6. And this, mind you, in an election in which Bush was leading in Florida by only a few hundred votes while losing the popular vote nationwide to Gore by, at last count, 539,000 votes.
©2001 Vincent Bugliosi

Cheney Lies About His Dealings With Saddam
By Colum Lynch

UNITED NATIONS - During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.

"Iraq's different," he said.

According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.

Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.

Mary Matalin, Cheney's counselor, said that if he "was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, 'No.' "

"In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts," Matalin said. "The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them."

The trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.

Halliburton's trade with Iraq was first reported by The Washington Post in February 2000. But U.N. records recently obtained by The Post show that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.

As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. After Cheney was named in 1995 to head Halliburton, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.

But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War.

Former executives at the subsidiaries said they had never heard objections -- from Cheney or any other Halliburton official -- to trading with Baghdad.

"Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws," said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump's business in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Halliburton's primary concern, added Ingersoll-Rand's former chairman, James E. Perrella, "was that if we did business with [the Iraqi regime], that it be allowed by the United States government. If it wasn't allowed, we wouldn't do it."

Dumas and Perrella said their companies' commercial links to the Iraqi oil industry began before the U.N. Security Council imposed an oil embargo on Baghdad in the wake of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

They returned to dealing with Iraq after the council established the "oil-for-food" program in December 1996, permitting Iraq to export oil under U.N. supervision and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The program was expanded in 1998 to allow Iraq to import spare parts for its oil facilities.

The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.

The proceeds funded a sharp increase in the country's nutritional standards, nearly doubling the food rations distributed to Iraq's poor.

But U.S. and European officials acknowledged that the expanded production also increased Saddam Hussein's capacity to siphon off money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program.

Cheney has offered contradictory accounts of how much he knew about Halliburton's dealings with Iraq. In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," he denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad.

"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," he said. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."

Cheney modified his response in an interview on the same program three weeks later, after he was informed that a Halliburton spokesman had acknowledged that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.

He said he was unaware that the subsidiaries were doing business with the Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.

"We inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq," Cheney explained, "but we divested ourselves of those interests."

The divestiture, however, was not immediate. The firms traded with Baghdad for more than a year under Cheney, signing nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, according to U.N. records.

Perrella said he believes Halliburton officials must have known about the Iraqi links before they purchased Dresser. "They obviously did due diligence," he said.

And even if Cheney was not told about the business with Baghdad before the purchase, Perrella said, the CEO almost certainly would have learned about it after the acquisition. "Oh, definitely, he was aware of the business," Perrella said, although Perrella conceded that this was an assumption based on knowledge of how the company worked, not a fact to which he could personally attest because he never discussed the Iraqi contracts with Cheney.

A long-time critic of unilateral U.S. sanctions, which he has argued penalize American companies while failing to punish the targeted regimes, Cheney has pushed for a review of U.S. policy toward countries such as Iraq, Iran and Libya.

In the first expression of that new thinking, the Bush administration is campaigning in the U.N. Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil-related equipment, to Iraq.

U.S. officials say the new policy is aimed at easing restrictions on companies that conduct legitimate trade with Iraq, while clamping down on weapons smuggling and other black-market activity.

If the plan is approved, there would be "nothing to stop Iraq from importing [as many] oil spare parts as it needs" from Halliburton and other suppliers, according to a British official who briefed reporters on the proposal when it was introduced last month.

Cheney resigned as chairman of Halliburton last August. Although he has retained stock options worth about $8 million, he has arranged to donate to charity any profits from the eventual exercise of those options, Glover Weiss said.

Confidential U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had broad, and sometimes controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime.

For instance, the documents detail more than $2.5 million in contracts between Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq that were blocked by the Clinton administration. They included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000 in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.

The Persian Gulf terminal was badly damaged during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and later was destroyed by allied warplanes during Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Cheney was secretary of defense.

Washington halted the sale because the facility was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the terms of the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is permitted to export crude oil, subject to U.N. supervision, through only two terminals, Ceyhan in Turkey and Mina al Bakr on the Persian Gulf.

The equipment was never delivered to Iraq, but Baghdad subsequently repaired the Khor al Amaya facility on its own.

A senior Iraqi oil ministry official, Faiz Shaheen, told an official Iraqi newspaper that Iraq would soon be able to export about 600,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the terminal.

Dumas said he was not aware of the dispute over the Khor al Amaya terminal. It was unlikely, he added, that Cheney or other top Halliburton executives would have known about the specific deals. "We had great independence in running our business," he said.

U.S. officials say the Bush administration is prepared to allow Iraq to resume exports from Khor al Amaya, as long as the earnings are placed in a U.N. escrow account that is used to pay for humanitarian supplies and further improvements to the oil industry.

"The U.S. attitude towards Iraqi exports has evolved considerably," said James A. Placke, a Washington-based analyst for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. "They used to tightly restrict Iraqi oil exports, and now there is no limitation on Iraqi exports."

Iraq's power to entice foreign investment, meanwhile, has increased with the soaring demand for oil. U.S. companies, which have been able to trade with Iraq only through foreign subsidiaries and middlemen, are wary of dealing with Baghdad but eager to get a piece of the action, according to industry sources.

"The American oil industry is very interested in trying to enter Iraq," said J. Robinson West, chairman of Petroleum Finance Co., a consulting firm. "But I think that they are quite respectful of U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. There is a very strong feeling that in fact he is the greatest threat to oil production in the Middle East."
©2001 Colum Lynch

"Unfortunately, the Eagle has landed -- right on top of your privacy," he said. "It's time to abolish this un-American spy scheme, and ground the Eagle for good."
©2001 Steve Dasbach

Taking Public Power "Public"
By Joe Conason

Whenever a conservative ideologue starts preaching about the miraculous benefits of the unregulated "free market," it is only prudent to make sure you still have your wallet -- because while you're distracted by that seductive pitch, somebody's invisible hand is probably picking your pocket.

Such is the lesson lately provided by California, whose citizens were promised cheap and plentiful power if only they would rid themselves of the archaic laws that regulated electric utilities. Like a mark plucked by grifters, the Golden State bought into deregulation, a foolish decision likely to cost them billions over the coming decades. They noticed a bit too late that the energy sector is neither "free" nor a "market" in any meaningful sense of those terms, and that the only dividend from deregulation has been the disruption and manipulation of supply by remote holding companies.

Growing public fury over this swindle has forced some of the nation's most ardently right-wing Republicans to demand federal price caps on electric power. Bill Thomas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, along with 14 other top congressional Republicans, signed a letter on June 12 urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to "ensure that rates for all wholesale electricity sales are just and reasonable in all markets" and to strictly enforce a "price mitigation" plan for the nation's Western region.

And now the Bush administration has responded with temporary measures to restrain prices, if only to save the hides of its political allies. So much for the magic of the free market. But don't expect Republicans in Washington or anywhere else to admit that deregulation is a disaster. Motivated by either ideology or greed or both, they continue to insist that there is no alternative to unrestrained corporate rapacity. According to the president, who doubles as chief spokesman for the energy industry, renewed regulation will only lead to worse shortages. "Price controls won't increase supply or reduce demand," he says. "Price controls will only hurt California consumers." As always with President Bush, it is difficult to determine whether that statement represents ignorance or deception. Perhaps he simply didn't notice that for his entire adult life, and long before he was born, the growth of the American economy was powered by regulated utilities whose prices and profits were entirely subject to government control. Remarkably, many otherwise intelligent people appear to have forgotten that same simple fact.

It wasn't a perfect system in any respect, but the regulatory regime that busted the original power trusts in the early decades of the last century made possible plentiful electricity at affordable prices. Power was sufficiently available and cheap to create the largest, most affluent economy in world history.

Consumers complained about prices, investors griped about profits and utility executives often succeeded in compromising the integrity of their regulators. But whatever abuses may have existed under the regulated monopolies seem mild and transparent when compared with the scams currently perpetrated in the name of competition.

Only after a long and determined propaganda campaign by conservatives to fetishize the market and denigrate the public sector did such notions as deregulating electricity become plausible. What could possibly be worse, they argued, than "big government"? What turned out to be much worse, of course, is what California is experiencing now that those arguments have prevailed.

What has proved to be a better way of supplying and purchasing electricity is how nearly 1.5 million residents of Los Angeles do it. Although their good fortune is rarely mentioned in media coverage of the California crisis, those lucky enough to be customers of the city's Department of Water and Power are exempt from brownouts and extortion. As beneficiaries of the nation's largest public power system, they enjoy rates considerably lower than their neighbors under the corporate yoke do. And the city has enough surplus power to sell electricity to the state.

If that sounds suspiciously like socialism, it doesn't seem to have injured the capitalistic spirit of L.A. or any of the hundreds of other American municipalities, including all of Long Island, that operate some kind of public power system. And let's not even discuss the rest of the industrialized world, where public power is taken for granted. The average public power customer pays considerably less per kilowatt-hour than consumers at the mercy of the private cartels. When Long Island residents switched to public power two years ago, after a private company went bankrupt, their rates dropped by 16 percent. (Perhaps that's why investor-owned utilities are known by the acronym IOU.)

Public power utilities are also more likely to promote serious conservation and environmental measures than those in the private sector. While California's private utilities maneuver to avoid bankruptcy, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is paying cash bonuses to customers who buy efficient new air conditioners or retrofit old ones. And the department recently completed a program of rebuilding its gas-fired power plants to reduce pollution.

So don't trust the hucksters who promoted deregulation when they insist there's no alternative to jacked-up prices and environmental destruction. There are better choices, and this may be the moment to reconsider one that is both the most radical 3. and the most successful.
©2001 Joe Conason

Quotable Quote

"It is never a crime to speak up for the poor, the helpless, or the ill; it is never a crime to tell the truth; it is never a crime to demand justice; it is never a crime to teach people their rights; it is never a crime to struggle for a just peace. It is never a crime. It is always a duty!" … U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass

And he said it might take a number of years for the Russian economy to sustain a full spectrum of economically independent media organizations, and he added, "I am very confident that without a free media, we cannot have a normal democratic society."
©2001 Patrick E. Tyler

For example, former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) tried during his last two years in office to legislate a reduction in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and limit those on alert, but was repeatedly denied access to information about the SIOP.
©2001 Walter Pincus

Dead Brain Walking
by Isaac Peterson

So, John Ashcroft doesn't think there's anything wrong with the way the federal death penalty is administered. Janet Reno commissioned a report on the death penalty as applied to minorities, and it was finished by Ashcroft in time to try to spin public opinion for Juan Raul Garza's execution.

In his report he concluded that there is no racial bias in federal death sentences and that whites are more likely to receive death sentences. This is in spite of the fact that while McVeigh was alive, there were 19 other inmates on Federal Death Row. Counting McVeigh, only 3 were white. As of June 11, that number is now 2. In the Justice Department's study, almost 1,000 capital cases were cited, and in those, federal prosecutors sought the death penalty far more often for minorities. This is the way it is all over the country, in many state's prisons also.

Ashcroft said that the reasoning was that the cases involving minorities were more atrocious than whites. He also said that the discrepancy in the numbers happens because prosecutors seek the death penalty more often in districts where there are more minority defendants than whites.

There are so many holes in this logic and so many directions to shoot it down, I'm not sure where to begin.

First, the report doesn't explain how prosecutors seeking the death penalty more often for minorities doesn't result in whites receiving it more often. In fact, part of the report shows whites more often being offered plea bargains than minorities, and the acceptance of plea bargains doesn't appear to be tied to the severity of the crime. Many of the capital cases involved drug-related murders by minorities who were lower level drug dealers. The killings were ordered by their bosses, who were able to plead their cases down to lesser sentences. Juan Garza's attorney has noted that there have been several cases where whites had committed 3 or more drug related murders and federal prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. All that I can figure Ashcroft is saying is that a bullet in the head somehow is more preferable from a white offender than a minority.

Second, I assume that he had a straight face when he claimed that even though prosecutors seek the death penalty more often for minorities, there is no racial bias. And he says that in spite of this, whites are more likely to receive the death penalty. I would laugh if this logic wasn't affecting real people's lives.

None of this may mean much to most people, but this scares the hell out of me for several reasons. It's part of a large picture that I'll try to paint here.

Minorities committing crimes remains a hot topic with the media and politicians. Remember the extensive coverage of minority youths in Central Park last year running wild while the police stood idly by? Or the footage of minority rioters and looters in Cincinnati a couple of months ago? How about the coverage of drive by shooting victims in the inner city on local newscasts? And without minorities, the TV show Cops would have been off the air in about 3 weeks.

There are many places on the internet where statistics can be found showing that minorities make up disproportionate amounts of the prison population in the United States. Sociological studies show that minorities don't commit a disproportionate amount of the crime, but no one would know by looking at how over-represented we are in the court and penal systems.

The outcome of the last presidential election revealed that somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of states have laws prohibiting convicted felons from voting. If I have to tell you who the majority of people not allowed to vote because of this is, you haven't been paying attention. People in charge of elections who realized this were able to prevent an awful lot of votes for Al Gore in the last presidential election.

We've been on a kick to build more and more prisons in the last couple of decades, while there has been a push to make more and more crimes punishable by death. Once again, who do you think are the people these movements are designed to affect? This also ties in with the recent Extreme Court decision that authorities can detain or arrest anyone for pretty much anything they want. Now, when racial profiling is factored in, and we realize that people can be pulled over for arousing suspicion just for having a really good tan... I'm not going to suggest that being allowed to arrest people on no grounds is going to give police more opportunity to fabricate or plant evidence in people's vehicles, but....

How does globalization tie in here? Well, consider that as more jobs have become extinct by being sent to other countries, it means that there are people who don't fit into the plans for where this country is going. Many people have been displaced. Even as this country went through unprecedented prosperity, wages lost ground, people were kicked off welfare, and many of the jobs for them were very low-level. If we go into recession, we already have warehouses for those unpleasant people who will be left with nowhere to go and nothing to do: the prisons.

Our prison population is one of the largest in the world, and growing. We stubbornly hold onto imprisoning and killing our own citizens, and we are being singled out by a large part of the rest of the world as barbarians for it, among other reasons. We have an occupant of the White House who has presided over more executions than any other world leader, and no sign that things are going to change any time soon. Molly Ivins was quoted recently saying that one of the reasons Europe abhors our use of the death penalty is that we use the death penalty primarily to punish people for the crime of being poor minorities.

Which brings me back to Ashcroft and his report. In spite of his supposed religious beliefs he is a hard-core death penalty advocate. He fits right in with how this administration thinks we should be doing things. I am disgusted but not surprised that he would make such ridiculous conclusions about the state of the death penalty in regard to race.

And that is the last brush stroke in the picture. By claiming that we have not gone overboard, that is, not reached a limit of acceptability for imprisoning and executing minorities, he is implying that we still have room to go further in that direction. He has not cited any reason to stop, slow down, or change anything, and so we can keep right on the way we are. We can convict and execute even more poor minorities.

Someone who didn't know better would swear this country just doesn't like minorities much at all.
©2001 Isaac Peterson

Regarding The Treatment Of Rove
by Marguerite Chandler

The Democrats and the Press are afraid of Rove. They don't want to start a fight because everyone knows how nasty he is and how nasty the rest of the Republicans are (they impeached the sitting President for a blowjob! Sent Federal employees to shut down the vote counting. The list goes on and on, but this is a much too small space for it all.)

But most of all Rove rode in town with the first appointed dictator the American nation has ever seen, on the bases of a number of conflicts of interest by the Supreme Court.

What they have done is already too extreme. Nothing is or will be too extreme for them now, from that coup d'etat on. Nothing it seems, after that one, is too extreme for them to get away with nary a peep from anyone.

Arrange for the top political advisor, who works out of the White House, to meet lobbyists and the CEO of a company when a merger is pending and said political advisor owns a major chunk of stock in same company? No problem! Piece of cake compared to stealing an election and having no mention made of it.

No one wants to stand up to these people. Though the crimes they have committed in only six months time are googles worse than Al Gore's non-lie about his visit, or not, with a FEMA executive to TX. Or Bill Clinton's blowjob or pardons or Jesse Jackson's child by his mistress.

The Repubs "get" the Dems on non-crimes. But the Dems are paralyzed to stand up to the Repubs on actual ones.

Compare Bill Clinton's pardon of Rich to Bush the senior's pardon of Weinberger! Give me a break. One wasn't even a payoff to speak of - - right, - - money to the Democratic Party or for a Presidential library, if anything.

*The other was a pardon for a crime in which Bush Sr. himself was implicated and the pardon occurred two weeks before the trial was to began. WHEN WEINBERGER HAD EVIDENCE AGAINST BUSH SR. IN THE FORM OF A DIARY AND DIARY ENTRIES HE HAD PROMISED TO TURN OVER*

Now, Clinton is *still being investigated* by the Republicans for a non-criminal offense AT THE SAME TIME THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY LEADER OF THE SENATE IS BULLIED INTO SAYING HE DOESN'T WANT TO MOUNT ANY INVESTIGATIONS AT ALL OF REPUBLICANS.

The price fixing of the oil and gas supply in CA is alone a huge scandal, not to even mention the conflict of interest between W. and the CEO of Enron.

Let alone this business with Rove.

Calling this all a double standard is way too weak.

The reaction by the Press and by the Democrats is called APPEASEMENT. And people would always rather take the easy way out, it seems, in this type of situation, with these types of characters.

This Administration - - Rove, W., Cheney etc. is made up of extremely scary people. (*Kissinger* called Cheney the most ruthless man he has *ever* met.) The White House is filled with the people who hunted President Clinton for years on the flimsiest of evidence and got away with it (Ever check out what was really behind the much touted "Whitewater" scandal? NOTHING.) And tens of millions of public and private monies were spent on that enterprise.

The same weasels who were behind that ignoble purpose are the exact same weasels who have illegitimately taken over the White House. Who are now pompously declaring that it's time now for a new tone. (But that's only a line to preach to Democrats.)

The Dems and Gore pretend to be better than these investigators but they really are just frightened of them. They get off the hook of having to fight them by just saying, "Oh, we are better." But they might as well be playing precisely by Republican dictated talking points. WE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE NO OPPOSITION PARTY. WE MIGHT AS WELL BE A TIN-HORN DICTATORSHIP WITH ONE PARTY.

Perhaps the Democratic leadership are just hoping the Repubs will go away or perhaps they are just waiting for them to hang themselves. However, waiting for them to hang themselves is futile. Meanwhile, while the cowards look on, the Repubs will just hang the country instead.

These vicious Republicans are so seriously scary that no one has the balls to stand up to them. The ridiculous, blatant and outrageous conflict of interest exhibited by the Rove incident and the non-response to it by everyone shows this exactly.

Anthony Lewis in today's Op-ed of the Times said [ordinary citizens] are frightened of George W. Bush.

Well yes, I am.

And what frightens me even more is the deafening silence of the Democrats and of the Press. This silence and the appeasement mentality that goes with it just give the far-right Republicans further permission to steal our country, our democracy, our rights and our money.
©2001 Marguerite Chandler

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Gruppenfuhrer Miller,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the Vidkun Quisling Award for 2001. Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling and last year’s winner Volksjudge Antoni (light-fingers) Scalia.

With your vote to weaken workers safety laws and thereby save your corporate masters billions of dollars, while eliminating useless, worn out workers from corporate responsibility, you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new world.

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala party in das Fuhrer Bunker, formerly the White House on 7-4-2001. We salute you Herr Miller! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

Bush Tax Rebate Scam Exposed
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN - Damn, now we do have a bad situation, and it's mostly because the media have consistently misreported the tax-rebate story.

Word has now filtered through lower-income communities that "everyone is going to get $300 back from the government."

"It's $500 for single moms," a single mother told me, proud to have all the details, "and $600 for married people." Unfortunately, 39 percent of the people in this country will not get the full rebate -- 26 percent (34 million taxpayers) will get nothing at all, and another 13 percent, 17 million, will get only partial rebates.

As usual, those who need it most will get the least -- mostly those with incomes under $25,000. Furthermore, bloodsuckers are out there offering "loans against your tax rebate" at the ever-reasonable 300 percent interest rate. These are loans against money that in most cases will never come. That so many people are looking forward to tax rebates they desperately need but won't get, leads to disappointment, if not heartbreak, and to anger.

Television journalists have taken to referring to the "$300 tax break" without even the cautionary "up to $300 for those who pay above a certain rate." Thus does poor reporting lead to disappointment and bitterness. The working poor, who get the Earned Income Tax Credit, are under the impression that they pay income taxes (they do) and thus qualify for the rebate (they don't). Even those too poor to pay income tax believe the payroll taxes withheld from their paychecks mean they, too, pay federal taxes (they do, and it's often a significant percentage of their incomes).

What this means is the folks who would rush out and spend their tax rebates because "the baby's home and needs shoes," thus stimulating the economy, won't be getting a rebate.

Meanwhile, at the $300 end of the deal, many Democrats are planning to give their checks to causes that have been hurt by Bush policies. Because this idea seems to have sprung up simultaneously in several places and spread like wildfire on the Internet, it's impossible to give attribution for it.

A number of organized groups are pooling their rebates to make such gifts. So far, the leading contenders seem to the Children's Defense Fund (as is only appropriate, since Bush swiped their slogan "Leave no child behind" without ever giving them credit) and various environmental groups.

Meanwhile, Republicans who get the full $300 don't urgently need it either and are likely to save it, thus stimulating the economy even less. This was not what the policy-makers intended (although it's hard to tell, since the Bushies made diametrically opposite claims about the reasons for this tax cut). Neo-Keynesians clearly need to rethink the effects of tax cuts in a society where the economic gap is this big.

Only a tax accountant could love the charts, but if you want to see where you or a lower-income friend ranks on this thing, Citizens for Tax Justice has excellent information, including state-by-state rates on its website www.ctj.org. They report, "Oddly, although most taxpayers in the bottom 60 percent of the income scale will get reduced or zero rebates, the tax bill extends the benefit of the rebate to about 2 million upper-income payers who will not actually benefit from the new 10 percent rate bracket, due to the Alternative Minimum Tax."

Meanwhile, the adventures of our old compadre Karl Rove get stranger and stranger. The Associated Press broke the story of Rove, who at the time owned between $100,000 to $250,000 worth of Intel stock, meeting with the company's chief executive and two lobbyists in March, while Intel pushed for federal approval of a corporate merger. The merger was approved two months later. White House officials said Rove played no part in approving the merger. Rove sold his entire stock portfolio on June 7, AP reports, for between $1 million and $2.5 million, after they had recovered most of their value from a 20 percent drop earlier in the year. Sen. Tom Daschle has announced the Senate probably will not be investigating Rove.

Rove next appears in the decision to end bombing on the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques in 2003. This decision made no one happy, since the Navy needs the bombing range and the Puerto Ricans don't see why they should get bombed for another two years. As to why the president's top political adviser sat in on meetings on what to do about a Navy bombing range -- I don't know, maybe he owned stock in it.

Speaking of matters ethical, also worthy of an investigation is Enron chairman Kenneth Lay's apparent attempt to threaten the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The chairman of FERC says he got a call from Lay, who is probably Bush's largest single contributor, saying that if wanted to keep his job as chairman, he should adopt certain viewpoints.

Now if this were the Clinton administration, and the Rove and Lay incidents had occurred, the Republicans would by now have five congressional committees and two special prosecutors investigating. While I find the current slumberous indifference more restful, I did hear a Democrat say the other day, "You know, Ken Starr could be really useful."

Meanwhile, the special prosecutor in the Henry Cisneros case (HUD secretary '93 to '97, accused of private misconduct long since settled) labors on like Inspector Javert.
©2001 Molly Ivins

The Fourth Of July
By Tally Briggs

I normally love the 4th of July holiday. Gorgeous sunshine, warm breeze, barbeque, baseball, fireworks, and celebrating how lucky we are to have the freedom we do.

But this year, it just doesn’t feel the same.

Yes, there will be days off. There will be baseball and Dodger Dogs, and maybe even Barry Bonds will hit another homerun or two when the Giants meet our Boys In Blue in spectacular Chavez Ravine. There will be barbeque, and swimming. There will even be fireworks. But the warm and fuzzy feeling I normally get, the one that brings a tear to my eye and gets me all choked up, isn’t there.

I know that my freedom has changed and is in danger of disappearing altogether if the Cheney-Bush monster has anything to do with it. Almost eight months have passed and I have witnessed the biggest and most rapid dive this country has taken in my lifetime, and the current appointistration has shamed this nation like never before.

Honest folk were systematically denied the right to vote. People were told they weren’t registered, even though they had their voter registration cards in hand. There were roadblocks in largely black neighborhoods. Polling places ran out of ballots or closed early. There were confusing ballots and I witnessed people across this nation, who did not use these ballots personally, ridicule and malign these people for being confused. There was even a contingent of GOP operatives who were paid to riot, threaten, and do everything in their power to stop a legal recount of votes, breaking the law, then were personally congratulated by Dubya for a job well done. Think about that for a moment – a man who aspires to be president of the free world, actively encouraging illegal, dishonorable, sleazy behavior.

And that was only the beginning.

The pride of our nation, the most hallowed and respected institution in the land, the Justices we designate as "Supreme", broke the law themselves by illegally getting involved with a national election. An act strictly forbidden by the US Constitution, a document they are bound and sworn to uphold, thereby disenfranchising the entire nation by disregarding the votes of the citizens of this once beloved country. Where is my protection by the Fourteenth Amendment? Spock must have been wrong. The needs of the many apparently do not outweigh the needs of the few.

Since that black day of December 12th, 2000, the market went from being somewhat stable apart from the tech sector, to acting like a blind bull in a china shop - afraid of the least clink and clatter. Investor confidence is at an all time low. Thousands of people have lost their jobs, and are soon to lose their homes.

The prime rate has been cut six times in six months. The people who couldn’t afford a house, still can’t because now they don’t have a paycheck, and the people who are trying to live off of their interest since Social Security won’t pay the monthly grocery bill, are losing their interest incomes as well.

There has been outrageous manipulation of the energy markets that has gone almost entirely unchecked. Billions of dollars have been bilked from private citizens just to line the already fat pockets of the very people who swore an oath to protect and serve them.

The ABM treaty has been thrown out with the Kyoto Protocol and the pristine ANWR may soon be little more than a memory.

There have been ethics violations by prominent members of the administration; some might even cry insider trading and other illegal activities that private citizens could face prison terms for if caught. Between Rove (holdings in Intel, Enron and others), O’Neill (Alcoa), and the Anti-Ethics Corruption King - the VP himself, Dick Cheney (Haliburton, with not only his refusal to name the people who met privately with his energy task force, but his constant lies about how Haliburton and its affiliates illegally traded with Iraq.

The media has been guilty of not only complicity in this gross rape of democracy, but blatant lies as well and is no longer to be trusted. I feel as though we need our own modern version of Radio Free Europe.

Will we ever see another presidential election? Will there be election reform that is fair? Will the press ever rise above corporate greed and get back to reporting the truth? Will there be campaign finance reform to the point it truly levels the playing field to the point it doesn’t matter how much money a candidate or political party has access to?

I don’t know. I do know things aren’t the same now. This isn’t the Land of The Free and Home of The Brave anymore.

This 4th of July I’ll barbeque and swim and hopefully watch the fireworks. I’ll have my beer and peanuts and Dodger Dogs and even though he’s on the other team, I’ll be proud to be a part of history if Bonds racks up a few more homers. But I won’t have that warm and fuzzy feeling during the National Anthem before the first pitch is thrown.

Things are different now.
©2001 Tally Briggs ... bardgal@yahoo.com

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of MoPaul.

Won't Get Screwed Again

Sung to the tune of Won't Get Fooled Again"
With apologies to The Who)

(instrumental intro)

They'll be voting in the street
With a pretender to defeat
Disillusioned ex-swing voters will be gone
And the Court that made him win
Won't be of any use to him
And at last we will make right what was wrong

(CHORUS:)
I'm tipping my hat a renewed constitution
Voters bringing George Bush retribution
Smile and grin change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Well I get on my knees and pray
We don't get screwed again

The change it has to come
They've screwed us much too long
We'll be liberated from the Court at last
Cuz the election they arranged
All of the sudden will be changed
And the term of George Bush will be in the past

(CHORUS:)
I'm tipping my hat a renewed constitution
Voters bringing George Bush retribution
Smile and grin change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Well I get on my knees and pray
We don't get screwed again

There'll come a time when they're ruing the day
That they stole an election away
A victory that millions malign
But we know that the hypnotized think it's fine

So the next time there's a vote
Democrats will get to gloat
Bush will be a single-termer like his dad
There'll be nothing up his sleeve
To give his campaign a reprieve
No recounts, Supreme Court, or hanging chad

(CHORUS:)
I'm tipping my hat a renewed constitution
Voters bringing George Bush retribution
Smile and grin change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Well I get on my knees and pray
We don't get screwed again

Meet the new boss
A change from the old boss
New lyrics by Steve Anderson … andersonfolk@home.com