Archive for July, 2007

Poll: Big Brother Better than Burglar Say Americans by 3 to 1

Published by
Gene Shinai
July 31, 2007 in Government and Newz. 0 Comments

From ABC News:

ANALYSIS by MICHELLE LIRTZMAN

Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians, but credited in London with helping to catch a variety of perpetrators since the early 1990s.

Given the chief arguments, pro and con — a way to help solve crimes vs. too much of a government intrusion on privacy — it isn’t close: 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it. -More

Decide for yourself, Poll or Propaganda?

-Ninja

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Giuliani exaggerating (again)

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Newz and Politics. 0 Comments

From the NY Daily News

BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Sunday, July 29th 2007, 8:33 PM

It is Rudy Giuliani’s favorite boast on the presidential campaign trail: “I cut taxes 23 times” as mayor of New York, he says, a claim inevitably met by applause.

The impressive-sounding stat stars in radio ads this week in New Hampshire and Iowa, where the voiceover asserts that Giuliani “cut or eliminated 23 taxes.”

Trouble is, it’s not really true, say tax-cutting allies of the former mayor, as well as experts at the Citizens Budget Commission and elsewhere.

A close examination of the tax-slashing claims from a list provided by his campaign show that in at least four cases, the former mayor is seizing credit for cuts initiated by others and, in one case, for a tax reduction he fought.

And some of the cuts’ original champions are now calling him on it.

“The correct nomenclature would be ‘We cut taxes,’ not ‘I cut taxes,’” said former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a Democrat who maintained cordial relations with Republican Giuliani.

It’s not that Giuliani wasn’t a persistent tax-cutter. He was, says Vallone and many others. But that just makes his decision to fudge numbers seem needless, they add.

Vallone’s slap is aimed mainly at Giuliani’s decision to count among his 23 cuts the elimination of a 12.5% personal income tax surcharge in 1998 - a $192 million idea that Vallone brought to the table that year.

At the time, Vallone was running for governor. Giuliani and his aides spent months blasting the cut as an irresponsible gambit. MORE

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Cheney Says He Is A ‘Unique Creature,’ Refuses To Say He Is Part Of Executive Branch

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government and Newz. 0 Comments

From ThinkProgress

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

In June, House investigators revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney had exempted his office from an executive order order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

After Congressional Democrats called his bluff by threatening to withhold funding from his office, the White House was forced to roll back their rhetoric, claiming “that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.”

But in an interview with CBS News’ Mark Knoller today, Cheney refused to say he was a member of the executive branch:

Mark Knoller: Are you part of the executive branch, sir?

Vice President Cheney: Well, the job of Vice President is an interesting one, because you have a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I have an office in the West Wing of the White House, I am an adviser to the president, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I’m actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. […]

KNOLLER: But you are principally a part of the executive branch, are you not?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches. MORE

Let’s admit it. He’s unique all right. He’s the most incredible monster that has walked this planet in many a long year.

~Susan~

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War, chaos and Bush’s faith

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government, Newz, Opinion and Religion. 0 Comments

From Salon

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

The first lesson of Iraq: Beware of those who play dice with God.

By Gary Kamiya

July 31, 2007 | In the last few weeks, as the dreadful consequences of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” continue to unfold in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, a disturbing thought is rising to the surface: There may be no way to clean up the mess he has made.

Ironically, this is the very argument that Bush and his supporters are now using to justify keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely — or at least onto the next president’s watch. They insist that disaster looms, and that only the blood of American troops, infused into a slow-drip I.V., can keep Iraq and the entire region from dying. Bush understands that there only two things that can save his legacy: either victory, or a worst-case scenario in which all of his threats about the all-powerful Islamo-fascist menace come true. The frightening thing is that for Bush, there’s no difference between the two outcomes. For this president is at once a true believer who sees himself leading a great war against evil, and a shrewd politician who wants to escape the blame for his Iraq disaster. Hence his refusal to cut America’s losses — and the very real possibility that he might roll the war dice yet again, this time in Iran. If the world blows up as a result, that will just prove that he was right about the evil jihadists.

Most Americans now believe that Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a terrible mistake. They see that it has turned out badly, and think that it has made us less safe. But there is another, less discussed reason why the war was an act of madness: War always has unforeseen consequences. Making war is like playing dice with God — using His dice. This is why war should always be a last resort. What’s stunning about the Iraq war is that its architects not only ignored this obvious truth, but also ignored the consequences that could have been, and were, foreseeable. To start an unprovoked war on false pretenses and pie-in-the-sky promises of a vast regional transformation, besides being unethical, is an act of almost cosmic folly. To put it in Christian terms, it is the cardinal sin — the sin of pride. MORE

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Sex offender wins terms challenge

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government, In Defense of Democracy, Law and Justice and Newz. 0 Comments

From the BBC

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

The government has been acting unlawfully by keeping prisoners in jail longer than necessary, judges say.

The Appeal Court ruling came in a case brought by a sex offender who had been handed an indeterminate jail sentence.

Under the sentence offenders are given a minimum tariff, but must prove they are no longer a danger to the public before they can be released.

David Walker argued he cannot be considered for release because his jail does not offer a parole course.

The Court of Appeal ruled there “was a general and systemic legal failure”.

The government was granted a stay on the ruling, pending an application for permission to make an appeal.

BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said if the government’s appeal was not successful, hundreds of prisoners might have to be released before it was determined that they were safe .

‘Cannot be justified’

Walker was given an indeterminate sentence after being convicted of sexual assault while drunk, and is currently in prison in Doncaster. MORE

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Congress must shield public’s right to know–Editorial

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government, In Defense of Democracy, Newz and Opinion. 0 Comments

From the Austin American-Statesman

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Congress has another opportunity this week to protect insiders who blow the whistle on government inefficiency and corruption — and the journalists who report it.

Naturally, many people in government don’t like the idea of protecting whistle-blowers, so the legislation being considered in the U.S. House and Senate faces an uphill course. A similar bill offering a qualified privilege for Texas journalists to protect the names of undisclosed sources fought its way through the Legislature last session only to be killed at the last minute by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball.

A federal law to protect the free flow of information could get a vote in the House Judiciary Committee as early as Wednesday. U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the San Antonio Republican whose 21st District reaches into Austin, is the ranking GOP member on the committee. This is a bill Smith should support, though his office issued a statement that says nothing about his intentions.

Though opponents try to paint HR 2102, known as the Free Flow of Information Act, as a shield bill for journalists, the true beneficiary is the American people. When government corruption is exposed — think of Watergate or the awful conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — the public benefits, not the journalists. MORE

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Why the White House Keeps Hiding Behind General Petraeus

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government, Middle East, Newz and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

From Alternet

By Frank Rich, The New York Times. Posted July 30, 2007.

 

The White House has done everything possible to create the appearance that Gen. David Petraeus has all the responsibility for the occupation of Iraq — but it’s really an attempt to shield Bush from the failure in Iraq.

There was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!

It was The Washington Post that first quantified General Petraeus’s remarkable ascension. President Bush, who mentioned his new Iraq commander’s name only six times as the surge rolled out in January, has cited him more than 150 times in public utterances since, including 53 in May alone.

As always with this White House’s propaganda offensives, the message in Mr. Bush’s relentless repetitions never varies. General Petraeus is the “main man.” He is the man who gives “candid advice.” Come September, he will be the man who will give the president and the country their orders about the war.

And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.

Actually, we don’t have to wait. We already know what David will say. He gave it away to The Times of London last month, when he said that September “is a deadline for a report, not a deadline for a change in policy.” In other words: Damn the report (and that irrelevant Congress that will read it) — full speed ahead. There will be no change in policy. As Michael Gordon reported in The New York Times last week, General Petraeus has collaborated on a classified strategy document that will keep American troops in Iraq well into 2009 as we wait for the miracles that will somehow bring that country security and a functioning government. MORE


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President Rudy-Opinion

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Government, Newz, Opinion and Politics. 1 Comment

From The Nation

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

Jon Wiener

In recent polls, Rudy Giuliani leads his rivals in the Republican primary race by about ten points. That’s surprising, since he’s been a supporter of gay rights, abortion rights and immigrant rights as well as gun control. It suggests that a President Giuliani would be better than Bush. I asked Kevin Baker–he’s author of the well-known City of Fire trilogy of novels about New York City–Strivers Row, Dreamland and Paradise Alley. He also writes for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Harper’s, where his essay, “A Fate Worse Than Bush,” leads the magazine’s August issue.

Giuliani’s main claim to fame is his conduct immediately after 9/11. Many still remember his TV press conference the night of the attacks, when a reporter asked how many casualties there would be. Giuliani had a magnificent answer: “More than we can bear.” Compared to what President Bush was saying, that was Shakespeare.

But what about the rest of his performance around 9/11? MORE

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Credit Card Buyer Beware–Opinion

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Business/Finance, Government, Newz and Opinion. 0 Comments

From the NY Times

Published: July 31, 2007

The federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the banking and credit card industries have failed utterly to keep pace with deceptive and unfair practices that have become shamefully standard in the business. As a consequence many hard-working Americans who pay their bills are mired in debt — and in danger of losing whatever savings they have, and perhaps their homes. Congress, which sat on its hands while the problem got worse and worse, needs to rein in this sometimes predatory industry.

The scope of the problem was laid out in Congressional hearings this spring held by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrat from Michigan. According to testimony, one witness exceeded his charge card’s $3,000 limit by $200 — triggering what eventually amounted to $7,500 in penalties and interest. After paying an average of $1,000 a year for six years, the man still owed $4,400.

That experience has become all too common as the credit card industry has stealthily adopted methods designed to maximize burdensome penalties and fees, while ratcheting up interest rates as high as 30 percent. Companies bombard unwary consumers with teaser packages that promise very low interest rates to start, while reserving for themselves the right to raise rates whenever they choose. The details are buried in deliberately arcane contracts that run 30 pages long and that even lawyers have trouble understanding.

Congressional investigations and studies by consumer advocates have exposed other unsavory practices. Some card companies apply penalty rates retroactively — to purchases that were made before the penalty was incurred or in some cases to debts that were even paid off. As one Congressional witness pointed out, the credit card industry is the only one allowed to increase the price of a product after it has been sold. MORE

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Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney Sues Newspaper for Libel

Published by
susan
July 31, 2007 in Human Interest/Society, Law and Justice, Newz and Politics. 0 Comments

From Editor & Publisher

Found for us by the Texas news ninja, Betsy!

Published: July 30, 2007 11:10 AM ET
NEW YORK Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney has filed a lawsuit against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, claiming the paper libeled her in at least two editorials and a news article.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Fulton County State Court against the newspaper, its parent company, Cox Enterprises, as well as its publisher, managing editor and editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker.

Among other allegations, the lawsuit alleges the paper contained libelous and defamatory statements in two of Tucker’s 2006 columns, including one about the congresswoman’s altercation with a Capitol Hill police officer in a Washington office building. That column was included in a submission that won Tucker the Pulitzer Prize earlier this year. MORE

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