HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
THE TORTURE-IRAQ CONNECTION
Release of the Bush administration's memos justifying "enhanced interrogation" techniques such as waterboarding has provoked considerable chatter among the pundit and political class. Right-wingers make the astonishing claim that releasing the memos has endangered U. S. national security. We hear the argument that it would be just a terrible precedent to prosecute officials from previous administrations for acting in "good faith" to protect the country. What they're saying is that criminals, if they're high enough in the government, should get a free pass.
Torture is contrary to everything we're supposed to represent. When we torture it takes away any credibility we have in arguing for human rights in repressive regimes around the world. It means that our enemies can torture and we really can't say much about it. The fact that torture does not elicit reliable information is another point, but certainly not the most important argument. In this commentary Frank Rich points out that the Bush administration was far less interested in protecting the country than in finding some justification for their filthy war in Iraq. The column is at www.nytimes.com:
Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.
Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
Monday, April 13, 2009
HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
CALIFORNIA'S ANTI-WORKER EDD
Think you have a social safety net if you lose your job in California? It's not necessarily so. Even if you should easily qualify for unemployment benefits, it becomes an onerous process to get the benefits. California's Employment Development Department in recent years has become decidedly anti-worker.
For instance, say that you begin some kind of job training. That can disqualify you for unemployment benefits. If you sign on the wrong line and say that you are starting training, you have to stay home for an "interview" by someone from EDD.
Even initial filing can be be a miserable process. If you try to call on the phone, you will most likely get a recorded message stating that EDD is too busy. They then summarily hang up on you.
If you weren't laid off, but lost your job for some other reason, you have to stay home for an "interview." They can find a myriad number of reasons to "interview" you these days, it seems, to try to disqualify you from unemployment.
It's not that unemployment is much of a safety net anyway. Most people would have a very difficult time surviving on unemployment for very long. I know the right-wing argument is that people have to get "incentives" to work, but what if there are no jobs?
Another thing that really irritates me about EDD is that they plaster your full Social Security number on forms. In an age where identity theft is a major problem, and Social Security numbers are a major part of identity theft, that seems highly irresponsible.
It's also mystifying that in age of the Internet that you can't file "continuing claim" forms online. You have to deal with a paper form (assuming they aren't holding that for an "interview.") You can file taxes online, pay bills online, renew your car registration online, so why can't you file continuing unemployment claims online?
Once we get rid of our current incompetent Republican governor I hope that EDD will undergo some reforms to make it sensitive to the needs of the unemployed.
CALIFORNIA'S ANTI-WORKER EDD
Think you have a social safety net if you lose your job in California? It's not necessarily so. Even if you should easily qualify for unemployment benefits, it becomes an onerous process to get the benefits. California's Employment Development Department in recent years has become decidedly anti-worker.
For instance, say that you begin some kind of job training. That can disqualify you for unemployment benefits. If you sign on the wrong line and say that you are starting training, you have to stay home for an "interview" by someone from EDD.
Even initial filing can be be a miserable process. If you try to call on the phone, you will most likely get a recorded message stating that EDD is too busy. They then summarily hang up on you.
If you weren't laid off, but lost your job for some other reason, you have to stay home for an "interview." They can find a myriad number of reasons to "interview" you these days, it seems, to try to disqualify you from unemployment.
It's not that unemployment is much of a safety net anyway. Most people would have a very difficult time surviving on unemployment for very long. I know the right-wing argument is that people have to get "incentives" to work, but what if there are no jobs?
Another thing that really irritates me about EDD is that they plaster your full Social Security number on forms. In an age where identity theft is a major problem, and Social Security numbers are a major part of identity theft, that seems highly irresponsible.
It's also mystifying that in age of the Internet that you can't file "continuing claim" forms online. You have to deal with a paper form (assuming they aren't holding that for an "interview.") You can file taxes online, pay bills online, renew your car registration online, so why can't you file continuing unemployment claims online?
Once we get rid of our current incompetent Republican governor I hope that EDD will undergo some reforms to make it sensitive to the needs of the unemployed.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
WORKER SOLIDARITY
Merle Haggard recorded a song called "The Workin' Man Can't Get Nowhere Today," and that's truer now than when Hag recorded it. With right wing dominance in the political and corporate culture there has been an assault on working people since Ronald Reagan strode into the White House in 1981. While the rich and their lackeys have done very well, wages and benefits for working people have stagnated or actually declined. Now, after the corrupt and incompetent administration of George W. Bush, we see the bitter fruits of right wing policies in their full hideous display.
Martin Luther King was killed 41 years ago. Martin Luther King was in Memphis, Tennessee, to lend support to striking sanitation workers. We can acknowledge and support Doctor King's legacy by standing up for working people once again. This commentary by Robyn E. Blumner is at www.commondreams.org:
One of the great labor speeches in American history is King's 1961 address to the AFL-CIO. In it King reflected on the grand work of the labor movement. He said that in response to the "organized misery" of sweatshops and the notion that capital may "act without restraints and without conscience," the worker unionized and by doing so had "constructed the means by which a fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him."
How sad that in the intervening years King's message to workers has been lost. Worker solidarity has given way to an every-man-for-himself ethic that has helped to strip labor of the influence it once had.
No surprise then that America's prosperity over the last 30 years has not been shared with the workers who created it, with essentially all of its rewards flowing to those at the top. Workers are no longer at the table when the pie gets divided, so they get the crumbs.
It seems the American worker has just been waiting around for, as King put it, "charitable impulses to grow in his employer."
Well, they haven't.
WORKER SOLIDARITY
Merle Haggard recorded a song called "The Workin' Man Can't Get Nowhere Today," and that's truer now than when Hag recorded it. With right wing dominance in the political and corporate culture there has been an assault on working people since Ronald Reagan strode into the White House in 1981. While the rich and their lackeys have done very well, wages and benefits for working people have stagnated or actually declined. Now, after the corrupt and incompetent administration of George W. Bush, we see the bitter fruits of right wing policies in their full hideous display.
Martin Luther King was killed 41 years ago. Martin Luther King was in Memphis, Tennessee, to lend support to striking sanitation workers. We can acknowledge and support Doctor King's legacy by standing up for working people once again. This commentary by Robyn E. Blumner is at www.commondreams.org:
One of the great labor speeches in American history is King's 1961 address to the AFL-CIO. In it King reflected on the grand work of the labor movement. He said that in response to the "organized misery" of sweatshops and the notion that capital may "act without restraints and without conscience," the worker unionized and by doing so had "constructed the means by which a fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him."
How sad that in the intervening years King's message to workers has been lost. Worker solidarity has given way to an every-man-for-himself ethic that has helped to strip labor of the influence it once had.
No surprise then that America's prosperity over the last 30 years has not been shared with the workers who created it, with essentially all of its rewards flowing to those at the top. Workers are no longer at the table when the pie gets divided, so they get the crumbs.
It seems the American worker has just been waiting around for, as King put it, "charitable impulses to grow in his employer."
Well, they haven't.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
SICK OF WINGNUTS
The wingnuts who write letters to the editor of The Fresno Bee are putting their ignorance, bigotry, and callousness on full display since Barack Obama became president. There's nothing new, of course. It's the same old tripe about "socialism" or other paranoid delusions. Today we had a repeat of the McCain campaign meme mocking Obama as "the anointed one." That's a little odd when many on the right claimed that George W. Bush was installed by God. I don't remember any pronouncements from the Deity, but maybe I just missed it.
Fresno is such a hole anyway. We have incredibly high poverty and incredibly high social dysfunction. A part of that, I'm convinced, is because we have more wingnuts per capita than almost any other place in the country. It's time for these right-wing cretins to crawl under their rocks and molder away.
SICK OF WINGNUTS
The wingnuts who write letters to the editor of The Fresno Bee are putting their ignorance, bigotry, and callousness on full display since Barack Obama became president. There's nothing new, of course. It's the same old tripe about "socialism" or other paranoid delusions. Today we had a repeat of the McCain campaign meme mocking Obama as "the anointed one." That's a little odd when many on the right claimed that George W. Bush was installed by God. I don't remember any pronouncements from the Deity, but maybe I just missed it.
Fresno is such a hole anyway. We have incredibly high poverty and incredibly high social dysfunction. A part of that, I'm convinced, is because we have more wingnuts per capita than almost any other place in the country. It's time for these right-wing cretins to crawl under their rocks and molder away.
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