Possibly, the only hope is to build an entirely new news media dedicated to the real journalistic principles of honesty and fairness. That will not be easy and will not be cheap. But it should now be clear what the costs are of doing nothing.
© 2001 Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra stories in the 1980s for The Associated Press and Newsweek

REPORTER IN HOT WATER
By Greg Palast

Mmmmm. Ahhhhh.

In a hot tub somewhere just outside New York on a humid summer night, your correspondent sinks down into the bubbles in the mood for a True Life detective story.

Here's a good one: Four men on a boat, a cruise ship to Bermuda, July 1994. Back on shore they fell ill, one with a fever so fierce his brain was damaged. One died.

By a one-in-a-million happenstance, three of them sought out the same doctor who just happened to have been, 20 years earlier, on the team investigating the hotel in Philadelphia where several members of the American Legion dropped dead from what became known as Legionnaires' disease.

Suspecting a new outbreak, the doctor alerted the US Center for Disease Control, which dispatched helicopters to scour Barbados looking for the disease's source. Ultimately, Dr Joseph Plouffe, famed legionella bug-hunter, boarded the fateful cruise ship, stuck his arm into a hot tub filter and pulled out a stinking gob of live killer bacteria.

No obvious problem with the filter's design: it had its 'NSF approved' sticker from the National Sanitation Foundation. Obviously, Holmes, the ship's owner did not properly clean the filter. Case closed. Not so fast, Watson! Anyone can print up a label with an official stamp of approval. The label could be a fake, a counterfeit, a cheat. And that's exactly what it was - a fraud, according to a New York jury's verdict in the case brought by survivors and victims of the murderous hot tub filter, the Triton-140.

This week lawyers are preparing to argue compensation to be paid. The jury has already hit the manufacturer, Essef Corporation of Ohio and affiliates, with $7 million in punitive damages.

Essef has since been acquired by a large multinational, Pentair Inc of Minneapolis. Essef insists the jury got it wrong and has asked the judge to overturn the verdict.

But here's what the jury heard. Essef's model TR-140 when fitted to a hot bubbling spa, doesn't filter bacteria -- it grows bacteria. The TR-140's internal plumbing could not rinse away the oily gunk that hot tub aficionados lather on to their bodies. And the company knew it. American tort law has a wide open 'discovery' process, the right to dive through an accused corporation's deepest files. In this case, investigators discovered an extraordinary piece of evidence: a movie, starring the filter. Stanley Kubrick it isn't. In 1986 an Essef engineer filmed red dye running through the filter's plastic guts to illustrate that the health product didn't work, couldn't work. It was designed-in death. Hundreds of thousands have been sold.

Did corporate chiefs see the clip? Yes. They used the film to promote a new device they patented to fix the problem. Unfortunately, their new gizmo failed in the field - and to fix the fix would have sliced a couple of dollars off the profit of each Triton. The company returned to the unmodified version, seeming to forget why they had dropped it.

In 1984, fully 10 years before the deaths in the Caribbean, inspectors caught the company slapping NSF stickers on the filters indicating they could be used in spas. But the company persisted - even when, in 1987, inspectors hit them with a second violation for using misleading labels. When asked why, the company's former vice-president, 'Bud' Fredericks, said, 'You don't stop production.'

(Essef, affiliates and lawyers have not returned our several phone calls. Iin court papers they state the product received its safety approvals on the eve of trial - which did not impress the jury.)

Around 1989, the company's filters also failed a test on the filter's 'head'. Rather than toss out the dodgy parts, the company chose the all-American solution: they shipped the parts, all 10,000 units, to Europe.

And in Europe, they made more filters with new 'NSF approved' labels in English and French - and instructions indicating their safety for use in hot tubs. The company's top Belgian executive testified that the NSF stamp made Europeans believe they were buying the 'Rolls Royce of filters'.

But this isn't about hot tubs. It is my excuse to talk about Freedom of Information, corporate cover-ups, Railtrack, investigative reporting and Julia Roberts.

There is a common myth that America, land of the free market cowboys, is the unregulated Wild West of commerce. Not so. The US has some of the toughest regulators of corporate malfeasance on the planet. They're called lawyers. When acting in the public interest they are, as one told the 'killer filter' jury, 'private attorneys general', enforcers, like Superman, of truth, justice and the American Way.

Often working for huge contingencies or court-granted bounties (not permitted in Britain), they front the millions of dollars for experts, investigators and legal teams needed to decode the harmful secrets in the files of an Essef or a British-American Tobacco Company. In the Legionnaire's case, the cruiseship line Celebrity funded the huge effort to get at the truth - for which the jury awarded Celebrity $2.8 million of the $7m in punitive damages from Essef and affiliates.

Punitive damages, unknown in Britain, are the way in which Americans issue exemplary civil fines. Imagine if Railtrack had to face, like Exxon in the Exxon Valdez case, a few billion quid in punitive damages for its errors - it might have focused Railtrak's attention on track repairs before the Paddington rail crash.

Britons sneer at Americans' predilection for lawsuits, yet cheer Julia Roberts when, as Erin Brockovich, a real-life heroine, she uses tort law to bring Pacific Gas and Electric to justice, a real-life villain.

England's chattering classes applaud America's Freedom of Information Act without recognising that US journalists rely far more on documents prised from litigation discovery, a far better way to get the goods than bothering with procedures under our freedom of information law. (The Guardian's exposing BAT's tolerance of contraband cigarette sales came courtesy of documents placed in a special repository in the UK by order of an American judge handling a tobacco class action trial.)

The US tort system of open discovery, contingent fees, class action and punitive damages is aimed at making the truth about dangerous products known to the public. There's no point uncovering the information if Julia Roberts can't say it or the Washington Post can't print it.

And that is where US and British law are mirror opposites. Whereas US tort law is designed to punish silence and reward revelation, British libel laws reward silence and punish publication.

As a result, in Britain, I've discovered that it is too often the investigators of horrors, not the perpetrators, who end up in hot water.
© 2001 Greg Palast is an investigative reporter for London's Sunday paper, The Observer, and BBC TV's Newsnight. Read, view or subscribe to his column at www.GregPalast.com.

If the recommendations of the national commission are implemented, and many of them probably will be, the chances of having a replay of last year's electoral crisis will be greatly diminished. But political crises rarely repeat themselves according to the same script, and the prescriptions offered will do little to address the more subterranean faults in our political life that became visible during and after Election 2000: the alienation and anger of much of the black community; the pitfalls of the Electoral College and the ways in which it skews political campaigns; the high rates of nonvoting, particularly among the poor and less educated; the dangers of partisan control of election administration; the cavalier and disrespectful treatment of voters in many locales; and the absence, as the Supreme Court observed in Bush v. Gore, of a constitutional right to vote for president. If our electoral system is to become, as the commission hopes, "a source of national pride and a model to all the world," a great deal of work remains to be done.
© 2001 Alex Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, is author of "The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.

Was Hanssen A Spy For The Right Wing, Too?

Should the national media ever manage to transcend the current preoccupation with the personal affairs of a certain Congressman, perhaps the time will come when attention turns again to an equally intriguing topic: the twisted politics of confessed F.B.I. traitor Robert P.Hanssen.

Emerging almost unnoticed in recent weeks were three strange but significant stories about the Hanssen case. What they suggest-along with other information unearthed previously about the longtime Soviet spy-is that he may have simultaneously functioned as a right-wing operative at the highest level of American law enforcement. If that sounds outlandish, consider the evidence.

The question of Mr. Hanssen's political affiliations first arose following his arrest, when it became clear that his treason had been motivated by money rather than ideology. He was no leftist but instead, as Newsweek reported in early March, a devout member of the secret, controversial and ultraconservative Catholic lay order known as Opus Dei. Liberal Catholics have frequently accused Opus Dei, which answers directly to the Vatican, of pursuing secular political influence and quashing modern reforms in the Church.

Now it appears that Mr. Hanssen once held a key bureaucratic position from which he may have promoted these objectives. On July 29, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy investigation of his role as a top F.B.I. overseer of domestic counterintelligence operations. From documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, many of which bear his handwritten initials, the Times discovered that Mr. Hanssen spent several years directing the bureau's notorious Reagan-era probes of American liberal and peace organizations. Such groups were deemed inimical to the objectives of the conservatives then in power, who tended to regard dissent over the nuclear-arms race and war in Central America as Soviet-influenced and subversive.

According to the paper, those redacted files refer repeatedly to the bureau's Soviet Analytical Unit, where Mr. Hanssen served as deputy chief. Among the unit's responsibilities was "to digest raw intelligence reports regarding alleged subversion." Its analysis would then be provided to "the White House, Congress, and occasionally, the public."

As later Congressional investigations would show, what this often meant in practice was the harassment and sometimes the smearing of Americans engaged in lawful political activity. Among the many groups under surveillance by the F.B.I. in those days were the Gray Panthers, nuclear-freeze advocates associated with SANE-and the left-leaning Catholic adversaries of Opus Dei who opposed the American-backed repression in Central America.

What the L.A. Times story doesn't explore is how the raw intelligence data reviewed by Mr. Hanssen may have been misused-and whether he was ever in direct contact with anyone at the White House, in Congress or in the news media regarding alleged liberal subversion.

That certainly seems possible in light of another revelation, under the venerable byline of Robert Novak. The conservative columnist admitted on July 12 that Mr. Hanssen had served as his main source for a 1997 column attacking Janet Reno, then the U.S. Attorney General, for supposedly covering up 1996 campaign-finance scandals. Although Mr. Novak still believes that the information offered by Mr. Hanssen was valid, even he cannot help wondering whether Mr. Hanssen was "merely using me to undermine Reno." (Adding another dimension to this curious confession is Mr. Novak's reportedly close relationship with a prominent Washington cleric who works in Opus Dei's offices near the White House.)

Apparently Mr. Hanssen would have been eager to use Mr. Novak against the Clinton administration, if a June 16 cover story published by Insight magazine is to be believed. The author, Paul Rodriguez, obtained numerous e-mails allegedly written by the spy in recent years, some of which include venomous invective against President Clinton and his appointees. The messages are full of speculation about subjects ranging from Mr. Clinton's personal behavior to the Elián González and China fund-raising affairs. One of the Hanssen e-mails concludes sardonically, "I guess from this you can determine that I am not a big fan of Clinton." The article omits the names of the recipients of those messages. Perhaps the magazine was protecting the privacy of innocent persons-or its own sources. It ought to be noted, however, that Insight is a conservative publication, put out by the same outfit that publishes the Washington Times.

All these stories, taken together, are merely pieces of a much larger jigsaw puzzle that may or may not ever be completed in public view. There is considerable irony, of course, in the news that a confessed Soviet agent was responsible for spying on innocent American citizens in the name of patriotic vigilance. But Mr. Hanssen, who avoided the death penalty by agreeing to reveal everything he knows and did, may have some truly troubling stories to tell about the American side of his double life.
©2001 Joe Conason

Quotable Quote

They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicate, for they have no souls ... Sir Edward Coke 1552 - 1634

Character A GOP Harangue

Yesterday, Mrs. Theodore B. Olson apologized. After all, she'd been drinking.
© 2001 Gene Lyons

Gore, Back In The Ring

Poor Al. He is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and yet he never will be.
© 2001 Maureen Dowd

Dred Scott
The Daily Brew

If there is any indisputable fact about the Presidential election that will harden into the granite of history, it is simply that the election was decided not by the voters, but instead by the Supreme Court. Even the most ardent Bush supporter cannot quibble with the reality that, rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Court ended the uncertainty associated with the counting of votes, and in so doing, determined the outcome of the election.

It is this truth, more than the tortured logic of the actual decision, that will mark the five member majority as having authored the perhaps the second most fundamentally anti-democratic example of jurisprudence in the history of the United States. However, calling the decision a blatantly political act that showed contempt for not only the law, but also the very institution of the Court itself, may miss the point. Perhaps these five members of the Supreme Court didn't merely set out to frustrate of the will of the electorate for partisan purposes. Instead, perhaps these five members were settling a long standing score, a grudge against democracy dating back to the election of 1860. For if Bush v. Gore was the second most poorly reasoned and blatantly political decision in the Court's history, the election of 1860 was a direct repudiation of the first.

In the early 1840s, Dred Scott, the slave of a U.S. Army doctor from Missouri, had accompanied his master to different army posts in the United States and the western territories. Most of the northern states had laws offering freedom to slaves who entered accompanied by their masters. Additionally, in the Missouri Compromise, Congress had prohibited slavery in the territories north of the southern boundary of Missouri. Because he had spent two years in a free state and a free territory, Dred Scott, backed by abolitionists, sued for his freedom in 1846. In 1856, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and on March 6, 1857, nine justices filed into the courtroom in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. They were lead by Chief Justice Taney, who then read the infamous Scott v. Sandford decision. Just as the court's decision in Bush v. Gore frustrated the fundamental bedrock of democracy, the conduct of fair and free elections, Taney's decision in Dred Scott frustrated the fundamental bedrock of liberty, the recognition that people are not, and cannot be, property.

The court had ruled that no black man, free or slave, was a U.S. citizen; and therefore "had no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Accordingly, a black man had no right to sue in federal court, and Dred Scott was forever condemned to slavery. The Court went further, though, ruling that the Congress never had the right to ban slavery in the newly settled Territories, because the Constitution protected people from being deprived of life, liberty, or property, and slaves were property.

The Supreme Court had sought to end, for once and for all, the contoversy surrounding slavery in the growing nation. For as both Northerners and Southerners knew, with respect to slavery, as the Territories went, so went the Nation. The Court did so by appeasing the South, a majority of whose great-grandchildren would one day support George Bush, at the expense of the North, a majority of whose great-grandchildren would one day support Al Gore. In so doing, they seemingly institutionalized slavery as a permanent feature of the Union, and the status of blacks as property. As they would again with the election of Bush, the white men of the South rejoiced at the Dred Scott decision, as their economic fortunes had been built directly on slavery. Abolitionists in the North, outraged by the Court's holding in Dred Scott, seemingly had little recourse. At least not until the election of 1860.

Leading up to the election of 1860, the editors of the Atlantic Monthly were perhaps too prescient in reporting "the Slave-System is one of those fearful blunders in political economy which are sure, sooner or later, to work their own retribution." At the same time, the Atlantic made plain that the 1860 election was a contest to undo the immorality hoisted upon America by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott:

"Whatever be the effect of slavery upon the States where it exists, there can be no doubt that its moral influence upon the North has been most disastrous. It has compelled our politicians into that first fatal compromise with their moral instincts and hereditary principles which makes all consequent ones easy; it has accustomed us to makeshifts instead of statesmanship, to subterfuge instead of policy, to party-platforms for opinions, and to a defiance of the public sentiment of the civilized world for patriotism. We have been asked to admit, first, that it was a necessary evil; then that it was a good both to master and slave; then that it was the corner-stone of free institutions; then that it was a system divinely instituted under the Old Law and sanctioned under the New. With a representation, three-fifths of it based on the assumption that negroes are men, the South turns upon us and insists on our acknowledging that they are things. After compelling her Northern allies to pronounce the "free and equal" clause of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence (because it stood in the way of enslaving men) a manifest absurdity, she has declared, through the Supreme Court of the United States, that negroes are not men in the ordinary meaning of the word. To eat dirt is bad enough, but to find that we have eaten more than was necessary may chance to give us an indigestion. The slaveholding interest has gone on step by step, forcing concession after concession, till it needs but little to secure it forever in the political supremacy of the country. Yield to its latest demand,--let it mould the evil destiny of the Territories,--and the thing is done past recall. The next Presidential Election is to say Yes or No".

Republican partisans still overjoyed with the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, particularly those in the South, would do well to remember the fallout of the Dred Scott decision. The Supreme Court had hoped they would end the controversy. Instead, Dred Scott simply fanned the flames of abolitionism. What at the time appeared to be the ultimate victory of slavery, would in the end cripple their cause. In the 1860 presidential election, Northern progressives, the abolitionists, repudiated the court, soundly electing Abraham Lincoln President. Days before Lincoln was to be sworn into office, the South suceeded from the Union. Within months, the Nation was plunged into the bloodiest and costliest war in its history, a war that ultimately decimated the South.

Perhaps Bush v. Gore will have a similar effect on today's progressives. Still, if progressives manage to repudiate the Court in the next Presidential election, I rather doubt that the protégé's of Southern sucessionists, the Republican "bourgeois rioters" who stormed of the Miami-Dade vote-counting room, will follow in their great grandfather's footsteps. Unlike their slaveholding forefathers, I suspect they haven't the courage for a real fight.
© 2001 The Daily Brew

DeLay Sock Puppet Reveals Opposition To Stem Cell Research
By Eric Pianin

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday declared his opposition to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, joining a chorus of conservative leaders attempting to pressure President Bush to their side on an issue that has sorely divided their party.

Hastert has held back for weeks while Bush has agonized over the issue and has come under mounting pressure from other GOP congressional leaders, antiabortion forces and even Pope John Paul II, who argued that the creation of human embryos for stem cell research is equivalent to infanticide.

Citing his "pro-life" philosophy, Hastert said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "I don't think at this point there ought to be federal funding, but I want to look at all the debate before I make solid that decision."

As Congress begins a final busy week of activity before the August recess, Hastert said he will push for passage of an energy package including Bush's controversial plan for drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He said he is still hoping to bring up patients' bill of rights legislation, provided the White House and House members can work out stark differences in two competing proposals.

Administration officials and Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.), chief sponsor of the bill closest to the one adopted in the Senate, are trying to settle differences over expanding the rights of patients to sue health maintenance organizations and insurance companies over treatment decisions that result in injury or death.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson told "Fox News Sunday" that the White House was just six to 10 votes short of what it needed to defeat Norwood's bill and to push through a more restrictive version favored by Bush.

Hastert's comments on stem cell research present additional problems for the White House, which already is feeling intense cross-pressures as the president tried to define a policy on whether the government should help pay for research using the medically promising but ethically controversial cells.

Stem cells are basic cells theoretically capable of developing into any type of tissue, which may prove useful in treating diseases such as Parkinson's or diabetes. Scientists have retrieved stem cells from adults, but many say embryonic stem cells are more versatile and therefore more promising.

Last week, more than 200 House members -- including 40 Republicans -- sent a letter to Bush urging him to support federal funding of the research, saying, "You have the lives of millions of our -- and your -- constituents in your hands."

Fifty-nine senators have also written to Bush in support of the research. A few prominent conservatives, including Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), have argued in support of stem cell research, saying the cells hold such promise it would be anti-life not to pursue it.

However, Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, has expressed concern that funding embryonic stem cell research would cost the president Catholic votes.

Hastert said, "I personally am pro-life, [and] I think . . . taking and killing those embryos certainly doesn't go along with that sanctity of life issue that I think is important."

As for efforts to reform laws regulating health maintenance organizations, Hastert said that "progress is being made" in reconciling the differences in the competing bills and suggested that he may delay the vote until September if negotiators need time.

"Why stop that process now when you're making progress?" he said. "We think progress is being made. I hope we can move the bill next week."

Like the patient protections approved by the Democrat-led Senate in June over White House objections, the far-reaching measure proposed by Norwood and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) would clear the way for injured patients to sue and win jury awards of up to $5 million in federal court and unlimited damages in state court.

Bush has threatened to veto the measure, warning it would drive up the cost of health care and force millions of Americans into the ranks of the uninsured.

Late last week, Bush began to personally pressure House Republicans to adopt the more limited protections he favors, a day after House leaders postponed a vote on the issue to avert a GOP defeat. The administration is backing an alternative authored by Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.).

"We need to get a bill that the president will sign," Hastert said.

Hastert also hinted that the Republicans eventually may have to renege on their pledge to never again use Medicare trust fund surpluses to cover the government's daily operating expenses. For the past two years, the Republicans have made political hay by promising voters to "lock away" surpluses in the Social Security and Medicare programs. But the newly passed tax cut and a downturn in the economy have begun to erode long-term surplus forecasts, making it less likely that the Republicans will be able to keep their promise on Medicare.

Whether the Republicans can keep that pledge beginning next year "is debatable," Hastert said, adding, "We're trying to stay out of it."
© 2001 Eric Pianin

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Propaganda Ansager Olson,

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.

Without your help shilling for us, spinning the truth, telling out right lies and ignoring the real news, holding onto power after our Coup D' Etat would have been impossible. With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Media Whores," you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account.

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala celebration in der Wolf's Lair (formerly Rancho de Bimbo) on 9-03-2001. We salute you Frau Olson! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

GOP Launches 'Winning Women' Campaign
Molly Ivins

AUSTIN -- Gee, how nice. The Republicans are mounting a big campaign to win women over to their cause. The campaign is called "Winning Women," and The New York Times says they're going to spend millions on us. Take off your aprons, girls, and get your hair out of those pincurls -- we have a new beau. The GOP is coming to woo us.

If I may offer our new suitor a little advice: Don't send candy, don't send flowers. Here are a few things we could use.

One of the most notable deformities in our country is the utter failure of government to respond to the fact that women work. The GOP is funded by businesspeople who won't even think about a six-month paid maternity leave, as is common in Europe, or federal funding for child care. There's a weird Republican schizophrenia: They want welfare mothers to work and working mothers to stay home. Among the Republican women we see most -- who are more often the wives of, rather than senators or representatives -- there is some kind of weird time warp, in which the women uniformly resemble Beaver's mom, Mrs. Cleaver, who always wore pearls and high heels to vacuum.

An actual woman is heading "Winning Women," and she is a suburban mom. Nothing wrong with suburban moms -- in fact a splendid group -- but they are not most of us. According to the last census, the two-parent family with a stay-at-home mom is increasingly rare and not likely to be urgently in need of government help. But I guess they vote more than working moms, who are really busy and really tired.

Here are some other ways government could help women. A lot us of work in factories, and a lot of us do office work. Jobs like data entry, not to mention tougher physical factory work, involve repetitive motion. This leads to everything from chronic back problems to carpal tunnel syndrome.

On his first day in office, President Bush put a plan to deal with repetitive stress injuries on hold. It was then killed by the Republicans in Congress in March. While it was very nice of Bush to appoint an actual woman, Elaine Chao, secretary of labor, it would be even nicer if the hearings the Labor Department is currently holding on repetitive stress were not so painfully obviously stacked in favor of business. I especially liked the doctor who testified that back pain is more likely to be caused by stress, anxiety and depression than heavy lifting.

"It is better to stay at work with a little pain than to adopt a lifestyle of disability," said this stoic. Another doctor expressed serious doubt that ergonomic injuries exist at all. The hearings are so one-sided that the one held at Stanford University Monday was picketed by the AFL-CIO. As long as the GOP is wooing us, it might take notice that we are really tired of being told it's all in our heads. Our heads work fine, thanks -- it's the backs and wrists and feet that hurt.

Another thing that would be helpful to women is universal health insurance. If there's one thing worse than breast cancer, it's having breast cancer and no medical insurance. In Texas, women who have survived breast cancer have formed an organization to help women without insurance (www.texaswings.org), but these are slow, laborious, individual campaigns and can only cover a few dozen cases. And that's just one form of cancer, and cancer is just one disease. We could really use some help on this issue.

And then, just to add an old favorite to the list, perhaps the GOP has noticed that wage discrimination has not disappeared. As difficult as it is to bring a class-action suit to court these days and as long as it takes to try it, women are still winning after proving, yet again, they are underpaid compared to men doing the same work.

Another item that would help working women is increasing the pathetically small number of people doing workplace inspections for health and safety conditions. Sweatshops did not go out with corsets: Many women still work in them.

An increase in the minimum wage would also help women even more than it would men. And as long as we're dreaming, why not a living wage? Then we might be able to afford decent housing, and speaking of housing, if the GOP would quit cutting the funding for it, there might actually be some affordable housing.

So, GOP, it's swell that you propose to serenade us, perhaps in barbershop quartet harmony. But forget the candy and flowers. As Eliza Doolittle sang, "Show Me."
© 2001 Molly Ivins

San Francisco And The Enemy Within?
By Tally Briggs

I can see why manic-depressives need medication. The ultra-high/devastatingly-low experiences I can't do everyday. Hell, it was hard enough going through Act III, Scene ii of Romeo and Juliet: Iím married to the best guy on earth and tonight he is all mine! What??? He just killed my cousin and he is BANISHED? At least I had a paycheck, an amazing Romeo, and the best writing in the history of the theatre to help balance the mood-swings. My recent trip to the Bay Area was a bit of a high-low roller coaster and might have been eased with a bit of lithium.

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to meet and pal around San Francisco with two of my favorite writers and consummate gentlemen, Isaac Peterson, and Jim Higdon. (Thank the Goddess for them, or it would have been utterly depressing!) They were sweet enough to invite me up to a speaking engagement of Vincent Bugliosiís at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. Even though I couldn't really afford it, I knew I'd kick myself endlessly and have deep regrets if I passed this up, besides, if just one person pays me to write, it's a business trip, right? If only... someday.

I can't tell you how excited I was to have this opportunity! Meeting two other writers who I have been applauding over endless emails, and to get a chance to hear one of the best prosecutors in the country speak about what I consider the greatest crime in the history of the United States, the theft of a presidential election, was like a dream come true. I was full of boundless hope.

The first day and a half were amazing. Isaac and I met at the airport and shared a ride into the city and were even fortunate enough to be staying mere blocks from each other just off Union Square. Isaac is a gentle giant of a man, very soft-spoken and determined, full of passion. He misses his new girlfriend who is in Australia visiting her family, very much. It was so wonderful to hear him talk of her. Jim Higdon is the very definition of a Bay Area Liberal. Cute, tan, sexy grayish hair, lean, kid at heart, fellow thespian, knows and is proud of his California wine heritage.

The first night we drove down to Jim's neck-o-the-bay for dinner. We had a great time along with fabulous food! I confess I had to steal Isaac's camera at one point after he snapped a photo of me in my white cotton Gap top, sans bra, (hey, they're ok for a gal my age!), attempting to club soda a bit of sauce off my left breast. No wet-tee-shirt action here guys! Fortunately, he managed to grab the wrong camera out of my purse. (Both identical Kodak disposables.) So I apparently have the photo in question, yet to be developed.

All of us met early the next morning to show Isaac the city, since he'd never been there before. We walked from Union Square down through China Town, to Pier 39, snacking on shellfish cocktails and chowder along Fishermanís Wharf, then down to Ghirardelli Square for lunch, (such touristas!) hanging out, and talking politics. I must say it felt like we were making history, sort of like George Bernard Shaw sitting at the Museum pub in London conversing with Karl Marx, or something like that.

Jim, having joined Voter March West, and being seen as the charismatic, witty, and relaxed speaker that he is, was set to chair the event, which included other speakers in addition to Mr. Bugliosi. (Isaac, having joined Voter March in Minneapolis, is already on the Board of Directors! Go Isaac!) The Amazing Mr. Higdon! He even tried to get us into the dinner that was scheduled with Bugliosi and some of the folks from Voter March. Well, Vincent was running late, and didnít make dinner, which was a shame, but didn't stop us from enjoying a great little Italian Trattoria.

We arrived at the theatre about thirty minutes before the event was scheduled to begin so Jim could get squared away. The Grand Lake Theatre, built in 1926 originally as a Vaudeville and silent movie house, has breathtaking art-deco fixtures and retains the original orchestra pit. It even has that wonderful musty smell of dusty curtains and aging wood. There is nothing like the smell of a theatre.

The excitement in the air was palpable. There were tables set up in the lobby with information on Voter March, and one with a great assortment of bumper stickers ranging from 'I Will Never Get Over It' to 'I'm a Pagan and I Vote'. Ha ha. We took our seats and anxiously waited for the event to begin.

Within a matter of moments, all my hopes and optimism were extinguished like the day I learned from my best friend there was no Santa Clause. From the very moment the first speaker reached the microphone after Jim's introduction, things went straight to hell. I felt like I was in a low rent comedy club on open mic amateur night, with a bunch of drunken hecklers in the crowd.

I have never seen such blatant disrespect in my life. Every speaker had something valid to say, but there were many who weren't listening. There were screams and shouts from the audience of every kind, constantly interrupting. Democrats blaming the Greens and Ralph Nader's ego. The Greens and Independents blaming Al Gore for not using Clinton and running on his own legacy. It's your fault! No, it's your fault! It was like being in a room with a bunch of children fighting over who broke the lamp. The anger and resentment was such that all I wanted to do was get on the next flight back to Burbank. I could totally see how the Students for a Democratic Society disbanded after the other liberal fringe groups at the time shouted them down. Apparently we've learned nothing in the art of how to get along and work together. At least they were a bit kinder to Mr. Bugliosi. But I was so disheartened! I didnít even have the stomach to wait in line to get some copies of The Betrayal of America signed. I just wanted to go.

Isaac was much braver and far more tolerant than I to wait in line to speak to Bugilosi. Isaac is a man of infinite patience. I knew it would have fed my anger and disappointment even further to be around the crowd. Not to mention after seven years working at Disneyland, I don't do crowds of any kind well, so I was content to wait in the darkness of the back of the house. But it was wonderful to see Isaac in his element, towering over everyone and smiling, and finally getting to speak to The Man himself. Jim Higdon, who is a fellow actor, saw and felt my pain, and equated it a bit to us being in a theatre, which somehow deep down is our Temple, which is entirely true but it was also much more than that.

I saw exactly how fractured and scattered we are. How unfocused. There is so much finger-pointing going on, so much blame for what happened, that no one is looking at what to do now, and I think that is what the GOP is counting on.

There were many factors that led to the sinking of the Titanic, just as there were many factors that enabled the pResidency to be handed to Bush. But the main factor, or our iceberg if you will, was the disenfranchisement of the nation by the Felonious Supreme Court Five. Many people, including Bugliosi, in my opinion, misstate that they negated only the 50 million people who voted for Al Gore. They did much more than that. They negated everyoneís vote, including those who voted for Bush, Nader, Buchanan, et al, by being the only ones whose vote did count. Everyone can scream about Gore and Nader all they want, but without the illegal intervention of the United States Supreme Court, Al would be in the Oval Office, and most of the country, no, the World, knows it.

It is time to get our proverbial act together. We must focus! We are set on self-destruct and it couldnít make the far right-wing nut jobs happier. We have to stop the in-fighting. We not only need to come together and build a better ship, we have to build the best and make our vision sharp enough to steer clear of not only the iceberg, but the thousand other details that put Bush in the White House. I learned some things on this trip and believe me, the iceberg and its children are getting more powerful every day. Haven't we witnessed how they can mobilize into a rioting mob at a moment's notice?

There are many, many changes that need to be made. Yes, the Electoral College needs to be abolished, but for now, we have to make sure the Rocks and Coyote states along with the rest of the country do not get any more faux felon lists, and bogus road blocks. Until the rules change, we must make the best of them. Yes, we need instant run-off elections. But we do not have them now, and until we do, we need every candidate and supporter to check their egos and ideologies at the door, and in the event of a close election, get behind whoever turns out to be the next Big Dog. We have to insist on the likes of Katherine Harris not continuing to successfully disenfranchise all but the Republican votes. Don't think for a minute that she's not trying to open a nation wide franchise.

We must be ruthless in making sure everyone's voice be heard and everyone's vote be counted. If we don't, and continue the in-fighting, back biting, whining, and blaming, then we are going to be subjected to another four more years of Dubya, or worse. There is much work to be done, but we all have to move forward together, in the same direction. Compromises must be made on all sides or we will stay mired in the quicksand we have been unwittingly placed. We must keep the lines of communication open and recognize propaganda for what it is. With the death of The Fairness Doctrine, we can no longer trust the media to tell the truth and get the word out. As we know, and they have proven time and again, they are already on the enemy payroll.

We are not the enemy. It is time to come together, and move beyond Nader and Gore. As good points as either have from whatever prospective you see it from, there is far too much damage there to be of use to us now. It's time to cut bait. If we hang on to either of these it will only act as a cancer and eat away at whatever body politic is left, and kill us outright. This is what the Right is betting on. If we succumb to our own fracturing self-destructive nature, and refuse to heal it ourselves by coming together, then they will win, and Devil Spawn Dubya will be locked in for as long as they choose to keep him there.

There is only one way to get the government back before it is completely reshaped in the Far Right Wingís image, and that is to fire them all, while we still have a right to vote, and before the Felonious Five take that privilege away permanently.

A hero will rise, and we have to be ready and focused enough to recognize and support them when they do.

To be able to return to the west side of the bay with the boys was a very welcome moment, but all in all, it was a lesson well learned. I just hope I am not the only one who sees it.
© 2001 Tally Briggs

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Jeff Stahler

Karl Rove

Sung to the tune of "China Grove
With apologies to The Doobie Brothers

(instrumental intro)

The Bush son f*cks up,
Though this creep now wears the crown,
Shrub cannot act alone,
As his spokesmen prep him for another day.
Tells him to stay at home.

These creeps who stole the crown are strange.
But they're proud of this man's name...
They're talkin' about Karl Rove.
(Talkin' about Karl Rove)
Karl Rove... Karl Rove... oh, that Karl Rove.

Rove's his teacher and a creature of mud, from Austin.
Architect of the Bush crown.
When the gossip gets to flying, he'll just start lyin'
When the Son goes falling down.
They say that Bush Daddy's big name
Is what kept this jerk in the game...

We're talkin' about Karl Rove.
(Talkin' about Karl Rove)
Karl Rove... Karl Rove... oh, that Karl Rove.

(instrumental break)

When we say, Bush hears Karl Rove's drumming,
We mean right wing radical views.
Dubya and his cronies have umbilical cords.
What they've done, we hear, is music to the Right.

(piano riff)

And though Bush was head of the Lone Star State
Only the rich got care.
They'll just keep on looking for their feast.

(instrumental break)

They're talkin' about Karl Rove.
(Talkin' about Karl Rove)
Karl Rove... Karl Rove... oh, that Karl Rove.
New lyrics by WK Tong

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." ... Edmund Burke

SUPPORT THE OREGON DEMOCRATS' PROPOSAL TO IMPEACH THE FELONIOUS FIVE!

Here's what you can do to help:

1. Write your members of Congress and urge them to support the Democratic Party of Oregon's resolution.

2. Contact your local and/or state Democratic Party office urging them to also support the resolution.

3. Contribute to the Democratic Party of Oregon. We plan to continue to promote this resolution and your contribution, no matter how small, will help us in this fight for democracy. Click on Democratic Party of Oregon to send your support today!

Supreme Injustice
by STEVE COBBLE

Lest we forget--just over six months ago, the Rehnquist Court stole an election in broad daylight. In fear of the truth, the Scalia Five intervened to block all votes from being counted, an action "unprecedented" (both historically and judicially) in US history. Though the June 12 "anniversary" went unnoticed by the media, we must never forget.

Was it the worst Supreme Court decision in US history, as American University Constitutional scholar Jamin Raskin has suggested? Considering that Raskin is a staunch civil rights advocate, the very thought that he would rank Bush v. Gore lower than both the Dred Scott and Plessy rulings is instructive. Nor does Raskin stand alone in his opinion of this judicial coup.

Justice John Paul Stevens: "One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. I respectfully dissent."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent." And related is the unsigned per curiam decision of the Scalia 5, a transparent attempt to try to avoid history's scarlet letter.

Hendrik Hertzberg, former presidential speechwriter: "The election of 2000 was not stolen. It was expropriated."

David Kairys, Temple University: "We had a constitutional crisis, and it was Bush v. Gore. History will not be kind."

Suzanna Sherry, Vanderbilt University: "There is really very little way to reconcile this opinion other than that they wanted Bush to win."

Jeffrey Rosen, legal scholar: "They have...made it impossible for citizens of the United States to sustain any kind of faith in the rule of law as something larger than the self-interested political preferences of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O'Connor."

Randall Kennedy, Harvard University: "But we should also insist that there be no confirmation for Scalia-like champions of the right-wing agenda. The Supreme Court has hurt its own reputation by wrongly intervening to ensure the victory of George W. Bush. Those who abhor what the Court did should say so and say so loudly and clearly."

Jesse Jackson and John Sweeney: "But if it comes down for justices to the 14th amendment and the promise of equal protection, one can only hope for the sake of the country that they consider how not counting all the votes mirrors too closely the habits of heart and mind that brought us slavery and segregation--the original sins of our nation that the equal protection clause sought to repair."

And, of course, Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of several bestselling true-crime books, in The Betrayal of America: ". . . the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law.... [The Court searched] mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their choice for president, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally settling, in their judicial coup d'État, on the untenable argument that there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause..."

Recent polls indicate the public's growing dissatisfaction with the results of the Scalia Five's decision. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and Princeton Survey Research Associates (June 13-17) showed George W. Bush's job approval rating at just 50 percent, down six points from March; the New York Times survey with CBS News (June 14-18) put the rating at 53 percent, down seven points from March. And Democracy Corps's Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll (June 11-13) found that 48 percent of likely voters think the nation is currently on the "wrong track." Perhaps most tellingly, 25 percent of voters in the Democracy Corps poll said that the phrase "not really elected President" describes Bush "very well," with another 15 percent saying that it describes him "well"--in other words, six months after the Scalia Five coup, 40 percent of likely voters still believe Bush was not really elected President.

What then, is to be done?

The least we can do is know our own history, and to understand that what the Injustices did was an insult to the dreams and ideals of Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge and Jefferson and Paine, Gettsyburg and Lincoln and Douglass, Selma and King, Seneca Falls and Anthony, Delano and Chavez, Flint and Debs and Lewis. We can bear witness to injustice, in the nonviolent protest tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, King, Havel, Robinson, Chavez.

The Scalia Five's judicial coup came down on the second Tuesday last December. So, on the second Tuesday of July, July 10, 2001, the Tuesday after the Pro-Democracy Convention in Philadelphia, the Tuesday between Independence Day and Bastille Day, the Institute for Policy Studies and friends are calling for a peaceful, nonviolent vigil at the Supreme Court building, at noon.

On July 10--and each Tuesday at noon from then on--let's gather at the scene of the crime, and bear witness to the truth. The Scalia Five won't be there; but we should be.

Bring a candle or a bell, like the Czechs a decade ago. Bring a copy of the Voters' Bill of Rights, or the US Constitution. Send an e-mail to all your friends, with your favorite quote from this list. Bring Pablo Neruda's and Marge Piercy's poems. Bring the next generation, so they will never forget. Bring your commitment to restore, rebuild, and expand American democracy. The Supreme Court cheated. Democracy lost. For now.
©2001 STEVE COBBLE

Send $100 or $1000 to The Heritage Foundation or Other Right-Wing Groups

This ultra-conservative group needs donations! Lend them a helping hand by sending them a few $100 or $1000 bills ... Confederate ones! Click here to print or download the bills. Send them to other right-wing groups as well!

And if you still want to annoy the Heritage Foundation, you can always go to their online donation form as soon as you try to leave the page, a pop-up window appears asking why you decided not to donate. Give them an explanation, but remember to be polite!

TO OUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

We, the undersigned voters, know that our cherished democracy is endangered from within by the grave and potentially fatal flaws in our voting systems exposed by the Presidential Election of 2000.

As our elected representatives, you have the duty, the opportunity, and the privilege to correct these flaws and to restore fair and honest elections throughout our nation. To this end, we charge you to construct and pass a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS, which shall include:

Strict enforcement and extension of the Voting Rights Act to prevent the disenfranchisement of voters and require full investigation and criminal prosecution of any offenders;

Standardized, easily understandable federal election ballots

Funding to replace old and unreliable voting machines to ensure that every vote is counted fairly and accurately

Genuine campaign finance reform that bans campaign contributions from special interests

Replacement of the Electoral College with a majority-rule election, or substantial reform of the Electoral College to allow for proportional representation

Measures to increase voter participation by eliminating bureaucratic hurdles to voter registration and turnout, including language barriers, physical barriers, archaic equipment, and lack of resources

Enactment and enforcement of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS will restore trust in our government and encourage participation in our democratic processes. The linchpin of a democracy is the process by which we select our representatives and leaders. The right to vote is our defining right as citizens of this nation. We call upon our elected representatives to protect our Constitution from abusive exercise of government power by enacting a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

We pledge our full and constant support for enactment of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

A Note of Protest:

It is likely that 50% of the U.S. population is strongly dissatisfied with the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the office of President. There are three likely reasons:
1. Bush won the election under questionable circumstances;
2. Bush has espoused a reactionary platform that places him far to the right of mainstream America;
3. Bush has demonstrated none of the intellectual attributes expected of a president.

In the interest of democracy, one could discredit election gripes (point number one) as being unfair to our longstanding electoral college process.. Also, one might disregard Bush’s agenda (point number two) because the hallmark of the United States Constitution is tolerance for divergent political and moral beliefs.

However, point number three leads to a more egregious problem, namely that a rather anonymous man, with no distinguishing ambition or vision has, by virtue of family wealth and connection, been installed as President of the United States. Even the most cursory glance at George W. Bush’s history and character builds a strong case for charges of nepotism and cronyism. Such a glaring display of favoritism, to benefit an individual with no considerable talent, runs counter to the spirit of competition and fair play that has driven the engine of American capitalism for more than two hundred years.

There is a way to tangibly and immediately raise a voice in protest of George W. Bush as President. For the remainder of his term, conscientious Americans should simply write "George W. Bush is an Idiot" on all U.S. currency that passes through their hands.

This protest has already begun. The first bills were marked and spent in San Francisco as of January 26, 2001. What is important, though, is to not only begin marking all currency (and to continue the effort throughout the Bush presidency), but to forward this memo as much as possible so as to replicate the message throughout our money supply.

In an effort to mark money more industriously, many of us have ordered a BUSH IS A FRAUD rubber stamp; these self-inking rubber stamps are useful for marking the "Fraud" message in red ink.

Make your voice heard,
Steven Capozzola
San Francisco, California