Sunday 24th of November 2024
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from the Centre for American Progress …..

Character Counts

President Bush declared this week "National Character Counts Week." Americans are supposed to remember our commitments to "values such as integrity, courage, honesty, and patriotism" that "sustain our democracy, make self-government possible, and help build a more hopeful future."

But the nation's lawmakers are the ones most in need of the reminder. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi writes, "These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line...a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable."

The current congressional leadership has put its self-interest above the common good and has refused to clean house or pass meaningful ethics reform legislation.

"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," notes constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley. The American people are getting fed up. The right-wing Congress is now at its lowest approval rating in 14 years. According to recent polls, 97 percent of Americans say that corruption in government will be an important consideration when they vote in November's elections and 85 percent want the government to commit "to the common good and put the public's interest above the privileges of the few." 

Many members of the Bush administration are far from role models during this Character Counts Week. On Oct. 6, key White House aide Susan Ralston resigned "in the wake of congressional report that listed hundreds of contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House." Ralston received her job with Karl Rove on a recommendation from Abramoff. She was lobbied 69 times -- more than any other White House official -- and received tickets from Abramoff to sporting events and concerts. But former White House political director Ken Mehlman may have been the real "go-to" guy for Abramoff. "Everyone would appreciate it if you would contact Ken only and not others here at the WH," read one message to Abramoff from Ralston, "because they just forward it to him anyway."

In 2002, Abramoff asked the White House to remove Allen Stayman, a State Department official who had opposed the interests of an Abramoff client in the Northern Mariana Islands. The e-mails reveal that Mehlman agreed to "get him fired."

Lawmakers have masterfully figured out how to insert spending proposals known as "earmarks" into federal legislation without public scrutiny. These earmarks often benefit few people except the lawmaker and his or her wealthy donors. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has earmarked more than $8 million for a project supposed to make Montana a center for space-related research and industry. But in reality, it has "produced few tangible results while spawning several state and federal investigations.

It has also earned lobbyists and companies connected to Burns hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts and lobbying fees as well as more than $80,000 in campaign contributions for Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT)." Perhaps no lawmaker has come to represent earmark corruption more than former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), who pled guilty in Nov. 2005, to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes from government contractors.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, released a report on Cunningham's corruption, concluding that unfortunately, Cunningham wasn't the only crooked government official; there "was a lot of people to persuade, cajole, deceive, pressure, intimidate, bribe, or otherwise influence to do what they wanted."

Another new report this week by the Wall Street Journal found that Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) has earmarked more than $30 million for nonprofits which he either created or are run by his supporters. A $4.8 million earmark in last year's transportation bill went to "widen parts of U.S. Highway 64, a winding mountain road that runs near tracts of timberland" that one of Taylor's companies owns. 

To date, there have been 15,832 earmarks in 2006, at a cost to taxpayers of $71.77 billion.

Lawmakers aren't the only ones to benefit from earmarks -- their families do, as well. Lobbying firms have picked up on this nepotism, and according to a new USA Today investigation, these firms "employed 30 family members last year to influence spending bills that their relatives with ties to the House and Senate appropriations committees oversaw or helped write." In 2005 alone, "appropriations bills contained about $750 million for projects championed by lobbyists whose relatives were involved in writing the spending bills." 

The latest FBI investigation into family corruption revolves around Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), who may have traded his political influence to win lucrative -- nearly $1 million per year -- lobbying contracts for his daughter's firm. Weldon repeatedly lobbied federal officials -- including Karl Rove -- on behalf of Itera, a controversial Russian natural gas company. Itera paid $500,000 to Karen Weldon's firm on Sept. 30, 2002, six days after her father arranged a dinner at the Library of Congress to honor Itera. "It's getting to the point where no one bothers to hide what appear to be raging conflicts of interest," noted Ronald Utt of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

An Oct. 11 Associated Press report found that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) collected $700,000 on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years. Reid had failed to disclose to Congress an earlier transaction "in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company." Reid countered that, although the title to the land had passed to a joint venture, he maintained continual ownership over the property. Nevertheless, Reid immediately apologized for the oversight lapse and amended his 2001 disclosure forms and asked the Senate Ethics Committee to clarify the matter.

Other lawmakers took a different approach. Weldon, for example, has blamed Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington Executive Director Melanie Sloan, former National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, and former CIA officer Mary McCarthy for his current ethical troubles. He believes the FBI's investigation is "revenge for his criticisms." Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who last week pled guilty in the Abramoff investigation, has blamed his legal troubles on the Justice Department, the media, and liberal groups.

Because of a single earmark in a 2005 federal highway bill, House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) net worth went from approximately $300,000 to at least $6.2 million. After acquiring land in 2002, Hastert inserted $207 million into the 2005 highway bill for construction of the Prairie Parkway Corridor, a highway that "had neither the support of the public nor the Illinois Department of Transportation," but was just over a mile from the property owned by Hastert's trust. Once the bill passed, Hastert sold his property at "a profit equal to 500 percent of his original investment," notes Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly and American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Norman Ornstein.

The Speaker used his official position to profit at the expense of American taxpayers. Media Matters reports that CNN has devoted 50 times as much coverage to Reid's case as to Hastert's. Time magazine has yet to mention the Hastert land scandal, but devoted three paragraphs in an Oct. 13 article to the assertion that Reid has "found himself embroiled in a real estate scandal."

The right-wing Congress refuses to clean house. Despite pleading guilty, Ney is not resigning from Congress immediately, but rather "in the next few weeks." Instead of cooperating with Harman to release the report on Cunningham, House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) condemned the release of the report before the November elections, stating that Harman's actions were "disturbing and beyond the pale."

Conservative lawmakers continue to donate heavily to Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA), who is now facing a lawsuit by a woman with whom he had a five-year affair. She alleges that he repeatedly beat her and "seriously injured her physically and emotionally." Weak lobbying bills passed by the House and the Senate earlier in the year have stalled and lawmakers have yet to set up a committee to reconcile differences between the two bills.

More fudge

From our ABC

Bush admits tactics in Iraq might change
The US President George W Bush has said he might change tactics in Iraq, but not his overall strategy.

He is due to consult his senior generals tomorrow to discuss ways of reducing the level of violence in the country.

The meeting comes in the midst of a bloody surge in violence in Iraq and one of the deadliest months for US troops.

But White House spokesman Tony Snow insists the meeting has been "on the schedule for weeks" and is not in response to the rising violence and death toll.

--------------------

Gus: "Obviously" the state of things in Iraq does not have a bearing on what the little bushit could do, would do or will do... What a lot of crock! Caught between a rock and a hard surface, the little Bush is sailing his ship "not in response to the rising violence and death toll" as if the blithers were not happening... No,... phase #347.53 is not in response to the rising violence and death toll, it's related to the fact people in the US have found out that the rising violence and death toll in Iraq, and their own troops are still being shot at, is exposing the twerp... as a twerp... and there is an election coming on...

After the elections, possibly won by the little bushit — using his scare tactics and his electronic counting machines, it will be back to the same "stay the course" bushit tactic since a lot more oil is to be pumped out of Iraq before anything can change... Yeah! "Freedom for the oil-wells of the world!!!" is the US motto... Bring on the sucking machine...

real politic .....

Yes Gus, the great deciderarian & his little aussie bediderarian find themselves trying to perch on the wrong end of their bayonets, as the US public seems to be finally wakening from its slumber ahead of the US Congressional elections & the cornerstones of their grand strategies are washed away by the blood of hundreds of thousands of inncocents.

And where justice, humanity & even reason fail to persuade the old masters of hubris that they have pursued the wrong course, it seems that a dose of real politic works every time .....

‘The Iraqi government, which has had a hard time adopting most aspects of American democracy, seems to have eagerly embraced this administration's lessons on how to deny politically unpleasant realities. Just the other day, The Times reported that the Pentagon had decided there was nothing wrong with a program in which phoney "positive news" was planted in Iraqi newspapers. And news reports said that the Iraqi government had decided to stop reporting civilian casualties to the United Nations so there would be no record of the war's increasing toll on ordinary Iraqis.

The way the Bush team is stage-managing the president's supposed change of heart about "staying the course" is unfair to the Americans who have taken him at his word that real progress is being made in Iraq - a dwindling but still significant number of people, some of whom have sons and daughters serving in the conflict. It is a disservice to the troops, who were never sent to Iraq in sufficient numbers to protect themselves or the Iraqi people. And it is a disservice to all Americans, who have waited so long for Mr. Bush to act that all that is left are a series of unpleasant choices.’

Blowing In The Wind

and, in plainer language …..

‘A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America's war in Iraq.

"We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he said.

"We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation," he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. "The Iraqi government is convinced of this."’

State Department Official: "Arrogance" & "Stupidity" Hindered US Goals In Iraq

and how about this wisdom from the young .....

‘"I've grown up in a culture today that doesn't teach me anything of substance, of value, how it bombards me every day with messages of emptiness and shallowness. And the youth are crying for something to stand for, something to believe in. If it weren't for my faith or my family, I possibly could have fallen into the lies that our culture tells us. But now I've traveled, I've spoken to over a million teens across this country.... I've seen depression, anger and loneliness, students without direction or purpose.... I've seen students who called themselves cutters, have cut themselves because that's the way they know to take out the pain that they're dealing with. I've learned a lot about my generation. And I've learned a lot since I lost my friends and my sister.''

And then Scott said the greatest words the president or anyone else could hope to ever hear:

"And the main thing I've learned is that kindness and compassion can be the biggest antidotes to anger and hatred, and I believe the biggest antidotes to violence.''

The president responded in the only way he could, which was to thank Scott, applaud him and then ask for a copy of his speech.

The next day, researchers from Johns Hopkins released an updated body count for the war in Iraq. An estimated 600,000 civilians have died since the war began. These are not soldiers or armed resisters; these are mothers, grandfathers, children playing outside. Families, just like yours, just like mine.

God forgive me should I ever truly understand how presidents Clinton and Bush are able to mouth the hollow words about protecting children ("We must ... teach them to express their anger and resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons") and then, hours later, give the damnable blessing for military movements that kill other people's children. This is madness, and it is the hell-bent delusion of violence that allows the president of the United States to stand up before a crowded room of parents, reporters and survivors and announce his intentions to better protect American schoolchildren, and then, before the same day's sun sets, continue to sit on a war that has killed more than half-a-million souls.

And a nation of 300 million barely opens its mouth.’

Bill Clinton, George Bush & Craig Scott: Nation's Leaders Mislead Youth By Preaching Peace, Practicing War

a stable of thieves & perverts .....

‘There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.’

Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever