages allegedly exchanged between a couple of Brits, hacked by other Brits, and written up in a British tabloid a very, very U.S. problem. Aliens attack U.S. communications system. Dr. Watson, meet Mulder and Scully.
Law's allegations are the first claims of News Corp phone hacking on U.S. soil. If the FBI finds evidence supporting Law's allegations, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, a U.S. corporation, could face charges for violating American wiretapping and privacy laws right here in the good 'ol US of A. Book him, Danno.
The Federal Communications Commission frowns upon cons holding FCC broadcast licenses. News Corp, aside from owning shuttered News of the World, owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a whole panoply of other media and communications enterprises.
Law and Jackson stayed briefly in New York while the actor was en route to Canada to film I Heart Huckabees. News of the World published a detailed account of Law's arrival at JFK and his stay at the Carlyle Hotel, including his room number and room service tab. Law claims News of the World could only have learned some of the things written in the article from his voicemails.
The FBI and US Justice Department are also looking into alleged News Corp hacking of 9/11 terrorist attack victims, and possible violations of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery law.
Meanwhile, in London, Murdoch's son, News Corp deputy chief operating officer James Murdoch, was coming under further scrutiny as two former News Corp executives contradicted the younger Murdoch's Monday testimony before a Parliamentary committee that he'd had no knowledge that phone hacking had extended beyond rogue reporter Clive Goodman.
Watson, Mulder, meet the "For Neville" Email.
Seems an English ex-footballer (that's soccer player, for all us Yanks), Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was getting a six-figure phone-hacking settlement from the News of the World. In May, 2008, News of the World parent News International's then-legal manager Tom Crone got a stack of papers from Taylor's lawyers marked "Amended Particulars for Claim," which included the description of a document seized by police during a raid on News of the World gumshoe Glenn Mulclaire, who'd been arrested with then-presumed "rogue" reporter Clive Goodman for phone hacking. With what must surely have been a sinking feeling in his gut, Crone read:
"By email dated 29th June 2005, Mr. Ross Hindley emailed Mr. Mulclaire a transcript of the aforesaid 15 messages from the claimant's mobile phone voicemail and 17 messages left by the claimant on Ms. Armstrong's mobile phone voicemail. The transcript is titled 'Transcript for Neville' and the document attached to the email was called 'Transcript for Neville.' It is inferred from the references to Neville that the transcript was provided to, or was intended to be provided to Neville Thurlbeck. Mr. Thurlbeck was at all material times employed by NGN as the News of the World's chief reporter."Meaning, of course, that neither News of the World reporter Ross Hindley or News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck were either "rogue" gumshoe Glenn Mulcaire or "rogue" reporter Clive Goodman. Cha-ching. High and deep to center field, and it's outta here. Caught red-handed in the cookie jar with a smoking gun. That's gotta hurt.
And, the original "For Neville" email had been sitting quietly in Scotland Yard's basement among the 11,000 documents Met boss Sir Paul Stephenson, busily enjoying $20,000 worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's courtesy of News Corp, and his Number Two, John Yates, had disdained rummaging through when they'd dropped the case back in the day. Gordon Taylor's lawyers hadn't dropped the case, and had gotten their hands on the "For Neville" email from the cops under a court order.
Sir Paul resigned as Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Sunday. Yates resigned Monday.
Now comes the good part. Crone, heart no doubt in his throat, walked down the hall to see his new boss and tell him the other side had the high-and-deep, cha-ching, cookie jar-smoking gun, that's-gotta-hurt email and its list of painstakingly transcribed voicemail messages. The new chief executive of News International, who'd been on the job for five months, and hadn't been around when the original proverbial had hit the fan the previous year, was none other than James Murdoch.
Who'd sat in front of lawmakers Monday and had told everyone he'd never, ever, pever, jever heard of anyone other than Goodman and Mulclaire hacking messages before.
Crone and former News of the World editor Colin Myler told a Parliamentary committee Friday they had told James Murdoch about the high-and-deep, cha-ching, et cetera email before Murdoch fils approved a big-money settlement for Taylor that was twice as much as what outside council for News International had advised. And no one ever heard of the "For Neville" email again. Until now. That's gotta hurt.
Oh, and, in the good ol' US of A, Senator Frank Lautenberger (D-NJ) Wednesday asked the FBI to take another gander at a complaint he'd made to then-US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005 that News America Marketing, a subsidiary of News Corp, had hacked into the computers of FLOORgraphics, Inc., of Princeton, New Jersey, one of Sen. Lautenberger's constituents.
Lautenberger hadn't heard back on that case, and he was wondering what was going on with it. Them. News Corp. Murdoch. Gonzales. The Bush Administration.
Book him, Danno.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Murdoch Misses Being Pied, But Cameron Ties Tighten, Police Bribes "Obvious"
Clearly, the British get to have so much more fun than Americans do, as News Corporation mogul Rupert Murdoch narrowly missed being pied by a merry prankster, and further revelations tied Prime Minister David Cameron ever closer to disgraced and now-defunct News of the World. Meanwhile, a rowdy crowd gathered outside hearing site Portcullis House, singing loud choruses of rock band Queen's Another One Bites the Dust.
England was jolly as ever as another day came and went in the News Corp phone hacking scandal. All that, and universal Public Health.
Rupert Murdoch and his son James were being grilled by lawmakers in a small meeting room when British comedian Johnnie Marbles tweeted his Twitter warning, "it is a far better thing i do now than i have ever done before #splat."
Marbles approached Murdoch and tried to pie him in the face, but Murdoch's nimble wife Wendi sprang from behind her husband and clocked the would-be avenger. Most of the shaving cream missed the mogul. Bobbies hustled Marbles away, who looked like he'd gotten the worst of the splatter himself.
When the lawmakers' questioning resumed, Conservative Member Louise Mensch asked Murdoch whether he had ever considered resigning.
"No," Murdoch replied. "Because I feel that people that I trusted let me down, I think that they behaved disgracefully," and added, "Frankly, I am the best person to clean this up." It wasn't immediately clear whether he meant News Corp, or the shaving cream on his sleeve.
Murdochs Rupert and James naturally claimed they knew nothing of the phone hacking and police bribery scandals that have rocked Jolly Olde.
"These actions do not live up to the standards that our company aspires to everywhere around the world," James Murdoch told lawmakers, in an astonishing reference to the company that owned Fox News in the United States and the News of the World and the Sun tabloids in England.
"I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud, ethical, distinguished people," Rupert Murdoch said under oath, apparently omitting any number of U.S. Republican politicians, American Tea Party zealots, and talking heads.
Whether British Prime Minister David Cameron might be considered one of those 53,000 proud, ethical, et cetera, et ceteras was becoming a bigger question for Her Majesty's subjects, as new information revealed closer ties between the PM and Murdoch's empire. Turns out Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor at News of the World who'd gotten himself arrested for the phone hacking scandal last week, worked as an advisor to Cameron's Conservative Party in the run-up to the general election. Wallis joined former Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson and Cameron pal Rebekah Brooks as News of the World or News Corp jailbirds with ties to Cameron.
Wallis apparently spent a week doing some pro bono helping out of the Conservatives. Very thrifty. A party spokesperson said, "it has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of the advice." Maybe just pointing out to Andy which fork to use with the fish.
Meanwhile, ex-Scotland Yard boss Sir Paul Stephenson and his sidekick John Yates - who'd resigned Sunday and Monday, respectively - were telling lawmakers Cameron chief of staff Ed Llewellyn had been keen on shielding the PM from information about the scandal.
And while the cops - sorry, ex-cops - were busy telling tales out of school, Lord Macdonald, the very upstanding former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, was telling the home affairs select committee that he'd been shocked by what he'd discovered last month when News Corp lawyers asked him to take a gander at some News of the World emails and tell them what he thought.
Lord Macdonald said it took him only "three to five minutes" to find "blindingly obvious" evidence of bribes to police officials.
"The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task," the ex-prosecutor-in-chief told the committee. "It was evidence of serious criminal offenses."
The ten or so emails Lord Macdonald handed over to Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Cressida Dick formed the basis for Operation Elveden, the ongoing police bribery probe.
All of which leaves the Yanks over in the Colonies pining to get in on the fun. At the moment, certain analysts were still saying News Corp wasn't going to get its FCC licenses pulled.
"If alleged bribery and phone tapping are confined to the U.K., we believe the likelihood of U.S. broadcast licenses being revoked or not renewed is very low," analysts Rebecca Arbrogast and David Kaut of Stifel Nicolaus, an investment firm, soothed clients.
Unfortunately for News Corp, that was before even a single rock had been turned over, and even a single slimy, crawly, disgusting multi-legged abomination had been revealed. "It would be a grave problem if the company is found in the United States to have committed a massive coverup of misconduct or questionable links with law enforcement that is emerging in the U.K.," Arbrogast and Kaut advised.
You're kidding right? Murdoch just about invented the Tea Party.
Crank up Queen. "And another one bites the dust..."
England was jolly as ever as another day came and went in the News Corp phone hacking scandal. All that, and universal Public Health.
Rupert Murdoch and his son James were being grilled by lawmakers in a small meeting room when British comedian Johnnie Marbles tweeted his Twitter warning, "it is a far better thing i do now than i have ever done before #splat."
Marbles approached Murdoch and tried to pie him in the face, but Murdoch's nimble wife Wendi sprang from behind her husband and clocked the would-be avenger. Most of the shaving cream missed the mogul. Bobbies hustled Marbles away, who looked like he'd gotten the worst of the splatter himself.
When the lawmakers' questioning resumed, Conservative Member Louise Mensch asked Murdoch whether he had ever considered resigning.
"No," Murdoch replied. "Because I feel that people that I trusted let me down, I think that they behaved disgracefully," and added, "Frankly, I am the best person to clean this up." It wasn't immediately clear whether he meant News Corp, or the shaving cream on his sleeve.
Murdochs Rupert and James naturally claimed they knew nothing of the phone hacking and police bribery scandals that have rocked Jolly Olde.
"These actions do not live up to the standards that our company aspires to everywhere around the world," James Murdoch told lawmakers, in an astonishing reference to the company that owned Fox News in the United States and the News of the World and the Sun tabloids in England.
"I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud, ethical, distinguished people," Rupert Murdoch said under oath, apparently omitting any number of U.S. Republican politicians, American Tea Party zealots, and talking heads.
Whether British Prime Minister David Cameron might be considered one of those 53,000 proud, ethical, et cetera, et ceteras was becoming a bigger question for Her Majesty's subjects, as new information revealed closer ties between the PM and Murdoch's empire. Turns out Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor at News of the World who'd gotten himself arrested for the phone hacking scandal last week, worked as an advisor to Cameron's Conservative Party in the run-up to the general election. Wallis joined former Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson and Cameron pal Rebekah Brooks as News of the World or News Corp jailbirds with ties to Cameron.
Wallis apparently spent a week doing some pro bono helping out of the Conservatives. Very thrifty. A party spokesperson said, "it has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of the advice." Maybe just pointing out to Andy which fork to use with the fish.
Meanwhile, ex-Scotland Yard boss Sir Paul Stephenson and his sidekick John Yates - who'd resigned Sunday and Monday, respectively - were telling lawmakers Cameron chief of staff Ed Llewellyn had been keen on shielding the PM from information about the scandal.
And while the cops - sorry, ex-cops - were busy telling tales out of school, Lord Macdonald, the very upstanding former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, was telling the home affairs select committee that he'd been shocked by what he'd discovered last month when News Corp lawyers asked him to take a gander at some News of the World emails and tell them what he thought.
Lord Macdonald said it took him only "three to five minutes" to find "blindingly obvious" evidence of bribes to police officials.
"The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task," the ex-prosecutor-in-chief told the committee. "It was evidence of serious criminal offenses."
The ten or so emails Lord Macdonald handed over to Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Cressida Dick formed the basis for Operation Elveden, the ongoing police bribery probe.
All of which leaves the Yanks over in the Colonies pining to get in on the fun. At the moment, certain analysts were still saying News Corp wasn't going to get its FCC licenses pulled.
"If alleged bribery and phone tapping are confined to the U.K., we believe the likelihood of U.S. broadcast licenses being revoked or not renewed is very low," analysts Rebecca Arbrogast and David Kaut of Stifel Nicolaus, an investment firm, soothed clients.
Unfortunately for News Corp, that was before even a single rock had been turned over, and even a single slimy, crawly, disgusting multi-legged abomination had been revealed. "It would be a grave problem if the company is found in the United States to have committed a massive coverup of misconduct or questionable links with law enforcement that is emerging in the U.K.," Arbrogast and Kaut advised.
You're kidding right? Murdoch just about invented the Tea Party.
Crank up Queen. "And another one bites the dust..."
Monday, July 18, 2011
British News Corp Whistle-Blower Found Dead
In a fantastically convenient turn of events for Rupert Murdoch, the whistle-blower who'd claimed now-defunct News of the World editor and former British government spokesperson Andy Coulson knew all about the phone hackings roiling the United Kingdom was found dead Monday in his home in Watford, near London, England.
In a statement, police said, "The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious," without specifying how they figured a death wasn't suspicious even though it hadn't been explained yet. Maybe it was a technical thing, like when an injured football player is listed as "questionable" instead of "doubtful." Maybe they meant anybody who messed with Murdoch should just expect to wake up dead.
To be fair, the police had quite a lot of bangers and mash piled on their plate Monday, as back at the Yard, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates was in the middle of resigning over the News Corporation phone hacking flap. He was following in the cubicle-clearing footsteps of his boss, Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who'd resigned Sunday. All that, and Sherlock Holmes was no where to be found.
The dead man, Sean Hoare, was the former Sun and News of the World reporter who'd been telling anyone in earshot that Andy Coulson, his former boss and later Prime Minister David Cameron's press secretary, knew his minions were hacking into folks' voicemails.
Hoare told the BBC Coulson had been "well aware" of the hacking, and that "to deny it is a lie. Simply a lie."
Regarding rummaging through all those celebrity voicemails, he'd told The New York Times that Coulson "actively encouraged me to do it."
The Hertfordshire police statement said, "At 10:40 am today (Monday, July 18), police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on that street," in its thoroughly British way. "Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after." Spot of bad luck, that.
Well, Hoare was a bit of a drinker and snorted coke and all that.
"He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs," said fellow journalist Nick Davis of the Guardian. "He told me how he used to start the day with a 'rock star's breakfast' - a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels."
It was not immediately known whether Murdoch ever said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent cokehead?"
Hoare had contradicted Coulson's declaration that he'd, "never condoned the use of phone hacking, and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place." Coulson has since been arrested, released on bail, and told not to leave town.
Sunday, News Corp honcho Rebekah Brooks, another Cameron pal, became the tenth person arrested in the scandal, giving the British PM the unsavory distinction of having as many jailbird cronies as some cheap third-world dictators.
In the United States, News Corp owns Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, and actively supports the Tea Party.
Hoare had also been telling everyone that News of the World was getting the local PD, aka Scotland Yard, to "ping" the whereabouts of celebs and pols. Hoare told the Guardian that reporters just had to go to their editors and ask for someone's whereabouts.
"Within 15 to 30 minutes, someone on the news desk would come back and say, 'Right, that's where they are.'" Hoare said.
The police have the ability to surreptitiously signal a cellular phone, and triangulate its location in relation to nearby cell sites. The practice supposedly required case-by-case authorization and was restricted to high-priority cases, such as to pinpoint the whereabouts of an Al Qaeda terrorist running around with a dirty bomb, not to pinpoint the whereabouts of Angelina Jolie running around with dirty underwear. She's got a wonderbra! Get her!
The brouhaha that police allegedly received News Corp bribes and gave News Corp inside info and generally cozied up to Murdoch's minions led to Stephenson's and Yates' resignation. That and some piddly stuff like Stephenson accepting from News Corp about $20 grand worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's and Yates conveniently ignoring 11,000 pages worth of hacking-related files piled up in Scotland Yard's basement.
In 2009, Yates refused to look into the phone hacking mess, saying there wasn't any evidence worth looking into.
"I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags," the British equivalent of dumpster-diving, said Yates. Never mind the dumpster was actually neatly stacked evidence boxes containing those 11,000 documents.
Now, it was Yates and Stephenson who'd been consigned to the dust bins. That's British for garbage cans.
And poor Sean Hoare was a-mouldering in his unexplained yet somehow unsuspicious grave.
Now, the US Justice Department and the FBI have started poking around Rupert Murdoch's empire.
It was not immediately known whether Murdoch has said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent Justice Department probe?" but Tea Party loyalist Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said Monday, "We're going to find out if the Tea Party's still there in force in the next few weeks on this debt limit because we're trying to recruit Americans right now..."
Unless the US government raises its debt ceiling by Aug. 2, it will no longer be able to fund operations, send out Social Security checks, pay off obligations, or run Justice Department investigations.
With so many eager Murdoch Tea Party minions champing at the bit to prove their worth to their Lord, one has to hope that the federal government won't wake up dead Aug. 3.
In a statement, police said, "The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious," without specifying how they figured a death wasn't suspicious even though it hadn't been explained yet. Maybe it was a technical thing, like when an injured football player is listed as "questionable" instead of "doubtful." Maybe they meant anybody who messed with Murdoch should just expect to wake up dead.
To be fair, the police had quite a lot of bangers and mash piled on their plate Monday, as back at the Yard, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates was in the middle of resigning over the News Corporation phone hacking flap. He was following in the cubicle-clearing footsteps of his boss, Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who'd resigned Sunday. All that, and Sherlock Holmes was no where to be found.
The dead man, Sean Hoare, was the former Sun and News of the World reporter who'd been telling anyone in earshot that Andy Coulson, his former boss and later Prime Minister David Cameron's press secretary, knew his minions were hacking into folks' voicemails.
Hoare told the BBC Coulson had been "well aware" of the hacking, and that "to deny it is a lie. Simply a lie."
Regarding rummaging through all those celebrity voicemails, he'd told The New York Times that Coulson "actively encouraged me to do it."
The Hertfordshire police statement said, "At 10:40 am today (Monday, July 18), police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on that street," in its thoroughly British way. "Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after." Spot of bad luck, that.
Well, Hoare was a bit of a drinker and snorted coke and all that.
"He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs," said fellow journalist Nick Davis of the Guardian. "He told me how he used to start the day with a 'rock star's breakfast' - a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels."
It was not immediately known whether Murdoch ever said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent cokehead?"
Hoare had contradicted Coulson's declaration that he'd, "never condoned the use of phone hacking, and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place." Coulson has since been arrested, released on bail, and told not to leave town.
Sunday, News Corp honcho Rebekah Brooks, another Cameron pal, became the tenth person arrested in the scandal, giving the British PM the unsavory distinction of having as many jailbird cronies as some cheap third-world dictators.
In the United States, News Corp owns Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, and actively supports the Tea Party.
Hoare had also been telling everyone that News of the World was getting the local PD, aka Scotland Yard, to "ping" the whereabouts of celebs and pols. Hoare told the Guardian that reporters just had to go to their editors and ask for someone's whereabouts.
"Within 15 to 30 minutes, someone on the news desk would come back and say, 'Right, that's where they are.'" Hoare said.
The police have the ability to surreptitiously signal a cellular phone, and triangulate its location in relation to nearby cell sites. The practice supposedly required case-by-case authorization and was restricted to high-priority cases, such as to pinpoint the whereabouts of an Al Qaeda terrorist running around with a dirty bomb, not to pinpoint the whereabouts of Angelina Jolie running around with dirty underwear. She's got a wonderbra! Get her!
The brouhaha that police allegedly received News Corp bribes and gave News Corp inside info and generally cozied up to Murdoch's minions led to Stephenson's and Yates' resignation. That and some piddly stuff like Stephenson accepting from News Corp about $20 grand worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's and Yates conveniently ignoring 11,000 pages worth of hacking-related files piled up in Scotland Yard's basement.
In 2009, Yates refused to look into the phone hacking mess, saying there wasn't any evidence worth looking into.
"I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags," the British equivalent of dumpster-diving, said Yates. Never mind the dumpster was actually neatly stacked evidence boxes containing those 11,000 documents.
Now, it was Yates and Stephenson who'd been consigned to the dust bins. That's British for garbage cans.
And poor Sean Hoare was a-mouldering in his unexplained yet somehow unsuspicious grave.
Now, the US Justice Department and the FBI have started poking around Rupert Murdoch's empire.
It was not immediately known whether Murdoch has said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent Justice Department probe?" but Tea Party loyalist Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said Monday, "We're going to find out if the Tea Party's still there in force in the next few weeks on this debt limit because we're trying to recruit Americans right now..."
Unless the US government raises its debt ceiling by Aug. 2, it will no longer be able to fund operations, send out Social Security checks, pay off obligations, or run Justice Department investigations.
With so many eager Murdoch Tea Party minions champing at the bit to prove their worth to their Lord, one has to hope that the federal government won't wake up dead Aug. 3.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Jude Law Claims News Corp Company Hacked His Phone While He Was In U.S.
In the first allegations of News Corporation phone hacking involving a U.S. telecommunications carrier, British actor Jude Law has claimed now-defunct News of the World illegally accessed voicemail messages he was exchanging with his personal assistant while they both were at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2003.
Law's allegations, reported in the British media, were significant as they were the first involving voice communications originating in and being carried on American cellular and long distance telephone networks. If true, there may have been violations of American wire-tapping and privacy laws.
"If phones or messages were hacked while these individuals were here in the U.S., this would clearly be a criminal offense under the federal wiretap acts," said Los Angeles attorney Brian Kabateck, who has represented clients in U.S. wiretapping cases.
U.S. telephone companies are public utilities licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, just as American television companies are public utilities licensed by the FCC.
Under U.S. law, anyone convicted of a criminal offense may not be issued an FCC broadcast license. News Corp owns Fox News, and a number of other American media outlets.
Law's claims are separate from his ongoing tussle with News Corp's British tabloid The Sun, which Law also alleges hacked his voicemails. In additional, Law is suing the News of the World, and was among several persons selected by a British judge to move forward with lead cases this coming January to establish guidelines for damages and to determine whether company executives had been involved in the hacking.
Law alleges News of the World published information obtained by hacking his cellular telephone voicemail box while he was in the baggage claim area of New York's JFK airport. He was in New York for a brief stay en route to Canada for filming I Heart Huckabees.
A News of the World story published Sept. 7, 2003 described how Law sent his personal assistant, Ben Jackson, ahead to see whether reporters and photographers were waiting for him in the terminal, and reported Law "refused to leave the baggage reclaim hall until Ben had spent 20 minutes scouring the arrivals lounge."
The story also detailed Law's stay at New York's Carlyle Hotel, including Law's room number and room service tab.
The widening scandals involving Rupert Murdoch's News Corp subsidiary News of the World has already led to nine arrests and to the resignations of Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal editor Les Hinton and News Corp newspaper honcho Rebekah Brooks. As many as 4,000 people may have had their voicemails hacked, including 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler, whose hacking has provoked widespread revulsion and outrage.
Other victims include former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose son's medical records had been revealed, and the British Royal Family. News of the World has been alleged to have bribed police officials for information.
In the U.S., a half-dozen lawmakers, including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), have called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller to open investigations into allegations News of the World hacked the phone records of 9/11 terrorist attacks victims, and possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act anti-bribery law.
Law's allegations, reported in the British media, were significant as they were the first involving voice communications originating in and being carried on American cellular and long distance telephone networks. If true, there may have been violations of American wire-tapping and privacy laws.
"If phones or messages were hacked while these individuals were here in the U.S., this would clearly be a criminal offense under the federal wiretap acts," said Los Angeles attorney Brian Kabateck, who has represented clients in U.S. wiretapping cases.
U.S. telephone companies are public utilities licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, just as American television companies are public utilities licensed by the FCC.
Under U.S. law, anyone convicted of a criminal offense may not be issued an FCC broadcast license. News Corp owns Fox News, and a number of other American media outlets.
Law's claims are separate from his ongoing tussle with News Corp's British tabloid The Sun, which Law also alleges hacked his voicemails. In additional, Law is suing the News of the World, and was among several persons selected by a British judge to move forward with lead cases this coming January to establish guidelines for damages and to determine whether company executives had been involved in the hacking.
Law alleges News of the World published information obtained by hacking his cellular telephone voicemail box while he was in the baggage claim area of New York's JFK airport. He was in New York for a brief stay en route to Canada for filming I Heart Huckabees.
A News of the World story published Sept. 7, 2003 described how Law sent his personal assistant, Ben Jackson, ahead to see whether reporters and photographers were waiting for him in the terminal, and reported Law "refused to leave the baggage reclaim hall until Ben had spent 20 minutes scouring the arrivals lounge."
The story also detailed Law's stay at New York's Carlyle Hotel, including Law's room number and room service tab.
The widening scandals involving Rupert Murdoch's News Corp subsidiary News of the World has already led to nine arrests and to the resignations of Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal editor Les Hinton and News Corp newspaper honcho Rebekah Brooks. As many as 4,000 people may have had their voicemails hacked, including 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler, whose hacking has provoked widespread revulsion and outrage.
Other victims include former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose son's medical records had been revealed, and the British Royal Family. News of the World has been alleged to have bribed police officials for information.
In the U.S., a half-dozen lawmakers, including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), have called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller to open investigations into allegations News of the World hacked the phone records of 9/11 terrorist attacks victims, and possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act anti-bribery law.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Let the Fox Hunt Begin
Hopefully, it'll be an ever-exponentially-expanding witch hunt and media circus with guys in DOJ and FBI windbreakers carting off truckloads of documents, and with streams of company execs, TV celebs, expert witnesses and assorted hangers-on marching to and fro before umpteen Congressional hearings. Let the games begin. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, a U.S. company, has been under fire in the United Kingdom, and contagion has brought the circus to America.
Circus it may be, but it is a circus of sad clowns, in part because of what the crazed international media empire that runs Fox News did to a thirteen-year-old girl while she was tragically losing her brief life. Police in England have compiled a list of 12,000 names and numbers that might have been hacked by News Corp.
While Rupert Murdoch was in London busting a desperate public relations move visiting the family of the thirteen-year-old murder victim whose voicemail his minions hacked when she was still a missing person, his chief executives were dropping like flies, and law enforcement agencies on this side of the pond were limbering up for what might be a long slog through a great many News Corporation files.
After weeks of hanging tough, Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch's chief honcho in England, and British Prime Minister David Cameron's pal and neighbor, resigned as chief executive of British newspaper operations for News Corp. Les Hinton, chairman of Dow Jones and publisher of News Corp's Wall Street Journal, figured it was time he, too, packed his office tsotchkes into a cardboard box and took the long elevator ride into history. Hinton had been top dog at News International, the British publishing subsidiary among Murdoch's rabbit warren of News Corp companies, from 1997 to 2005, when The News of the World had been rummaging through people's voicemails.
Murdoch himself, doubtless at the behest of PR giant Edleman, spent the day Friday in Jolly Old having a spot of tea with the family of poor Milly Dowler, the murder victim whose voicemails News Corp hacks hacked. Murdoch hired Edleman to take care of News Corp's spinning in the hacking and bribery scandal.
The list of alleged hacking victims included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the British Royal Family. News Corp minions allegedly bribed police officers and officials for information. Nine persons have been arrested in the scandal so far, including former Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson.
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking Friday from Sydney, Australia, where he'd been meeting with foreign justice officials, announced the US Justice Department would be looking into the phone hacking and police bribery scandal.
"There have been serious allegations raised in that regard in Great Britain and there is an ongoing investigation here," Holder said. "There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate the same allegations, and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate federal law enforcement agencies in the United States."
The Federal Bureau of Investigations Thursday said they'd begun their own preliminary probe of allegations News Corp hacked the voicemails of 9/11 terrorist attack victims. An ex-New York police officer and private investigator told British media that now-defunct News of the World asked him to get phone records of 9/11 victims.
Aside from the phone hacking itself, US lawmakers asked Holder to look into possible News Corp violations of American anti-bribery laws.
"I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding allegations that News Corporation and its subsidiaries bribed foreign law enforcement officials for information to advance their business interests," Sen. Frank Lautenberger (D-NJ) told Holder in a letter dated July 13. "If true, these allegations may be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977..."
Lautenberger was one of several US lawmakers who'd jumped into the News Corp fray. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) became the first Republican to join Democrats Lautenberger, Commerce Committee chair Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (WV), Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA), Sen. Robert Menendez (NJ), and Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY) in calling for probes into News Corp's doings.
"It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism," Homeland Security Committee chair King wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Murdoch throw money at people for gain? Unbelievable!
Murdoch is one of the moneybags bankrolling the Tea Party movement in America.
King is not exactly a shy and retiring wallflower, and he claims his district was home to more than 150 victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He recently held hearings on how patriotic American Muslims might be, so he's not exactly reticent about holding a hearing or two, either. One could only hope that his truly justifiable outrage over the deplorable possible violation of his heroic constituents won't precipitate a crazed media circus tearing into News Corp. Or not.
Murdoch might have to hope his Tea Party juggernaut can prevent the federal government from raising its debt ceiling, forcing a government default and shutdown. News Corp may not survive the ensuing catastrophic cascade failure of the global financial markets, but at least it won't be alone.
Circus it may be, but it is a circus of sad clowns, in part because of what the crazed international media empire that runs Fox News did to a thirteen-year-old girl while she was tragically losing her brief life. Police in England have compiled a list of 12,000 names and numbers that might have been hacked by News Corp.
While Rupert Murdoch was in London busting a desperate public relations move visiting the family of the thirteen-year-old murder victim whose voicemail his minions hacked when she was still a missing person, his chief executives were dropping like flies, and law enforcement agencies on this side of the pond were limbering up for what might be a long slog through a great many News Corporation files.
After weeks of hanging tough, Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch's chief honcho in England, and British Prime Minister David Cameron's pal and neighbor, resigned as chief executive of British newspaper operations for News Corp. Les Hinton, chairman of Dow Jones and publisher of News Corp's Wall Street Journal, figured it was time he, too, packed his office tsotchkes into a cardboard box and took the long elevator ride into history. Hinton had been top dog at News International, the British publishing subsidiary among Murdoch's rabbit warren of News Corp companies, from 1997 to 2005, when The News of the World had been rummaging through people's voicemails.
Murdoch himself, doubtless at the behest of PR giant Edleman, spent the day Friday in Jolly Old having a spot of tea with the family of poor Milly Dowler, the murder victim whose voicemails News Corp hacks hacked. Murdoch hired Edleman to take care of News Corp's spinning in the hacking and bribery scandal.
The list of alleged hacking victims included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the British Royal Family. News Corp minions allegedly bribed police officers and officials for information. Nine persons have been arrested in the scandal so far, including former Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson.
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking Friday from Sydney, Australia, where he'd been meeting with foreign justice officials, announced the US Justice Department would be looking into the phone hacking and police bribery scandal.
"There have been serious allegations raised in that regard in Great Britain and there is an ongoing investigation here," Holder said. "There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate the same allegations, and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate federal law enforcement agencies in the United States."
The Federal Bureau of Investigations Thursday said they'd begun their own preliminary probe of allegations News Corp hacked the voicemails of 9/11 terrorist attack victims. An ex-New York police officer and private investigator told British media that now-defunct News of the World asked him to get phone records of 9/11 victims.
Aside from the phone hacking itself, US lawmakers asked Holder to look into possible News Corp violations of American anti-bribery laws.
"I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding allegations that News Corporation and its subsidiaries bribed foreign law enforcement officials for information to advance their business interests," Sen. Frank Lautenberger (D-NJ) told Holder in a letter dated July 13. "If true, these allegations may be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977..."
Lautenberger was one of several US lawmakers who'd jumped into the News Corp fray. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) became the first Republican to join Democrats Lautenberger, Commerce Committee chair Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (WV), Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA), Sen. Robert Menendez (NJ), and Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY) in calling for probes into News Corp's doings.
"It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism," Homeland Security Committee chair King wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Murdoch throw money at people for gain? Unbelievable!
Murdoch is one of the moneybags bankrolling the Tea Party movement in America.
King is not exactly a shy and retiring wallflower, and he claims his district was home to more than 150 victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He recently held hearings on how patriotic American Muslims might be, so he's not exactly reticent about holding a hearing or two, either. One could only hope that his truly justifiable outrage over the deplorable possible violation of his heroic constituents won't precipitate a crazed media circus tearing into News Corp. Or not.
Murdoch might have to hope his Tea Party juggernaut can prevent the federal government from raising its debt ceiling, forcing a government default and shutdown. News Corp may not survive the ensuing catastrophic cascade failure of the global financial markets, but at least it won't be alone.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Hey Georgia, Your Peaches Are Rotting: Throughout South, Immigration Crackdown Backfires
How's that hate-y, white separatist-y thing workin' out for ya?
Turns out the Aryan master race doesn't do agricultural labor. Or framing, or sheetrocking, or roofing. Or electrical or plumbing, except, as any homeowner knows, at astronomical rates with lots of breaks and long lunches.
Southern states which enacted tough Arizona-style white supremacy laws requiring law enforcement to routinely and continuously demand citizenship documents from persons of color based solely on their race are suffering crippling backlashes as Hispanic agricultural and construction workers flee persecution.
It's what the great political satirist Will Durst might call "a Darwinian police action." Instant karma: just add racists.
In Georgia, where the law Republican Gov. Nathan Deal recently signed goes into effect July 1, the state's crops are rotting in their fields. Deals' scheme to fill 11,000 agricultural labor jobs with probationers has been a dismal failure, and the Georgia Agribusiness Council warned the industry might lose $1 billion as fruit and produce ripe for the plucking go to waste.
"Those guys out there weren't out there 30 minutes," Jermond Powell, one of Deal's probationers, said of his fellow ex-cons. "They just left, took off across the field walking."
Rotting crops are one thing, but sitting helpless amid the splintered ruins of what had once been your home is quite something else.
In Alabama, where a savage series of tornadoes wiped out much of the northern half of the state this spring, folks were discovering that construction workers were hard to come by.
"Hispanics, documented and undocumented, dominate anything to do with masonry, concrete, framing, roofing and landscaping," Bob McNelly of Nash-McCraw Properties complained. "There are very few subcontractors I work with that don't have a Hispanic workforce."
Republican Gov. Robert Bentley arrogantly signed Alabama's white supremacy measure into law June 9, boasting it was the toughest in the nation. He and his white separatist cohort probably hadn't counted on it being toughest on the state's white residents. Alabama's law goes beyond constantly hassling persons of color for their long-form birth certificates. Alabama's law prohibits anyone transporting, or renting to undocumented persons, and even prohibits undocumented children from enrolling in schools. That'll teach 'em. Or not teach 'em.
As though the state's omniscient Neo-Confederates, white separatists, Ku Klux Klanners and evangelical supremacists home-schooled on hate and misinterpretations of the Bible would ever deign to attend the newly ethnically-cleansed public classrooms anyway.
Talk about instant karma: Bentley's home town of Tuscaloosa was among the hardest hit this spring. A fair-sized twister plowed through the middle of town, trashing some 7,200 homes and businesses and killing 43.
Now, with Hispanic workers fleeing the white supremacist crackdown set to take effect September 1, the townsfolk are left holding their Makitas.
"Tuscaloosa will feel it," said undocumented construction worker Miguel Ramirez. "The talk in our community is that people are packing their things."
"They're leaving," said Dorothy McDade of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church, which saw it's Spanish language collection plate triple over the past decade before crashing in recent weeks. "Anybody with family in another state is going to go."
Whenever an earthquake hits California or a hurricane rolls through Florida, folks around the Red neck of the woods are keen to claim God is punishing those places for supporting the LGBTG community or some such. Wonder what God's punishing Alabama and Georgia for.
In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, anxious to get into the spanking line, signed her state's white supremacy measure into law Monday. Better watch out: hurricane season is just around the corner.
In Mississippi, another Republican governor named Haley, this one Barbour, had the advantage of experience in dealing with a state smashed to bits by natural selection.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild," said Barbour, who hadn't yet signed his state's white supremacy law.
Where Mississippi would have been is where Alabama is now, cartographic contortions notwithstanding.
When Bentley signed Alabama's white supremacy law, State Sen. Scott Beason (R-Gardendale) crowed, "This will put thousands of Alabamians back in the workforce."
Or, they could just stay parked in front of their TV sets, collecting disability checks, swilling beer, and screaming about President Barack Obama and other persons of color destroying America. Unless God destroyed their homes, in which case they'd stay parked in front of their emergency shelter's TV set, collecting disability checks, swilling beer, and screaming about President Barack Obama and other persons of color destroying America.
"There are plenty of people capable of working, " said Rich Cooper of Bell Construction. "If they'd just get off their butts and do it." C'mon Rich, most folks haven't slung stacks of asphalt roofing shingles over their shoulders and climbed up twenty-foot ladders in 90+ degree heat in generations.
Among those able to work, Alabama's May unemployment rate was 9.6%. Sshhh... Bill O'Reilly is on Fox.
"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," Deal had said. Spot on. Too few immigrants. Crops rotting in fields. Whole towns levelled with no one to rebuild them. What happens to a nation when it can't feed or shelter itself?
McNelly said of the Hispanic labor force, " It's not the pay rate. It's the fact that they work harder than anyone. It's the work ethic."
Sounds exactly like the kind of folks you'd want in your country.
Turns out the Aryan master race doesn't do agricultural labor. Or framing, or sheetrocking, or roofing. Or electrical or plumbing, except, as any homeowner knows, at astronomical rates with lots of breaks and long lunches.
Southern states which enacted tough Arizona-style white supremacy laws requiring law enforcement to routinely and continuously demand citizenship documents from persons of color based solely on their race are suffering crippling backlashes as Hispanic agricultural and construction workers flee persecution.
It's what the great political satirist Will Durst might call "a Darwinian police action." Instant karma: just add racists.
In Georgia, where the law Republican Gov. Nathan Deal recently signed goes into effect July 1, the state's crops are rotting in their fields. Deals' scheme to fill 11,000 agricultural labor jobs with probationers has been a dismal failure, and the Georgia Agribusiness Council warned the industry might lose $1 billion as fruit and produce ripe for the plucking go to waste.
"Those guys out there weren't out there 30 minutes," Jermond Powell, one of Deal's probationers, said of his fellow ex-cons. "They just left, took off across the field walking."
Rotting crops are one thing, but sitting helpless amid the splintered ruins of what had once been your home is quite something else.
In Alabama, where a savage series of tornadoes wiped out much of the northern half of the state this spring, folks were discovering that construction workers were hard to come by.
"Hispanics, documented and undocumented, dominate anything to do with masonry, concrete, framing, roofing and landscaping," Bob McNelly of Nash-McCraw Properties complained. "There are very few subcontractors I work with that don't have a Hispanic workforce."
Republican Gov. Robert Bentley arrogantly signed Alabama's white supremacy measure into law June 9, boasting it was the toughest in the nation. He and his white separatist cohort probably hadn't counted on it being toughest on the state's white residents. Alabama's law goes beyond constantly hassling persons of color for their long-form birth certificates. Alabama's law prohibits anyone transporting, or renting to undocumented persons, and even prohibits undocumented children from enrolling in schools. That'll teach 'em. Or not teach 'em.
As though the state's omniscient Neo-Confederates, white separatists, Ku Klux Klanners and evangelical supremacists home-schooled on hate and misinterpretations of the Bible would ever deign to attend the newly ethnically-cleansed public classrooms anyway.
Talk about instant karma: Bentley's home town of Tuscaloosa was among the hardest hit this spring. A fair-sized twister plowed through the middle of town, trashing some 7,200 homes and businesses and killing 43.
Now, with Hispanic workers fleeing the white supremacist crackdown set to take effect September 1, the townsfolk are left holding their Makitas.
"Tuscaloosa will feel it," said undocumented construction worker Miguel Ramirez. "The talk in our community is that people are packing their things."
"They're leaving," said Dorothy McDade of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church, which saw it's Spanish language collection plate triple over the past decade before crashing in recent weeks. "Anybody with family in another state is going to go."
Whenever an earthquake hits California or a hurricane rolls through Florida, folks around the Red neck of the woods are keen to claim God is punishing those places for supporting the LGBTG community or some such. Wonder what God's punishing Alabama and Georgia for.
In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, anxious to get into the spanking line, signed her state's white supremacy measure into law Monday. Better watch out: hurricane season is just around the corner.
In Mississippi, another Republican governor named Haley, this one Barbour, had the advantage of experience in dealing with a state smashed to bits by natural selection.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild," said Barbour, who hadn't yet signed his state's white supremacy law.
Where Mississippi would have been is where Alabama is now, cartographic contortions notwithstanding.
When Bentley signed Alabama's white supremacy law, State Sen. Scott Beason (R-Gardendale) crowed, "This will put thousands of Alabamians back in the workforce."
Or, they could just stay parked in front of their TV sets, collecting disability checks, swilling beer, and screaming about President Barack Obama and other persons of color destroying America. Unless God destroyed their homes, in which case they'd stay parked in front of their emergency shelter's TV set, collecting disability checks, swilling beer, and screaming about President Barack Obama and other persons of color destroying America.
"There are plenty of people capable of working, " said Rich Cooper of Bell Construction. "If they'd just get off their butts and do it." C'mon Rich, most folks haven't slung stacks of asphalt roofing shingles over their shoulders and climbed up twenty-foot ladders in 90+ degree heat in generations.
Among those able to work, Alabama's May unemployment rate was 9.6%. Sshhh... Bill O'Reilly is on Fox.
"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," Deal had said. Spot on. Too few immigrants. Crops rotting in fields. Whole towns levelled with no one to rebuild them. What happens to a nation when it can't feed or shelter itself?
McNelly said of the Hispanic labor force, " It's not the pay rate. It's the fact that they work harder than anyone. It's the work ethic."
Sounds exactly like the kind of folks you'd want in your country.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Supreme Corporate Declares Corporations Supreme: High Court Strikes Down Arizona Campaign Law
In dealing yet another blow against free speech, the Supreme Court, by the proverbial 5-4 margin, Monday struck down an Arizona campaign finance law that gave candidates in that state public matching funds when being outspent by well-heeled corporate stooges.
In a brazen display of partisan zealotry, Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. assumed all the corporate stooges would be Republicans, and once again led the five-man charge to shred Bill of Rights. Roberts wrote, "Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand." Roberts apparently believed that the Arizona law inhibited the robust and wide open buying of political offices, and moved decisively to stop such nonsense.
Roberts and his pals on the High Court's ideological right consider corporations to be people, and cash to be speech. It was not immediately known exactly how many conversations Roberts and his cohort, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, got for their decision.
In a mind-bending rationalization of their toadying to the ultra-wealthy, the right-wing Supreme Corporates reasoned that big-money interests might be discouraged from monopolizing all the TV airtime, radio spots, campaign flyers and phone calls in an election if they knew that, whatever they spent, the other side would get public funds to match them. The Roberts Court essentially said free speech meant that not only do the very rich get to speak, they get to prevent others from speaking because the others might make the very rich shy. Roberts and his pals certainly earned many conversations with those acrobatic musings.
Apparently, to Roberts and his cohort, the only free speech is paid corporate speech.
The Arizona 1998 Citizens Clean Elections Act had allowed candidates to opt out of unlimited privately-funded campaigns and accept public financing instead. To level the playing field, as long as the candidate participated in a debate and agreed to give back any money she didn't need, the state would match the amount well-heeled private donors lavished on pet candidates opposing her.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagen, one of the four non-partisan judges arrayed against the five corporate activist ideologues, wrote for the minority,
"What the law does...is fund more speech," Kagan said.
Roberts wasn't interested in more speech. Roberts only cared about speech pushing the ultra-wealthy's agenda. "Levelling the playing field can sound like a good thing," Roberts said of something that was as good as it sounded. "But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game." Roberts did not specify what it was instead, although his decision implied some sort of auction.
As they did with their infamous Citizens United case in 2009, the Roberts Court figured the candidates with the most money behind them should win all the elections. Roberts and his gang refused to countenance the notion that poorly-funded candidates and issues had any business trying to get their message out to the electorate.
Roberts didn't say when his cohort planned on dispensing with elections all together, and moving to a system in which the candidate backed by the largest corporations would simply be anointed.
In the 2009 Citizens United case, the same Roberts Court gang of five struck down decades of precedent and unleashed unlimited corporate funding of elections. Laws in 24 states that prohibited corporations smothering elections with mountains of cash fell before the juggernaut of right-wing plutocratization.
Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas appeared confident Republicans would always get the lion's share of corporate patronage, but the Chief Justice hedged a bit against the day the GOP figured out how to plunder public campaign funds. "We do not today call into question the wisdom of public financing as a means of funding political candidacy," Roberts elevated himself to the royal plural. "That is not our business."
The business of the Supreme Court is, apparently, Business.
In a brazen display of partisan zealotry, Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. assumed all the corporate stooges would be Republicans, and once again led the five-man charge to shred Bill of Rights. Roberts wrote, "Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand." Roberts apparently believed that the Arizona law inhibited the robust and wide open buying of political offices, and moved decisively to stop such nonsense.
Roberts and his pals on the High Court's ideological right consider corporations to be people, and cash to be speech. It was not immediately known exactly how many conversations Roberts and his cohort, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, got for their decision.
In a mind-bending rationalization of their toadying to the ultra-wealthy, the right-wing Supreme Corporates reasoned that big-money interests might be discouraged from monopolizing all the TV airtime, radio spots, campaign flyers and phone calls in an election if they knew that, whatever they spent, the other side would get public funds to match them. The Roberts Court essentially said free speech meant that not only do the very rich get to speak, they get to prevent others from speaking because the others might make the very rich shy. Roberts and his pals certainly earned many conversations with those acrobatic musings.
Apparently, to Roberts and his cohort, the only free speech is paid corporate speech.
The Arizona 1998 Citizens Clean Elections Act had allowed candidates to opt out of unlimited privately-funded campaigns and accept public financing instead. To level the playing field, as long as the candidate participated in a debate and agreed to give back any money she didn't need, the state would match the amount well-heeled private donors lavished on pet candidates opposing her.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagen, one of the four non-partisan judges arrayed against the five corporate activist ideologues, wrote for the minority,
"The First Amendment's core purpose is to foster a healthy, vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. Nothing in Arizona's anti-corruption statute, The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, violates this constitutional protection. To the contrary, the act promotes the values underlying both the First Amendment and our entire Constitution by enhancing the 'opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people.'"As usual, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor joined in the dissent.
"What the law does...is fund more speech," Kagan said.
Roberts wasn't interested in more speech. Roberts only cared about speech pushing the ultra-wealthy's agenda. "Levelling the playing field can sound like a good thing," Roberts said of something that was as good as it sounded. "But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game." Roberts did not specify what it was instead, although his decision implied some sort of auction.
As they did with their infamous Citizens United case in 2009, the Roberts Court figured the candidates with the most money behind them should win all the elections. Roberts and his gang refused to countenance the notion that poorly-funded candidates and issues had any business trying to get their message out to the electorate.
Roberts didn't say when his cohort planned on dispensing with elections all together, and moving to a system in which the candidate backed by the largest corporations would simply be anointed.
In the 2009 Citizens United case, the same Roberts Court gang of five struck down decades of precedent and unleashed unlimited corporate funding of elections. Laws in 24 states that prohibited corporations smothering elections with mountains of cash fell before the juggernaut of right-wing plutocratization.
Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas appeared confident Republicans would always get the lion's share of corporate patronage, but the Chief Justice hedged a bit against the day the GOP figured out how to plunder public campaign funds. "We do not today call into question the wisdom of public financing as a means of funding political candidacy," Roberts elevated himself to the royal plural. "That is not our business."
The business of the Supreme Court is, apparently, Business.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
House GOP's Reply to Smoochie Khadafy: We'll Cut Libya Action Funds
The smoochie, smoochie love tome Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy sent House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has apparently set the Republican leader's heart all aflutter. Boehner and his moon-faced cohort in the House GOP caucus are falling over each other to protect their hunky beau from nasty President Barack Obama's evil campaign to to be mean and horrid to him. Boehner announced the House might vote this week to cut off funding America's role in NATO's Libya intervention.
"Congress has the power of the purse!" Boehner crowed, apparently fussing over which handbag matched his shoes. Boehner last week said the President had failed miserably answering the 21-question essay test Boehner had sent him demanding an explanation of the motives, costs, and legality of why everyone was being so awful to Boehner's dreamy hunk o,' hunk o' burning love.
Sunday marked 90 days since NATO began enforcing the U.N.-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, and America's involvement in the air campaign against Khadafy's forces. House Republicans have ostensibly been tussling over application of the 1973 War Powers Act, which arguably required that the President obtain a Congressional thumbs-up for continued hostilities, although most of the GOP reps seemed only to care about wiping Obama's eye.
Hearing of Boehner and the Republican's diligent efforts to obstruct Obama, Khadafy sent Congressional leaders and the White House a smoochie, smoochie love letter gushing, "I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues," and that he was, "counting on the United States Congress to its continued investigation of military activities of NATO and its allies to confirm what we believe is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973."
Boehner, swaying to bird song, whined, "The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we've got drone attacks under way!" Sounding alarmingly like a thirteen year old girl pursuing a forbidden love, Boehner stamped his feet, "Part of the mission is to drop bombs on Khadafy's compound!" Awful, awful bombs!
It was not immediately known whether Boehner then screamed that he hated President Obama, and flung himself on his bed to cry his eyes out.
Fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was appalled. He told ABC's This Week, "If we had not intervened, Khadafy was at the gates of Benghazi. He said he was going to go house to house to kill everyone. That's a city of 700,000 people. What would we be saying now if we had allowed for that to happen?"
It was not known whether Boehner kicked and screamed, "I don't care! I love him! I love him!" and buried his face in a pillow, sobbing.
McCain's pal Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stepped up and announced sternly that he would have, "no part of any effort to defund" the Libya operation. "Congress should shut up and not empower Khadafy."
It was not known whether Boehner howled, "You always take his side!" and cried inconsolably while House Republicans stroked his head and glared at Graham.
Boehner had said disgraced Twitter exhibitionist Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) should go for showing women pictures of his wee-wee, but was apparently intent on shielding dreamboat Moammar, whose only crimes involved killing countless thousands, subjugating his country, and blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.
After all, Khadafy was a billionaire oil mogul, and George W. Bush's valued ally in the War on Terror. Or Terra, as Bush always said, making much more sense grammatically.
Graham and McCain have taken Republican presidential hopefuls to task for the field's dovish posture. On Afghanistan, Graham compared Mitt Romney to Jimmy Carter, the GOP equivalent of a third-grader saying a classmate's father was a member of the LGBTG community.
"We cannot move into an isolationist party," McCain railed. "We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930s, when the United States of America stood by while bad things happened in the world."
On foreign policy matters, neither McCain or Graham appeared to back fellow Republicans' automatic opposition to Obama's actions. Many Republicans, especially from the Tea Party wing, have suddenly turned uncharacteristically dovish in the name of fiscal restraint, although none have countenanced meaningful revenue reform to deal with their supposed concerns over debt and deficit spending.
"So, the Congress of the United States should pass a resolution," McCain said. "And, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and I have the resolution that's ready to go, that would comply with the War Powers Act."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stated he backed Obama on Libya, and that the War Powers Act did not apply to the US's limited role in the NATO operation. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurred, as did Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican whose day job had been running the vaguely-monikered defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation. SAIC is the nation's ninth largest defense contractor, employing 44,000, and was a notable player among interventionist neo-cons in the run-up to the Iraq war.
It was not known whether Boehner locked himself into his room, screamed he hated everyone, and said he and Moammer were going to get married.
"Congress has the power of the purse!" Boehner crowed, apparently fussing over which handbag matched his shoes. Boehner last week said the President had failed miserably answering the 21-question essay test Boehner had sent him demanding an explanation of the motives, costs, and legality of why everyone was being so awful to Boehner's dreamy hunk o,' hunk o' burning love.
Sunday marked 90 days since NATO began enforcing the U.N.-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, and America's involvement in the air campaign against Khadafy's forces. House Republicans have ostensibly been tussling over application of the 1973 War Powers Act, which arguably required that the President obtain a Congressional thumbs-up for continued hostilities, although most of the GOP reps seemed only to care about wiping Obama's eye.
Hearing of Boehner and the Republican's diligent efforts to obstruct Obama, Khadafy sent Congressional leaders and the White House a smoochie, smoochie love letter gushing, "I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues," and that he was, "counting on the United States Congress to its continued investigation of military activities of NATO and its allies to confirm what we believe is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973."
Boehner, swaying to bird song, whined, "The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we've got drone attacks under way!" Sounding alarmingly like a thirteen year old girl pursuing a forbidden love, Boehner stamped his feet, "Part of the mission is to drop bombs on Khadafy's compound!" Awful, awful bombs!
It was not immediately known whether Boehner then screamed that he hated President Obama, and flung himself on his bed to cry his eyes out.
Fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was appalled. He told ABC's This Week, "If we had not intervened, Khadafy was at the gates of Benghazi. He said he was going to go house to house to kill everyone. That's a city of 700,000 people. What would we be saying now if we had allowed for that to happen?"
It was not known whether Boehner kicked and screamed, "I don't care! I love him! I love him!" and buried his face in a pillow, sobbing.
McCain's pal Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stepped up and announced sternly that he would have, "no part of any effort to defund" the Libya operation. "Congress should shut up and not empower Khadafy."
It was not known whether Boehner howled, "You always take his side!" and cried inconsolably while House Republicans stroked his head and glared at Graham.
Boehner had said disgraced Twitter exhibitionist Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) should go for showing women pictures of his wee-wee, but was apparently intent on shielding dreamboat Moammar, whose only crimes involved killing countless thousands, subjugating his country, and blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.
After all, Khadafy was a billionaire oil mogul, and George W. Bush's valued ally in the War on Terror. Or Terra, as Bush always said, making much more sense grammatically.
Graham and McCain have taken Republican presidential hopefuls to task for the field's dovish posture. On Afghanistan, Graham compared Mitt Romney to Jimmy Carter, the GOP equivalent of a third-grader saying a classmate's father was a member of the LGBTG community.
"We cannot move into an isolationist party," McCain railed. "We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930s, when the United States of America stood by while bad things happened in the world."
On foreign policy matters, neither McCain or Graham appeared to back fellow Republicans' automatic opposition to Obama's actions. Many Republicans, especially from the Tea Party wing, have suddenly turned uncharacteristically dovish in the name of fiscal restraint, although none have countenanced meaningful revenue reform to deal with their supposed concerns over debt and deficit spending.
"So, the Congress of the United States should pass a resolution," McCain said. "And, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and I have the resolution that's ready to go, that would comply with the War Powers Act."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stated he backed Obama on Libya, and that the War Powers Act did not apply to the US's limited role in the NATO operation. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurred, as did Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican whose day job had been running the vaguely-monikered defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation. SAIC is the nation's ninth largest defense contractor, employing 44,000, and was a notable player among interventionist neo-cons in the run-up to the Iraq war.
It was not known whether Boehner locked himself into his room, screamed he hated everyone, and said he and Moammer were going to get married.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Georgia Immigrant Crackdown Begets Prison Labor Pitstop On Road to Slavery
With Georgia's Arizona-style white supremacy law weeks away from going into effect, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal announced criminal probationers would be a great solution for planters facing the looming peach harvest with scant immigrant labor.
The impending crackdown on immigrant labor has intimidated many workers, and the state's planters have complained HB 87, Georgia's new white supremacy law going into effect July 1, has already caused a labor shortage. A state survey revealed 11,000 farm jobs have gone begging, as the state's white population has disdained tough agricultural labor despite white supremacist claims their law would be a boon for job-seekers.
The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association reported planters were only getting 30%-50% of the laborers they needed. Georgia has a $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry.
Georgia's impending white supremacy law exposes persons of color to repeated and continuous harassment, questioning and detention based on the color of their skin. As in Arizona, Georgia law enforcement may detain and demand citizenship documents at will. As in Arizona, all persons of color are suspect, including Asian-American business owners, Latino-American scientists and President Barack Obama, while all whites, including German neo-Nazi skinheads, British soccer hooligans, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard, not to mention home-grown murderers and child molesters, are considered to be valued all-American members of the superior white race.
Workers convicted of possessing non-compliant identity papers face 15 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Now, according to Deal's deal, such undocumented workers could presumably be incarcerated, fined, then made to work the fields anyway to pay off their fines. Presumably, President Obama would be picking peas for failing to produce his long-form birth certificate. As the President knows, white supremacists ultimately won't accept any documentation a person of color might produce. White supremacists consider "American" to be a synonym for the white race.
Tapping probationers and prisoners would open a vast pool of non-white laborers. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the state has 55,252 inmates, 62% of whom are African-American. Many may have a future of labor in the fields beneath the overseers' lash. Deal claimed there were as many as 100,000 people on probation in Georgia.
In contrast to its prison population, which is 62% black and 34% white, the state of Georgia is 59.7% white, 30.5% black, and 8.8% Latino.
Georgia is a stronghold of the neo-Confederacy movement and other white separatist and evangelical supremacist covens, many of which covet a return to a hazy antebellum vision of leisured white slave holders exploiting and brutalizing subjugated non-whites.
Deal Tuesday said he had directed state corrections and agriculture commissioners to get probationers out to the farms.
"I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available," Deal said, apparently bemoaning the overbearing federal burden imposed by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Grower Roscoe Hutcheson was not convinced. He blamed HB 87 when no one showed up to pick blackberries at his Baxley, GA farm. He told reporters he had three small children, and didn't want probationers on his spread.
"I don't want bad people around my young 'uns," he said.
Alabama is set to join Georgia with its own, even more restrictive, white supremacy law September 1. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour is still considering signing into law his state's version of the white supremacy measures, but, to the chagrin of fellow Republicans and Tea Party activists, has balked at categorically criminalizing tens of thousands who gave his state a leg up during its darkest hour.
Immigrant labor was critical to getting Mississippi back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state in 2005, according to Barbour.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild, and there's no doubt in my mind that some of them weren't here legally," Barbour acknowledged. "If they hadn't come and stayed...we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
Many in Mississippi don't share Barbour's reticence. White supremacists believe non-whites are subhumans to be exploited, abused and discarded at will.
Should Barbour sign his state's new white supremacy bill into law, it would create a 600-mile wide white separatist bastion through the heart of the Deep South. Barbour has walked a fine line between extremism and propriety, at first refusing to denounce, then vowing to veto, license plates commemorating Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, who many considered to have been a terrorist. American Democracy is certainly in critical condition if Haley Barbour represents its last hope against white racist dominion.
The impending crackdown on immigrant labor has intimidated many workers, and the state's planters have complained HB 87, Georgia's new white supremacy law going into effect July 1, has already caused a labor shortage. A state survey revealed 11,000 farm jobs have gone begging, as the state's white population has disdained tough agricultural labor despite white supremacist claims their law would be a boon for job-seekers.
The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association reported planters were only getting 30%-50% of the laborers they needed. Georgia has a $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry.
Georgia's impending white supremacy law exposes persons of color to repeated and continuous harassment, questioning and detention based on the color of their skin. As in Arizona, Georgia law enforcement may detain and demand citizenship documents at will. As in Arizona, all persons of color are suspect, including Asian-American business owners, Latino-American scientists and President Barack Obama, while all whites, including German neo-Nazi skinheads, British soccer hooligans, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard, not to mention home-grown murderers and child molesters, are considered to be valued all-American members of the superior white race.
Workers convicted of possessing non-compliant identity papers face 15 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Now, according to Deal's deal, such undocumented workers could presumably be incarcerated, fined, then made to work the fields anyway to pay off their fines. Presumably, President Obama would be picking peas for failing to produce his long-form birth certificate. As the President knows, white supremacists ultimately won't accept any documentation a person of color might produce. White supremacists consider "American" to be a synonym for the white race.
Tapping probationers and prisoners would open a vast pool of non-white laborers. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the state has 55,252 inmates, 62% of whom are African-American. Many may have a future of labor in the fields beneath the overseers' lash. Deal claimed there were as many as 100,000 people on probation in Georgia.
In contrast to its prison population, which is 62% black and 34% white, the state of Georgia is 59.7% white, 30.5% black, and 8.8% Latino.
Georgia is a stronghold of the neo-Confederacy movement and other white separatist and evangelical supremacist covens, many of which covet a return to a hazy antebellum vision of leisured white slave holders exploiting and brutalizing subjugated non-whites.
Deal Tuesday said he had directed state corrections and agriculture commissioners to get probationers out to the farms.
"I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available," Deal said, apparently bemoaning the overbearing federal burden imposed by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Grower Roscoe Hutcheson was not convinced. He blamed HB 87 when no one showed up to pick blackberries at his Baxley, GA farm. He told reporters he had three small children, and didn't want probationers on his spread.
"I don't want bad people around my young 'uns," he said.
Alabama is set to join Georgia with its own, even more restrictive, white supremacy law September 1. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour is still considering signing into law his state's version of the white supremacy measures, but, to the chagrin of fellow Republicans and Tea Party activists, has balked at categorically criminalizing tens of thousands who gave his state a leg up during its darkest hour.
Immigrant labor was critical to getting Mississippi back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state in 2005, according to Barbour.
"I don't know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn't been for the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild, and there's no doubt in my mind that some of them weren't here legally," Barbour acknowledged. "If they hadn't come and stayed...we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
Many in Mississippi don't share Barbour's reticence. White supremacists believe non-whites are subhumans to be exploited, abused and discarded at will.
Should Barbour sign his state's new white supremacy bill into law, it would create a 600-mile wide white separatist bastion through the heart of the Deep South. Barbour has walked a fine line between extremism and propriety, at first refusing to denounce, then vowing to veto, license plates commemorating Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, who many considered to have been a terrorist. American Democracy is certainly in critical condition if Haley Barbour represents its last hope against white racist dominion.
Monday, June 13, 2011
To Balance Budgets, Racist Red States Shouldn't Get Federal Dollars
In an action that revealed the magnitude of its deep-seated racist hate and anti-American radicalism, Alabama Thursday became the latest Red State to enact a sweeping white supremacy law subjugating persons of color. Going far beyond even Arizona's infamous white supremacy laws, first-term Republican Governor Robert Bentley signed into law the draconian measure set to take effect September 1.
The state that conspired to bludgeon and bomb the Freedom Riders has done Bull Connor proud.
In addition to requiring law enforcement officers to demand citizenship documents from anyone they deem might not be citizens, the Alabama law:
Clearly, no whites will ever be required to show documentation proving citizenship. Throughout the Red States, "American," is considered to be a synonym for "white." Thus, among the neo-Confederates, white separatists and evangelical supremacists that comprise the core of the Republican constituency in such states as Alabama, German neo-Nazi skinheads, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard are all considered to be "American", while Asian-American merchants, Latino business owners and President Barack Obama are illegal immigrants. To the white supremacists, what makes a person, immigrant or not, "illegal" is skin color.
"There will be no profiling," taunted State Rep.Mickey Hammon (R-Decatur), who co-sponsored the measure with fellow de facto white separatist champion State Sen. Scott Beason (R-Gardendale), glossing over exactly how law enforcement officers would apply their racist detentions. "We welcome legal immigrants with open arms."
Hammon did not specify what caliber or types of arms would be employed in welcoming immigrants.
In enacting its white supremacy law, Alabama continued to flaunt its unmitigated disdain for the federal authority that props up its institutions and its people. Despite continuous railing by its Republican politicians against government spending, Alabama continuously receives more federal dollars from Washington than it collects in taxes. For every dollar in federal taxes Alabama raises, it receives $1.67 from federal coffers.
If Republicans really wanted to balance the federal budget, they should just cut off states like Alabama.
Alabama joins other fellow debtor states Utah, Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona in enacting white supremacy laws. Utah receives $1.07 for every dollar it raises, Georgia $1.02, and Indiana $1.05. Arizona gets $1.19.
Arizona is the stronghold of such white race icons as mass-shooter Jared Loughner, who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and murdered Judge John Roll, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Utah's enacted its white supremacy law despite having a population that's already 89% white.
Alabama's population is 68% white, 26% black, and 4% Latino.
"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," claimed Bentley, a Southern Baptist Deacon. "I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I'm proud of the Legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country."
"Illegal immigrants have become a drain on our state resources and a strain on our tax-paying, law-abiding citizens," said Alabama Republican Party chair Bill Armistead.
Armistead did not address the drain the state of Alabama is on the diverse law-abiding taxpayers of California and New York, who have to prop Alabama up. For every dollar in federal taxes Californians pay, their state receives just 78 cents back from Washington. New Yorkers get only 79 cents. The balance goes to Red States like Alabama that incessantly deride their sponsoring states and those states' taxpayers.
Despite their dependence on California dollars, folks in Alabama and other Red States are quick to taunt California any time there's any sort of disaster. Whenever there are wildfires or earthquakes in California, Red State evangelical supremacists quickly declare that God is punishing California for championing liberal positions or supporting the LGBTG community.
God, however, apparently was not punishing Alabama when the northern half of the state, including Bentley's home town of Tuscaloosa, was wiped out by an unprecedented series of tornadoes this spring. After all, Alabama will be rebuilt with generous blessings of California and New York tax dollars, many of which were paid by the Latinos, Asians and other subhuman mongrel races Alabama's superior whites disdain.
The state that conspired to bludgeon and bomb the Freedom Riders has done Bull Connor proud.
In addition to requiring law enforcement officers to demand citizenship documents from anyone they deem might not be citizens, the Alabama law:
- Prohibits schools from accepting students who cannot provide birth certificates or other citizenship documents, including asylum-seekers and refugees.
- Prohibits anyone from transporting, harboring, or renting property to someone who might lack approved citizenship documents.
- Presumes that any person not in possession of approved citizenship documents or a driver license is an illegal immigrant.
- Voids any employment contracts with undocumented aliens, encouraging employers to hire such persons for the purposes of exploitation.
Clearly, no whites will ever be required to show documentation proving citizenship. Throughout the Red States, "American," is considered to be a synonym for "white." Thus, among the neo-Confederates, white separatists and evangelical supremacists that comprise the core of the Republican constituency in such states as Alabama, German neo-Nazi skinheads, Russian mobsters, and IRA terrorists on the lam from Scotland Yard are all considered to be "American", while Asian-American merchants, Latino business owners and President Barack Obama are illegal immigrants. To the white supremacists, what makes a person, immigrant or not, "illegal" is skin color.
"There will be no profiling," taunted State Rep.Mickey Hammon (R-Decatur), who co-sponsored the measure with fellow de facto white separatist champion State Sen. Scott Beason (R-Gardendale), glossing over exactly how law enforcement officers would apply their racist detentions. "We welcome legal immigrants with open arms."
Hammon did not specify what caliber or types of arms would be employed in welcoming immigrants.
In enacting its white supremacy law, Alabama continued to flaunt its unmitigated disdain for the federal authority that props up its institutions and its people. Despite continuous railing by its Republican politicians against government spending, Alabama continuously receives more federal dollars from Washington than it collects in taxes. For every dollar in federal taxes Alabama raises, it receives $1.67 from federal coffers.
If Republicans really wanted to balance the federal budget, they should just cut off states like Alabama.
Alabama joins other fellow debtor states Utah, Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona in enacting white supremacy laws. Utah receives $1.07 for every dollar it raises, Georgia $1.02, and Indiana $1.05. Arizona gets $1.19.
Arizona is the stronghold of such white race icons as mass-shooter Jared Loughner, who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and murdered Judge John Roll, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Utah's enacted its white supremacy law despite having a population that's already 89% white.
Alabama's population is 68% white, 26% black, and 4% Latino.
"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," claimed Bentley, a Southern Baptist Deacon. "I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I'm proud of the Legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country."
"Illegal immigrants have become a drain on our state resources and a strain on our tax-paying, law-abiding citizens," said Alabama Republican Party chair Bill Armistead.
Armistead did not address the drain the state of Alabama is on the diverse law-abiding taxpayers of California and New York, who have to prop Alabama up. For every dollar in federal taxes Californians pay, their state receives just 78 cents back from Washington. New Yorkers get only 79 cents. The balance goes to Red States like Alabama that incessantly deride their sponsoring states and those states' taxpayers.
Despite their dependence on California dollars, folks in Alabama and other Red States are quick to taunt California any time there's any sort of disaster. Whenever there are wildfires or earthquakes in California, Red State evangelical supremacists quickly declare that God is punishing California for championing liberal positions or supporting the LGBTG community.
God, however, apparently was not punishing Alabama when the northern half of the state, including Bentley's home town of Tuscaloosa, was wiped out by an unprecedented series of tornadoes this spring. After all, Alabama will be rebuilt with generous blessings of California and New York tax dollars, many of which were paid by the Latinos, Asians and other subhuman mongrel races Alabama's superior whites disdain.
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